After the 53rd Lancers had been in the trenches for seven
days--during which period the Boches hated them ceaselessly with
whizz-bangs, tear-shells, snipers, coal-boxes, hand and rifle
grenades, spring guns, rifle batteries, machine-guns, gas and liquid
fire; and something celestial leaked badly so that the front line
gave a muddy imitation of the Grand Canal, Venice--the infantry
relieved them and they came out looking like nothing on earth.
They were marched into an ex-dye factory, boiled, fourteen in a vat,
issued with a change of underclothes and marched on to billets.
The 53rd being a smart regiment, they were given twenty-four hours to
lick and polish themselves like unto the stars of the firmament for
brightness, or never hear the last of it.
In twenty-four hours they paraded again, according unto orders, and
the stars of the firmament also ran.
At noon the same day the party proceeding on Blighty leave was
paraded for inspection by the Orderly Officer.
Pending the arrival of the O.O., the Regimental Sergeant-Major gave
them a preliminary look over.
They were dressed by the right in file, chests thrown in the air,
faces shiny with soap and pink from razoring. Every badge, buckle
and button twinkled a challenge back at the sun, every spur shone
like a bar of silver, their leatherwork gleamed with the polish bloom
of a plum, their puttees and tunics were without spot or blemish,
every cap raked slightly over every right ear. They were smart men
of a smart regiment, whose boast it was that they lived and died
glitteringly.
The R.S.M. ran a grey foxy eye over and through them. At the sixth
file from the right he paused, staggered, blanched, and broke into
tears.
The Regiment was disgraced, the name gloriously won by dashing
generations of light cavalry men was gone for ever. Here was a
Fifty-third proposing to go home and swank about England practically
naked. Blankety blankety blank. O Lord! The sixth file went
pea-green under his tan, instinctively felt for his top left-hand
pocket button and did it up.
The R.S.M. went on his way down the line, thrashing his leggings
severely with his whip and shaking with emotion. Ten files further
down he found a speck of brass polish lurking behind a belt-hook and
didn't expect to survive it.
Sixteenth file rubbed it off with a handkerchief, trembling all over.
The O.O. came on the scene, inspected them with a swelling of pride
tightening his tunic, found a few faults as a matter of principle,
and ordered them away.
The R.S.M. escorted them to the road, dismissed them with his
blessing, adjuring them to be good little boys generally, and pay his
respects to a publican near the Elephant and Castle if they passed
that way.
At 2 p.m. they entrained at the railhead along with carolling parties
from the thousand-and-one units that go to make the B.E.F.
At 3 a.m. they detrained in the dim-lit vault of Victoria. As they
tramped out of the gates a little man, wearing square clothes and an
accent that twanged like a banjo, bored into the crowd.
He let some squads of mud-caked line infantry go by unmolested, threw
but a cursory glance over a batch of rain-sodden gunners, then his
bright eye caught the brighter buttons of the Fifty-thirds and he
swooped upon them, thrusting pasteboards into every hand. The
sixteenth file paused with his chum under a lamp and read his card.
It ran as follows: