Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 261
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[Page 261
129
RESURRECTION
"As once they stood in serried ranks awaiting a command"
"So now in ordered rows they lie, awaiting God's command,
Arise!!"
A week or so later, in pleasant sunny weather, a Canadian Division relieved ours, and the remnants of our units moved back behind Ypres to recuperate, reorganise the companies and replace our losses.
Winter was now too advanced for any more big offensives, and we moved back southwards to a quiet sector at Houplines very close to Armentieres. We had the traditional Christmas "out of the line", during a bitterly cold and frosty fortnight, in a big old disused brewery at Erquinghem, a mile to the south-west of Armentieres: General Birdwood came to see us eating our Christmas dinner, and arrived in the middle of a great clamour by the assembled troops because the plum pudding was late in being served: the cooks were being told very vociferously what they could do with it.
Because we had absorbed such a big proportion of raw reinforcements, our units were badly in need of extra battle training. In the beginning of the new year we were shifted well back behind the front lines to Meteren, near Corps Headquarters, to become battle-worthy again. The companies were mostly billeted in surrounding farm buildings, but because of shortage of rooms in the farmhouse the officers of my company had to be lodged right in the town with civilian families and meet for meals at one particular house. A week after we arrived there was a call from Brigade Headquarters for officers of Captain's rank to volunteer for a hazardous secret mission on another Front, but only one to be selected from each Brigade. I volunteered and was chosen by our Brigade Commander, Brigadier-General Rosenthal. The next afternoon I presented myself at General Birdwood's Headquarters at Fletre to be interviewed, with a dozen other Captains from other Brigades and Divisions, by a South African Brigadier-General Byron. We left our respective units almost at once, crossed the channel from Calais to