The chief penalty of doing a job of work well is that you are promptly
put on to another. This is supposed to be a compliment.
The authorities allowed us exactly two days' rest, and then packed us
off by train, with the new draft, to a particularly hot sector of the
trench-line in Belgium--there to carry on with the operation known in
nautical circles as "executing repairs while under steam."
Well, we have been in Belgium for two months now, and, as already
stated, are getting into our stride again.
There are new faces everywhere, and some of the old faces are not
quite the same. They are finer-drawn; one is conscious of less
chubbiness all round. War is a great maturing agent. There is,
moreover, an air of seasoned authority abroad. Many who were second
lieutenants or lance corporals three months ago are now commanding
companies and platoons. Bobby Little is in command of "A" Company: if
he can cling to this precarious eminence for thirty days--that is,
if no one is sent out to supersede him--he becomes an "automatic"
captain, aged twenty! Major Kemp commands the battalion; Wagstaffe is
his senior major. Ayling has departed from our midst, and rumour
says that he is leading a sort of Pooh Bah existence at Brigade
Headquarters.
There are sad gaps among our old friends of the rank and file. Ogg
and Hogg, M'Slattery and M'Ostrich, have gone to the happy
hunting-grounds. Private Dunshie, the General Specialist (who, you
may remember, found his true vocation, after many days, as battalion
chiropodist), is reported "missing." But his comrades are positive
that no harm has befallen him. Long experience has convinced them that
in the art of landing on his feet their departed friend has no equal.
"I doot he'll be a prisoner," suggests the faithful Mucklewame to the
Transport Sergeant.
"Aye," assents the Transport Sergeant bitterly; "he'll be a prisoner.
No doot he'll try to pass himself off as an officer, for to get better
quarters!"
(The Transport Sergeant, in whose memory certain enormities of Dunshie
had rankled ever since that versatile individual had abandoned the
veterinary profession, owing to the most excusable intervention of
a pack-mule's off hind leg, was not far out in his surmise, as
subsequent history may some day reveal. But the telling of that story
is still a long way off.)
Company Sergeant-Major Pumpherston is now Sergeant-Major of the
Battalion. Mucklewame is a corporal in his old company. Private Tosh
was "offered a stripe," too, but declined, because the invitation
did not include Private Cosh, who, owing to a regrettable lapse not
unconnected with the rum ration, had been omitted from the Honours'
List. Consequently these two grim veterans remain undecorated, but
they are objects of great veneration among the recently joined for all
that.
So you see us once more in harness, falling into the collar with
energy, if not fervour. We no longer regard War with the least
enthusiasm: we have seen It, face to face. Our sole purpose now is to
screw our sturdy followers up to the requisite pitch of efficiency,
and keep them remorselessly at that standard until the dawn of
triumphant and abiding peace.
We have one thing upon our side--youth.
"Most of our regular senior officers are gone, sir," remarked Colonel
Kemp one day to the Brigadier--"dead, or wounded, or promoted to other
commands; and I have something like twenty new subalterns. When you
subtract a centenarian like myself, the average age of our Battalion
Mess, including Company Commanders, works out at something under
twenty-three. But I am not exchanging any of them, thanks!"