"Squoad--'_Shun!_ Move to the right in fours. Forrm--_fourrrs!_"
The audience addressed looks up with languid curiosity, but makes no
attempt to comply with the speaker's request.
"Come away now, come away!" urges the instructor, mopping his brow.
"Mind me: on the command 'form fours,' odd numbers will stand fast;
even numbers tak' a shairp pace to the rear and anither to the right.
Now--forrm _fourrs!_"
The squad stands fast, to a man. Apparently--nay, verily--they are all
odd numbers.
The instructor addresses a gentleman in a decayed Homburg hat, who is
chewing tobacco in the front rank.
"Yous, what's your number?"
The ruminant ponders.
"Seeven fower ought seeven seeven," he announces, after a prolonged
mental effort.
The instructor raises clenched hands to heaven.
"Man, I'm no askin' you your regimental number! Never heed that. It's
your number in the squad I'm seeking. You numbered off frae the right
five minutes syne."
Ultimately it transpires that the culprit's number is ten. He is
pushed into his place, in company with the other even numbers, and the
squad finds itself approximately in fours.
"Forrm--two _deep!_" barks the instructor.
The fours disentangle themselves reluctantly, Number Ten being the
last to forsake his post.
"Now we'll dae it jist yince more, and have it right," announces the
instructor, with quite unjustifiable optimism. "Forrm--_fourrs!_"
This time the result is better, but there is confusion on the left
flank.
"Yon man, oot there on the left," shouts the instructor, "what's your
number?"
Private Mucklewame, whose mind is slow but tenacious, answers--not
without pride at knowing--
"Nineteen!"
(Thank goodness, he reflects, odd numbers stand fast upon all
occasions.)
"Weel, mind this," says the sergeant--"Left files is always even
numbers, even though they are odd numbers."
This revelation naturally clouds Private Mucklewame's intellect for
the afternoon; and he wonders dimly, not for the first time, why he
ever abandoned his well-paid and well-fed job as a butcher's assistant
in distant Wishaw ten long days ago.
And so the drill goes on. All over the drab, dusty, gritty
parade-ground, under the warm September sun, similar squads are being
pounded into shape. They have no uniforms yet: even their instructors
wear bowler hats or cloth caps. Some of the faces under the brims of
these hats are not too prosperous. The junior officers are drilling
squads too. They are a little shaky in what an actor would call their
"patter," and they are inclined to lay stress on the wrong syllables;
but they move their squads about somehow. Their seniors are dotted
about the square, vigilant and helpful--here prompting a rusty
sergeant instructor, there unravelling a squad which, in a spirited
but misguided endeavour to obey an impossible order from Second
Lieutenant Bobby Little, has wound itself up into a formation closely
resembling the third figure of the Lancers.
Over there, by the officers' mess, stands the Colonel. He is in
uniform, with a streak of parti-coloured ribbon running across
above his left-hand breast-pocket. He is pleased to call himself a
"dug-out." A fortnight ago he was fishing in the Garry, his fighting
days avowedly behind him, and only the Special Reserve between him and
_embonpoint_. Now he finds himself pitchforked back into the Active
List, at the head of a battalion eleven hundred strong.
He surveys the scene. Well, his officers are all right. The Second
in Command has seen almost as much service as himself. Of the four
company commanders, two have been commandeered while home on leave
from India, and the other two have practised the art of war in company
with brother Boer. Of the rest, there are three subalterns from the
Second Battalion--left behind, to their unspeakable woe--and four from
the O.T.C. The juniors are very junior, but keen as mustard.
But the men! Is it possible? Can that awkward, shy, self-conscious
mob, with scarcely an old soldier in their ranks, be pounded, within
the space of a few months, into the Seventh (Service) Battalion of the
Bruce and Wallace Highlanders--one of the most famous regiments in the
British Army?
The Colonel's boyish figure stiffens.
"They're a rough crowd," he murmurs, "and a tough crowd: but they're
a stout crowd. By gad! we'll make them a credit to the Old Regiment
yet!"