12
The wagon line all this while had, in the charge of the sergeant-major, been cursed most bitterly by horse masters and A.D.V.S.’s who could not understand how a sergeant-major, aged perhaps thirty-nine, could possibly know as much about horse management as a new-fledged subaltern anywhere between nineteen and twenty-one.
From time to time I pottered down on a bicycle for the purpose of strafing criminals and came away each time with a prayer of thanks that there was no new-fledged infant to interfere with the sergeant-major’s methods.
On one occasion he begged me to wait and see an A.D.V.S. of sorts who was due at two o’clock that afternoon and who on his previous tour of inspection had been just about as nasty as he could be. I waited.
Let it be granted as our old enemy Euclid says that the horse standings were the worst in France—the Division of course had the decent ones—and that every effort was being made to repair them. The number of shelled houses removed bodily from the firing line to make brick standings and pathways through the mud would have built a model village. The horses were doing this work in addition to ammunition fatigues, brigade fatigues and every other sort of affliction. Assuming too that a sergeant-major doesn’t carry as much weight as a Captain (I’d got my third pip) in confronting an A.S.C. forage merchant with his iniquities, and I think every knowledgeable person admitted that our wagon line was as good as, if not better than, shall we say, any Divisional battery. Yet the veterinary expert (?) crabbed my very loyal supporter, the sergeant-major, who worked his head and his hands off day in, day out. It was displeasing,—more, childish.
In due course he arrived,—in a motor car. True, it wasn’t a Rolls-Royce, but then he was only a Colonel. But he wore a fur coat just as if it had been a Rolls-Royce. He stepped delicately into the mud, and left his temper in the car. To the man who travels in motors, a splash of mud on the boots is as offensive as the sight of a man smoking a pipe in Bond Street at eleven o’clock in the morning. It isn’t done.
I saluted and gave him good morning. He grunted and flicked a finger. Amicable relations were established.
“Are you in charge of these wagon lines?” said he.
“In theory, yes, sir.”
He didn’t quite understand, and cocked a doubtful eye at me.
I explained. “You see, sir, the B.C. and I are carrying on the war. He’s commanding Group and I’m commanding the battery. But we’ve got the fullest confidence in the sergeant-maj.—”
Was it an oath he swallowed? Anyhow, it went down like an oyster.
The Colonel moved thus expressing his desire to look round.
I fell into step.
“Have you got a hay sieve?” said he.
“Sergeant-Major, where’s the hay sieve?” said I.
“This way, sir,” said the sergeant-major.
Two drivers were busily passing hay through it. The Colonel told them how to do it.
“Have you got wire hay racks above the horses?”
“Sergeant-Major,” said I, “have we got wire hay racks?”
“This way, sir,” said the sergeant-major.
Two drivers were stretching pieces of bale wire from pole to pole.
The Colonel asked them if they knew how to do it.
“How many horses have you got for casting?” said the Colonel.
“Do we want to cast any horses, Sergeant-Major?” said I.
“Yes, sir,” said the Sergeant-Major. “We’ve got six.”
It was a delightful morning. Every question that the Colonel asked I passed on to the sergeant-major, whose answer was ever ready. Wherever the Colonel wished to explore, there were men working.
Could a new-fledged infant unversed in the ways of the Army have accomplished it?
One of the sections was down the road, quite five minutes away. During the walk we exchanged views about the war. He confided to me that the ideal was to have in each wagon line an officer who knew no more about gunnery than that turnip, but who knew enough about horses to take advice from veterinary officers.
In return I told him that there ought not to be any wagon lines, that the horse was effete in a war of this nature, that over half the man-power of the country was employed in grooming and cleaning harness, half the tonnage of the shipping taken up in fetching forage, and that there was more strafing over a bad turn-out than if a battery had shot its own infantry for four days running.
The outcome of it all was pure farce. He inspected the remaining section and then told me he was immensely pleased with the marked improvement in the condition of the animals and the horse management generally (nothing had been altered), and that if I found myself short of labour when it came to building a new wagon line, he thought he knew where he could put his hand on a dozen useful men. Furthermore, he was going to write and tell my Colonel how pleased he was.
The sergeant-major’s face was a study!
The psychology of it is presumably the same that brings promotion to the officer who, smartly and with well-polished buttons, in reply to a question from the General, “What colour is black?” whips out like a flash, “White, sir!”
And the General nods and says, “Of course!—Smart young officer that! What’s his name?”
Infallible!