Batteries look after their own stomachs, and are not catered for by contractors. The cook-house was a wagon-tilt. The wood, being damp, smoked a good deal. One thought of the wide, adequate kitchen ranges and the concrete passages of the service quarters in the big house just behind. One even dared to think Teutonically of the perfectly good panelling and the thick hard-wood floors that could –—
Service conditions, you see. said my guide, as the cook inspected the baked meats and the men inside the wagon-tilt grated the carrots and prepared the onions. It was old work to them after all these months - done swiftly, with the clean economy of effort that camp life teaches. What are these lads when they re at home? I inquired.
Londoners chiefly - all sorts and conditions.
The cook in shirt sleeves made another investigation, and sniffed judicially. He might have been cooking since the Peninsular. He looked at his watch and across towards the park gates. He was responsible for one hundred and sixty rations, and a battery has the habit of saying quite all that it thinks of its food. How often do the batteries go out? I continued. ‘Bout five days a week. You see, we’re being worked up a little. And have they got plenty of ground to work over? ‘Oh yes-s. What’s the difficulty this time? Birds? ‘No; but we got orders the other day not to go over a golf-course. That rather knocks the bottom out of tactical schemes.
Perfect shamelessness, like perfect virtue, is impregnable; and, after all, the lightnings of this war, which have brought out so much resolve and self-sacrifice, must show up equally certain souls and institutions that are irredeemable.
The weather took off a little before noon. The carpenters could have put in a good half-day’s work on the sheds, and even if they had been rained upon they had roofs with fires awaiting their return. The batteries had none of these things. ‘
The Gunner at Home:
They came in at last far down the park, heralded by that unmistakable half-grumble, half-grunt of guns on the move. The picketed horses heard it first, and one of them neighed long and loud, which proved that he had abandoned civilian habits. Horses in stables and mews seldom do more than snicker, even when they are halves of separated pairs. But these gentlemen had a corporate life of their own now, and knew what pulling together means.
When a battery comes into camp it parks all six guns at the appointed place, side by side in one mathematically straight line, and the accuracy of the alignment is, like ceremonial drill with the Foot, a fair test of its attainments. The ground was no treat for parking. Specimen trees and draining ditches had to be avoided and circumvented. The gunners, their reins, the guns, the ground, were equally wet, and the slob dropped away like gruel from the brake-shoes. And they were Londoners - clerks, mechanics, shop assistants, and delivery men - anything and everything that you please. But they were all home and at home in their saddles and seats. They said nothing; their officers said little enough to them. They came in across what had once been turf; wheeled with tight traces; halted, unhooked; the wise teams stumped off to their pickets, and, behold, the six guns were left precisely where they should have been left to the fraction of an inch. You could see the wind blowing the last few drops of wet from each leather muzzle-cover at exactly the same angle. It was all old known evolutions, taken unconsciously in the course of their day’s work by men well abreast of it.
Our men have one advantage, said a voice.
As Territorials they were introduced to unmade horses once a year at training. So they ve never been accustomed to made horses.
And what do the horses say about it all? I asked, remembering what I had seen on the road in the early days.
They said a good deal at first, but our chaps could make allowances for em. They know now.
Allah never intended the Gunner to talk. His own arm does that for him. The batteries off’ saddled in silence, though one noticed on all sides little quiet caresses between man and beast - affectionate nuzzlings and nose-slappings. Surely the Gunner’s relation to his horse is more intimate even than the cavalryman’s; for a lost horse only turns cavalry into infantry, but trouble in a gun team may mean death all round. And this is the Gunner’s war. The young wet officers said so joyously as they passed to and fro picking up scandal about breast-straps and breechings, examining the collars of ammunition-wagon teams, and listening to remarks on shoes. Local blacksmiths, assisted by the battery itself, do the shoeing. There are master smiths and important farriers, who have cheerfully thrown up good wages to help the game, and their horses reward them by keeping fit. A fair proportion of the horses are aged - there was never a Gunner yet satisfied with his team or its rations till he had left the battery - but they do their work as steadfastly and whole- heartedly as the men. I am persuaded the horses like being in society and working out their daily problems of draught and direction. The English, and Londoners particularly, are the kindest and most reasonable of folk with animals. If it were not our business strictly to underrate ourselves for the next few years, one would say that the Territorial batteries had already done wonders. But perhaps it is better to let it all go with the grudging admis- sion wrung out of a wringing wet bombardier,
Well, it isn t so dam bad considering.
I left them taking their dinner in mess tins to their tents, with a strenuous afternoon’s cleaning-up ahead of them. The big park held some thousands of men. I had seen no more than a few hundreds, and had missed the howitzer-batteries after all. A cock pheasant chaperoned me down the drive, complaining loudly that where he was used to walk with his ladies under the beech trees, some unsport- ing people had built a miniature landscape with tiny villages, churches, and factories, and came there daily to point cannon at it.
Keep away from that place, said I, or you’ll find yourself in a field-kitchen.
Not me! he crowed. I’m as sacred as golf’ courses.
Mechanism and Mechanics
There was a little town a couple of miles down the road where one used to lunch in the old days, and had the hotel to oneself. Now there are six ever-changing officers in billet there, and the astonished houses quiver all day to traction engines and high-piled lorries. A unit of the Army Service Corps and some mechanical transport lived near the station, and fed the troops for twenty miles around.
Are your people easy to find?’ I asked of a wandering private, with the hands of a sweep, the head of a Christian among lions, and suicide in his eye.
Well, the A.S.C. are in the Territorial Drill Hall for one thing; and for another you’re likely to hear us! There’s some motors come in from Bulford. He snorted and passed on, smelling of petrol. The drill-shed was peace and comfort. The A.S.C. were getting ready there for pay-day and for a concert that evening. Outside in the wind and the occasional rain-spurts, life was different. The Bulford motors and some other crocks sat on a side-road between what had been the local garage and a newly-erected workshop of creaking scaffold-poles and bellying slatting rick-cloths, where a forge glowed and general repairs were being effected. Beneath the motors men lay on their backs and called their friends to pass them spanners, or, for pity’s sake, to shove another sack under their mud-wreathed heads.
A corporal, who had been nine years a fitter and seven in a city garage, briefly and briskly outlined the more virulent diseases that develop in Government rolling-stock. (I heard quite a lot about Bulford,) Hollow voices from beneath eviscerated gear-boxes confirmed him. We with- drew to the shelter of the rick-cloth workshop - that corporal ; the sergeant who had been a carpenter, with a business of his own, and, incidentally, had served through the Boer War; another sergeant who was a member of the Master Builders Association; and a private who had also been fitter, chauffeur, and a few other things. The third sergeant, who kept a poultry-farm in Surrey, had some duty elsewhere.
A man at a carpenter’s bench was finishing a spoke for a newly-painted cart. He squinted along it. .
That’s funny. said the master builder. Of course in his own business he d chuck his job sooner than do wood-work. But it s all funny. .
What I grudge, a sergeant