CHAPTER XXVI

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Little remains to be said of the history of the 1st Civil Service Rifles in France, but before the story is closed mention should be made of a few incidents which stand out in the last few months before demobilisation was complete.

After the concert at Tournai the Battalion once more marched out along the road to Brussels, but this time the route was along the lower road, and the troops were employed for a time in repairing the railway at Leuze. They were billeted in the little village of Pipaix, where they made great friends with the villagers and were very happy. It was hoped that even yet they would get to Germany, but a bitter disappointment was in store, for it was decreed that the 47th Division should end its career in France in the same district where it started, and in less than a week the Civil Service Rifles left Pipaix for Willems, a village between Tournai and Lille, where a week was spent before starting the trek across the devastated area to the mud and squalor of the coal-fields around Auchel.

It should perhaps be mentioned that to Sergeant Haycock, the Battalion Pioneer Sergeant, fell the distinction of being the first member of the Battalion to be demobilised. He left Willems for that purpose on the 23rd of November, 1918.

The journey to the coal-fields began on the 26th of November, and, after a night in the suburbs of Lille, the interest of the trek, especially to “the 17th of March man” consisted in a last glimpse at the ruins of La Bassée and the Double Crassier, dominating the village and battle-field of Loos, and, later, the brick-fields at Cuinchy he had fired at so zealously nearly four years ago. The night of the 27th of November was spent at Bethune, within a stone’s throw of the Girl’s School where the Battalion had been quartered on its first visit to the line. Suppers were obtained at small cafés in the suburbs, but those who looked for the gay patisseries they once knew now found the site of the old town, including the picturesque church, belfry and Hôtel du Nord, a desolate waste of charred bricks! The next day a war-worn and weary Battalion reversed the march described at the beginning of