Abandoning the role of surgical expert for that of coroner, Mucklewame held the trophy aloft, and delivered his verdict—­

“There, boys!  That’s what comes of eating your iron ration without authority!”

III

Here is an average billet, and its personnel.

The central feature of our residence is the refuse-pit, which fills practically the whole of the rectangular farmyard, and resembles (in size and shape only) an open-air swimming bath.  Its abundant contents are apparently the sole asset of the household; for if you proceed, in the interests of health, to spread a decent mantle of honest earth thereover, you do so to the accompaniment of a harmonised chorus of lamentation, very creditably rendered by the entire family, who are grouped en masse about the spot where the high diving-board ought to be.

Round this perverted place of ablution runs a stone ledge, some four feet wide, and round that again run the farm buildings—­the house at the top end, a great barn down one side, and the cowhouse, together with certain darksome piggeries and fowl-houses, down the other.  These latter residences are occupied only at night, their tenants preferring to spend the golden hours of day in profitable occupation upon the happy hunting ground in the middle.

Within the precincts of this already overcrowded establishment are lodged some two hundred British soldiers and their officers.  The men sleep in the barn, their meals being prepared for them upon the Company cooker, which stands in the muddy road outside, and resembles the humble vehicle employed by Urban District Councils for the preparation of tar for road-mending purposes.  The officers occupy any room which may be available within the farmhouse itself.  The Company Commander has the best bedroom—­a low-roofed, stone-floored apartment, with a very small window and a very large bed.  The subalterns sleep where they can—­usually in the grenier, a loft under the tiles, devoted to the storage of onions and the drying, during the winter months, of the family washing, which is suspended from innumerable strings stretched from wall to wall.

For a Mess, there is usually a spare apartment of some kind.  If not, you put your pride in your pocket and take your meals at the kitchen table, at such hours as the family are not sitting humped round the same with their hats on, partaking of soup or coffee. (This appears to be their sole sustenance.) A farm-kitchen in northern France is a scrupulously clean place—­the whole family gets up at half-past four in the morning and sees to the matter—­and despite the frugality of her own home menu, the fermiere can produce you a perfect omelette at any hour of the day or night.