“A” COMPANY RUSTLES
When we got into the bally place it was raining in torrents, and the air was also pure purple because the Colonel found some one in his old billet, and the Town-Major, a cantankerous old dug-out who seemed to exist chiefly for the purpose of annoying men who did go into the front line, was about as helpful as the fifth wheel to a wagon. Finally, the Colonel shot out of his office like an eighteen-pounder from a whizz-bang battery, and later on the tattered remnants of our once proud and haughty Adjutant announced to us, in the tones of a dove who has lost his mate, that there were no billets for us at all, and that officers and men would have to bivouac by the river.
Under all circumstances the Major is cheerful—and he has a very clear idea of when it is permissible to go around an order. Also the Town-Major invariably has the same effect on him as such an unwelcome visitor as a skunk at a garden-party would have on the garden-party. Having consigned the aforesaid T.-M. to perdition in Canadian, English, French, and Doukhobor, he said: “We are going to have billets for the men, and we are going to have billets for ourselves.” That quite settled the matter, as far as we Company officers were concerned. In the course of the next half-hour we had swiped an empty street and a half for the men, and put them into it, and then we gathered together, seven strong, and proceeded to hunt for our own quarters.
There is a very strongly developed scouting instinct among the Canadian forces in the Field. Moreover, we are not overawed by outward appearances. In the centre of the town we found a château; and an hour later we were lunching there comfortably ensconed in three-legged arm-chairs, with a real bowl of real flowers on the table, and certain oddments of cut-glass (found gleefully by the batmen) reflecting the bubbling vintage of the house of Moët et Chandon. Our dining-hall was about sixty feet by twenty, and we each had a bedroom of proportionate size, with a bed of sorts in it. Moreover, the place was most wonderfully clean—it might almost have been prepared for us—and McFinnigan, our cook, was in the seventh heaven of delight because he had found a real stove with an oven.
“I cannot understand,” said the Major, “how it is no one is in this place. It’s good enough for a Divisional Commander.”
There was actually a bath in the place with water running in the taps. Jones, always something of a pessimist, shook his head when he saw the bath.
“Look here, all you boys,” he said, “this is no place for us. There is an unwritten law in this outfit that no man, unless he wears red and gold things plastered all over his person, shall have more than one bath in one month. Now I had one three weeks ago, and I am still—— but why dwell on it?”
Needless to say he was ruled out of order.
Just to show our darned independence, we decided to invite most of the other officers of the battalion to dinner that evening, “plenty much swank” and all that kind of thing. Would that we had thought better of it. Of course we eventually decided to make a real banquet of it, appointed a regular mess committee, went and saw the Paymaster, and sent orderlies dashing madly forth to buy up all the liqueurs, Scotch, soda, and other potations that make glad the heart of man. We arranged for a four-course dinner, paraded the batmen and distributed back-sheesh and forcible addresses on the subjects of table-laying and how to balance the soup and unplop the bubbly.
Nobody came near us at all. As far as the Town-Major was concerned we might have been in Kamtchatka. The Major had gone to the C.O. (after lunch) and told him we had “found a little place to shelter in,” and as the latter had written a particularly biting, satirical, not to say hectic note to the Brigadier on the subject of the Town-Major’s villainy, and was therefore feeling better, he just told the Major to carry on, and did not worry about us in the least.
Nineteen of us—Majors, Captains, and “Loots”—sat down to dinner. It was a good dinner, the batmen performed prodigies of waitership; the wine bubbled and frothed, frothed and bubbled, and we all bubbled too. It was a red-letter night. After about the seventeenth speech, in which the Doc. got a little mixed concerning the relationship of Bacchus and a small statue of the Venus de Milo which adorned one corner of the room, some one called for a song. It was then about 11 “pip emma.”
We were in the midst of what the P.M. called a little “Close Harmony”—singing as Caruso and McCormack NEVER sang—when we heard the sound of feet in the passage, feet that clanked and clunk—feet with spurs on.
A hush fell over us, an expectant hush. The door opened, without the ceremony of a knock, and in walked not any of your common or garden Brigadiers, not even a Major-General, but a fully-fledged Lieutenant-General, followed by his staff, and the Town-Major.
In our regiment we have always prided ourselves on the fact that we can carry on anywhere and under any circumstances. But this fell night our untarnished record came very near to disaster. It was as though Zeus had appeared at a Roman banquet being held in his most sacred grove.
The General advanced three paces and halted. Those of us who were able to do so got up. Those who could not rise remained seated. The silence was not only painful, it was oppressive. A steel-grey, generalistic eye slowly travelled through each one of us, up and down the table, unadorned with the remnants of many bottles, the half-finished glasses of many drinks. Just then the Town-Major took a step forward; he was a palish green, with an under-tinge of yellow.
“What is the meaning of——” said the General, in a voice tinged with the iciest breath of the far distant Pole, but he got no further.
There was a sudden rending, ear-splitting roar, the lights went out, the walls of the château seemed to sway, and the plaster fell in great lumps from the frescoed ceiling.
That (as we afterwards discovered) no one was hurt was a marvel. It is the one and only time when we of this regiment have thanked Fritz for shelling us. In the pale light of early dawn the last member of the party slunk into the bivouac ground. The General, where was he? We knew not, neither did we care.
But it was the first and last time that “A” Company rustled a Corps Commander’s Château!