XVIII
The Ritz, London November 17, 1917
Your minds can be at rest as regards my safety for a few weeks at least. I've been collared for fair, but I think I'll manage to get free again presently. I suppose you'll say that I'm a donkey to want so much to get back to the Front; perhaps I am—the war will last quite long enough for every man in khaki to get very much more of it than he can comfortably stomach. The proper soldierly attitude is to take every respite as it turns up and be grateful for it. But then I'm not a professional soldier. I think in saying that I've laid my finger on the entire reason for the splendour of our troops—that they're not professional soldiers, but civilian idealists. Your professional soldier isn't particularly keen on death—his game is to live that he may fight another day. Our game is to fight and fight and fight so long as we have an ounce of strength left. My major and myself are all that are left of the officers in my battery. A great many of our best men are gone. They need us back to help them out.
Here's a story of stories—one which answers all the questions one hears asked as to whether the Army doesn't lower a man's morals and turn saints into blackguards.
When we were on the Somme, a batch of very worthless-appearing remounts arrived at our wagon-lines direct from England. When they were paraded before us, they made the rottenest impression—they looked like molly-coddles whom the Army had cowed. Among them was a particularly inoffensive-looking young man who had been a dental student, whom, if the Huns could have seen him as a sample of the kind of reinforcements we were getting, they would certainly have taken new courage to win the war. All the officers growled and prayed God for a consignment of the old rough-and-tumble knockabout chaps who came out of gaols, from under freight-trains, and from lumber-camps to die like gentlemen—the only gentlemanly thing some of them ever did, I expect—with the Canadian First Contingent.
A few weeks later we sent back to the wagonlines for a servant to be sent up to the guns, two of our batmen having been killed and a third having been returned to duty. The wagon-line officer sent us up this fellow with the following note: “I'm sending you X. He's the most useless chap I have—not bad, but a ninny. I hope he'll suit you.” He didn't. He could never carry out an order correctly, and seemed scared stiff: by any N.C.O. or officer. We got rid of him promptly. When he returned to the wagon-lines, he was put on to all the fatigues and dirty jobs.
The first time we got any hint that the chap had guts was when we were out at rest at Christmas. He'd been shifted from one section to another, because no one wanted him.. Each new Number One as he received him put him on to his worst horses, so as to get rid of him the more quickly. The chap was grooming a very ticklish mare, when she up with her hind-legs and caught him in the chest, throwing him about twenty yards into the mud. He lay stunned for a full minute; we thought he was done. Then, in a dazed kind of way, he got upon his feet. He was told he could fall out, but he insisted upon finishing the grooming of his horse. When the stable parade was dismissed, much against his will he was sent to be inspected by the Brigade doctor.
The doctor looked him over and said, “I ought to send you out to a hospital, but I'll see how you are to-morrow. You must go back to your billets and keep quiet. The kick has chipped the point of your breast-bone.”
“It didn't,” said Driver X., “and I'm not going to lie down.”
The doctor, who is very small, looked as much like the Last Judgment as his size would allow. “You'll do what you're told,” he said sharply. “You'll find yourself up for office if you speak to me like that. If I told you that both your legs were broken, they would be broken. You don't know very much about the Army, my lad.”
“But my breast-bone isn't chipped,” he insisted. Contrary to orders he was out on the afternoon parade and was up to morning stables next day at six o'clock. When strafed for his disobedience, he looked mild and inoffensive and obstinate. He refused to be considered, and won out. You can punish chaps for things like that; but you don't.
The next thing we noticed about him was that he was learning to swear. Then he began to look rough, so that no one would have guessed that he came from a social grade different from that of the other men. And this was the stage he had arrived at when I got wounded last summer and left the battery. The story of his further progress was completed for me this week when I met my major in town.
“Who's the latest hero, do you think?", he questioned. “You'd never guess—the dental student. He did one of the most splendid bits of work that was ever done by an Artillery driver.”
Here's what he did. He was sent along a heavily shelled road at nightfall to collect material from blown-in dug-outs for building our new battery position. He was wheel-driver on a G.S. wagon which had three teams hooked into it. There was a party of men with him to scout up the material and an N.C.O. in charge. As they were halted, backed up against an embankment, a shell landed plumb into the wagon, crippling it badly, wounding all the horses and every man except the ex-dental student. The teams bolted, and it was mainly due to the efforts of the wheel-driver that the stampede was checked. He must have used quite a lot of language which really polite people would not have approved. He then bound up all the wounds of his comrades—there was no one to help him—and took them back to the field dressing-station two at a time, mounted on two of the least wounded horses. When he had carried them all to safety, he removed their puttees and went back alone along the shelled road to the wounded horses and used the puttees to stop their flow of blood. He managed to get the wagon clear, so that it could be pulled. He tied four of the horses on behind; hooked in the two that were strongest, and brought the lot back to the wagonlines single-handed.
And here's the end of the story. The O.C. put in a strong recommendation that he be decorated for his humanity and courage. The award came through in the record time of fourteen days, with about a yard of Military Medal ribbon and congratulations from high officers all along the line. The morning of the day it came through thieving had been discovered in the battery, and a warning had been read out that the culprit was suspected, and that it would go hard with him when he was arrested. The decoration was received in the afternoon while harness-cleaning was in progress. Without loss of time the O.C. went out, a very stern look on his face, and had the battery formed up in a hollow square. There was only one thought in the men's heads—that the thief had been found. There was a kind of “Is it I” look in their faces. Without explanation, the O.C. called upon the ex-dental student to fall out. He fell out with his knees knocking and his chin wobbling, looking quite the guilty party. Then the O.C. commenced to read all the praise from officers at Brigade, Division, Corps, Army, of the gallant wheel-driver who had not only risked his life to save his pals, but had even had the fineness of forethought to bind up the horses' wounds with the puttees. Then came the yard of Military Medal ribbon, a piece of which was snipped off and pinned on to the lad's worn tunic. The battery yelled itself crimson. The dental student had learnt to swear, but he'd won his spurs. He's been promoted to the most dangerous and coveted job for a gunner or driver in the artillery; he's been put on to the B.C. party, which has to go forward into all the warm spots to observe the enemy and to lay in wire with the infantry when a “show” is in progress. Can you wonder that I get weary of seeing the London buses trundle along the well-swept asphalt of Oxford Street and long to take my chance once more with such chaps?