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Updated: May 8, 2025
We were fortunate in finding another billet quite close an important point, as we were to mess together and then took a stroll around the town. Bailleul is, like most French provincial towns, arranged like a star, the Grande Place and Hôtel de Ville forming the centre.
As I sat out in our garden in Bailleul one evening at the end of April reading "The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne," three aeroplanes like great birds volplaned slowly down from the clouds coming home to roost until they were within 100 feet of the ground, just clearing the house tops as they dropped into their nesting ground on the other side of the town. I could see the pilots quite plainly.
Christmas Day the men were marched into Bailleul, where a big dinner was given them by the officers of the battalion. In the evening another dinner was held for the officers themselves. There were the usual toasts and speeches, and before the party broke up Captain George T. Richardson asked for a few minutes' silent prayer for those who would not be present at our next dinner.
Our next journey, on the 7th, led through Bailleul, where the band of the Artists' Rifles played in the great square, and the Warwicks of the 143rd Brigade viewed us with the superior air of men who had already been in the trenches with the 6th Division; then between the poplars along the Armentières road, until we turned to the left at Rabot, and soon arrived at our destination, a small village called Romarin.
Arriving at the headquarters at Bailleul, I met Lieutenant-Colonel , and we decided to go straight to the front line. Leaving in a heavy rain, we splashed our way through one continuous stream of mud and water. Mile after mile of it. In places the water covered the entire road, until at times one hardly knew which was the road and which was the ditch alongside. Several times our car got ditched.
My hospital itinerary was from the field to the dressing station at Bailleul, thence to Boulogne; from Boulogne to Rouen, and from Rouen to Southampton and Brighton.
Then if you try to pierce the northern haze, beyond that ruined tower, you may follow in imagination the course of the Yser westward to that Belgian coast where Admiral Hood's guns broke down and scattered the German march upon Dunkirk and Calais; or if you turn south you are looking over the Belfry of Bailleul, towards Neuve Chapelle, and Festubert, and all the fierce fighting-ground round Souchez and the Labyrinth.
Later in the day we advanced to Bailleul, where we learnt that the 1st Corps was fighting furiously to the north. The square was full of motor-buses and staff-officers. They were the first of our own motor-buses we had seen out in Flanders. They cheered us greatly, and after some drinks we sat in one and tried to learn from the map something of the new country in which we were to ride.
They had watched the heavens but they might not sow; they had turned their back on the fields which they would never reap. There was an end to all their husbandry, and they had no one left to speak with their enemies in the gate. This was the secret of their heavy lethargy. My companion and I took counsel together. It were better, we agreed, to maintain them on the road to Bailleul.
"Your goodness, my second father, is incredible." "You remain, then?" asked de Bailleul eagerly. The conflict of the moonlight night was once more going on in Lecour's breast. The forces on both sides were strong. "Give me an hour to think, sir. See, this paragraph does not contain any risk; the word is printed 'Réfsentigny." The Chevalier scanned it anew. "True," said he.
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