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The villages we went through had escaped obliterating shell fire. I learned that our attacks had been planned thus-wise. Near a bleak cross-roads I saw Collinge of B Battery, and got off the lorry to talk to him. "Brigade Headquarters are at Bousies, about six miles from here," he said. "I'm going that way. The batteries are all in Bousies." "What sort of a time have you had?" I inquired.
F.E.R. Collinge of No. 1 Section D.A.C. will join B Battery to-day." The night bristled with excitements. No. 1 Section of the D.A.C., with two hundred horses, were camped a hundred yards from us, and at 9 P.M. I was in their mess, talking books of the day, horses, and stage gossip. A lull in the conversation was broken by the low unmistakable drone of an enemy aeroplane.
"They shelled this place like stink yesterday," Collinge told me. "Headquarters were in one of those little houses on the left for one night, and their waggon line is there now, so you'll be able to get a horse.... I heard that Major Bartlett had both his chargers killed yesterday when C Battery came through.... Isn't that one of them, that black horse lying under the trees?"
Away on the left a lone tree acted as a landmark for a sunken road. "Brigade tried to make a headquarters there," went on Collinge, "but a signaller got knocked out, and the Boche began using the tree as a datum point; so the colonel ordered a shift." Twenty rough wooden crosses rose mournful and remote in a wide, moist mangel-field. "The cavalry got it badly there," said Collinge.
My way lay up a slushy tree-bordered lane; Collinge bade me good-bye, and rode on down the winding street. There were the usual welcoming smiles. Manning gave me a "Had a good leave, sir?" in his deep-sea voice, and Wilde came out to show where my horse could be stabled.
It was the village which our two brigades of artillery occupied when the Armistice was signed, where the King came to see us, and M. le Maire, in his excitement, gave His Majesty that typically French, shall I say? clasp of intimacy and brotherliness, a left-handed handshake. "Curious thing happened on that rise," remarked Collinge when we were in open country again.
Collinge and I rode into Bousies in the wan light of an October afternoon. At a cross-roads that the Boche had blown up "They didn't do it well enough; the guns got round by that side track, and we were only held up ten minutes," said Collinge Brigade Headquarters' sign-board had been planted in a hedge.
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