Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 247
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[Page 247]
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shot of the German front line. An Expeditionary Force Canteen, staffed by Army personnel but very like a big general store, sold packed groceries, tobacco and cigarettes, sweets and toiletry, at very low, and duty-free, prices. A permanent Divisional Concert Troupe, recruited from talented soldiers, provided thoroughly enjoyable entertainment, in a large hall in the absence of women's army units, some of the actors made amazingly clever female impersonations.
Christmas - New Year found us well behind the front lines in Divisional Reserve at a cheerless farming centre, Blanche Maison, on flat open country about two miles south of the big town of Bailleul: the weather was miserably wet and cold and there were some heavy snowfalls. Our Company like all the others was billeted at a big farm; the officers in spare rooms in the farmhouse itself, and the men on straw in the barns and sheds that completed a hollow-square of buildings around a large manure pit. I had a rough but comfortable stretcher in a loft over the stall of the one big draught horse on the farm. Our host was a fine old veteran of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, and like all prosperous farmers he kept a well-stocked wine cellar for special occasions. For our traditional Christmas Dinner he sold us Epernay Champagne for eight francs a large bottle, equivalent to six shillings in those days. On receipt of a chit from Brigade Headquarters, the Army Canteen, once a month, allowed each Company Officers Mess of six officers to purchase a case of a dozen bottles of Scotch for forty-two shillings, and we often put champagne in our whisky instead of soda water.
During the first four months of the new year (1917) we held several forward positions in various sectors of the British Front, north and south of Armentieres. In addition to the usual patrolling and erecting or repairing barbed-wire fences, in no-mans-land during the hours of darkness, we participated, without many casualties, in a few big raids on the Germans at night, our supporting artillery entrapping a section of them in a fierce box-barrage while the raid lasted. There were times