The Retreat from Mons. Arthur Corbett-Smith
And that was how the trouble began. If only the A.S.C. major had exercised a little imagination and made five out of his addition sum: if only he had read his own instructions a little more carefully (although we didn't know that till afterwards), a draft of tired Gunners would not have spent the next week trailing about the South of England looking for an A.S.C. company which didn't want them, and their officer would not have received a black mark which nearly damned his future chances at the very outset. But that by the way.
"The men had their breakfast at three this morning," and the cheery little subaltern, who had brought the draft down from Newcastle, saluted and discreetly made himself still smaller by vanishing hastily round the nearest corner.
I took my railway warrant and went out to have a look at the draft.
A fresh-looking lot they were; young, most of them, averaging about twenty-three years old; special reservists the senior sergeant told me. The few old hands, who sadly needed a shave and a wash, showed how young the rest of them were. I didn't take much stock of them, then. One doesn't when it's just a conducting job of a few hours, handing over, and back to Headquarters right away.
The men stood to attention, picked up their kits, and, with a "Fours left," we were off to the station down the shimmering, dancing, sandy roads of the Aldershot camps. The A.S.C. major returned to his ledgers and more arithmetic, and the cheery subaltern reclined at lordly ease in a Gunner Mess arm-chair, with a tinkling glass of gin and ginger beer at his elbow, and discussed the striking results of the previous day's battle in the North Sea—which had not taken place.
The station-master, who didn't look as worried as he felt, touched his cap.
"A local to——, then change and go on to Reigate" (was it Reigate? I forget now, one visited so many out-of-the-way places), "and from there you'll probably get a through train to Portsmouth. If there isn't room in the train you can always turn people out."
Visions of burly, homespun-clad farmers and comfortable market-women being turned out, protesting, by a mere Gunner captain danced through my brain. Actions for assault and battery, damages, bail, prison.
"How an if they will not turn out?" said I.
And then I realised. This was War, red War; and Great Britain was mobilising. The needs of the State were paramount.
"You shall bid them turn out in the Prince's name," and, unlike Dogberry, shall see that you are obeyed.
And I made myself two inches taller because after all a Gunner captain was somebody in the world now. And people looked with a new interest at the lads in khaki and began to realise, perhaps for the first time, that they would have to count on the British Army even though it were "such a little one."
To do the good folk justice there was never a word of protest at the idea of having to turn out. And we had to invite them to do so a good many times before the company finished its tour of the Southern ports. Really it might have been a railway in Germany from the way the civilians gave road to the uniform. This change of attitude was certainly a vivid contrast to the days—last week was it?—when a man in His Majesty's uniform was looked at askance in crowded street and bar.
At Reigate, where we had to wait an hour, a bombardier, one of the old hands, begged leave to visit a certain hotel outside the station to buy some bread and cheese.
He was a man who hardly gave the appearance of being bread-and-cheese hungry, if you quite take my meaning, and the glassy stare with which this ancient tried to fix me augured ill for discipline if there were many others in the draft like him. Permission was refused. It was a trivial point gained but it had its consequences.
Portsmouth was reached in some five hours; and twenty minutes' march brought us to the A.S.C. barracks where a hot dinner would cheer us all; for I had remembered to send a telegram en route to tell them to expect us.
We were received with cordiality by a decrepit old store-keeper, and the stables' cat. Otherwise the barracks looked as though an army had lately sacked the place from floor to basement.
The men looked glum, and there was more than a hint of a move to a near-by hotel for "bread and cheese." Well, they were only young reservists and discipline was an almost unknown quantity.
But dinner had to materialise somehow. So, demanding the keys of the castle from the unwilling seneschal, the senior sergeant, the bombardier, the stables' cat and myself started on a tour of inspection.
Good! The kitchen contained a sack of flour and most of a sheep. Apparently the sheep was intended to last the decrepit servitor and his struggling family for the rest of the week. But we paid no heed to tearful entreaties and ruthlessly tore the meat away from their very mouths.
"This is War," said I.
Soon dinner was well on the way, blankets were found for the men, and off I went to report to Headquarters.
H.Q. "received me most politely," as Harry Fragson used to sing, and didn't think they wanted me nor my company for any performance in Portsmouth.
"Come back to-morrow morning," said H.Q., "and we'll tell you."
The next day. "Oh, yes!" said H.Q., "you're Field Gunners, you're evidently sent here for Hilsea (two miles out): you'd better move on at once."
"Parade with kits in half an hour," I ordered.
Merrily we marched forth from the castle gates. Were we not wanted at Hilsea?
A cyclist orderly threw himself, panting, from his machine.
"H.Q.'s compliments and will you please report there at once."
"Halt! Fours about! Quick march!"
H.Q. again received me most politely.
"No, you're not to go to Hilsea. You've evidently got to join the Eenty-eenth A.S.C. Company which has gone on to Bristol. You'll just catch the 5.0 train if you're sharp."
"We're to go to Bristol," said I to the senior sergeant, "and you've got to get a move on or we'll miss the train."
"I've heard tell of Bristol," he ruminated; "nice place, so my wife's cousin's husband used to say. He did tell as how——"
But I cut the soliloquy short and got the draft out of the castle again.
A few minutes later peaceable citizens fled into doorways and up courts, electric cars pulled up short with a grinding of brakes, policemen held up traffic. The R.F.A. draft approached at a steady double.
"Where's the fire?" yelled some.
"The Germans have captured the 'Hampshire Arms,'" said others.
"It's for a cinema show," screamed a ragged urchin. Everyone gave us kindly encouragement, and girls waved merrily as we flew past. The bombardier, who was on the pavement side, threw an arm gallantly round the waist of a stout matron of some forty summers and dragged her, not unwillingly, half a dozen yards before he could get home with a kiss on the cheek.
But we caught that train with five minutes to spare. The men were now beginning to see the joke. As yet it had escaped me. Of course it was not the first time I had seen "Tommy" at his cheeriest under misadventures; but this cheeriness now struck me vividly for the first time. To-day it is world-famous.
They certainly made that journey a lively one. Six hours in a slow train across country—it is apt to become somewhat tedious. I tried to look like the man who owns a dog which persists in nibbling the trousers of total strangers—to pretend they (the men, not the trousers) didn't belong to me. It was no good. They might have been Lancashire lads off to Blackpool for the "wakes."
So with imitations of Harry Tate, George Robey and other well-known favourites of the music-halls, the railway officials at the various stations being made the butt of the jokes; with a weird medley of harmony and melody, from "Hallo, hallo, who's your lady friend?" to "Sun of my Soul," the journey passed happily enough until the first of the Bristol stations was reached about 11.45 P.m.
As