There is one matter I have hitherto not touched on, because it has not
hitherto touched on me, and that is Courses.
The ideal course works like this. You are sitting up to the ears in mud
under a brisk howitzer, trench mortar and rifle grenade fire, when a
respectful signaller crawls round a traverse, remarking, "Message, Sir."
You take the chit from him languidly, wondering whether you have earned
a court-martial by omitting to report on the trench sleeping-suits which
someone in the Rearward Services has omitted to forward, and you read,
still languidly at first; then you get up and whoop, throw your primus
stove into the air and proceed to dance on the parapet, if your trench
has one. Then you settle down and read your message again to see if it
still runs, "You are detailed to attend three months' Staff work course
at Boulogne, commencing to-morrow. A car will be at the dump for you
to-night. A month's leave on completion, of course."
But all courses are not like this; all you can say is that some are less
unlike it than others. I was sitting in a warm billet about twelve noon
having breakfast on the first day out of trenches when the blow fell on
me. I was to report about two days ago at a School of Instruction some
two hundred yards away. I gathered that the course had started without
me. I set some leisurely inquiries in train, in the hope that it might
be over before I joined up. I also asked the Adjutant whether I couldn't
have it put off till next time in trenches, or have it debited to me as
half a machine-gun course payable on demand, or exchange it for a
guinea-pig or a canary, or do anything consistent with the honour of an
officer to stave it off. For to tell the truth, like all people who know
nothing and have known it for a long time, I cherish a deeply-rooted
objection to being instructed.
Unfortunately the Adjutant is one of those weak fellows who always tell
you that they are mere machines in the grip of the powers that change
great nations. So on the third day I bought a nice new slate and satchel
and joined up.
Even now, after some days of intense instruction, I find my condition is
a little confused and foggy. Of course it covers practically the whole
field of military interests, and I ought to be able to win the War in
about three-quarters of an hour, given a reasonable modicum of men,
guns, indents, physical training and bayonet exercise, knowledge of
military law, and acquaintance with the approved methods of conducting a
casualty clearing station, a mechanical transport column, and a field
kitchen. The confusion of mind evident in this last sentence is a high
testimonial to the comprehensive nature of our course.
Physical training made the strongest appeal to me. I remember some of
the best words, not perhaps as they are, but as I caught them from an
almost over-glib expert. Did you know you had a strabismal vertebra? or,
given a strabismal vertebra, that it could be developed to almost any
extent by simply 'eaving from the 'ips? Take my tip and try it next time
you're under shell-fire.
To-morrow we break up, and I join the army. The army has gone away
somewhere while I wasn't looking, and I shall have to make inquiries
about it. You never can tell what these things will do when not kept
under the strictest observation. My bit _may_ have gone to Egypt or
Nyassaland or Nagri Sembilan. But I have a depressing feeling that A 27
_x y z_ iv. 9.8 will be nearer the mark, and that I shall find it
meandering nightly to Bk 171 in large droves, there to insert more and
more humps of soggy Belgium into more and more sandbags. I don't want to
make myself unpleasant to the War Office, but I really can't see why we
haven't once and for all built trenches all done up in eight-inch thick
steel plates. They could easily be brought up ready-made, and simply
sunk into position.
They would sink all right; you'd just have to put them down anywhere and
look the other way for a minute. The difficulty would be to stop the
lift before it got to the basement--if there is a basement in Flanders.
There is a tragedy to report. We were adopted recently by a magpie. He
was a gentle creature of impulsive habits and strong woodpecking
instincts. Arsene we called him. For some days he gladdened us with his
soft bright eye. But when we came to know him well and I relied on him
to break the shells of my eggs every morning at breakfast, to steal my
pens and spill my ink, to wake me by a gentle nip on the nose from his
firm but courteous beak, a rough grenadier came one day to explain a new
type of infernal machine, and, when we went out, left a detonator on the
table.
I never saw what actually followed, but we buried Arsene with full
military honours.
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"Ladies' Self-trimmed Velvet Hate for One
Shilling."--_North-Country Paper._
The latest fashion in Berlin.
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