All in It : K(1) Carries On Part 9

"Yes, sir," said Angus respectfully.

"Right-o! You are to march them to 'A' Company billets. I'll show you the way. My name's c.o.c.kerell. Your train is late. What time did you leave the Base?"

"Indeed," replied Angus meekly, "I am not quite sure. We had barely landed when they told me the train would start at seventeen-forty.

What time would that be--sir?"

"About a quarter to ten: more likely about midnight! Well, get your bunch on to the road, and--Hallo, what's the matter? Let go!"

The new officer was gripping him excitedly by the arm, and as the new officer stood six-foot-four and was brawny in proportion, Master c.o.c.kerell's appeal was uttered in a tone of unusual sincerity.

"Look!" cried Angus excitedly. "The dogs, the dogs!"

A small cart was pa.s.sing swiftly by, towed by two st.u.r.dy hounds of unknown degree. They were pulling with the feverish enthusiasm which distinguishes the Dog in the service of Man, and were being urged to further efforts by a small hatless girl carrying the inevitable large umbrella.

"All right!" explained c.o.c.kerell curtly. "Custom of the country, and all that."

The impulsive Angus apologised; and the draft, having been safely manoeuvred on to the road, formed fours and set out upon its march.

"Are the Battalion in the trenches at present, sir?" inquired Angus.

"No. Rest-billets two miles from here. About time, too! You'll get lots of work to do, though."

"I shall welcome that," said Angus simply. "In the depot at home we were terribly idle. There is a windmill!"

"Yes; one sees them occasionally out here," replied c.o.c.kerell drily.

"Everything is so strange!" confessed the open-hearted Angus. "Those dogs we saw just now--the people with their sabots--the country carts, like wheelbarrows with three wheels--the little shrines at the cross-roads--the very children talking French so glibly--"

"Wonderful how they pick it up!" agreed c.o.c.kerell. But the sarcasm was lost on his companion, whose attention was now riveted upon an approaching body of infantry, about fifty strong.

"What troops are those, please?"

c.o.c.kerell knitted his brows sardonically.

"It's rather hard to tell at this distance," he said; "but I rather think they are the Grenadier Guards."

Two minutes later the procession had been met and pa.s.sed. It consisted entirely of elderly gentlemen in ill-fitting khaki, clumping along upon their flat feet and smoking clay pipes. They carried shovels on their shoulders, and made not the slightest response when called upon by the soldierly old corporal who led them to give Mr. c.o.c.kerell "eyes left!" On the contrary, engaged as they were in heated controversy or amiable conversation with one another, they cut him dead.

Angus M'Lachlan said nothing for quite five minutes. Then--

"I suppose," he said almost timidly, "that those were members of a _Reserve_ Regiment of the Guards?"

c.o.c.kerell, who had never outgrown certain characteristics which most of us shed upon emerging from the Lower Fourth, laughed long and loud.

"That crowd? They belong to one of the Labour Battalions. They make roads, and dig support trenches, and sling mud about generally.

Wonderful old sportsmen! Pleased as Punch when a sh.e.l.l falls within half a mile of them. Something to write home about. What? I say, I pulled your leg that time! Here we are at Headquarters. Come and report to the C.O. Grenadier Guards! My aunt!"

Angus, although his Celtic enthusiasm sometimes led him into traps, was no fool. He soon settled down in his new surroundings, and found favour with Colonel Kemp, which was no light achievement.

"You won't find that the War, in its present stage, calls for any display of genius," the Colonel explained to Angus at their first interview. "I don't expect my officers to exhibit any quality but the avoidance of _sloppiness_. If I detail you to be at a certain spot, at a certain hour, with a certain number of men--a ration-party, or a working-party, or a burial-party, or anything you like,--all I ask is that you will be _there_, at the appointed hour, with the whole of your following. That may not sound a very difficult feat, but experience has taught me that if a man can achieve it, and can be _relied_ upon to achieve it, say, nine times out of ten--well, he is a pearl of price; and there is not a C.O. in the British Army who wouldn't scramble to get him! That's all, M'Lachlan. Good morning!"

By punctilious attention to this sound advice Angus soon began to build up a reputation. He treated war-worn veterans like Bobby Little with immense respect, and this, too, was counted to him for righteousness. He exercised his platoon with appalling vigour. Upon Company route-marches he had to be embedded in some safe place in the middle of the column; in fact, his enormous stride and pedestrian enthusiasm would have reduced his followers to pulp. At Mess he was mute: like a wise man, he was feeling for his feet.

But being, like Moses, slow of tongue, he provided himself with an Aaron. Quite inadvertently, be it said. Bidden to obtain a servant for his personal needs, he selected the only man in the Battalion whose name he knew--Private Bogle, the _ci-devant_ painter of houses. That friendly creature obeyed the call with alacrity. If his house-painting was no better than his valeting, then his prospects of a "contrack"

after the War were poor indeed; but as a Mess waiter he was a joy for ever. Despite the blood-curdling whispers of the Mess Corporal, his natural urbanity of disposition could not be stemmed. Of the comfort of others he was solicitous to the point of oppressiveness. A Mess waiter's idea of efficiency as a rule is to stand woodenly at attention in an obscure corner of the room. When called upon, he starts forward with a jerk, and usually trips over something--probably his own feet. Not so Private Bogle.

"Wull you try another cup o' tea, Major?" he would suggest at breakfast to Major Wagstaffe, leaning affectionately over the back of his chair.

"No, thank you, Bogle," Major Wagstaffe would reply gravely.

"Weel, it's cauld onyway," Bogle would rejoin, anxious to endorse his superior's decision.

Or--in the same spirit--

"Wull I luft the soup now, sir?"

"_No!_"

"Varra weel: I'll jist let it bide the way it is."

Lastly, Angus M'Lachlan proved himself a useful acquisition--especially in rest-billets--as an athlete. He arrived just in time to take part--no mean part, either--in a Rugby Football match played between the officers of two Brigades. Thanks very largely to his masterly leading of the forwards, our Brigade were preserved from defeat at the hands of their opponents, who on paper had appeared to be irresistible.

Rugby Football "oot here" is a rarity, though a.s.sociation, being essentially the game of the rank-and-file, flourishes in every green field. But an Inverleith or Queen's Club crowd would have recognised more than one old friend among the thirty who took the field that day.

There were those partic.i.p.ating whose last game had been one of the spring "Internationals" in 1914, and who had been engaged in a prolonged and strenuous version of an even greater International ever since August of that fateful year. Every public school in Scotland was represented--sometimes three or four times over--and there were numerous doughty contributions from establishments south of the Tweed.

The lookers-on were in different case. They were to a man devoted--nay, frenzied--adherents of the rival code. In less s.p.a.cious days they had surged in their thousands every Sat.u.r.day afternoon to Ibrox, or Tynecastle, or Parkhead, there to yell themselves into convulsions--now exhorting a friend to hit some one a kick on the nose, now recommending the foe to play the game, now hoa.r.s.ely consigning the referee to perdition. To these, Rugby Football--the greatest of all manly games--was a mere name. Their att.i.tude when the officers appeared upon the field was one of indulgent superiority--the sort of superiority that a brawny pitman exhibits when his Platoon Commander steps down into a trench to lend a hand with the digging.

But in five minutes their mouths were agape with scandalised astonishment; in ten, the heavens were rent with their protesting cries. Accustomed to see football played with the feet, and to demand with one voice the instant execution of any player (on the other side) who laid so much as a finger upon the ball or the man who was playing it, the exhibition of savage and promiscuous brutality to which their superior officers now treated them shocked the a.s.sembled spectators to the roots of their sensitive souls. Howls of virtuous indignation burst forth upon all sides.

When the three-quarter-backs brought off a brilliant pa.s.sing run, there were stern cries of "Haands, there, referee!" When Bobby Little stopped an ugly rush by hurling himself on the ball, the supporters of the other Brigade greeted his heroic devotion with yells of execration. When Angus M'Lachlan saved a certain try by tackling a speedy wing three-quarter low and bringing him down with a crash, a hundred voices demanded his removal from the field. And, when Mr.

Waddell, playing a stuffy but useful game at half, gained fifty yards for his side by a series of judicious little kicks into touch, the spectators groaned aloud, and remarked caustically--

"This maun be a Cup-Tie, boys! They are playin' for a draw, for tae get a second gate!"

Altogether a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon, both for players and spectators. And so home to tea, domesticity, and social intercourse.

In this connection it may be noted that our relations with the inhabitants are of the friendliest. On the stroke of six--oh yes, we have our licensing restrictions out here too!--half a dozen kilted warriors stroll into the farm-kitchen, and mumble affably to Madame--

"Bone sworr! Beer?"

France boasts one enormous advantage over Scotland. At home, you have at least to walk to the corner of the street to obtain a drink: "oot here" you can purchase beer in practically every house in a village.

The French licensing laws are a thing of mystery, but the system appears roughly to be this. Either you possess a license, or you do not. If you do you may sell beer, and nothing else. If you do not, you may--or at any rate do--sell anything you like, including beer.

However, we have left our friends thirsty.