Yet during all this latter time at the Douve I longed for a change in trench life.  Some activity, some march to somewhere or other; anything to smash up the everlasting stagnant appearance of life there.  Suddenly the change came.  We were told we had to go out a day before one of our usual sessions in the trenches was ended.  We were all immensely pleased.  We didn’t know where we were bound for, but, anyway, we were going.  This news revived me enormously, and everything looked brighter.  The departure-night came, and company by company we handed over to a battalion that had come to relieve us, and collected on the road leading back to Neuve Eglise.  I handed over all my gun emplacements to the incoming machine-gun officer, and finally collected my various sections with all their tackle on the road as well.  We merely marched back to our usual billets that night, but next morning had orders to get all our baggage ready for the transport wagons.  We didn’t know where we were going, but at about eleven o’clock in the morning we started off on the march, and soon realized that our direction was Bailleul.

On a fine, clear, warm spring day we marched along, all in the best of spirits, songs of all sorts being sung one after the other.  As I marched along in the rear of the battalion, at the head of my machine-gun section, I selected items from their repertoire and had them sung “by request.”  I had some astonishingly fine mouth-organists in my section.  When we had “In the trail of the Lonesome Pine” sung by half the section, with mouth-organ accompaniment by the other half, the effect was enormous.  We passed several battalions of my regiment on the road, evidently bound for the Armentieres direction.  Shouts, jokes and much mirth showed the kindred spirits of the passing columns.  All battalions of the same regiment, all more or less recruited in the same counties.  When we reached Bailleul we halted in the Square, and then I learnt we were to be billeted there.  There was apparently some difficulty in getting billets, and so I was faced with the necessity of finding some for my section myself.  The transport officer was in the same fix; he wanted a large and commodious farm whenever he hitched up countless as he had a crowd of horses, wagons and men to put up somehow.  He and I decided to start out and look for billets on our own.

I found a temporary rest for my section in an old brickyard on the outskirts of the town, and the transport officer and I started out to look for a good farm which we could appropriate.

Bailleul stands on a bit of a hill, so you can get a wide and extensive view of the country from there.  We could see several farms perched about in the country.  We fixed on the nearest, and walked out to it.  No luck; they were willing to have us, but it wasn’t big enough.  We tried another; same result.  I then suggested we should separate, and each try different roads, and thus we should get one quicker.  This we did, I going off up a long straight road, and finally coming to a most promising looking edifice on one side—­a real large size in farms.