The Grey Wave

by A. Hamilton Gibbs

15

That nine days at La Bruyère did not teach us very much,—not even the realization of the vital necessity of patience. We looked upon each day as wasted because we weren’t up the line. Everywhere were preparations of war but we yearned for the sound of guns. Even the blue-clad figures who exchanged jokes with us over the hospital railing conveyed nothing of the grim tragedy of which we were only on the fringe. They were mostly convalescent. It is only the shattered who are being pulled back to life by a thread who make one curse the war. We looked about like new boys in a school, interested but knowing nothing of the workings, reading none of the signs. This all bored us. We wanted the line with all the persistence of the completely ignorant.

The morning after our bath we got it. There was much bustle and running and cursing and finally we had our saddles packed, and a day’s rations in our haversacks and a double feed in the nose-bags.

The cavalry man in full marching order bears a strange resemblance to a travelling ironmonger and rattles like the banging of old tins. The small man has almost to climb up the near foreleg of his horse, so impossible is it to get a leg anywhere near the stirrup iron with all his gear on. My own method was to stick the lance in the ground by the butt, climb with infinite labour and heavings into the saddle and come back for the lance when arranged squarely on the horse.

Eventually everything was accomplished and we were all in the saddle and were inspected to see that we were complete in every detail. Then we rode out of that muddy camp in sections—four abreast—and made our way down towards the station. It was a real touch of old-time romance, that ride. The children ran shouting, and people came out of the shops to wave their hands and give us fruit and wish us luck, and the girls blew kisses, and through the hubbub the clatter of our horses over the cobbles and the jingle of stirrup striking stirrup made music that stirred one’s blood.

There was a long train of cattle trucks waiting for us at the station and into these we put our horses, eight to each truck, fastened by their ropes from the head collar to a ring in the roof. In the two-foot space between the two lots of four horses facing each other were put the eight saddles and blankets and a bale of hay.

Two men were detailed to stay with the horses in each truck while the rest fell in and were marched away to be distributed among the remaining empty trucks. I didn’t altogether fancy the idea of looking after eight frightened steeds in that two-foot alleyway, but before I could fall in with the rest I was detailed by the sergeant.

That journey was a nightmare. My fellow stableman was a brainless idiot who knew even less about the handling of horses than I did.

The train pulled out in the growing dusk of a cold November evening, the horses snorting and starting at every jolt, at every signal and telegraph pole that we passed. When they pawed with their front feet we, sitting on the bale of hay, had to dodge with curses. There was no sand or bedding and it was only the tightness with which they were packed together that kept them on their feet. Every light that flashed by drew frightened snorts. We spent an hour standing among them, saying soothing things and patting their necks. We tried closing the sliding doors but at the end of five minutes the heat splashed in great drops of moisture from the roof and the smell was impossible. Eventually I broke the bale of hay and threw some of that down to give them a footing.

There was a lamp in the corner of the truck. I told the other fellow to light it. He said he had no matches. So I produced mine and discovered that I had only six left. We used five to find out that the lamp had neither oil nor wick. We had just exhausted our vocabularies over this when the train entered a tunnel. At no time did the train move at more than eight miles an hour and the tunnel seemed endless. A times I still dream of that tunnel and wake up in a cold sweat.

As our truck entered great billows of smoke rushed into it. The eight horses tried as one to rear up and crashed their heads against the roof. The noise was deafening and it was pitch dark. I felt for the door and slid it shut while the horses blew and tugged at their ropes in a blind panic. Then there was a heavy thud, followed by a yell from the other man and a furious squealing.

“Are you all right?” I shouted, holding on to the head collar of the nearest beast.

“Christ!” came the answer. “There’s a ’orse down and I’m jammed up against the door ’ere. Come and get me out, for Christ’s sake.”

My heart was pumping wildly.

The smoke made one gasp and there was a furious stamping and squealing and a weird sort of blowing gurgle which I could not define.

Feeling around I reached the next horse’s head collar and staggered over the pile of saddlery. As I leaned forward to get to the third something whistled past my face and I heard the sickening noise of a horse’s hoof against another horse, followed by a squeal. I felt blindly and touched a flank where a head should have been. One of them had swung round and was standing with his fore feet on the fallen horse and was lashing out with both hind feet, while my companion was jammed against the wall of the truck by the fallen animal presumably.

And still that cursed tunnel did not come to an end. I yelled again to see if he were all right and his fruity reply convinced me that at least there was no damage done. So I patted the kicker and squeezed in to his head and tried to get him round. It was impossible to get past, over or under, and the brute wouldn’t move. There was nothing for it but to remain as we were until out of the tunnel. And then I located the gurgle. It was the fallen horse, tied up short by the head collar to the roof, being steadily strangled. It was impossible to cut the rope. A loose horse in that infernal mêlée was worse than one dead—or at least choking. But I cursed and pulled and heaved in my efforts to get him up.

By this time there was no air and one’s lungs seemed on the point of bursting. The roof rained sweat upon our faces and every moment I expected to get a horse’s hoof in my face.

How I envied that fellow jammed against the truck. At last we came out into the open again, and I slid back the door, and shoved my head outside and gulped in the fresh air. Then I untied the kicker and somehow, I don’t know how, got him round into his proper position and tied him up, with a handful of hay all round to steady their nerves.

The other man was cursing blue blazes all this time, but eventually I cut the rope of the fallen horse, and after about three false starts he got on his feet again and was retied. The man was not hurt. He had been merely wedged. So we gave some more hay all round, cursed a bit more to ease ourselves and then went to the open door for air. A confused shouting from the next truck reached us. After many yells we made out the following, “Pass the word forward that the train’s on fire.”

All the stories I’d ever heard of horses being burnt alive raced through my brain in a fraction of a second.

We leaned to the truck in front and yelled. No answer. The truck was shut.

“Climb on the roof,” said I, “and go forward.” The other man obeyed and disappeared into the dark.

Minutes passed, during which I looked back and saw a cloud of smoke coming out of a truck far along the train.

Then a foot dropped over from the roof and my companion climbed back.

“Better go yourself,” he said. “I carnt mike ’im understand. He threw lumps of coal at me from the perishin’ engine.”

So I climbed on to the roof of the swaying coach, got my balance and walked forward till a yard-wide jump to the next roof faced me in the darkness.

“Lord!” thought I, “if I didn’t know that other lad had been here, I shouldn’t care about it. However——” I took a strong leap and landed, slipping to my hands and knees.

There were six trucks between me and the engine and the jumps varied in width. I got there all right and screamed to the engine driver, “Incendie!—Incendie!”

He paused in the act of throwing coal at me and I screamed again. Apparently he caught it, for first peering back along all the train, he dived at a lever and the train screamed to a halt. I was mighty thankful. I hadn’t looked forward to going back the way I came and I climbed quickly down to the rails. A sort of guard with a lantern and an official appearance climbed out of a box of sorts and demanded to know what was the matter, and when I told him, called to me to follow and began doubling back along the track.

I followed. The train seemed about a mile long but eventually we reached a truck, full of men and a rosy glare, from which a column of smoke bellied out. The guard flashed his lantern in.

The cursed thing wasn’t on fire at all. The men were burning hay in a biscuit tin, singing merrily, just keeping themselves warm.

I thought of the agony of those jumps in the dark from roof to roof and laughed. But I got my own back. They couldn’t see us in the dark, so in short snappy sentences I ordered them to put the fire out immediately. And they thought I was an officer and did so.