18
The culminating point was reached when I became ill.
Feeling sick, I couldn’t eat any breakfast and dragged myself on parade like a mangy cat. I stuck it till about three in the afternoon, when the horse which I was grooming receded from me and the whole world rocked. I remember hanging on to the horse till things got a bit steadier, and then asked the sergeant if I might go off parade. I suppose I must have looked pretty ill because he said yes at once.
For three days I lay wrapped up on the straw in the barn, eating nothing; and only crawling out to see the doctor each morning at nine o’clock. Of other symptoms I will say nothing. The whole affair was appalling, but I recovered sufficient interest in life on the fourth morning to parade sick, although I felt vastly more fit. Indeed, the argument formed itself, “since I am a soldier I’ll play the ‘old soldier’ and see how long I can be excused duty.” And I did it so well that for three more days I was to all intents and purposes a free man. On one of the days I fell in with a corporal of another squadron, and he and I got a couple of horses and rode into Bailleul, which was only about three miles south of us, and we bought chocolates, and candles and books, and exchanged salutes with the Prince of Wales, who was walking in the town. Then we came back with our supplies after an excellent lunch at the hotel in the square, the “Faucon,” and had tea with the officers’ servants in a cosy little billet with a fire and beds. The remarks they made about their officers were most instructive, and they referred to them either as “my bloke” or “’is lordship.”
And there it was I met again a man I had spoken to once at Tidworth, who knew French and was now squadron interpreter. He was a charming man of considerable means, with a large business, who had joined up immediately on the outbreak of war. But being squadron interpreter he messed with the officers, had a billet in a cottage, slept on a bed, had a private hip bath and hot water, and was in heaven, comparatively. He suggested to me that as my squadron lacked an interpreter (he was doing the extra work) and I knew French it was up to me.
“But how the devil’s it to be done?” said I, alight with the idea.
“Why don’t you go and see the Colonel?” he suggested.
I gasped. The Colonel was nearly God.
He laughed. “This is ‘Kitchener’s Army,’” he said, “not the regular Army. Things are a bit different.” They were indeed!
So I slept on the idea and every moment it seemed to me better and better, until the following evening after tea, instead of going to the estaminet, I went down to squadron headquarters. For about five minutes I walked up and down in the mud, plucking up courage. I would rather have faced a Hun any day.
At last I went into the farmyard and knocked at the door. There were lights in the crack of the window shutters.
A servant answered the door.
“Is the Colonel in?” said I boldly.
He peered at me. “What the perishin’ ’ell do you want to know for?”
“I want to see him,” said I.
“And what the ’ell do you want to see him for?”
I was annoyed. It seemed quite likely that this confounded servant would do the St. Peter act and refuse me entrance into the gates.
“Look here,” I said, “it doesn’t matter to you what for or why. You’re here to answer questions. Is the Colonel in?”
The man snorted. “Oh! I’m ’ere to answer questions, am I? Well, if you want to know, the Colonel ain’t in.—Anything else?”
I was stumped. It seemed as if my hopes were shattered. But luck was mine—as ever. A voice came from the inner room. “Thomson! Who is that man?”
The servant made a face at me and went to the room door.
“A trooper, sir, from one of the squadrons, askin’ to see the Colonel.”
“Bring him in,” said the voice.
My heart leapt.
The servant returned to me and showed me into the room.
I saw three officers, one in shirt sleeves, all sitting around a fire. Empty tea things were still on a table. There were a sofa, and armchairs and bright pictures, a pile of books and magazines on a table, and a smell of Egyptian cigarettes. They all looked at me as I saluted.
“Thomson tells me you want to see the Colonel,” said the one whose voice I had heard, the one in shirt sleeves. “Anything I can do?”
It was good to hear one’s own language again, and I decided to make a clean breast of it.
“It’s awfully kind of you, sir,” said I. “Perhaps you can. I came to ask for the interpretership of my squadron. We haven’t got one and I can talk French. If you could put in a word for me I should be lastingly grateful.”
His next words made him my brother for life. “Sit down, won’t you,” he said, “and have a cigarette.”
Can you realize what it meant after those weeks of misery, with no letters and the eternal adjective of the ranks which gets on one’s nerves till one could scream, to be asked to sit down and have a cigarette in that officers’ mess?
Speechless, I took one, although I dislike cigarettes and always stick to a pipe. But that one was a link with all that I’d left behind, and was the best I’ve ever smoked in my life. He proceeded to ask me my name and where I was educated, and said he would see what he could do for me, and after about ten minutes I went out again into the mud a better soldier than I went in. That touch of fellow feeling helped enormously. And he was as good as his word. For the following morning the Major sent for me.