Under this designation it is convenient to lump the whole heavenly
host which at present orders our goings and shapes our ends. It
includes--
(1) The War Office;
(2) The Treasury;
(3) The Army Ordnance Office;
(4) Our Divisional Office;
--and other more local and immediate homes of mystery.
The Olympus which controls the destinies of "K(1)" differs in many
respects from the Olympus of antiquity, but its celestial inhabitants
appear to have at least two points in common with the original
body--namely, a childish delight in upsetting one another's
arrangements, and an untimely sense of humour when dealing with
mortals.
So far as our researches have gone, we have been able to classify
Olympus, roughly, into three departments--
(1) Round Game Department (including Dockets, Indents, and all
official correspondence).
(2) Fairy Godmother Department.
(3) Practical Joke Department.
The outstanding feature of the Round Game Department is its craving
for irrelevant information and its passion for detail. "Open your
hearts to us," say the officials of the Department; "unburden your
souls; keep nothing from us--and you will find us most accommodating.
But stand on your dignity; decline to particularise; hold back one
irrelevant detail--and it will go hard with you! Listen, and we
will explain the rules of the game. Think of something you want
immediately--say the command of a brigade, or a couple of washers for
the lock of a machine-gun--and apply to us. The application must be
made in writing, upon the Army Form provided for the purpose, and in
triplicate. _And_--you must put in all the details you can possibly
think of."
For instance, in the case of the machine-gun washers--by the way, in
applying for them, you must call them _Gun, Machine, Light Vickers,
Washers for lock of, two_. That is the way we always talk at the
Ordnance Office. An Ordnance officer refers to his wife's mother as
_Law, Mother-in-, one_--you should state when the old washers were
lost, and by whom; also why they were lost, and where they are now.
Then write a short history of the machine-gun from which they were
lost, giving date and place of birth, together with, a statement of
the exact number of rounds which it has fired--a machine-gun fires
about five hundred rounds a minute--adding the name and military
record of the pack-animal which usually carries it. When you have
filled up this document you forward it to the proper quarter and await
results.
The game then proceeds on simple and automatic lines. If your
application is referred back to you not more than five times, and if
you get your washers within three months of the date of application,
you are the winner. If you get something else instead--say an
aeroplane, or a hundred wash-hand basins--it is a draw. But the
chances are that you lose.
Consider. By the rules of the game, if Olympus can think of a single
detail which has not been thought of by you--for instance, if you omit
to mention that the lost washers were circular in shape and had holes
through the middle--you are _ipso facto_ disqualified, under Rule
One. Rule Two, also, is liable to trip you up. Possibly you may have
written the pack-mule's name in small block capitals, instead of
ordinary italics underlined in red ink, or put the date in Roman
figures instead of Arabic numerals. If you do this, your application
is referred back to you, and you lose a life. And even if you survive
Rules One and Two, Rule Three will probably get you in the end. Under
its provision your application must be framed in such language and
addressed in such a manner that it passes through every department and
sub-department of Olympus before it reaches the right one. The rule
has its origin in the principle which governs the passing of wine at
well-regulated British dinner-tables. That is, if you wish to offer a
glass of port to your neighbour on your right, you hand the decanter
to the neighbour on your left, so that the original object of your
hospitality receives it, probably empty, only after a complete circuit
of the table. In the present instance, the gentleman upon your right
is the President of the Washer Department, situated somewhere in the
Army Ordnance Office, the remaining guests representing the other
centres of Olympian activity. For every department your
application misses, you lose a life, three lost lives amounting to
disqualification.
When the washers are issued, however, the port-wine rule is abandoned;
and the washers are despatched to you, in defiance of all the laws of
superstition and tradition, "widdershins," or counter-clockwise.
No wonder articles thus jeopardised often fail to reach their
destination!
Your last fence comes when you receive a document from Olympus
announcing that your washers are now prepared for you, and that if you
will sign and return the enclosed receipt they will be sent off upon
their last journey. You are now in the worst dilemma of all. Olympus
will not disgorge your washers until it has your receipt. On the other
hand, if you send the receipt, Olympus can always win the game by
losing the washers, and saying that _you_ have got them. In the face
of your own receipt you cannot very well deny this. So you lose
your washers, and the game, and are also made liable for the
misappropriation of two washers, for which Olympus holds your receipt.
Truly, the gods play with loaded dice.
On the whole, the simplest (and almost universal) plan is to convey a
couple of washers from some one else's gun.
The game just described is played chiefly by officers; but this is a
democratic age, and the rank and file are now occasionally permitted
to take part.
For example, boots. Private M'Splae is the possessor, we will say,
of a pair of flat feet, or arched insteps, or other military
incommodities, and his regulation boots do not fit him. More than
that, they hurt him exceedingly, and as he is compelled to wear them
through daily marches of several miles, they gradually wear a hole in
his heel, or a groove in his instep, or a gathering on his great toe.
So he makes the first move in the game, and reports sick--"sair feet."
The Medical Officer, a terribly efficient individual,
keenly--sometimes too keenly--alert for signs of malingering, takes a
cursory glance at M'Splae's feet, and directs the patient's attention
to the healing properties of soap and water. M'Splae departs,
grumbling, and reappears on sick parade a few days later, palpably
worse. This time, the M.O. being a little less pressed with
work, M'Splae is given a dressing for his feet, coupled with a
recommendation to procure a new pair of boots without delay. If
M'Splae is a novice in regimental diplomacy, he will thereupon address
himself to his platoon sergeant, who will consign him, eloquently, to
a destination where only boots with asbestos soles will be of any use.
If he is an old hand, he will simply cut his next parade, and will
thus, rather ingeniously, obtain access to his company commander,
being brought up before him at orderly-room next morning as a
defaulter. To his captain he explains, with simple dignity, that he
absented himself from parade because he found himself unable to "rise
up" from his bed. He then endeavours, by hurriedly unlacing his boots,
to produce his feet as evidence; but is frustrated, and awarded three
extra fatigues for not formally reporting himself sick to the orderly
sergeant. The real point of issue, namely, the unsuitability of
M'Splae's boots, again escapes attention.
There the matter rests until, a few days later, M'Splae falls out on
a long regimental route-march, and hobbles home, chaperoned by a not
ungrateful lance-corporal, in a state of semi-collapse. This time the
M.O. reports to the captain that Private M'Splae will be unfit for
further duty until he is provided with a proper pair of boots. Are
there no boots in the quartermaster's store?
The captain explains that there are plenty of boots, but that under
the rules of the present round game no one has any power to issue
them. (This rule was put in to prevent the game from becoming too
easy, like the spot-barred rule in billiards.) It is a fact well known
to Olympus that no regimental officer can be trusted with boots. Not
even the colonel can gain access to the regimental boot store. For all
Olympus can tell, he might draw a pair of boots and wear them himself,
or dress his children up in them, or bribe the brigadier with them,
instead of issuing them to Private M'Splae. No, Olympus thinks it
wiser not to put temptation in the way of underpaid officers. So the
boots remain locked up, and the taxpayer is protected.
But to be just, there is always a solution to an Olympian enigma, if
you have the patience to go on looking for it. In this case the proper
proceeding is for all concerned, including the prostrate M'Splae, to
wait patiently for a Board to sit. No date is assigned for this event,
but it is bound to occur sooner or later, like a railway accident or
an eclipse of the moon. So one day, out of a cloudless sky, a Board
materialises, and sits on M'Splae's boots. If M'Splae's company
commander happens to be president of the Board the boots are
condemned, and the portals of the quarter-master's store swing open
for a brief moment to emit a new pair.
When M'Splae comes out of hospital, the boots, provided no one has
appropriated them during the term, of his indisposition, are his. He
puts them on, to find that they pinch him in the same place as the old
pair.
* * * * *
Then there is the Fairy Godmother Department, which supplies us with
unexpected treats. It is the smallest department on Olympus, and, like
most philanthropic institutions, is rather unaccountable in the manner
in which it distributes its favours. It is somewhat hampered in its
efforts, too, by the Practical Joke Department, which appears to
exercise a sort of general right of interference all over Olympus. For
instance, the Fairy Godmother Department decrees that officers from
Indian regiments, who were home on leave when the War broke out and
were commandeered for service with the Expeditionary Force, shall
continue to draw pay on the Indian scale, which is considerably higher
than that which prevails at home. So far, so good. But the Practical
Joke Department hears of this, and scents an opportunity, in the form
of "deductions." It promptly bleeds the beneficiaire of certain sums
per day, for quarters, horse allowance, forage, and the like. It is
credibly reported that one of these warriors, on emerging from a
week's purgatory in a Belgian trench, found that his accommodation
therein had been charged against him, under the head of "lodgings," at
the rate of two shillings and threepence a night!
But sometimes the Fairy Godmother Department gets a free hand. Like
a benevolent maiden aunt, she unexpectedly drops a twenty-pound note
into your account at Cox's Bank, murmuring something vague about
"additional outfit allowance"; and as Mr. Cox makes a point of backing
her up in her little secret, you receive a delightful surprise next
time you open your pass-book.
She has the family instinct for detail, too, this Fairy Godmother.
Perhaps the electric light in your bedroom fails, and for three days
you have to sit in the dark or purchase candles. An invisible but
observant little cherub notes this fact; and long afterwards a postal
order for tenpence flutters down upon you from Olympus, marked "light
allowance." Once Bobby Little received a mysterious postal order for
one-and-fivepence. It was in the early days of his novitiate, before
he had ceased to question the workings of Providence. So he made
inquiries, and after prolonged investigation discovered the source of
the windfall. On field service an officer is entitled to a certain
sum per day as "field allowance." In barracks, however, possessing a
bedroom and other indoor comforts, he receives no such gratuity. Now
Bobby had once been compelled to share his room for a few nights
with a newly-joined and homeless subaltern. He was thus temporarily
rendered the owner of only half a bedroom. Or, to put it another way,
only half of him was able to sleep in barracks. Obviously, then, the
other half was on field service, and Bobby was therefore entitled to
half field allowance. Hence the one-and-fivepence. I tell you, little
escapes them on Olympus. So does much, but that is another story.
* * * * *
Last of all comes the Practical Joke Department. It covers practically
all of one side of Olympus--the shady side.
The jokes usually take the form of an order, followed by a
counter-order. For example--
In his magisterial days Ayling, of whom we have previously heard, was
detailed by his Headmaster to undertake the organisation of a school
corps to serve as a unit of the Officers' Training Corps--then one of
the spoilt bantlings of the War Office. Being a vigorous and efficient
young man, Ayling devoted four weeks of his summer holiday to a course
of training with a battalion of regulars at Aldershot. During that
period, as the prospective commander of a company, he was granted the
pay and provisional rank of captain, which all will admit was handsome
enough treatment. Three months later, when after superhuman struggles
he had pounded his youthful legionaries into something like
efficiency, his appointment to a commission was duly confirmed, and he
found himself gazetted--Second Lieutenant. In addition to this, he was
required to refund to the Practical Joke Department the difference
between second lieutenant's pay and the captain's pay which he had
received during his month's training at Aldershot!
But in these strenuous days the Department has no time for baiting
individuals. It has two or three millions of men to sharpen its wit
upon. Its favourite pastime at present is a sort of giant's game of
chess, the fair face of England serving as board, and the various
units of the K. armies as pieces. The object of the players is to get
each piece through as many squares as possible in a given time, it
being clearly understood that no move shall count unless another piece
is evicted in the process. For instance, we, the _x_th Brigade of the
_y_th Division, are suddenly uprooted from billets at A and planted
down in barracks at B, displacing the _p_th Brigade of the _q_th
Division in the operation. We have barely cleaned up after the
_p_th--an Augean task--and officers have just concluded messing,
furnishing, and laundry arrangements with the local _banditti_, when
the Practical Joke Department, with its tongue in its cheek, bids us
prepare to go under canvas at C. Married officers hurriedly despatch
advance parties, composed of their wives, to secure houses or lodgings
in the bleak and inhospitable environs of their new station; while
a rapidly ageing Mess President concludes yet another demoralising
bargain with a ruthless and omnipotent caterer. Then--this is the
cream of the joke--the day before we expect to move, the Practical
Joke Department puts out a playful hand and sweeps us all into some
half-completed huts at D, somewhere at the other end of the Ordnance
map, and leaves us there, with a happy chuckle, to sink or swim in an
Atlantic of mud.
So far as one is able to follow the scoring of the game, some of
the squares in the chessboard are of higher value than others. For
instance, if you are dumped down into comparatively modern barracks
at Aldershot, which, although they contain no furniture, are at least
weatherproof and within reach of shops, the Practical Joke Department
scores one point. Barracks condemned as unsafe and insanitary before
the war, but now reckoned highly eligible, count three points;
rat-ridden billets count five. But if you can manoeuvre your helpless
pawns into Mudsplosh Camp, you receive ten whole points, with a bonus
of two points thrown in if you can effect the move without previous
notice of any kind.
We are in Mudsplosh Camp to-day. In transferring us here the
Department secured full points, including bonus.
Let it not be supposed, however, that we are decrying our present
quarters. Mudsplosh Camp is--or is going to be--a nobly planned and
admirably equipped military centre. At present it consists of some
three hundred wooden huts, in all stages of construction, covering
about twenty acres of high moorland. The huts are heated with stoves,
and will be delightfully warm when we get some coal. They are lit
by--or rather wired for--electric light. Meanwhile a candle-end does
well enough for a room only a hundred feet long. There are numerous
other adjuncts to our comfort--wash-houses, for instance. These will
be invaluable, when the water is laid on. For the present, there is a
capital standpipe not a hundred yards away; and all you have to do, if
you want an invigorating scrub, is to wait your turn for one of the
two tin basins supplied to each fifty men, and then splash to your
heart's content. There is a spacious dining-hall; and as soon as the
roof is on, our successors, or their successors, will make merry
therein. Meanwhile, there are worse places to eat one's dinner than
the floor--the mud outside, for instance.
The stables are lofty and well ventilated. At least, we are sure
they will be. Pending their completion the horses and mules are very
comfortable, picketed on the edge of the moor.... After all, there are
only sixty of them; and most of them have rugs; and it can't possibly
go on snowing for ever.
The only other architectural feature of the camp is the steriliser,
which has been working night and day ever since we arrived. No, it
does not sterilise water or milk, or anything of that kind--only
blankets. Those men standing in a _queue_ at its door are carrying
their bedding. (Yes, quite so. When blankets are passed from regiment
to regiment for months on end, in a camp where opportunities for
ablution are not lavish, these little things will happen.)
You put the blankets in at one end of the steriliser, turn the
necessary handles, and wait. In due course the blankets emerge,
steamed, dried, and thoroughly purged. At least, that is the idea. But
listen to Privates Ogg and Hogg, in one of their celebrated cross-talk
duologues.
_Ogg (examining his blanket)_. "They're a' there yet. See!"
_Hogg (an optimist)_. "Aye; but they must have gotten an awfu'
fricht!"
But then people like Ogg are never satisfied with anything.
However, _the_ feature of this camp is the mud. That is why it
counts ten points. There was no mud, of course, before the camp was
constructed--only dry turf, and wild yellow gorse, and fragrant
heather. But the Practical Joke Department were not to be discouraged
by the superficial beauties of nature. They knew that if you crowd
a large number of human dwellings close together, and refrain from
constructing any roads or drains as a preliminary, and fill these
buildings with troops in the rainy season, you will soon have as much
mud as ever you require. And they were quite right. The depth varies
from a few inches to about a foot. On the outskirts of the camp,
however, especially by the horse lines or going through a gate, you
may find yourself up to your knees. But, after all, what is mud! Most
of the officers have gum-boots, and the men will probably get used to
it. Life in K(1) is largely composed of getting used to things.
In the more exclusive and fashionable districts--round about
the Orderly-room, and the Canteen, and the Guard-room--elevated
"duck-walks" are laid down, along which we delicately pick our way.
It would warm the heart of a democrat to observe the ready--nay,
hasty--courtesy with which an officer, on meeting a private carrying
two overflowing buckets of kitchen refuse, steps down into the mud to
let his humble brother-in-arms pass. Where there are no duck-walks, we
employ planks laid across the mud. In comparatively dry weather these
planks lie some two or three inches below the mud, and much innocent
amusement may be derived from trying to locate them. In wet weather,
however, the planks float to the surface, and then of course
everything is plain sailing. When it snows, we feel for the planks
with our feet. If we find them we perform an involuntary and
unpremeditated ski-ing act: if we fail, we wade to our quarters
through a sort of neapolitan ice--snow on the top, mud underneath.
Our parade-ground is a mud-flat in front of the huts. Here we take our
stand each morning, sinking steadily deeper until the order is given
to move off. Then the battalion extricates itself with one tremendous
squelch, and we proceed to the labours of the day.
Seriously, though--supposing the commanding officer were to be delayed
one morning at orderly-room, and were to ride on to the parade-ground
twenty minutes late, what would he find? Nothing! Nothing but a great
_parterre_ of glengarries, perched upon the mud in long parallel rows,
each glengarry flanked on the left-hand side by the muzzle of a rifle
at the slope. (That detached patch over there on the left front,
surrounded by air-bubbles, is the band. That cavity like the crater
of an extinct volcano, in Number one Platoon of A Company, was once
Private Mucklewame.)