We have only two topics of conversation now--the date of our
departure, and our destination. Both are wrapped in mystery so
profound that our range of speculation is practically unlimited.
Conjecture rages most fiercely in the Officers' Mess, which is in
touch with sources of unreliable information not accessible to the
rank and file. The humblest subaltern appears to be possessed of a
friend at court, or a cousin in the Foreign Office, or an aunt in the
Intelligence Department, from whom he can derive fresh and entirely
different information each week-end leave.
Master Cockerell, for instance, has it straight from the Horse Guards
that we are going out next week--as a single unit, to be brigaded with
two seasoned regiments in Flanders. He has a considerable following.
Then comes Waddell, who has been informed by the Assistant sub-Editor
of an evening journal widely read in his native Dundee, that The First
Hundred Thousand are to sit here, eating the bread of impatience,
until The First Half Million are ready. Thereupon we shall break
through our foeman's line at a point hitherto unassailed and known
only to the scribe of Dundee, and proceed to roll up the German Empire
as if it were a carpet, into some obscure corner of the continent of
Europe.
Bobby Little, not the least of whose gifts is a soaring imagination,
has mapped out a sort of strategical Cook's Tour for us, beginning
with the sack of Constantinople, and ending, after a glorified
route-march up the Danube and down the Rhine, which shall include a
pitched battle once a week and a successful siege once a month, with a
"circus" entry into Potsdam.
Captain Wagstaffe offers no opinion, but darkly recommends us to order
pith helmets. However, we are rather suspicious of Captain Wagstaffe
these days. He suffers from an over-developed sense of humour.
The rank and file keep closer to earth in their prognostications. In
fact, some of them cleave to the dust. With them it is a case of hope
deferred. Quite half of them enlisted under the firm belief that
they would forthwith be furnished with a rifle and ammunition and
despatched to a vague place called "the front," there to take
pot-shots at the Kaiser. That was in early August. It is now early
April, and they are still here, performing monotonous evolutions and
chafing under the bonds of discipline. Small wonder that they have
begun to doubt, these simple souls, if they are ever going out at all.
Private M'Slattery put the general opinion in a nutshell.
"This regiment," he announced, "is no' for the front at all. We're
jist tae bide here, for tae be inspeckit by Chinese Ministers and
other heathen bodies!"
This withering summary of the situation was evoked by the fact that
we had once been called out, and kept on parade for two hours in
a north-east wind, for the edification of a bevy of spectacled
dignitaries from the Far East. For the Scottish, artisan the word
"minister," however, has only one significance; so it is probable that
M'Slattery's strictures were occasioned by sectarian, rather than
racial, prejudice.
Still, whatever our ultimate destination and fate may be, the fact
remains that we are now as fit for active service as seven months'
relentless schooling, under make-believe conditions, can render us. We
shall have to begin all over again, we know, when we find ourselves up
against the real thing, but we have at least been thoroughly grounded
in the rudiments of our profession. We can endure hail, rain, snow,
and vapour; we can march and dig with the best; we have mastered the
first principles of musketry; we can advance in an extended line
without losing touch or bunching; and we have ceased to regard an
order as an insult, or obedience as a degradation. We eat when we can
and what we get, and we sleep wherever we happen to find ourselves
lying. That is something. But there are certain military
accomplishments which can only be taught us by the enemy. Taking
cover, for instance. When the thin, intermittent crackle of blank
ammunition shall have been replaced by the whistle of real bullets, we
shall get over our predilection for sitting up and taking notice. The
conversation of our neighbour, or the deplorable antics of B Company
on the neighbouring skyline, will interest us not at all. We shall get
down, and stay down.
We shall also be relieved of the necessity of respecting the property
of those exalted persons who surround their estates with barbed wire,
and put up notices, even now, warning off troops. At present we either
crawl painfully through that wire, tearing our kilts and lacerating
our legs, or go round another way. "Oot there," such unwholesome
deference will be a thing of the past. Would that the wire-setters
were going out with us. We would give them the place of honour in the
forefront of battle!
We have fired a second musketry course, and are now undergoing
Divisional Training, with the result that we take our walks abroad
several thousand strong, greatly to the derangement of local traffic.
Considered all round, Divisional Training is the pleasantest form of
soldiering that we have yet encountered. We parade bright and early,
at full battalion strength, accompanied by our scouts, signallers,
machine-guns, and transport, and march off at the appointed minute to
the starting-point. Here we slip into our place in an already moving
column, with three thousand troops in front of us and another two
thousand behind, and tramp to our point of deployment. We feel
pleasantly thrilled. We are no longer a battalion out on a
route-march: we are members of a White Army, or a Brown Army,
hastening to frustrate the designs of a Blue Army, or a Pink
Army, which has landed (according to the General Idea issued from
Headquarters) at Portsmouth, and is reported to have slept at Great
Snoreham, only ten miles away, last night.
Meanwhile our Headquarters Staff is engaged in the not always easy
task of "getting into touch" with the enemy--_anglicè_, finding him.
It is extraordinary how elusive a force of several thousand troops
can be, especially when you are picking your way across a defective
half-inch map, and the commanders of the opposing forces cherish
dissimilar views as to where the point of encounter is supposed to be.
However, contact is at length established; and if it is not time to go
home, we have a battle.
Various things may now happen to you. You may find yourself detailed
for the Firing-line. In that case your battalion will take open order;
and you will advance, principally upon your stomach, over hill and
dale until you encounter the enemy, doing likewise. Both sides then
proceed to discharge blank ammunition into one another's faces at
a range, if possible, of about five yards, until the "cease fire"
sounds.
Or you may find yourself in Support. In that case you are held back
until the battle has progressed a stage or two, when you advance with
fixed bayonets to prod your own firing line into a further display of
valour and agility.
Or you may be detailed as Reserve. Membership of Brigade Reserve
should be avoided. You are liable to be called upon at any moment
to forsake the sheltered wood or lee of a barn under which you are
huddling, and double madly up a hill or along a side road, tripping
heavily over ingenious entanglements composed of the telephone wires
of your own signallers, to enfilade some unwary detachment of the
enemy or repel a flank attack. On the other hand, if you are ordered
to act as Divisional Reserve, you may select the softest spot on the
hillside behind which you are sheltering, get out your haversack
ration, and prepare to spend an extremely peaceful (or extremely dull)
day. Mimic warfare enjoys one enormous advantage over the genuine
article: battles--provided you are not out for the night--_must
always_ end in time for the men to get back to their dinners at five
o'clock. Under this inexorable law it follows that, by the time the
General has got into touch with the enemy and brought his firing line,
supports, and local reserves into action, it is time to go home. So
about three o'clock the bugles sound, and the combatants, hot and
grimy, fall back into close order at the point of deployment, where
they are presently joined by the Divisional Reserve, blue-faced and
watery-eyed with cold. This done, principals and understudies, casting
envious glances at one another, form one long column of route and set
out for home, in charge of the subalterns. The senior officers trot
off to the "pow-wow," there, with the utmost humility and deference,
to extol their own tactical dispositions, belittle the achievements of
the enemy, and impugn the veracity of one another.
Thus the day's work ends. Our divisional column, with its trim,
sturdy, infantry battalions, its jingling cavalry and artillery, its
real live staff, and its imposing transport train, sets us thinking,
by sheer force of contrast, of that dim and distant time seven months
ago, when we wrestled perspiringly all through long and hot September
days, on a dusty barrack square, with squad upon squad of dazed and
refractory barbarians, who only ceased shuffling their feet in order
to expectorate. And these are the self-same men! Never was there a
more complete vindication of the policy of pegging away.