Servants Of The Guns Part 10

Nor, in his own particular case, was he far wrong. For the horses of K3 were certainly quite wonderful, and Snatty was undoubtedly a "waster."

His death or his desertion would have been a small matter compared with the spoiling of one equine temper.

The officers disliked him because he was an eyesore to them; the N.C.O.'s hated him because he gave them endless trouble; and the men had shown their distrust of his personal cleanliness by ducking him in a horse-trough more than once. Driver Snatt felt that every man's hand was against him, and since he possessed neither the will power nor the desire to overcome his delinquencies by a little honest toil, he not infrequently drowned his sorrows in large potations of canteen beer. In person he was small and rather shrivelled looking--old for his age unquestionably. A nervous manner and a slight stammer in the presence of his superiors, combined with a s.h.i.+fty eye at all times, served to enhance the unpleasing effect which he produced on all who knew him.

There was but one thing to be said for him--he could ride. Before enlisting he had been in a training stable, but had been dismissed for drink or worse. On foot he lounged about with rounded shoulders and uneven steps, always untidy and often dirty. But once upon a horse, the puny, awkward figure that was the despair of N.C.O.'s and officers alike, became graceful, supple, almost beautiful. The firm, easy seat that swayed to every motion, the hands that coaxed even the hard-mouthed gun-horses into going kindly, betrayed the horseman born. Snatty might kick his horses in the stomach; he would never jerk them in the mouth.

At the conclusion of the midday stable-hour Snatt was summoned before his section officer, one Briddlington by name, more frequently known as "Biddie," and thus addressed--

"Now, look here: you've made a dam' poor show so far, and this is your last chance. If you don't take it, G.o.d help you, for I won't. See?"

Snatt stared at his boot, swallowed twice, and then fixed his gaze on some distant point above the opposite stable.

"Ye-es, sir," he said huskily.

"Very well. Now you've never had a job of your own, and I'm going to try you with one. You'll take over the wheel of A subsection gun team to-day, and have those two remounts to drive. I shall give you a fortnight's trial. If I see you're trying, I'll do all I can for you.

Otherwise--out you go. Understand that?"

Again the deep interest in the distant point, but this time there was a trace of surprise in the faintly uttered, "Yes, sir."

Snatty saluted and retired, wondering greatly. The wheel-driver of a gun team is an important personage: he occupies a coveted position attained only by those who combine skill, nerve, and horsemans.h.i.+p with the ability to tend a pair of horses as they would their own children, and to clean a double set of harness better than their fellows. Snatty at first was resentful: "'E's put me there to make a fool of me, I s'pose.

All right, I'll show 'im up. I can drive as well as any of them." Then he experienced a feeling of pleasurable antic.i.p.ation. As it so happened he detested the driver whose place he was to take, and he looked forward with satisfaction to witnessing the fury of that worthy when ordered to "hand over" to the despised waster of the battery. He was not grateful--that was not his nature--nor was he proud of having been selected. He was on the defensive, determined to show that, given a definite position with duties and responsibilities of his own, he could do very well--if he chose. Which was precisely the frame of mind into which his thoughtful subaltern had hoped to lure him.

In the barrack-room Snatty met with much abuse. In a battery which prides itself enormously on its horses, any ill-treatment of them is not left unnoticed. Barrack-room invective does not take the form of delicate sarcasm: on the contrary, it is coa.r.s.e and directly to the point. The culprit sat upon his bed-cot and sulked in silence, until a carroty-headed driver, sitting on the table with his hat on the back of his head, remarked--

"I see ole Biddie givin' you a proper chokin' off after stables."

The chance for which Snatty had waited very patiently had come, and he retorted quickly--

"Oh! did yer? Well, p'raps you'll be glad to 'ear that 'e 'as given me your 'orses and the wheel of A sub., says you're no ---- use, 'e does!"

Howls of derision greeted this sally, and Snatty relapsed into silence.

But that evening he whistled softly to himself as he led his new horses out to water and watched his red-headed enemy, deprived of his legitimate occupation, put to the unpleasant task of "mucking out" the stable. The day, so Snatty felt, had not been wasted.

II

From that time dated the conversion of Driver Joseph Snatt. The change was necessarily gradual, for no man can reform in a week: the habits inculcated by years of idleness cannot be cast aside in a moment, nor can the doubts and suspicions clinging to an untrustworthy character be dispersed by one day's genuine work. But still a change for the better was evident. The comments of the barrack-room were free but not unfriendly, for Snatty was beginning to find his true level after his own peculiar fas.h.i.+on. Briddlington, too, did not fail to notice the success of his experiment. Whilst inclined to boast of it in a laughing way to his brother officers, he had the good sense to overlook many trivial offences and to make much of anything that he could find to praise. What pleased him most of all was Snatty's behaviour to his horses. Dirty he still was upon occasions, and scarcely as smart as most drivers of the battery; nor was he always quite devoid of drink, but to his horses from that first day onwards he became a devoted, faithful slave. They were a pair of which any man might well have been proud.

Both were bright bays, well matched in colour and in size. In shape they were almost the ideal stamp of artillery wheeler, which is tantamount to saying that they might have graced the stud of any hunting gentleman of fifteen stone or thereabouts. Snatty's pride in them was almost ludicrous. A word said against them would put him up in arms at once, and when Territorials borrowed the battery horses for their training on Sat.u.r.day afternoons his indignation knew no bounds.

"'Ow can I keep me 'orses fit," he used to say, "if a bloomin' bank clerk goes drivin' 'em at a stretched gallop the 'ole o' Sat.u.r.day?

Proper dis'eartenin', that's wot it is." And this in spite of the fact that he was allowed a s.h.i.+lling for his trouble. The villainies that he perpetrated for their wellbeing, if discovered, would have given him small chance before a stern commanding officer. He stole oats from the forage barn, bread and sugar from his barrack-room, and even the feeds from the next manger. Snatty's moral sense, as we have seen, was not a very high one. But p.r.i.c.ked ears and gentle whinnies as he approached, and velvety muzzles pushed into his roughened hand, betrayed the effect of many a purloined dainty, and amply compensated for any qualms which a guilty but belated conscience may have given him. Not that he was particularly caressing in his manner. He would growl at each one as he groomed him, or scold him as one does a naughty child, and his "Naow _then_, stand still, will yer, Dawn?" was well known during stable-hour.

Who it was who had first called the off horse Dawn was never quite clear, but Snatty in a fit of poetic inspiration had christened the other Daylight. Dawn was difficult to shoe, so difficult indeed that his driver's presence was required in the forge to keep him still. And when Snatty went on furlough for a month both horses began to lose condition.

The years went by, and Snatty soldiered on, winter and summer, drill season and leave season, content to drive the wheel of A and drink a bit too much on Sat.u.r.days. But in that time he had become a man--not a strong, determined man, certainly not a refined one, but for all that a man. To Briddlington, who had raised him from the mental slough in which he had lain to all appearances content, he at no time betrayed a sense of grat.i.tude. On the contrary, the position of a privileged person of some standing which he had gained he attributed largely to his own cunning in deceiving his superiors combined with his consummate skill with horses. But still he had learnt his job, and was fulfilling his destiny to more purpose than many better men. Moreover he was happy.

Crooning softly as he polished straps and buckles in the harness-room, with a skill and speed born of long practice, he was contented, and was vaguely conscious that the world was not a bad place after all. An officer who knew him well once said--

"I wouldn't trust him to carry a bottle of whisky half a mile, but I'd send him across England with a pair of horses--by himself. And as to driving--well, I don't know about the needle and the camel's eye, but I know that Snatty would drive blind drunk along the narrow road to Heaven and never let his axles touch!" For two years in succession the battery won the galloping compet.i.tion at Olympia, with Snatty in the wheel. And over rough ground, moving fast, he was unequalled.

When his time was up and Snatty had to go, there was never, perhaps, a time-expired man who was so hard put to it to a.s.sume a joy at leaving which he did not feel. Of course, like other men, he swaggered about saying that he was glad to be "shut of" the army; that he had got a nice little place to step into where there wasn't any "Do this" and "Do that"

and "Why the deuce haven't you done what I told you?" But in his heart he was more affected than he had ever been before.

"Wot about yer 'orses, Snatty?" some one asked him; "who's going to 'ave them when you're gorn?"

"'Ow should I know?" he answered, rather nettled.

"n.o.bbler Parsons, so I 'eard. 'E'll soon spoil 'em, I bet yer."

Then was Snatty very wroth, and he replied--

"You leave me and my 'orses alone, or you'll be for it, I warn yer,"

thereby revealing his inmost feelings most effectually.

On the eve of his departure he was treated by his friends till he grew almost maudlin. Then he slipped away "just to say good-bye to 'em," and even that hardened a.s.sembly of "canteen regulars" forbore to scoff. He was found when the battery came down to evening stables, a pathetic figure, in his ill-fitting suit of plain clothes, standing between his beloved pair, an arm round the neck of one, his pockets full of sugar, and tears of drink and genuine grief trickling down his unwashed cheeks.

"Six bloomin' years I've 'ad yer," they heard him say. "Six bloomin'

years, and no one's ever said a word against yer that I 'aven't knocked the 'ead of. P'rades and manoeuvres, practice camp and ceremonial, there's nothin' I can't do wiv yer and ... and, Gawd, I wish I wasn't leavin' yer now to some other bloke." Then they led him gently away, and on the morrow he was gone. For a week he was missed; in a month he was forgotten. Only Daylight and Dawn still fretted for him, and turned round in their stalls with anxious, wistful eyes.

For six months Snatty struggled to keep body and soul together, living upon his reserve pay and upon such small sums as he could pick up by doing odd jobs in livery stables. But the self-respect which he had won so hardly slipped away from him, and he sank slowly in the social scale.

The lot of the ex-soldier whose character is "fair," and whose record of sobriety leaves much to be desired, is not a happy one. Snatty was in rags and well-nigh starving. Small wonder, then, that one day the blandishments of an eloquent recruiting sergeant proved too much for his resistance and that he succ.u.mbed to the temptations thrust upon him by the great G.o.d Hunger. Manfully he perjured himself when brought before the magistrate. His name was Henry Morgan, his age twenty-three years and five months, and he had never served before, so help him G.o.d. All false--but Snatty wished to live.

He asked to be put into the infantry, fearing that his knowledge of the ways of troop stables would betray him if he joined a mounted branch.

The penalties attached to a "false answer on attestation" were heavy, as he knew, and he would take no chances. In due course, therefore, he found himself posted to a crack light infantry regiment, and his troubles soon began. To be marched about a barrack-square followed by shouts of objurgation was bad enough: to be pestered with the intricacies of musketry was worse: but what galled him most of all was to have to walk. He loathed the life. This was not the world of soldiering that he had known and loved. His soul hungered for the rattle of log-chains and the jingle of harness; the smell of the stable still lingered in his nostrils. Moreover, he was in constant trouble, for desperation made him reckless. Those who had known him in the battery would scarcely have recognised in the sullen ne'er-do-well whom men called Morgan, the cheerful Snatty of a former time. He had just pa.s.sed his recruit drills (with difficulty be it said) and taken his place in the ranks, when the war which wise men had predicted as inevitable was forced upon the nation with disconcerting suddenness. The regiment was ordered out on service, and with it, amongst nine hundred other souls, went Private Henry Morgan, _alias_ Snatty.

III

A hot sun beating down from a cloudless sky upon a land parched and dusty from a lengthened drought; miles upon miles of rolling downs, which once were green but which the driest summer for many years has baked into a dirty yellow; here and there an oasis consisting of a copse of fir-trees, farmstead, and a field or two of pasture marking the presence of a kindly stream: a landscape in short so typical of hundreds of square miles of this particular region that ordinarily it would fail to interest. But to-day the peace of the country side is disturbed by the boom of guns and the rattle of musketry. Two mighty armies are at grips at last, and in the s.p.a.ce between them hovers Death.

Upon a little rise commanding a good view of the surrounding country there is a long line of khaki figures lying p.r.o.ne behind a scanty earth-work. These are infantry, and shaken infantry at that; shaken because they have marched all night and stormed that hill at dawn with fearful loss, because they are weak from hunger and parched with thirst, and because they feel in their hearts that the end is near. Relief must come, or one determined rush will drive them back to ruin. Sh.e.l.ls burst over them with whip-like crack, rifle fire tears through their ranks, and sometimes a harsh scream followed by a deafening report and clouds of acrid smoke marks the advent of a high-explosive sh.e.l.l.

A much hara.s.sed brigadier sat behind a rock near the telephone awaiting the answer to his urgent demand for guns. It came sooner than he expected it, and took the tangible shape of a little group of hors.e.m.e.n which appeared on the hill some way to his right. There was a quick consultation as gla.s.ses swept the front. Then the horses were led away under cover and the range-takers began operations. The brigadier recognised the signs and gained fresh hope as he saw that his prayer was answered. At the far end of the line Private Morgan, busily engaged in excavating a hole for himself by means of an entrenching tool much resembling a short-handled garden hoe, looked up quickly as he heard a well-known voice say--

"All right, Biddie, I'll observe from here. Bring 'em in quick."

"Strewth!" muttered Snatty to himself, "it's the major. So the old troop's comin' into action 'ere."

For weeks he had scanned every battery that had been near him, hoping to meet his own. But Horse Artillery act with cavalry and work far ahead of the toiling infantry in rear, so that it was not till now, when a pitched battle was in progress, when the advanced cavalry had come in and every available gun was being utilised, that Fate permitted Snatty to see his old battery once more. Looking over his shoulder, he said--

"It's all right now, sergeant. There's some guns coming."

"You shut yer mouth and get on with yer work," was the rejoinder, "Wot do you know about guns, I'd like to know?"

"Oh, nothink! But you watch 'em, that's all," said Private Morgan, with an ill-suppressed gleam of pride, which made the sergeant wonder.

The line of six guns, each with its wagon behind it, thundered up the rise. There was a shrill whistle, and a hand held up. Then the hoa.r.s.e voices of the sergeants shouted, "Action front," and the wheelers were thrown into the breeching, almost sitting on their haunches to stop the weight behind them: the gunners leapt from their horses and sprang to the gun: a second's pause, then, "Drive on," and six limbers went rattling away to the rear as six trails were flung round half a circle and dropped with a thud. Hardly were they down before each gun had its wagon up beside it and the horses unhooked. They too galloped to the rear. In ten seconds there was not a sign of movement. The battery was there, and that was all.

Of the weary infantry who lay and watched there was one at least who could appreciate the merit of the performance.

"Couldn't ha' been better in the old days on Salisbury Plain," was his comment. "But, Gawd! the 'orses 'ave fell away proper. Skeletons, that's wot they are now."