THE MUD LARKS.
"Gurr finny," says T. Atkins, and there seems no doubt about the well-known War being over at last. Home-keeping folk, who imagine it ended when the whistle blew at the eleventh hour of November 11th, are wide, very wide, of the mark. We have experienced some of its direst horrors since then. Why, at one time (and not so long ago) we were without the bare necessities of life itself.
I have seen hardy old soldiers; banded like zebras with wound-stripes and field-service chevrons, offering to barter a perfectly good horse for a packet of Ruby Queen cigarettes, or swap a battery of Howitzers for a flagon of Scotch methylated. Then came the Great Downfall. Nabobs, who for years had been purring about back areas in expensive cars, dressed up like movie-kings, were suddenly debussed and dismantled. Brigadiers sorrowfully plucked the bâtons from off their shoulder-straps and replaced them in their knapsacks. The waste-paper baskets brimmed with red flannelette and gilt edging. Field officers cast down their golden crowns and crept slowly back to their original units as substantive lieutenants.
And now all are gone, some home to England to write for The Times (Appointments Required column) and some to watch the Rhine and see that it gets up to no irregularities, such as running the wrong way or dry. Here, on the fringe of the old battle-grounds, only the merest handful of us remain, deserted by the field armies, apparently forgotten by the management.
It has happened before. Bob, our Camp Commandant, swears that a battalion of his regiment, while garrisoning some ocean isle, got mislaid for years and years, and they would have been there to this day, chatting to the crabs and watering the palm-trees with their tears, if some junior subaltern had not sent his birthday-book to KITCHENER with the request that the Field-Marshal would inscribe some verses therein.
Occasionally the boom of explosions coming from the devastated areas tells us that our brave allies the Chinese are still on deck, salvaging ammunition after their own unique fashion of rapping shells smartly over the nose-caps with sledge-hammers to test whether they be really duds or no.
Although a very courageous man, I do not linger in their whereabouts unless I have to. I don't follow their line of thought. One of them unearthed a MILLS bomb the other day. It gave off blue smoke and fizzed prettily. When last seen he was holding it to the ear of a chum, who was smiling entrancedly, as a child smiles at the croon of a conch-shell.
By the way, whilst we are on the subject, who is this MILLS? The illustrated papers have shown us THE MAN WHO WON THE WAR, the thousand-and-one sole and only inventors of Tinribs the Tank; their prattle-pages are crammed daily with portraits of war-worn flag-sellers, heroic O.B.E.'s, and so on; but what of our other benefactors, the names of whom are far more familiar to the average Atkins than are those of the Twelve Apostles or his own Generals? I confess, to a great desire to behold the features of Mr. MILLS, the bombster (I picture him a benevolent-looking old gentleman with a flowing white beard), Mr. STOKES of the gun, Mrs. AYRTON of the gas-fan, and Messrs. ARMSTRONG and NISSEN, the hutters. Can no enterprising picture-paper supply the want?
But to return to ourselves. With the exception of the faithful Celestial, the land is empty of human interest. The roads that once rumbled unceasingly with wheels and swarmed with merry men now run bare under a sad sky. The deepway side drains, in which our lorries used to play at submarines, now harbour nothing more exciting than tadpoles. We are hard-pressed to find mischief for our idle hands to do.
Sherlock the Sleuth keeps himself in fair fettle by prowling round the countryside and trying to restrain the aborigines from pinching what little British material they have not already pinched. Yesterday he came upon a fatigue party of Gauls staggering down a by-way under the shell of an Armstrong hut. He whooped and gave chase. The Gauls, sighting the A.P.M. brassard, promptly dumped the hut and dived through a wire fence. Sherlock hitched his horse to a post and followed afoot, snorting fire and brimstone. They led him at a smart trot over four acres of boggy plough, through a brambly plantation, two prickly hedges and a richly-perfumed drain and went to ground inextricably in some mine buildings. He returned, blown, battered and baffled, to the starting-point, to find that some third party had in the meantime removed the Armstrong hut—also his horse.
Ronald, our only remaining Red Hat, saves his soul from boredom by keeping all the H.Q. departments open and conducting, on his own, a brisk correspondence between them. As there are about thirty of these and he conducts them all himself it will be understood that this entails a certain amount of movement on his part.
Bob, the Camp Commandant, spends his time trying to square his returns and interviewing Violet. Violet is a middle-aged gentleman who came to us from some Labour unit and refuses to leave. He has an enormous head, a walrus moustache, a hairy nose, and feet which flap as they walk. His métier is to keep the place tidy and the incinerator fires burning. He prowls about at night, accompanied by a large ginger tom-cat, harpooning loose scraps of paper. Any dust he meets he deals with on the blotting-paper principle, by rolling in it and absorbing it. When his clothes are so stiff with dirt that they will stand up without any inside assistance from Violet, they are sawn off him and consigned to the incinerator and he is given a new suit. Whenever his back hair has grown so long that it is liable to impede his movements, a posse of grooms is despatched to his lair to rope, throw and shear him with horse-clippers. Last time they did it they swear they lost the instrument twice and that two bats and an owl flew out of his tresses.
He is allowed out only at night, because the German prisoners laugh at him, which is bad for his moral and good for theirs. He lives, he and his cat, deep in the chateau woods in a tiny semi-subterranean cabin he has constructed of odds and ends of tin and tar-paper. He was supposed to have been demobilised ages ago, but we cannot get him off the premises.
Bob goes and interviews him on the subject about three times a day—all to no avail. "'Tain't a bit o' use you comin' an' flappin' them there paperses at me, Mister" (all officers, irrespective of rank, are "Mister" to Violet), says he to Bob; "you know very well I aren't no scholard an' I won't sign nothin' I can't read, even if I could sign, which I can't, bein' no scholard; so there's the end of it, as I've told you scores of times before, with all due respect, of course, as the sayin' is."
He doesn't want to go home and he won't go home, he says. His wife beats him "somethink crool," he says; in fact he never knew what real peace meant until war broke out. Furthermore she has been putting on a lot of muscle of late and demobilisation means certain death. He is going to stay where he is. What with the ginger cat's poaching proclivities and the bully beef he has buried in the plantation he can hold out almost indefinitely, he says; so there is no cause for us to be anxious on his behalf. When we come back for the next war we shall find him on the old stand, ready to resume business, he says, and for his part the next war can't break out any too soon.
The remainder of Bob's time, as I said before, is occupied in trying to square his establishment returns. Some time ago he discovered that he was a water-cart short. This was serious, very. A water-cart is a large and expensive item, and as far as he could see it would end in his having to make good the loss out of his own pocket, which at that moment contained ten centimes and a corkscrew.
However he was determined he would see what a little applied cunning would do first. He locked himself into his office and took thought. After an hour's violent mental disturbance he penned a letter to the authorities, saying that his establishment was complete in all details, with the exception of one water-bottle. As, however, he had come by several superfluous knives, spoons and forks considerably exceeding the water-bottle in value, might they be taken in exchange and the account squared? The Government would be greatly the gainer thereby.
Four days later he was notified that the transaction was approved. After waiting till he was reasonably certain that the correspondence was safely lost, burnt or consigned to impenetrable archives, he sent the following wire:—
"Reference my R.L.217, dated April 1st, for 'bottle' read 'cart.'"
The reply came back, "Noted."
PATLANDER.
