After the perusal of this characteristic _Ave atque Vale!_ the two
friends adjourned to the balcony, overlooking the Green Park. Here
they lit their cigars in reminiscent silence, while neighbouring
search-lights raked the horizon for Zeppelins which no longer came. It
was a moment for confidences.
"Old Mucklewame is like the rest of us," said Wagstaffe at last.
"How?"
"Wanting to go back, and all that. I do too--just because I'm here,
I suppose. A year ago, out there, my chief ambition was to get home,
with a comfortable wound and a comfortable conscience."
"Same here," admitted Bobby.
"It was the same with practically every one," said Wagstaffe. "If any
man asserts that he really enjoys modern warfare, after, say, six
months of it, he is a liar. In the South African show I can honestly
say I was perfectly happy. We were fighting in open country, against
an adversary who was a gentleman; and although there was plenty of
risk, the chances were that one came through all right. At any rate,
there was no poison gas, and one did not see a whole platoon blown to
pieces, or buried alive, by a single shell. If Brother Boer took
you prisoner, he did not stick you in the stomach with a saw-edged
bayonet. At the worst he pinched your trousers. But Brother Boche is
a different proposition. Since he butted in, war has descended in
the social scale. And modern scientific developments have turned a
sporting chance of being scuppered into a mathematical certainty.
And yet--and yet--old Mucklewame is right. One _hates_ to be out of
it--especially at the finish. When the regiment comes stumping through
London on its way back to Euston--next year, or whenever it's going to
be--with their ragged pipers leading the way, you would like to be
at the head of 'A' Company, Bobby, and I would give something to be
exercising my old function of whipper-in. Eh, boy?"
"Never mind," said practical Bobby. "Perhaps we shall be on somebody's
glittering Staff. What I hate to feel at present is that the other
fellows, out there, have got to go on sticking it, while we--"
"And by God," exclaimed Wagstaffe, "what stickers they are--and were!
Did you ever see anything so splendid, Bobby, as those six-months-old
soldiers of ours--in the early days, I mean, when we held our
trenches, week by week, under continuous bombardment, and our gunners
behind could only help us with four or five rounds a day?"
"I never did," said Bobby, truthfully.
"I admit to you," continued Wagstaffe, "that when I found myself
pitchforked into 'K(1)' at the outbreak of the war, instead of getting
back to my old line battalion, I was a pretty sick man. I hated
everybody. I was one of the old school--or liked to think I was--and
the ways of the new school were not my ways. I hated the new officers.
Some of them bullied the men; some of them allowed themselves to be
bullied by N.C.O.'s. Some never gave or returned salutes, others went
about saluting everybody. Some came into Mess in fancy dress of their
own design, and elbowed senior officers off the hearthrug. I used to
marvel at the Colonel's patience with them. But many of them are dead
now, Bobby, and they nearly all made good. Then the men! After ten
years in the regular Army I hated them all--the way they lounged, the
way they dressed, the way they sat, the way they spat. I wondered how
I could ever go on living with them. And now--I find myself wondering
how I am ever going to live without them. We shall not see their
like again. The new lot--present lot--are splendid fellows. They are
probably better soldiers. Certainly they are more uniformly trained.
But there was a piquancy about our old scamps in 'K(1)' that was
unique--priceless--something the world will never see again."
"I don't know," said Bobby thoughtfully. "That Cockney regiment which
lay beside us at Albert last summer was a pretty priceless lot. Do you
remember a pair of fat fellows in their leading platoon? We called
them Fortnum and Mason!"
"I do--particularly Fortnum. Go on!"
"Well, their bit of trench was being shelled one day, and Fortnum, who
was in number one bay with five other men, kept shouting out to Mason,
who was round a traverse and out of sight, to enquire how he was
getting on. 'Are you all right, Bill?' 'Are you _sure_ you're all
right, Bill?' 'Are you _still_ all right, Bill?' and so on. At last
Bill, getting fed up with this unusual solicitude, yelled back:
'What's all the anxiety abaht, eh?' And Fortnum put his head round the
traverse and explained. 'We're getting up a little sweepstake in our
bay,' he said, 'abaht the first casuality, and I've drawn you, ole
son!'"
Wagstaffe chuckled.
"That must have been the regiment that had the historic poker party,"
he said.
"What yarn was that?"
"I heard it from the Brigadier--four times, to be exact. Five men off
duty were sitting in a dug-out playing poker. A gentleman named 'Erb
had just gone to the limit on his hand, when a rifle-grenade came into
the dug-out from somewhere and did him in. While they were waiting for
the stretcher-bearers, one of the other players picked up 'Erb's hand
and examined it. Then he laid it down again, and said: 'It doesn't
matter, chaps. Poor 'Erb wouldn't a made it, anyway. I 'ad four
queens.'"
"Tommy has his own ideas of fun, I'll admit," said Bobby. "Do you
remember those first trenches of ours at Festubert? There was a dead
Frenchman buried in the parapet--you know how they used to bury people
in those days?"
"I did notice it. Go on."
"Well, this poor chap's hand stuck out, just about four feet from the
floor of the trench. My dug-out was only a few yards away, and I never
saw a member of my platoon go past that spot without shaking the hand
and saying, Good-morning, Alphonse!' I had it built up with sandbags
ultimately, and they were quite annoyed!"
"They have some grisly notions about life and death," agreed
Wagstaffe, "but they are extraordinarily kind to people in trouble,
such as wounded men, or prisoners. You can't better them."
"And now there are five millions of them. We are all in it, at last!"
"We certainly are--men and women. I'm afraid I had hardly realised
what our women were doing for us. Being on service all the time, one
rather overlooks what is going on at home. But stopping a bullet puts
one in the way of a good deal of inside information on that score."
"You mean hospital work, and so on?"
"Yes. One meets a lot of wonderful people that way! Sisters, and
ward-maids, and V.A.D.'s--"
"I love all V.A.D.'s!" said Bobby, unexpectedly.
"Why, my youthful Mormon?"
"Because they are the people who do all the hard work and get no
limelight--like--like--!"
"Like Second Lieutenants--eh?"
"Yes, that is the idea. They have a pretty hard time, you know,"
continued Bobby confidentially: "And nothing heroic, either. Giving up
all the fun that a girl is entitled to; washing dishes; answering the
door-bell; running up and downstairs; eating rotten food. That's the
sort of--"
"What is her name?" enquired the accusing voice of Major Wagstaffe.
Then, without waiting to extort an answer from the embarrassed
Bobby:--
"You are quite right. This war has certainly brought out the best in
our women. The South African War brought out the worst. My goodness,
you should have seen the Mount Nelson Hotel at Capetown in those
days! But they have been wonderful this time--wonderful. I love them
all--the bus-conductors, the ticket-punchers, the lift-girls--one
of them nearly shot me right through the roof of Harrod's the
other day--and the window-cleaners and the page-girls and the
railway-portresses! I divide my elderly heart among them. And I met a
bunch of munition girls the other day, Bobby, coming home from work.
They were all young, and most of them were pretty. Their faces and
hands were stained a bright orange-colour with picric acid, and will
be, I suppose, until the Boche is booted back into his stye. In other
words, they had deliberately sacrificed their good looks for the
duration of the war. That takes a bit of doing, I know, innocent
bachelor though I am. But bless you, they weren't worrying. They
waved their orange-coloured hands to me, and pointed to their
orange-coloured faces, and laughed. They were _proud_ of them; they
were doing their bit. They nearly made me cry, Bobby. Yes, we are all
in it now; and those of us who come out of it are going to find this
old island of ours a wonderfully changed place to live in."
"How? Why?" enquired Bobby. Possibly he was interested in Wagstaffe's
unusual expansiveness: possibly he hoped to steer the conversation
away from the topic of V.A.D.'s--possibly towards it. You never know.
"Well," said Wagstaffe, "we are all going to understand one another a
great deal better after this war."
"Who? Labour and Capital, and so on?"
"'Labour and Capital' is a meaningless and misleading expression,
Bobby. For instance, our men regard people like you and me as
Capitalists; the ordinary Brigade Major regards us as Labourers, and
pretty common Labourers at that. It is all a question of degree. But
what I mean is this. You can't call your employer a tyrant and an
extortioner after he has shared his rations with you and never
spared himself over your welfare and comfort through weary months of
trench-warfare; neither, when you have experienced a working-man's
courage and cheerfulness and reliability in the day of battle, can you
turn round and call him a loafer and an agitator in time of peace--can
you? That is just what the _Bandar-log_ overlook, when they jabber
about the dreadful industrial upheaval that is coming with peace. Most
of all have they overlooked the fact that with the coming of peace
this country will be invaded by several million of the wisest men that
she has ever produced--the New British Army. That Army will consist
of men who have spent three years in getting rid of mutual
misapprehensions and assimilating one another's point of view--men
who went out to the war ignorant and intolerant and insular, and are
coming back wise to all the things that really matter. They will flood
this old country, and they will make short work of the agitator, and
the alarmist, and the profiteer, and all the nasty creatures that
merely make a noise instead of _doing_ something, and who crab the
work of the Army and Navy--more especially the Navy--because there
isn't a circus victory of some kind in the paper every morning. Yes,
Bobby, when our boys get back, and begin to ask the _Bandar-log_ what
they _did_ in the Great War--well, it's going to be a rotten season
for _Bandar-log_ generally!"