"_Gurr finny,"_ says T. Atkins, and there seems no doubt about the
well-known War being over at last. Home-keeping folk, who imagine it
ended when the whistle blew at the eleventh hour of November 11th, are
wide, very wide, of the mark. We have experienced some of its direst
horrors since then. Why, at one time (and not so long ago) we were
without the bare necessities of life itself.
I have seen hardy old soldiers; banded like zebras with wound-stripes
and field-service chevrons, offering to barter a perfectly good horse
for a packet of Ruby Queen cigarettes, or swap a battery of Howitzers
for a flagon of Scotch methylated. Then came the Great Downfall. Nabobs,
who for years had been purring about back areas in expensive cars,
dressed up like movie-kings, were suddenly debussed and dismantled.
Brigadiers sorrowfully plucked the bâtons from off their shoulder-straps
and replaced them in their knapsacks. The waste-paper baskets brimmed
with red flannelette and gilt edging. Field officers cast down their
golden crowns and crept slowly back to their original units as
substantive lieutenants.
And now all are gone, some home to England to write for _The Times_
(Appointments Required column) and some to watch the Rhine and see that
it gets up to no irregularities, such as running the wrong way or dry.
Here, on the fringe of the old battle-grounds, only the merest handful
of us remain, deserted by the field armies, apparently forgotten by the
management.
It has happened before. Bob, our Camp Commandant, swears that a
battalion of his regiment, while garrisoning some ocean isle, got
mislaid for years and years, and they would have been there to this day,
chatting to the crabs and watering the palm-trees with their tears, if
some junior subaltern had not sent his birthday-book to KITCHENER with
the request that the Field-Marshal would inscribe some verses therein.
Occasionally the boom of explosions coming from the devastated areas
tells us that our brave allies the Chinese are still on deck, salvaging
ammunition after their own unique fashion of rapping shells smartly over
the nose-caps with sledge-hammers to test whether they be really duds or
no.
Although a very courageous man, I do not linger in their whereabouts
unless I have to. I don't follow their line of thought. One of them
unearthed a MILLS bomb the other day. It gave off blue smoke and fizzed
prettily. When last seen he was holding it to the ear of a chum, who was
smiling entrancedly, as a child smiles at the croon of a conch-shell.
By the way, whilst we are on the subject, who is this MILLS? The
illustrated papers have shown us THE MAN WHO WON THE WAR, the
thousand-and-one sole and only inventors of Tinribs the Tank; their
prattle-pages are crammed daily with portraits of war-worn flag-sellers,
heroic O.B.E.'s, and so on; but what of our other benefactors, the names
of whom are far more familiar to the average Atkins than are those of
the Twelve Apostles or his own Generals? I confess, to a great desire
to behold the features of Mr. MILLS, the bombster (I picture him a
benevolent-looking old gentleman with a flowing white beard), Mr. STOKES
of the gun, Mrs. AYRTON of the gas-fan, and Messrs. ARMSTRONG and
NISSEN, the hutters. Can no enterprising picture-paper supply the want?
But to return to ourselves. With the exception of the faithful
Celestial, the land is empty of human interest. The roads that once
rumbled unceasingly with wheels and swarmed with merry men now run bare
under a sad sky. The deepway side drains, in which our lorries used to
play at submarines, now harbour nothing more exciting than tadpoles. We
are hard-pressed to find mischief for our idle hands to do.
Sherlock the Sleuth keeps himself in fair fettle by prowling round the
countryside and trying to restrain the aborigines from pinching what
little British material they have not already pinched. Yesterday he came
upon a fatigue party of Gauls staggering down a by-way under the shell
of an Armstrong hut. He whooped and gave chase. The Gauls, sighting the
A.P.M. brassard, promptly dumped the hut and dived through a wire fence.
Sherlock hitched his horse to a post and followed afoot, snorting fire
and brimstone. They led him at a smart trot over four acres of boggy
plough, through a brambly plantation, two prickly hedges and a
richly-perfumed drain and went to ground inextricably in some
mine buildings. He returned, blown, battered and baffled, to the
starting-point, to find that some third party had in the meantime
removed the Armstrong hut--also his horse.
Ronald, our only remaining Red Hat, saves his soul from boredom by
keeping all the H.Q. departments open and conducting, on his own, a
brisk correspondence between them. As there are about thirty of these
and he conducts them all himself it will be understood that this entails
a certain amount of movement on his part.
Bob, the Camp Commandant, spends his time trying to square his returns
and interviewing Violet. Violet is a middle-aged gentleman who came to
us from some Labour unit and refuses to leave. He has an enormous head,
a walrus moustache, a hairy nose, and feet which flap as they walk. His
_métier_ is to keep the place tidy and the incinerator fires burning. He
prowls about at night, accompanied by a large ginger tom-cat, harpooning
loose scraps of paper. Any dust he meets he deals with on the
blotting-paper principle, by rolling in it and absorbing it. When his
clothes are so stiff with dirt that they will stand up without any
inside assistance from Violet, they are sawn off him and consigned to
the incinerator and he is given a new suit. Whenever his back hair has
grown so long that it is liable to impede his movements, a _posse_ of
grooms is despatched to his lair to rope, throw and shear him with
horse-clippers. Last time they did it they swear they lost the
instrument twice and that two bats and an owl flew out of his tresses.
He is allowed out only at night, because the German prisoners laugh at
him, which is bad for his _moral_ and good for theirs. He lives, he and
his cat, deep in the chateau woods in a tiny semi-subterranean cabin he
has constructed of odds and ends of tin and tar-paper. He was supposed
to have been demobilised ages ago, but we cannot get him off the
premises.
Bob goes and interviews him on the subject about three times a day--all
to no avail. "'Tain't a bit o' use you comin' an' flappin' them there
paperses at me, Mister" (all officers, irrespective of rank, are
"Mister" to Violet), says he to Bob; "you know very well I aren't no
scholard an' I won't sign nothin' I can't read, even if I could sign,
which I can't, bein' no scholard; so there's the end of it, as I've told
you scores of times before, with all due respect, of course, as the
sayin' is."
He doesn't want to go home and he _won't_ go home, he says. His wife
beats him "somethink crool," he says; in fact he never knew what real
peace meant until war broke out. Furthermore she has been putting on
a lot of muscle of late and demobilisation means certain death. He
is going to stay where he is. What with the ginger cat's poaching
proclivities and the bully beef he has buried in the plantation he can
hold out almost indefinitely, he says; so there is no cause for us to be
anxious on his behalf. When we come back for the next war we shall find
him on the old stand, ready to resume business, he says, and for his
part the next war can't break out any too soon.
The remainder of Bob's time, as I said before, is occupied in trying to
square his establishment returns. Some time ago he discovered that he
was a water-cart short. This was serious, very. A water-cart is a large
and expensive item, and as far as he could see it would end in his
having to make good the loss out of his own pocket, which at that moment
contained ten centimes and a corkscrew.
However he was determined he would see what a little applied cunning
would do first. He locked himself into his office and took thought.
After an hour's violent mental disturbance he penned a letter to the
authorities, saying that his establishment was complete in all details,
with the exception of one water-bottle. As, however, he had come by
several superfluous knives, spoons and forks considerably exceeding the
water-bottle in value, might they be taken in exchange and the account
squared? The Government would be greatly the gainer thereby.
Four days later he was notified that the transaction was approved. After
waiting till he was reasonably certain that the correspondence was
safely lost, burnt or consigned to impenetrable archives, he sent the
following wire:--
"Reference my R.L.217, dated April 1st, for 'bottle' read 'cart.'"