CODES.
It began like the noise of rushing water, and for a moment the Brigade Major hoped that somebody had taken it upon himself to wash the orderly. The noise, however, was followed by a succession of thumps which put an end to this pretty flight of fancy. Aghast he surveyed the scene before him. Close to the Brigade Headquarters' dug-out was an old French dump of every conceivable kind of explosive made up into every known form of projectile. No longer was it a picture of Still Life. The Sleeping Beauty was awake indeed. The Prince had come in the form of a common whizz-bang.
As he looked (and ducked) a flock of aerial torpedoes, propelled by the explosion of one of their number, rose and scattered as if at the approach of a hostile sportsman. Another explosion blew what seemed to be a million rockets sizzling into the air.
The store was on fire!
The Brigade Major retired.
Everybody was in the Signal dug-out (Signals build deep and strong). Secretly the clerks were praying for the disintegration of the typewriter and the total destruction of the overwhelming mass of paper (paper warfare had been terrible of late). The Staff Captain and the O.C. Gum Boots, who had been approaching the Headquarters, were already half a mile down the road and still going strong.
The Division rang up. One need hardly have mentioned that. In times of stress the higher formations rarely fail.
"What's going on?" they asked.
The Brigade Major was just going to say, when suddenly he remembered. That very morning he had been severely strafed for speaking of important things over the telephone when so near the enemy. "Had he not read the Divisional G 245/348/24 of the 29th inst.? What was the good of issuing orders to defeat the efficiency of the Bosch listening apparatus if they were not obeyed?" etc., etc.
True, it was conceivable that even without the aid of a delicate listening apparatus the Bosch was cognisant of an explosion that made his whole front line quiver; still orders is orders. So the Brigade-Major swallowed hard.
"C-can't tell you over the wires. Your G 245/348/24..."
"Yes, yes, we know all about that. Don't say it definitely, but give us an idea. Where is all this noise?"
"Here!—Oh!" piped the B.M. as a crump shook the receiver out of his hand.
"Send it in code at once. The G.O.C. is strafing horribly to know."
To encode a message which may be your last words on earth is not the easiest of tasks. It has no romance about it. Who would relish an obituary such as: "He died like a hero, his last words being 'XB35/067K'"?
To the ramping of the continuous crump the B.M. scraped away the dirt and stuff that had fallen from the throbbing walls of his dug-out and fished out the Code-Book. Hurriedly he turned over the pages to "Ammunition" and read down the set phrases and their code equivalents. Four times he relit the candle. There seemed nothing under this heading applicable to the situation. "Send up" was one, but that had already been done. "Am/is/are/running short of" was another, but it was doubtful if the Division would see the real meaning of it.
"Ah, here we are," he muttered, relighting the candle for the fifth time. "Dumps." Alas, there was nothing to convey the situation very clearly even under this heading. Finally he picked out the nearest he could find and sent it over the wires.
This is what they decoded to the expectant G.O.C. of the Division: "Advanced ammunition depôt has moved."
The G.O.C. said something which impelled the entire Divisional Staff to the telephone, where they all grabbed for the receiver.
"What the devil is this code message? We can't understand it. You've sent in something about the dump at your Brigade Headquarters."
"Ah!" said the B.M. meaningly, "there is not a dump at Brigade Headquarters now."
"Well, I don't care. We want to know what all this noise is about."
"It's the dump. It's m-moved."
"Moved? Moved where? Give the map reference."
"Map reference?" murmured the B.M. "Oh, my sacred aunt, what fools ... I'm sorry" (he smiled at them through his teeth) "I can't give you the m-map reference, but I can give you the area roughly."
"Barmy!" was the word he heard spoken to a bystander at the other end.
"Look here, old man," they said kindly, "we know you're all very tired and worried, but just try to think a moment. Never mind dumps now. You can't be making all that noise moving a dump—what?" (Specimen of Divisional joke—very rare.) "Tell us, is the Bosch shelling?"
"No. They've stopped."
"Good. Then it's all over?"
"No. It's still going on."
"But you just said that it had stopped."
"Yes, it has. But the dump hasn't. It keeps m-moving."
"Poor old bird," they said, "his nerve's gone at last. All right," they shouted, "don't you worry. The storeman will look after the dump. You go to bed and have a good sleep."
"Have a g-good sleep!" muttered the B.M., "that's just like the Divis—Oh!" and he sat down as a torpedo flopped into his bedroom a few doors away and made a hole of it.
Then he sat up. The storeman of the Brigade dump was not two hundred yards away from the active one. The poor fellow was to have gone on leave that night. Presently it occurred to him that, instead of trying to decide who should have the reversion of the storeman's leave, it would be better to go and see if there really was a vacancy. Fifteen boxes of melinite delayed him but a moment. With melinite you know the worst at once; it doesn't hang round like boxes of ammunition, for instance. He called a clerk and together they raced over to the storeman's dug-out.
"Jock!" cried the clerk. "Are ye there, Jock?"
"Is he quite dead?" said the B.M., making up his mind to use his leave warrant for himself.
"No, Sir, he's very deaf, that's why he's a storeman. Jo-ock!!"
"Hello!" came from the ground.
"Are ye all right, Jock?"
"Na. There's an awfu' to-do here."
"What's wrong then?"
"Ma candle keeps going oot."
"Are ye all right, though, Jock?"
"Na."
"Well, what's up with ye?"
"I told ye. Ma candle keeps going oot. What's up yon?"
When the B.M. got back he found a one-sided war in progress on the telephone. The G.O.C. had heated up the wires to red-heat.
"Is that you, Nessel? Where the devil have you been? This noise is still going on. Tell me what it is. No-dam-nonsense-now. Let's have it."
"If you want to know and you don't mind the Bosch hearing what I say, Sir, the dump, the French dump, has b-blown itself to b-blazes."
"Why the devil couldn't you say so before?"
Every dog has his day. With a full and fatuous smile the Brigade-Major picked up a paper and began: "Reference your G. 245/348/24 of the 29th inst. It says that—"
Somebody must have taken a bone away from a dog at the other end. He growled horribly.
Flapper (shyly). "COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT A STAMP STUCK ON AT THAT ANGLE MEANS IN THE LANGUAGE OF POSTAGE-STAMPS?"
From an account of the Ministerial crisis in Sweden:—
"Two imperialist minstrels, however, Von Melsted and Lengquist, did quite enough mischief."—Daily Mail.
Members of the pro-German band, no doubt.
Mr. Punch desires to record thanks to the innumerable correspondents who have drawn his attention to the statement in The Daily Chronicle that among the German officers who escaped and were afterwards recaptured was "Von Thelan, a lieutenant in the lying corps." The existence of this unit in the German Army has, as most of them point out, been long suspected, but never officially confirmed till now.
