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The number of men assigned to a house depends in a great measure on the discretion of the householder and the temper of the billeting officer. A gruff reply or a caustic remark from the former sometimes offends; often the officer is in a hurry, and at such a time disproportionate assortment is generally the result.
"I fear I shall have to ask some of my fellow townsmen to share in billeting you." "It is not to be heard of," I said, guessing that he wished to distribute the expense. Not that I should have had any objection to that; but that it was necessary to the design I had suddenly conceived that we should be all together. "It will not be safe," I continued.
On reaching Commercy, Forsyth and I found that quarters had been already selected for us, and our names written on the door with chalk the quartermaster charged with the billeting of the officers at headquarters having started out in advance to perform this duty and make all needful preparations for the King before he arrived, which course was usually pursued thereafter, whenever the royal headquarters took up a new location.
Fortunately, the chalk marks of the Boche billeting officers had not been washed off the doors, and these told us how many men had been lodged in a given house. In my lodging I was accorded a most friendly reception, for my hostess was French. Her nephew had come up from Paris to visit her a few months before the outbreak of the war, and had been unable to get back to France.
On the second day the fever declared itself; for some nights he was delirious; and I remember it was when a commanding officer was inspecting our quarters, with an intention, very likely, of billeting himself on the house, that the howling and mad words of the patient overhead struck him, and he retired rather frightened.
Neither were there provisions for quartering or billeting soldiers, or impressing waggons and other conveyances, in times of exigency. To crown all, no court-martial could sit out of Virginia; a most embarrassing regulation, when troops were fifty or a hundred miles beyond the frontier.
Billeting was not so easy now, for we were ordered to treat the inhabitants as neutrals, and when they objected we couldn't handle the situation as we did later on in Germany. No one likes to have soldiers or civilians quartered on him, and the Luxemburgers were friendly to us only as a matter of policy.
The prisoners were remorsefully shot, as it would have been impossible to bring them away under the heavy fire. We jogged on to Nanteuil, all of us very pleased with ourselves, particularly the Duke of Wellington's, who were loaded with spoils, and a billeting officer who, running slap into some Uhlans, had been fired at all the way from 50 yards' range to 600 and hadn't been hit.
It got about that they were to be billeted in that suburb of Landrécies through which they had passed, Maroilles. At about five o'clock on that aching day, Maroilles was reached. All through the streets there were halts and delays, intolerable to those in whom the want of rest had become a positive passion. At last the members of the billeting party were sighted here at last was rest and sleep....
He had told him all the advantages he could think of that were there to be had for the asking, and Sergeant Cane merely neglected them. ``Let me have a try, said Arthur Smith. ``He soldiered with me before. Sir Munion shrugged his shoulders. He had all the advantages at his fingers' ends, from pay to billeting: there was nothing more to be said. Nevertheless young Smith went.
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