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[Page 23]
Ligne Roquetoire
29/3/16
The houses of the inhabitants were mostly small and the men were accommodated in barns and lofts. Only the officers occupied dwellings. Managed to pack the whole company into 8 houses, some lofts taking a platoon each. Skene Smith struck a good place in a clean farm house with a pretty girl. Fixed my head quarters at a farm occupied by Lombard and his family – very clean people and an old bedroom with wooden bed.,
The back of these farm houses takes the form of a courtyard in which are the stables one side, the storeroom the other and the peoples entrance the other. In the centre is a large dung heap which is the central thing in each farmyard. Found I could make the people understand my bad French fairly well. The old man and his wife and married daughter live on the place with the daughters two boys who are at school and a farm hand (Augustine) and a serving wench.
The husband and the old mans son are both soldiers, the latter being a prisoner in Germany. Very hospitably they offered Flemings & myself cale and cognac and lit a fire for us in the parlour in which were the family portraits and a stuffed fox and a pheasant. The inevitable few Catholic pictures were of course on the walls.
At odd places along the road we noticed small shrines perhaps in a hedge or nailed to a tree in which were a few images. Stuck in the hedge all round or upon the ground were many little wooden crosses evidently placed there by devotees.
Outside the village church was a large stone crucifix and graves alround the old church. Passed Monsieur Le Curie wearing a square biretta.
The quite lanes hedged with green budding hawthorn and the orderly lines of elm trees round the old red roofed cottages make one think of village pictures. My team of officers at present is Elnings second in command. Hogarth No 9 platoon Skene Smith No 11, Bazelle (Military Cross) No 10 and Mackay late Brigade Orderly office and Captain of the Melbourne Grammar School.