“I don’t think we’d better go into the church,” he said.  “They’d probably throw us out.”

They passed through an archway in a huge medieval wall into the graveyard, and thence, by a sudden and complete transformation in time, colour and atmosphere, into a most delightful garden of magnificent proportions, with smooth lawns and sweeping drives.  The chateau itself was scarcely in keeping with this stateliness.  The impression it gave one came as an anti-climax.  The Subaltern was beginning to develop a fine taste in French chateaux, but somehow this one did not rank with the others, although his brain reeled at the thought of the cost of it all.  Probably that is why it failed as a work of art and beauty:  it made one wonder how much it must have cost.

A passer-by told them that it belonged to a certain woman whose name had been on everybody’s lips, just before the war, and the information stimulated their interest.  They wandered around, past silent fountains and over velvet lawns, stone terraces and gravel drives.  On their way back they passed one of the big bay windows on the ground floor of the chateau.  It was open, and they caught the faint but distinctive aroma of disinfectant.  The erstwhile billiard-room had obviously been converted into a hospital dressing-room.  The place was deserted, and they turned away without the intuition entering into either of their heads that they themselves would before long be carried into that very room.

Souvir was apparently their headquarters for the time being, for if they moved away by day or night, they always marched back into it.  And as, day by day, they saw the same sights and did the same things, the passage of time did not leave such exact impressions on his mind as the changing sights and actions of the moving battles had done.

Compared with the days that had gone before they were divinely comfortable.  Unless there was an alarm, they could sleep as long as they liked.  There was not sufficient accommodation in the little hut, so the Officers commandeered a little shed at the side of it.  Here there was plenty of straw, and for several mornings they lay dozing until eight or nine o’clock.

The men were quite happy in their barns, and would not begin to stir before seven o’clock.  Then they would hear in their sleep confused sounds of tramping feet and shouts in the road outside.

The voice of the Quartermaster-Sergeant, distributing the rations, was always the most insistent.

“’Ere, who’s ’ad that there tea?”

“Fourty-two Smith took it down the street, Cooler Sawgint.”

(When there is more than one man of the same name in a Battalion, the last two figures of his regimental number, are, as it were, hyphenated on to it.  Brown’s number was, say, 1965, so to prevent mistakes he was always ’65 Brown, to distinguish him from all the other Browns.)

“Where’s the Orderly Cor’pril of No. 5 Platoon?”