BEDS
“Thinkof my leave coming in two weeks, and of getting a decent bed to sleep in, with sheets!”
Sancho Panza blessed sleep, but perhaps he always had a good bed to sleep in; we, who can almost slumber on “apron” wire, have a weakness for good beds.
To appreciate fully what a good bed is, one must live for a time without one, and go to rest wrapped in a martial cloak—to wit a British warm or a trench coat, plus the universal sand-bag, than which nothing more generally useful has been seen in this war. Any man who has spent six months (in the infantry) at the front knows all about beds. Any man with a year’s service is a first-class, a number one, connoisseur. The good bed is so rare that whoever spends a night in one talks about it for a week, and brings it up in reminiscences over the charcoal brazier.
“You remember when we were on the long hike from the salient? And the little placewe struck the third night—Cattelle-Villeul I think it was called? By George, I had a good bed. A peach! It had a spring mattress and real linen sheets—not cotton—and two pillows with frilly things on them, and a ripping quilt, with a top-hole eider-down. I was afraid to get into it until my batman produced that new pair of green pyjamas with the pink stripes. It simply hurt to give that bed up!”
And if you let him he will continue in like vein for half an hour. Recollections of that bed have entered into his soul; it is one of the bright spots in a gloomy life.
Needless to say, the farther you go back from the line, the better the beds. They can be roughly classified as follows: Battle beds. Front line beds. Support beds. Reserve beds. Divisional rest beds. Corps reserve beds, and Army Reserve beds. Beyond this it is fifty-fifty you will get a good bed, provided there are not too many troops in the place you go to.
Battle beds, as such, are reserved for battalion commanders, seconds in command, and adjutants. Sometimes Os.C. units have a look-in, but the humble sub. hasnot, unlesshe is one of those Johnnies who can always make something out of nothing.
When there is a “show” on nobody expects to sleep more than two hours in twenty-four, and he’s lucky if he gets that. The C.O. takes his brief slumber on some bare boards raised above the floor-level in a dug-out. The Os.C. units use a stretcher, with a cape for a pillow, and the others sleep any old where—on a broken chair, in a corner on the ground, on the steps of a dug-out, on the fire-step of a parapet, or even leaning against the parapet. One of the best snoozes we ever had was of the last variety, while Fritz was plastering the communication trenches with a barrage a mouse could not creep through.
There is one thing about battle beds; one is far too weary to do anything but flop limply down, and go instantly to sleep. The nature of your couch is of secondary importance. Possibly the prize goes to the man who slept through an intense bombardment, curled up between two dead Germans, whom he thought were a couple of his pals, asleep, when he tumbled in to rest.
Front line beds vary according to sector.Usually they are simply a series of bunks, tucked in one above the other as in a steamer-cabin, and made of a stretch of green canvas nailed to a pair of two by fours. Sometimes an ingenious blighter introduces expanded metal or chicken wire into the general make-up, with the invariable result that it gets broken by some 200-pounder, and remains a menace to tender portions of the human frame until some one gets “real wild” and smashes up the whole concern.
In support, the “downy couch” does not improve very much. Sometimes it is worse, and it is always inhabited by a fauna of the largest and most voracious kind.
There is a large element of chance as to reserve beds. They are generally snares of disillusionment, but once in a while the connoisseur strikes oil. It will not have sheets—clean sheets, at all events—but it may possess the odd blanket, and the room may have been cleaned a couple of weeks ago. If Madame is clean the bed will be clean; if otherwise, otherwise also.
All the beds at the front are the same in some respects. They are all wooden, andthey nearly all have on them huge piles of mattresses, four or five deep. It is wisest not to investigate too thoroughly the inner consciousnesses of the latter, or the awakening may be rude. In the old days, long, long ago, when the dove of Peace billed and cooed over the roof of the world, no self-respecting citizen would sleep in them, but now with what joy do we sink with a sigh of relief into the once abominated feather-bed of doubtful antecedents, which has been slept in for two years by one officer after another, and never, never, never been aired.
C’est la guerre!
Divisional rest beds are at least two points superior to the last. They are the kind of beds run by a sixth-rate lodging-house in Bloomsbury, taken on the whole. Usually there is one bed short per unit, so some one has to double up, with the result that the stronger of the twain wrapsallthe bed-clothes around him, and the other chap does not sleep at all, or is ignominiously rolled out on to the brickpavé.
Every one in French villages must go to bed with their stockings on.
Judging by the permanent kinks in all the beds, they must have been bedssolitairefor a life-time, before the soldiers came.
Once we were asked to share a bed withbébé, who was three. We refused. On another occasion, when we were very tired indeed, we were told that the only bed available was that usually dwelt in by “Jeanne.” We inspected it, and made a peaceful occupation. “Jeanne” came home unexpectedly at midnight, and slipped indoors quietly to her room. It was a bad quarter of an hour, never to be forgotten! Especially when we found out in the morning that “Jeanne” was twenty years old, and decidedly pretty. Our reputation in that household was a minus quantity.
In corps reserve one gets beds with coffee in the morning at 7A.M.“Votre café, M’sieu.” “Oui, oui, mercy; leave it outside the door—la porte—please!” “Voiçi, M’sieu! Vous avez bien dormi?” And of course you can’t say anything, even if Madame stands by the pillow and tells you the whole story of how Yvonne makes the coffee!
They are fearless, these French women!