THE MAN WHO WASN'T LET
Perhaps he was Let, eventually. But when I met him he was
emphatically the man who wasn't Let to fight.
I met him in London, a tall, well-set Australian, wearing the
all-wool khaki of the Commonwealth and the neat leather cap of the
Australian Divisional Supply Column. In his own words he was a
"Leatherhead." He was a thirteen-stone man, but without a spare ounce
of flesh on him anywhere; one could quite believe him when he said he
was "as strong as a Monaro steer." And over his right eye he wore a
pink celluloid patch.
This decoration moved my curiosity, for I knew the Leatherheads had
not taken part in the Dardanelles fighting but were at that time
destined for very active service elsewhere. In fact, they were on the
very eve of embarking; therefore I opened a conversation by asking if
he were off "to the front."
"No, worse luck," he said, "I'm the only man staying behind. They
won't let me fight." This with some bitterness.
A little sympathy, judiciously expressed, started him talking;
and in the monotonous drawl affected by the men of the Australian
bush--natural to them, it may be--he unfolded a strange story of his
wanderings in search of a fight. He told me who he was, and what he
was; they are not essential to the point of his story. It is enough
to say that he sacrificed a very good income and excellent prospects
to join the Australian Expeditionary Force.
"You see," he said, "I've got only one eye, my left; but it's a good
one. I lost the other eight years ago--mining. Since then I've come
to the conclusion that a man doesn't need two eyes, except in case of
accident, like mine. I had a glass eye fixed up in Sydney, just like
the other one, and you couldn't tell the difference; well, when I
tell you, you'll know that you couldn't.
"I was always fond of soldiering, and joined the militia. I got my
musketry certificate, so that shows you a man with one eye can shoot
as well as any man with two, and a sight better than most of them.
I've done some 'roo shooting, too, and a fellow that can knock over
an old man running at three hundred with a worn Martini, don't want
any spare eyes.
"When I was in Sydney I learned to drive a motor-car, and never had
any trouble. A man who can take a fast car through the Sydney traffic
don't want to worry about being shy of one eye. And nobody ever
noticed; I used to get on well with girls, and all that; and they're
the first to grumble if a man's got anything wrong with him.
"I've seen a lot of bush life; done thirty miles a day with a big
swag in my time, and was never sick or sorry in my life. All this
leads up to what I'm going to tell you.
"Naturally I volunteered when the war came, having no one dependent
on me. Besides, I never liked Germans. I passed the medical
examination all right; and they are mighty particular over there.
Of course the doctor never tumbled to my glass eye, and there was
nothing else the matter with me.
"When they found I could drive a motor, they put me among the
Leatherheads; but I had to pass a driving test first, and that was no
child's play. But still nobody tumbled to my glass eye, and I wasn't
saying anything. I went into camp in the Domain, and everything was
all right till they inoculated me against typhoid.
"It took pretty bad with me; they tell me that's a good sign. But
I was feverish and felt rotten, and had to go into hospital. When
the doctor came round the second day, I had a dirty tongue and a
temperature, and he whistled a bit.
"'Let's look at your eye,' he said; and before I knew what he was
after, he had pulled back my bottom lid to see if there was any
inflammation there. Of course, my old glass eye rolled out on the
pillow.
"You oughter seen that doctor jump. He went quite white in the
face, too. Well, there was nobody about, and presently he burst out
laughing, which I took to be a good sign. So I said, 'Are you going
to be a sport, doctor? No one knows but you, and there's no need for
you to know.'
"'Are you sure nobody knows?' he asked, still laughing fit to burst.
'Not a soul,' I told him. He tried the eye. 'Wonderful,' he says;
'don't know either.' So I got away with the Contingent."
"When our boys got off at Egypt we came on here, because our motor
outfit was no manner of use in the sand there. We never went to the
Dardanelles for the same reason; but have been five long months in
camp at Romsey. All that time I've been doing the same work as the
rest; transporting gravel in the motor wagon, and all the rest of it.
And not a soul ever tumbled to my glass eye.
"Then it was settled that we should be sent--somewhere. But before
we could go, the whole lot of us had to go through a fresh medical
examination; British Army doctors this time. I was going to chance
it; and I don't think they would ever have found me out. But you
never know what you're doing with these English doctors; they're not
reasonable chaps like in Australia, as you shall see. And I didn't
want to get the C.O. into trouble; he's a grand chap, Tunbridge.
"So when the doctor came to me, I made a clean breast of it; you
ought to have seen the C.O.'s face. He was dead surprised; so would
any one be. But the doctor turned nasty. 'I can't pass you,' he said.
'A one-eyed man driving a car! Disgraceful!' And so on.
"Nothing I could say or do was any use; I was rejected. I'm as strong
as a Monaro steer, and my eye is as good as three ordinary ones.
But--no good.
"So I got a week's leave, and went off to see a bit of England. Down
at Southampton I fell in with some Canadians; real good sorts, they
were. We had a drink or two, and I found they were off to the front
that very night. Here was a chance! I fixed things up with them, and
borrowed a slouch hat; then I made my cap into a neat parcel, and
left it at the railway parcels office. There was I, as good a Canuck
as any of them. Except that I had 'Australia' on my shoulders instead
of 'Canada,' but that didn't matter.
"It was dark when we lined up on the pier and they called the roll. I
got into the back row, and they called everybody's name but mine; and
everybody said 'Here,' except me. Bit neglectful, I call it; but I
was there all right. 'Australia _will_ be there.'
"We got over to Havre, and everybody was fussing about his dunnage,
so I fussed about mine. Of course I didn't have any, but I gave such
a good description of it that to get rid of me the fellow said, 'It's
over there.' So I got on to the train, and up to the front at a place
I think they called Dickiesborough. It sounded like that.
"We were all billeted in a big barn with stacks of grub; and next
evening my pals were detailed to go out into the trenches. I got hold
of a rifle and some ammunition; there was no difficulty. And I went
off with them.
"It was dusk, and about 400 yards from the communication trench we
all went down on our hands and knees and crawled. I crawled, too, and
kept low, as they told me, when we got to the communication trench;
and presently we were all snug in the first line of trenches.
"Then my luck turned. Along came a Canadian officer, to inspect.
'Are you all right here, sergeant?' he says. 'How many men have you
got?' 'Twenty-one, sir,' says the sergeant in quite a little voice.
'Twenty, you mean.' 'No, sir, twenty-one. There's a long Australian
galoot here, that wants to have a shot at the Germans, so we brought
him with us.'
"Now if that'd been an English officer there'd have been a row, and
I should have been shot, or something. But this captain says, 'Here,
that won't do. Let's have a look at you.' So he ran the rule over me,
and examined my papers, and felt my khaki--he even felt my khaki! He
knew a bit, that Canuck captain.
"Then he said, 'I believe you are telling the truth, but I can't
have you here. You'll be getting wounded or something; you're just
the sort of fool that would.' He spoke very nice. 'You wouldn't have
the sense to get killed,' he said. 'You'd be wounded, and I couldn't
account for you. So, get,' he says.
"'How am I to get out?' I asked. 'The same way you got in,' he says,
very short. 'And where am I to go?' And I wouldn't like to tell you
where he told me to go to.
"Well, I stooped and went back along the communication trench. I
wasn't going to draw the fire on the boys who were in the firing
line. But when I got to the end of it, I stood up, and put my fingers
in my mouth and I whistled as loud as I could. I couldn't shoot at
the Germans, but I did want a bit of fighting. I put my hands in my
pockets and strolled back over that ground where we'd been crawling;
and I whistled 'The Wild Colonial Boy'. Nobody took a bit of notice.
"I slept in the billet that night, and had a real good breakfast;
then the wounded began to come in. There was a pretty lively scrap
through the night; of course I slept through it all--just my luck.
I made myself useful--stretcher-bearing and what not. But I could
see that if I stayed there, I'd only get myself into trouble, and
somebody else, too, very likely.
"I went to the little base hospital, and I said, 'Can you give me an
eyeshade. My eye is paining me.' And they gave me this. They were
just making up a hospital train for the coast, so I chucked away my
glass eye--I was disgusted with it anyhow--and put on the shade. Then
I got on the train as one of the poor wounded.
"Presently another doctor comes round--this place seems stiff with
doctors--and examined me. 'That's getting on nicely,' he says,
looking very hard at me. 'Yes, doctor,' I says, as if I was in pain.
Of course he must have seen there was something wrong, but he was too
busy to worry about a little thing like that.
"We had a pleasant journey down: nurses fussing around, and so
on. And what do you think I struck on the ship? 'Another blooming
doctor!' (unconsciously quoting Kipling).
"He was so pleased with my quick recovery that he brought an
assistant to look at me. They seemed quite dazed about it, but they
were busy men: plenty to keep them occupied without troubling about
me, which is just as it should be.
"I got my cap at Southampton, and joined up with my old corps. No
fighting for me.
"Now I've got to send in my papers. But I've not come 12,000 miles
for a fight with the Germans to go home without firing a shot. I'm
getting a new eye made here in London; I've seen it in the rough and
it's a boshter, the real thing. They know how to make them here.
"And I'm going to have it riveted in, and soldered down and fastened
in its place with concrete; then I'm going to enlist with Kitchener's
boys. If they find me out, they can only jug me. Do you think they
would?"
* * * * *
I could not tell him. It is more than likely. A strong man with a
glass eye, who insists on fighting the enemy at a time like this, is
apt to be considered a danger in this country. Especially when he has
an undetectable glass eye.
THE AUSTRALASIAN SOLDIER