Chapter IV: Part I: The Ranks (3)

“Look here,” I said, “it doesn’t matter to you what for or why. You’re here to answer questions. Is the Colonel _in_?”

The man snorted. “Oh! I’m ’ere to answer questions, am I? Well, if you want to know, the Colonel ain’t in.--Anything else?”

I was stumped. It seemed as if my hopes were shattered. But luck was mine--as ever. A voice came from the inner room. “Thomson! Who is that man?”

The servant made a face at me and went to the room door.

“A trooper, sir, from one of the squadrons, askin’ to see the Colonel.”

“Bring him in,” said the voice.

My heart leapt.

The servant returned to me and showed me into the room.

I saw three officers, one in shirt sleeves, all sitting around a fire. Empty tea things were still on a table. There were a sofa, and armchairs and bright pictures, a pile of books and magazines on a table, and a smell of Egyptian cigarettes. They all looked at me as I saluted.

“Thomson tells me you want to see the Colonel,” said the one whose voice I had heard, the one in shirt sleeves. “Anything I can do?”

It was good to hear one’s own language again, and I decided to make a clean breast of it.

“It’s awfully kind of you, sir,” said I. “Perhaps you can. I came to ask for the interpretership of my squadron. We haven’t got one and I can talk French. If you could put in a word for me I should be lastingly grateful.”

His next words made him my brother for life. “Sit down, won’t you,” he said, “and have a cigarette.”

Can you realize what it meant after those weeks of misery, with no letters and the eternal adjective of the ranks which gets on one’s nerves till one could scream, to be asked to sit down and have a cigarette in that officers’ mess?

Speechless, I took one, although I dislike cigarettes and always stick to a pipe. But that one was a link with all that I’d left behind, and was the best I’ve ever smoked in my life. He proceeded to ask me my name and where I was educated, and said he would see what he could do for me, and after about ten minutes I went out again into the mud a better soldier than I went in. That touch of fellow feeling helped enormously. And he was as good as his word. For the following morning the Major sent for me.

19

The rain had stopped and there had been a hard frost in the night which turned the roads to ice. The horses were being walked round and round in a circle, and the Major was standing watching them when I came up and saluted.

“Yes, what is it?” he said.

“You sent for me, sir.”

“Oh--you’re Gibbs, are you?--Yes, let’s go in out of this wind.” He led the way into the mess and stood with his back to the fire.

Every detail of that room lives with me yet. One went up two steps into the room. The fireplace faced the door with a window to the right of the fireplace. There was a table between us with newspapers on it, and tobacco and pipes. And two armchairs faced the fire.

He asked me what I wanted the interpretership for. I told him I was sick of the ranks, that I had chucked a fascinating job to be of use to my King and country, and that any fool trooper could shovel mud as I did day after day.

He nodded. “But interpreting is no damned good, you know,” he said. “It only consists in looking after the forage and going shopping with those officers who can’t talk French.--That isn’t what you want, is it?”

“No, sir,” said I.

“Well, what other job would you like?”

That floored me completely. I didn’t know what jobs there were in the squadron and told him so.

“Well, come and have dinner to-night and we’ll talk about it,” said he.

Have dinner! My clothes reeked of stables, and I had slept in them ever since I arrived.

“That doesn’t matter,” said the Major. “You come along to-night at half-past seven. You’ve been sick all this week. How are you? Pretty fit again?”

He’s Brigadier-General now and has forgotten all about it years ago. I don’t think I ever shall.

There were the Major, the Captain and one subaltern at dinner that night--an extraordinary dinner--the servant who a moment previously had called me “chum” in the kitchen gradually getting used to waiting on me at the meal, and I, in the same dress as the servant, gradually feeling less like a fish out of water as the officers treated me as one of themselves. It was the first time I’d eaten at a table covered with a white tablecloth for over two months, the first time I had used a plate or drunk out of a glass, the first time I had been with my own kind.--It was very good.

The outcome of the dinner was that I was to become squadron scout, have two horses, keep them at the cottage of the interpreter, where I was to live, and ride over the country gathering information, which I was to bring as a written report every night at six o’clock. While the squadron was behind the lines it was, of course, only a matter of training myself before other men were given me to train. But when we went into action,--vistas opened out before me of dodging Uhlan patrols and galloping back with information through a rain of bullets. It was a job worth while and I was speechless with gratitude.

It was not later than seven o’clock the following morning, Christmas Eve, 1914, that I began operations. I breakfasted at the cottage to which I had removed my belongings overnight, and went along towards the stables to get a horse.

The man with whom I had been mucking in met me outside the farm. He was in the know and grinned, cheerily.

“The sergeant’s lookin’ for you,” he said. “He’s over in the stables.”

I went across. He was prowling about near the forage.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” said I.

He looked at me and stopped prowling. “Where the----” and he asked me in trooperese where I had been and why I wasn’t at early morning stables. I told him I was on a special job for the Major.

He gasped and requested an explanation.

“I’m knocked off all rolls, and parades and fatigues,” I said. “You’ve got to find me a second horse. They are both going to be kept down the road, and I shall come and see you from time to time when I require forage.”

He was speechless for the first and only time. It passed his comprehension.

At that moment the sergeant-major came in and proceeded to tell him almost word for word what I had told him. It was a great morning, a poetic revenge, and eventually I rode away leading the other horse, the sergeant’s pop eyes following me as I gave him final instructions as to where to send the forage.

Later, as I started out on my first expedition as squadron scout, he waved an arm at me and came running. His whole manner had changed, and he said in a voice of honey, “If you _should_ ’appen to pass through Ballool would you mind gettin’ me a new pipe?--’Ere’s five francs.”

I got him a pipe, and in Bailleul sought out every likely looking English signaller or French officer, and dropped questions, and eventually at 6 p.m., having been the round of Dramoutre, Westoutre, and Locre, took in a rather meagre first report to the Major. How I regretted that I had never been a newspaper reporter! However, it was a beginning.

The following morning was Christmas Day, cold and foggy, and before starting out I went about a mile down the road to another farm and heard Mass in a barn. An odd little service for Christmas morning. The altar was made of a couple of biscuit boxes in an open barn. The priest wore his vestments, and his boots and spurs showed underneath. About half a dozen troopers with rifles were all the congregation, and we kneeled on the damp ground.

The first Christmas at Bethlehem came to mind most forcibly. The setting was the same. An icy wind blew the wisps of straw and the lowing of a cow could be heard in the byre. Where the Magi brought frankincense and myrrh we brought our hopes and ambitions and laid them at the Child’s feet, asking Him to take care of them for us while we went out to meet the great adventure. What a contrast to the previous Christmas, in the gold and sunshine of Miami, Florida, splashed with the scarlet flowers of the bougainvillea, and at night the soft, feathery palms leaning at a curious angle in the hard moonlight as though a tornado had once swept over the land.

The farm people sold me a bowl of coffee and a slice of bread, and I mounted and rode away into the fog with an apple and a piece of chocolate in my pocket, the horse slipping and sliding on the icy road. Not a sound broke the dead silence except the blowing of my horse and his hoofs on the road. Every gun was silent during the whole day, as though the Child had really brought peace and good will.

I got to within a couple of miles of Ypres by the map, and saw nothing save a few peasants who emerged out of the blanket of fog on their way to Mass. A magpie or two flashed across my way, and there was only an occasional infantryman muffled to the eyes when I passed through the scattered villages.

About midday I nibbled some chocolate, and watered my horse and gave him a feed, feeling more and more miserable because there was no means of getting any information. My imagination drew pictures of the Major, on my return with a blank confession of failure, telling me that I was no good and had better return to duty. As the short afternoon drew in, my spirits sank lower and lower. They were below zero when at last I knocked reluctantly at the door of the mess and stood to attention inside. To make things worse all the officers were there.

“Well, Gibbs?” said the Major.

“It isn’t well, sir,” said I. “I’m afraid I’m no damn good. I haven’t got a thing to report,” and I told him of my ride.

There was silence for a moment. The Major flicked off the ash of his cigarette. “My dear fellow,” he said quietly, “you can’t expect to get the hang of the job in five minutes. Don’t be impatient with it. Give it a chance.”

It was like a reprieve to a man awaiting the hangman.

20

The squadron, having been on duty that day, had not celebrated Christmas, but the _estaminet_ was a mass of holly and mistletoe in preparation for to-morrow, and talk ran high on the question of the dinner and concert that were to take place. There were no letters for me, but in spite of it I felt most unaccountably and absurdly happy as I left the _estaminet_ and went back to my billet and got to bed.

The interpreter came in presently. He had been dining well and Christmas exuded from him as he smoked a cigar on the side of his bed.

“Oh, by the way,” he said, “your commission has come through. They were talking about it in mess to-night. Congratulations.”

Commission! My heart jumped back to the Marlborough Hotel.

“I expect you’ll be going home to-morrow,” he went on; “lucky devil.”

Home! Could it be? Was it possible that I was going to escape from all this mud and filth? Home. What a Christmas present! No more waiting for letters that never came. No more of the utter loneliness and indifference that seemed to fill one’s days and nights.

The dingy farm room and the rough army blanket faded and in their place came a woman’s face in a setting of tall red pines and gleaming patches of moss and high bracken and a green lawn running up to a little house of gables, with chintz-curtained windows, warm tiles and red chimneys, and a shining river twisting in stately loops. And instead of the guns which were thundering the more fiercely after their lull, there came the mewing of sandpipers, and the gurgle of children’s laughter, and the voice of that one woman who had given me the vision.--

21

The journey home was a foretaste of the return to civilisation, of stepping not only out of one’s trooper’s khaki but of resuming one’s identity, of counting in the scheme of things. In the ranks one was a number, like a convict,--a cipher indeed, and as such it was a struggle to keep one’s soul alive. One had given one’s body. They wanted one’s soul as well. By “they” I mean the system, that extraordinary self-contained world which is the Army, where the private is marched to church whether he have a religion or not, where he is forced to think as the sergeant thinks and so on, right up to the General commanding. How few officers realise that it is in their power to make the lives of their juniors and men a hell or a heaven.

It was a merciful thing for me that I was able to escape so soon, to climb out of that mental and physical morass and get back to myself.

From the squadron I went by motor lorry to Hazebrouck and thence in a first-class carriage to Boulogne, and although the carriage was crowded I thought of the horse truck in which I’d come up from Rouen, and chuckled. At Boulogne I was able to help the Major, who was going on leave. He had left a shirt case in the French luggage office weeks before and by tackling the porter in his own tongue, I succeeded in digging it out in five minutes. It was the only thing I’ve ever been able to do to express the least gratitude,--and how ridiculously inadequate.

We spent the night in a hotel and caught the early boat, horribly early. But it was worth it. We reached London about two in the afternoon, a rainy, foggy, depressing afternoon, but if it had snowed ink I shouldn’t have minded. I was above mere weather, sailing in the blue ether of radiant happiness. In this case the realisation came up to and even exceeded the expectation. Miserable-looking policemen in black waterproof capes were things of beauty. The noise of the traffic was sweetest music. The sight of dreary streets with soaked pedestrians made one’s eyes brim with joy. The swish of the taxi round abrupt corners made me burst with song. I was glad of the rain and the sort of half-fog. It was so typically London and when the taxi driver stopped at my brother’s house and said to me as I got out, “Just back from the front, chum?” I laughed madly and scandalously overtipped him. No one else would ever call me chum. That was done with. I was no longer 7205 Trooper A. H. Gibbs, 9th Lancers. I was Second Lieutenant A. Hamilton Gibbs, R.F.A. and could feel the stars sprouting.

My brother wasn’t at home. He was looking like an admiral still and working like the devil. But his wife was and she most wisely lent me distant finger tips and hurried me to a bath, what time she telephoned to my brother.

That bath! I hadn’t had all my clothes off more than once in six weeks and had slept in them every night. Ever tried it? Well, if you really want to know just how I felt about that first bath, you try it.

I stayed in it so long that my sister-in-law became anxious and tapped at the door to know if I were all right. All right! Before I was properly dressed--but running about the house most shamelessly for all that--my brother arrived.

It was good to see him again,--very good. We “foregathered,”--what?

And the next morning scandalously early, the breakfast things still on the table, found me face to face once more with the woman who had brought me back to life. All that nightmare was immediately washed away for ever. It was past. The future was too vague for imaginings but the present was the most golden thing I had ever known.