Sunday, March 19th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.
If the standard of military organisation in France is anything like it is here then I don't see how we will ever win this war!
The Ammunition Column received an order to depart on Friday night at 10.30 - to leave on Saturday. The O.C. spent Saturday morning in trying to get the order rescinded, because, he maintained, the Weeley position is too far back for a battery at Frinton, especially with a R.A.M.C. and an A.S.C. in between. He failed. Do senior officers always query their orders I wonder? I'm sure they think they know best, but where does that leave discipline? Anyway, the actual departure, which we witnessed between 5.30 and 6.30 pm., was a striking proof of the vast inferiority of horse and mule traction to motor traction.
One mule wagon had to be unloaded twice as the mules wouldn't or couldn't draw it. General mix-up and dinting of gate posts. Part of confusion may be the fact that the O.C. had lost both his subalterns and had to do everything himself. However he had an excellent sergeant-major, a career soldier of vast experience. Probably, had he been given the whole thing to organise, it would have run like clockwork. On one wagon was perched the O.C.'s servant holding his dog under one arm and a parcel of a large photo under the other. The departure had the air of a circus departure badly managed. Then of course on arrival at Weeley (2 miles) they had to take everything to pieces again.
Meantime new units were coming in, and it was getting dusk, and an officers' mess was being fixed up roughly at Culver House. Obviously a high priority this! The melancholy of evening rain over it all; but at least it was a warm evening. Few drops of rain. Then in darkening village you saw groups of men with piles of kit bags lying in front of them waiting to get, or trying to get, into the Workmen's Club where a lot of them were billeted. I don't imagine they mind any amount of discomfort though when the alternative might be a trench in France.
Lovely night. bright moon. Trot of a horse occasionally 'til late.
No comments:
Post a Comment