THE SIGNAL SECTION.
You know how the great hunter who sleeps with his gun at his pillow is awake in an instant, with all his faculties alert, when the sacred spider breaks a twig in the jungle? You remember how the handsome highwayman, at the first far clatter of hoofs on the great North Road, is up and out on the scullery roof of the inn before you have turned the page, and is deep in Lonely Copse (wearing the serving-wench's stomacher) before his first fat pursuer has said, "Open in the name of the Law," below his window? Well, like Jimmy's bloodhound in Punch, I am very good at that.
But it is a telephone-bell that does it. You go down seventy-two steps—backwards, or you hit your head—to a German room, which smells German, and you will find my boudoir, furnished with sandbags, a shaving mirror and a telephone.
At eleven o'clock I lie on the sandbags and, like the great hunter, close my eyes immediately in dreamless sleep.
At five minutes past eleven the telephone-bell rings.
That is what I am good at. I leap to my feet and say "Hullo!"
Utter silence follows, save (as Mr. BEACH THOMAS would say) for the monotonous drone of the great shells bursting outside.
I repeat my original remark. "Hullo!" I say brightly, "Hullo!... Hullo!"
I shake the microphone. It sounds as though sand had got into it, and still there is silence. The minutes creep on and my voice begins to fail. Outside in the quiet night a solitary gas-alarm chirps a few quiet notes to the stars and is still. I continue to say "Hullo!"
At eleven-fifteen the operator at the other end finishes the story of what he said to her and what she, on the other hand, said to him, and turns refreshed to his instrument.
With a dexterous twist of his wrist he sounds a deafening peal in the bell at my ear, and says, "Hullo!"
I retaliate. When the score is vantage out, I put all the red tabs I can into my voice, and his tone changes. He is at once the cheerful and willing artisan, eager to please.
"Yes, Sir ... Yes, Sir ... Who do you want, Sir? This is Zed Esses Pip Ack five, Sir ..."
"You called me," I say.
He is more hurt than angry at that. "Oh, no, Sir. You rang me up, Sir. This is Zed Esses ..."
I nip that in the bud by saying "Hullo!" very loud. He realizes that the game is up.
"Speak to Division, Sir," he says curtly, and clicks before I can answer. A faint far gnat-voice says, "Is that Zed Ess?"
"No," I shout. "What the ..."
"Through to Division," says gnat-voice and clicks me off. Another voice carries on the good work. Upstairs the shells burst playfully on the parapet, and under the starlit sky a gas cloud drifts slowly across the fields, almost hiding the cattle who are grazing peacefully there in the long wet grass.
At midnight I am through to Division.
"Is that you?" says Division. "There is a list ..."
"Finished, please?" says the operator so near and loud that I jump.
Division and I are at one here—we are agreed that we have not finished. Like the Brothers Crosstalk, we say so simultaneously, using the same swearword.
The operator clicks off, baffled.
"That list of men for a bombing course," says Division.
"Yes, Sir," I reply brightly, though my heart sinks.
"You ought to have sent it in at 6 P.M.," says Division. "And it has not yet arrived."
I look at my wrist-watch, but realise too late that this graceful gesture is lost on him. "I am sorry, Sir," I reply with dignity, "but the delay was inevitable. It shall be with you on the breakfast-table. The difficulty of communication in this great War ..."
Division laughs sardonically.
At ten minutes past twelve I go to bed again, and at twelve-fifteen an orderly shines an electric torch in my eyes in order to prevent my reading a wire which he hands me. It says, "Ref. your S.C. 1985 please ask PIG if they have salvaged any German socks. A.A.A. urgent."
I stand up, and the orderly, completely unnerved by the sight of a Staff Captain in undress uniform, releases the button of his torch and retires under cover of darkness.
I twirl the handle of the telephone and listen. There is silence. I turn it again with vigour. For twenty minutes I behave like an organ-grinder. Towards dawn the bell rings and I receive an electric shock.
"Hullo!" says the operator.
I tell him what I think of him. When I have finished the sun is up and the first aeroplane is dropping its glad bombs on the dewy earth below.
I demand PIG. PIG is a Machine Gun Company. By breakfast-time I have discovered that PIG has salvaged socks, German, one.
I ring up Division ...
It is a splendid force, as they used to say in The Message from Mars—it is a splendid force, the Signal Service.
And men sleeping among the rats in the front line wake for their coffee and hot water and envy me my undisturbed nights.
New Tenant (digging up lawn and waste ground, to agent). "CAN YOU INFORM ME WHERE I CAN FIND THE MAN WHO OWNED THIS PLACE BEFORE ME?"
House Agent. "ER—HE'S IN FRANCE."
Tenant. "UM. WELL, I HOPE HE COMES BACK. SAFELY!"
"The Vienna Die Zeit considers the political crisis in Germany as one of the chief consequences of the political utterances of English, American and French statesmen, demanding the demoralisation of Germany."—Sunday Times.
It seems superfluous.
"It is authoritatively announced that the American troops fighting in France will very shortly receive steel helmets, the design of the helmets being very similar to those worn by the French and British forces, but bearing, as insignia, the United States coat of mail."—Daily Graphic.
Head-protection is very necessary, but isn't this rather overdoing it?