I went out to the Officers’ Club which had been established in Lille, and found Brand there, and Fortune, and young Clatworthy, who made a place for me at their table.
Two large rooms which had been the dining- and drawing-rooms of a private mansion, were crowded with officers, mostly English, but with here and there a few Americans and French, seated at small tables, waited on by the girls we call Waacs (of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps). Two old-fashioned candelabra of cut-glass gave light to each room, and I remember that the walls were panelled with wood painted a greyish-white, below a moulding of fruit and flowers. Above the table where my friends sat was the portrait of a French lady of the eighteenth century, in an oval frame of tarnished gilt.
I was late for the meal on Armistice night, and many bottles of champagne had already been opened and drunk. The atmosphere reeked with the smell of food, the fumes of wine and cigarette-smoke, and there was the noise of many men talking and laughing. I looked about the tables and saw familiar faces. There were a good many cavalry officers in the room where I sat, and among them officers of the Guards and the Tank Corps, aviators, machine-gunners, staff-officers of infantry divisions, French interpreters, American liaison officers, A.P.M.’s, Town Majors, and others. The lid was off at last. All these men were intoxicated with the thought of the victory we had won--complete, annihilating--and of this Armistice which had ended the war and made them sure of life. Some of them were a little drunk with wine, but not enough at this hour to spoil their sense of joy.
Officers rose at various tables to make speeches, cheered by their own groups, who laughed and shouted and did not listen.
“The good old British Army has done the trick at last----”
“Gentlemen, it has been a damned tough job----”
“Here’s to good old beer, put it down, put it down!”
“The cavalry came into its own in the last lap. We’ve fought mounted, and fought dismounted. We’ve rounded up innumerable Huns. We’ve ridden down machine-guns----”
“There’s a long, long trail a-winding To the land of my dreams.”
A toast was being pledged at the next table by a Tank officer who stood on a chair, with a glass of champagne raised high above his head: