AT THE FRONT.
There is one matter I have hitherto not touched on, because it has not hitherto touched on me, and that is Courses.
The ideal course works like this. You are sitting up to the ears in mud under a brisk howitzer, trench mortar and rifle grenade fire, when a respectful signaller crawls round a traverse, remarking, "Message, Sir."
You take the chit from him languidly, wondering whether you have earned a court-martial by omitting to report on the trench sleeping-suits which someone in the Rearward Services has omitted to forward, and you read, still languidly at first; then you get up and whoop, throw your primus stove into the air and proceed to dance on the parapet, if your trench has one. Then you settle down and read your message again to see if it still runs, "You are detailed to attend three months' Staff work course at Boulogne, commencing to-morrow. A car will be at the dump for you to-night. A month's leave on completion, of course."
But all courses are not like this; all you can say is that some are less unlike it than others. I was sitting in a warm billet about twelve noon having breakfast on the first day out of trenches when the blow fell on me. I was to report about two days ago at a School of Instruction some two hundred yards away. I gathered that the course had started without me. I set some leisurely inquiries in train, in the hope that it might be over before I joined up. I also asked the Adjutant whether I couldn't have it put off till next time in trenches, or have it debited to me as half a machine-gun course payable on demand, or exchange it for a guinea-pig or a canary, or do anything consistent with the honour of an officer to stave it off. For to tell the truth, like all people who know nothing and have known it for a long time, I cherish a deeply-rooted objection to being instructed.
Unfortunately the Adjutant is one of those weak fellows who always tell you that they are mere machines in the grip of the powers that change great nations. So on the third day I bought a nice new slate and satchel and joined up.
Even now, after some days of intense instruction, I find my condition is a little confused and foggy. Of course it covers practically the whole field of military interests, and I ought to be able to win the War in about three-quarters of an hour, given a reasonable modicum of men, guns, indents, physical training and bayonet exercise, knowledge of military law, and acquaintance with the approved methods of conducting a casualty clearing station, a mechanical transport column, and a field kitchen. The confusion of mind evident in this last sentence is a high testimonial to the comprehensive nature of our course.
Physical training made the strongest appeal to me. I remember some of the best words, not perhaps as they are, but as I caught them from an almost over-glib expert. Did you know you had a strabismal vertebra? or, given a strabismal vertebra, that it could be developed to almost any extent by simply 'eaving from the 'ips? Take my tip and try it next time you're under shell-fire.
To-morrow we break up, and I join the army. The army has gone away somewhere while I wasn't looking, and I shall have to make inquiries about it. You never can tell what these things will do when not kept under the strictest observation. My bit may have gone to Egypt or Nyassaland or Nagri Sembilan. But I have a depressing feeling that A 27 x y z iv. 9.8 will be nearer the mark, and that I shall find it meandering nightly to Bk 171 in large droves, there to insert more and more humps of soggy Belgium into more and more sandbags. I don't want to make myself unpleasant to the War Office, but I really can't see why we haven't once and for all built trenches all done up in eight-inch thick steel plates. They could easily be brought up ready-made, and simply sunk into position.
They would sink all right; you'd just have to put them down anywhere and look the other way for a minute. The difficulty would be to stop the lift before it got to the basement—if there is a basement in Flanders.
There is a tragedy to report. We were adopted recently by a magpie. He was a gentle creature of impulsive habits and strong woodpecking instincts. Arsène we called him. For some days he gladdened us with his soft bright eye. But when we came to know him well and I relied on him to break the shells of my eggs every morning at breakfast, to steal my pens and spill my ink, to wake me by a gentle nip on the nose from his firm but courteous beak, a rough grenadier came one day to explain a new type of infernal machine, and, when we went out, left a detonator on the table.
I never saw what actually followed, but we buried Arsène with full military honours.
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The latest fashion in Berlin.