Next day he took me about the town. Civilians were moving furtively. They were not used to emerge before night. In any case such shops and _estaminets_ as remained were prohibited from opening before 7.30 in the evening. Wonderful!--how the civilians hang on. They have their property; also, they have the money they can always make from the herds of troops who make a fleeting sojourn in the place. Apart from the proprietors of cafés and _estaminets_, they are mostly caretakers who stay on: caretakers and rich old men with much property who prefer the chance of being hit to leaving what their industry has amassed over thirty years of labour....
The German fatigue on the railway was useful, if slow. It was supplied from the prisoners of war camp near the station. When the thaw was in progress we lost them, so heavy were the demands upon the camp for road labour. The O.C. the camp sometimes visited to see what manner of work they did. He threw light on their domestic behaviour in camp: "The greediest ----s on earth!" he would say. "If one of them leaves table for two minutes, his friends have pinched and swallowed his grub. They steal each other's food daily--and they're fed well enough. They're a sanctimonious crew, too; most of their post-cards from home are scriptural, laden with texts and pictorial demonstration of the way the Lord is with them. The camp is half-filled with religious fanatics; they sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs when they're free. But there's not much of the New Testament notion of the brotherhood of man amongst 'em; they do each other down most damnably!..."
When the Arras advance was imminent their camp was moved farther back from the line, and we lost them. The Deputy-Assistant-Director of Labour sent a fatigue of 125 of the halt and the maimed--the P.B.'s; altogether inadequate.
A Permanent-base man may be incapable of lumping. And even if he is not incapable, he is usually in a position to say he is--none daring to make him afraid. P.B. fatigues are highly undesirable.
"Pinching" supplies was by no means unheard of amongst them. (Amongst whom at all is it unheard-of? Australians themselves are the arch-appropriators of Army supplies.) But P.B. men do not pinch with that faculty of vulpine cunning which is clear of detection. One morning, after an all-night clearance, the A.P.M. found one of the P.B.'s sneaking back to billet in the cold grey dawn with three tins of pork and beans, two loaves of bread, six candles, imperfectly concealed. He promptly put him in the clink. There was a court-martial. The unhappy fellow got three months. Pinching in the Army should be done judiciously. It is not a moral crime. Getting caught is. At any rate, that is an intellectual, if not a moral crime.