Indeed the battalion owed its very existence to O’Dell and to Noel Kite’s father, Findlay. Both were rich men (Kite had made his fortune in dye) and in 1914 they had paid for the formation and upkeep of the battalion (food, uniforms, transport, pay) out of their own pockets for several months, until the Army Council recognized it officially as a New Army service battalion. Our first uniforms — navy-blue serge — were made up at Selfridge’s. We even had our own pipe band.
Findlay Kite felt strongly that every battalion should have a band and had recruited and paid eight youths from Glasgow to join the battalion. The Army Council refused to take on this expense and it was still borne by the Kite family — much to Noel Kite’s irritation. The pipers were fully cognizant of their privileged position and refused any other duties. They lived apart from the rest of us in well-tended billets (they received an extra allowance for food and clothing when overseas). The sight of the pipers lounging around their braziers in shirtsleeve order was the only thing that seemed to rile Noel, normally placid to the point of inertia. “Work-shy peasants!” he used to call them and regularly wrote to his father encouraging the band’s dissolution. But his father and Colonel O’Dell always vetoed it. They liked the idea of an English battalion with a Scottish band. It gave the 13th a ready-made gloss of tradition, O’Dell argued.
A few days after my arrival at Dunkirk an orderly runner told me that I was wanted by the colonel. I went to battalion HQ worried that my father had changed his mind and was going to demand my return. But not at all. O’Dell was a bald cheerful man with a frizzy blond moustache.
“Welcome aboard, Todd. Peter Hobhouse’s cousin, yes? He wrote to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Todd … Todd … You must have been in Fetter’s, then. George Armitage’s house.”
“Sorry, sir?”
“No, no. Got it now. Gallway’s. Never forget a face. Grand you’re here. Could do with a few more Stanburians, I can tell you.”
I did not correct him.
“Remember the motto? Plutôt fort que piquant. That’s the spirit.”
“Yes, sir.”
At Dunkirk, apart from doing the Naval Division’s fatigues, we were sent on route marches with Louise around the warm and dusty countryside. “Route strolls,” as Maitland Bookbinder referred to them. We were relieved to march up to Coxyde-Bains to take over the end of the Belgian line. The skirling music of the pipes led us through battered Belgian villages, gazed upon by the incurious eyes of the few inhabitants who turned out to watch us pass. There was a discernible quickening of our spirits as we approached these hamlets. Our plod became a swagger; our caps were set at extravagant angles. Louise, on a bicycle, would ride by and implore us to throw away our cigarettes. “Nao ciggies, chips,” he would say in his South African accent. “Unsoldierly. Come on, please, fags out.” We puffed on regardless. Louise gave up quickly. He had not been to public school — not that we cared — and I think he felt socially uneasy with us. It was strange, but every time we passed through a village we seemed to pick up an escort of four or five dogs that scampered alongside for a mile or so, sniffing and tails wagging, before abandoning us.
The line at Nieuport is where I really date the start of my military career. At Dunkirk we had been little more than servants and laborers in our working-party duties for the disdainful Naval Division. At Coxyde in reserve, or in the trenches at Nieuport, at least we felt more like soldiers. We were facing the enemy after all, albeit under reasonably pleasant circumstances. Here too I began to shed the integument of gloom and self-loathing that had enfolded me since that black weekend at Charlbury. I began to emerge. A fragile self-confidence established itself. I started to correspond with Hamish and learned something of the events subsequent to my departure from school.
Our plan had worked well. I was not discovered absent until the next day. Angus was dispatched to Galashiels Station and then traveled up and down the line searching for traces of me. Hamish’s role was discovered swiftly and he was duly flogged. He wrote: “It was as bad as everyone had said. I do not think I have ever experienced such pain before. Still, it was a useful experience. Now I know what it is like to be mercilessly beaten. (Minto is quite batty, I am sure.) It all adds to one’s store of knowledge.” He sounded almost grateful, as if I had opened a locked door in his life. But it made me feel guilty.
Our routine at Nieuport was straightforward. Two companies held the line for a week and were relieved by the other two. The resting companies occupied battalion reserve (an orchard) at Coxyde-Bains and occasionally supplied fatigue parties for the Royal Marine siege gunners. After each company had spent a total of a month in the line, we returned to brigade reserve at Wormstroedt, some distance away, behind the British sector of the Western Front. Life at Coxyde-Bains was pleasant, if boring. The town was out of bounds to us, but not to Belgian troops. There was a sizable detachment garrisoned here as King Albert had his HQ at nearby La Panne. There was a small closer village, St. Idesbaldle, which we were allowed to visit, with two cafés — one for officers, one for other ranks — but it did not offer much in terms of diversion. Our time was taken up with prettifying the reserve lines (creating ash-clinker paths with whitewashed stone borders, allotments, building a clay tennis court for the officers’ mess), route marches, close-order drill, musketry practice and endless sessions of battalion sports of every type. About two miles away, near St. Idesbalde, was a large Belgian field hospital. Once or twice we passed this, either marching or on a cross-country run, and we saw the off-duty nurses with red crosses on their starched aprons and what I took to be an order of Belgian nuns with headdresses like stiff white-linen sombreros, the vast brims complicatedly folded. This view excited some of our more sensual types — Leo Druce and Noel Kite in particular — who instantly planned to strike up acquaintances. Little was achieved beyond vain shouts of introduction as we jogged past — much to Louise’s irritation.
My main pleasure at Coxyde-Bains — when I had the chance — was to walk on the beach. If one left the orchard and walked down a lane past a farm, one soon came to the dunes. They evoked for me memories of Scotland and, when the tide was out, the huge flat beach recalled the West Sands at St. Andrews in Fife. Sometimes I would walk west towards Dunkirk. On other occasions I would walk east towards Nieuport and the front line. I would stop when I could just see the revetments and sandbags at the mouth of the Yser River at Nieuport, which marked the position I so often occupied as l’homme de l’extrême gauche. At low tide the furthest extension of the wire was often exposed and I was often obscurely tempted to walk on and wade round the double entanglements, then traverse the mile of no-man’s-land and perhaps bypass the German line too. There I might meet my German counterpart: a young private, a little unhappy, uncertain of his future, whiling away his off-duty hours with a morose stroll on the sands at Ostende-Bains. Perhaps we would simply nod “Good morning” and saunter on? Perhaps I might ask him for a light: Hast du Feuer? It was a pleasing fantasy.…