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Updated: May 27, 2025
And though the hearts of Mo and me go out to you, laddie, and though we miss you sore, yet Mo says he's blistering glad you're out of it and safe in your perishing bed with a Blighty one. And such, in more academic phraseology, are the sentiments of your old friend Phineas. "Ah, laddie! it was a bad day when we marched from the old billets; for the word had gone round that we weren't going back.
Abandoning their original intention of forming a mine under the walls, they placed the powder in this vault, and afterwards gradually conveyed into it three thousand billets of wood, and five hundred fagots; Guy Fawkes arranging them in order, making the place clean and neat, in order that if any strangers, by accident or otherwise, entered the house, no suspicion might be excited.
As the croupier placed the billets de banque upon the table, I overheard the muttered commendations of an old veteran behind me, upon the coolness and judgment of my play; so much for fortune, thought I, my judgment consists in a perfect ignorance of the chances, and my coolness is merely a thorough indifference to success; whether it was now that the flattery had its effect upon me, or that the passion for play, so long dormant, had suddenly seized hold upon me, I know not, but my attention became from that moment rivetted upon the game, and I played every deal.
His company was to be relieved that day, and to go back from the trenches to rest billets, behind the lines. We had sent our laddie a braw lot of Christmas packages not long before, but he had had them kept at the rest billet, so that he might have the pleasure of opening them when he was out of the trenches, and had a little leisure, even though it made his Christmas presents a wee bit late.
We learned that the enemy had loosed off a lot of gas beyond Kemmel, and we were to man the defences as soon as possible. The battalion marched along as far as the entrance to Bailleul, when just as day was breaking a cyclist orderly rode up with orders for us to return to our billets. No infantry attack had followed the gas cloud, and we were free to return to rest.
Wetherell had at one time been actually a resident of Boston, he received quite as many cautions from his neighbors as Monsieur Dumollet. Billets doux and pistols were, of course, not mentioned, but it certainly behooved him, when he should have arrived at that place of intrigues, to be on the lookout for cabals.
Everybody started laughing at McLean's plight, but no sooner were the rest of us settled down till we too had a battle on our hands; and in the middle of the fray, Fritz started shelling our billets with gas shells, one of the missiles going clean through the tile roof and knocking the tiles down on our heads. Then came a salvo six shells followed by several others.
More than once I have shaved in a periscope mirror pegged into the side of a trench, with the bullets snapping overhead, and rubbed my face with wet tea leaves afterward to freshen up. Back in billets the very first thing that comes off is the big clean-up. Uniforms are brushed up, and equipment put in order. Then comes the bath, the most thorough possible under the conditions.
If one of those ruinous farms does not contain a battery mess the chances are that it will shelter a field ambulance or else a company in billets. Field ambulances, like the batteries, are somewhat migratory in their habits, and change their positions according as they are wanted.
Every man in the company thought he was the greatest company officer in the division, and I thought so too. The battalion paraded early on April 7th and once more we were on the march. We were working north and were to go into billets near Cassel. The intended attack on the Rue D'Enfer never took place. It was only an April fool joke.
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