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Updated: June 26, 2025
I warrant he has some brilliant scheme in his head." From Montauban we marched up the Garonne to Toulouse, and finally found ourselves at Narbonne, where we went into winter quarters. Roger was, of course, with his own troop, but Felix and I were billeted in the same house, much to our satisfaction.
"Are you mad, that you come here, and every stable full of dragoons' horses? They have them billeted on us, curse them, and the villains are in the coachhouse polishing their bits and stirrup irons. Hark to them." "I hear them," said Hope. "Get me two of your oat sacks, Charlie, good strong ones. I have goods here that want protecting from the sunlight."
But in winter the sodden landscape was desolate beyond belief, these roads presenting just that aspect of a current of slime in a muddy sea which they suggested to the lonely horseman on the eve of Waterloo in that little classic of De Vigny's known to literature as Laurette. Such was the country and such the town in which we were billeted.
They would need some part of his house which, by the way, was formerly the domicile of Louis David, the great painter of Napoleon and he would be glad if he could make arrangements to lodge four soldiers. My friend at once consented, and out of the five rooms he has kept two to himself. In the other three are billeted a cavalry officer and four soldiers.
It was not so with some of the others, however; and Count Bismarck was particularly unfortunate, being billeted in a very small and uncomfortable house, where, visiting him to learn more fully what was going on, I found him, wrapped in a shabby old dressing-gown, hard at work.
It was dated the previous day and said that he was billeted with his unit close to Meteren. So I set off at once to find him, and had the good luck to meet him as he was cycling round on some medical inspection duties. His unit had just come out to France and he had no idea I was so near at hand; and I think he nearly fell off his bicycle with surprise when I first appeared in that country lane.
We are sorry, but we'll forget it as soon as the women and children are buried. We are sorry, but it is not important. Things are a bit livened up here. Day before yesterday a regiment of dragoons arrived. They are billeted for three months. They are men from the midi, and, alas! none too popular at this moment. Still, they have been well received, and their presence does liven up the place.
But I noticed that they answered my companion in a dull, trance-like way, as though our questions concerned no one so little as themselves. "They're fugitives," he repeated to me. "Been burnt out of their farm by the Bosches near the Menin ridge." "Are they all alone?" I asked. He put some further questions. "Yes, their only son was shot by the Germans when they billeted there." "Why?"
Once, I say, a Sleepy Hollow, but now alive with the tramp of soldiers and the rumble of artillery and transport; for Wellingsford is the centre of a district occupied by a division, which means twenty thousand men of all arms, and the streets and roads swarm with men in khaki, and troops are billeted in all the houses. The War has changed many aspects, but not my old friendships.
Away we rushed through the night, and as we went through villages where our Tommies were billeted, the strains of the old home songs Irish, Scotch and English were wafted to my ears. Except for the incessant shelling, the flash of guns, and the distant glare from the star-shells, it was almost impossible to believe we were in the terrible throes of war. I arrived at G.H.Q. about 8.30 p.m.
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