WHAT OUR SOLDIERS READ.
BY BEATRICE HARRADEN.
About eighteen months ago Miss Elizabeth Robins and myself entered on our duties as Honorary Librarians to the Military Hospital, Endell Street, the only Military Hospital in England officered entirely by women. The doctor in charge is Dr. Flora Murray and the chief surgeon Dr. L. Garrett Anderson. There is a staff of fourteen doctors, including a pathological and an ophthalmic surgeon, a staff of thirty-six nursing sisters and ninety orderlies—all women. There are eighteen large wards, accommodating about 550 wounded.
We were asked to collect a number of suitable books and magazines, and by personal intercourse with the soldiers, to encourage reading amongst the men, and to do our best to help them through the long hours of illness and inaction by offering them books which would amuse and interest them. From the very onset it seemed an interesting project, but nothing like so stimulating and gratifying as it has proved itself to be. And it has struck me that a short record of our work may perhaps be acceptable to the reading public, and also useful in indicating what can be done in hospitals by the help of an organised Library Department.
We began by writing to our publisher friends, who, in generous response to our requests, sent us splendid consignments of volumes of fiction, travel, and biography and hundreds of magazines. Authors likewise rallied willingly to our aid. We were presented by a lady with an enormous bookcase, a dignified and imposing structure, which we planted in the Recreation Room, and regarded as a proud outward and visible sign of our official existence. Other bookcases followed and were soon filled, and we were still engaged in the heavy task of sorting and rejecting literally shoals of all sorts and conditions of books, when suddenly the hospital was opened and the men arrived from the front. It was remarkable what private people did send—and do still send. It was as if they had said to themselves: ‘Here is a grand opportunity of getting rid of all our old, dirty, heavy book encumbrances.’ I never in my life remember being so dirty, nor so indignant. However, in due time we emerged triumphantly from this period of trial—a trial mitigated for us by the generosity and understanding of other people who sent new books or money with which we were to buy books of our own choice. And we instituted at a very early date a system of sacks, in which we despatched all our good surplus matter either to one of the war libraries to be sent to the troops abroad or elsewhere, or to the Salvation Army, which was glad to collect old books and papers to be used for pulp.
We determined to have no red tape, and to leave all the bookcases unlocked at all times, so that the men who were able to move about could come and pick out what they liked. And we arranged to go into the wards and take books ourselves to the men who were confined to their beds. Our view was that we should give them what they wanted, not necessarily what we wanted for them. They were there for rest and recuperation, and we felt that we had no right to impose on them in their enfeebled condition books which would tax them unduly or depress their spirits. We had to remember that many of them at best have very little power of concentration, and of course still less in the suffering and shattered condition in which they arrive home. So our point was to take note of their different temperaments, and see what we could do for each separate individual.
We soon learnt that we had to invest in a large number of detective books, and any amount of Nat Gould’s sporting stories. In fact, a certain type of man would read nothing except Nat Gould. However ill he was, however suffering and broken, the name of Nat Gould would always bring a smile to his face. Often and often I’ve heard the whispered words: ‘A Nat Gould—ready for when I’m better.’
We also had to get Garvice’s books, and also Oppenheim’s. But even at the beginning of our venture, we were by no means limited in opportunity to authors of any particular class. It was quite possible that one man in a ward would be reading, say, Nat Gould’s ‘Jockey Jack’—a great favourite—and the man in the next bed would be reading Shakespeare, or ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ or Shelley, or Meredith, Conrad, or the Encyclopædia. We found, in fact, so many different kinds of minds and upbringings, that we could never have remembered without the aid of a note-book what each man wanted.
So after various experiments, this became our system. We divided the wards between us, and went round with our note-book to each bedside, found out if our soldier cared to read, and, if he had no suggestion to make, found out in a vague sort of way, without worrying him, of course, what he would be likely to want—if, indeed, he wanted anything at all. For in some cases the very thought of a book was apparently worse than a bomb. In instances like this, matches and cigarettes or tobacco served as a substitute for literature, and generally speaking as a natural concomitant too! Now and again we have had men who have never learnt to read at all. With one exception, these have invariably been miners.
One day our work took on a new phase, the development of which has been the source of great satisfaction, both to readers and librarians. We were asked for a book on high explosives. We made inquiries about the one in question, and found it cost eighteen shillings. That seemed a good deal to spend on one book for one person, but on mentioning this matter to our doctor in charge, we were told to go ahead and buy it, and also anything else that seemed to be wanted. This one incident fired us with the idea to find out what subjects the men were interested in, what had been their occupation before the war, or their plans for the future. And from that moment the work of the librarians became tenfold more interesting, and in some degree constructive.
We were asked for books on paper-making, printing, cabinet-making, engineering, marine engineering, veterinary work, Sheffield plate, old furniture, organic and inorganic chemistry, fish-curing, coal-mining, counterpoint, languages, meteorology, electricity, submarines, aeroplanes, flowers, trees, gardening, forestry, the Stone Age, painting and drawing, violin making, architecture, and so on. The fish-curing instance was particularly interesting. The soldier in question was from Nova Scotia, and his father’s business was fish-curing. He was anxious to learn the English methods, and gain all the information he could during his sojourn in England, before he was invalided out of the army and returned to his home.
We have therefore made it our business to supply these various needs, and also to provide any weekly papers bearing on the different subjects in which the men are interested. Our Department could not, of course, be always buying costly books, but with the aid of our subscription to Mudie’s, and by the help of friends who have come to the rescue and lent their valuable books to us for the special purpose which we have unfolded to them, we have been able so far to meet all demands; and this part of our work is increasing all the time. The Sheffield plate book lent us by a generous antiquary was a perfect godsend to one of our crippled men. His business was that of a second-hand dealer, and he said it was a rare chance to get hold of that book and make copious notes from it which would be invaluable to him afterwards.
Turning aside from technical subjects to literature in general, I would like to say that although we have not ever attempted to force good books on our soldiers, we have of course taken great care to place them within their reach. And it is not an illusion to say that when the men once begin on a better class of book, they do not as a rule return to the old stuff which formerly constituted their whole range of reading. My own impression is that they read rubbish because they have had no one to tell them what to read. Stevenson, for instance, has lifted many a young soldier in our hospital on to a higher plane of reading whence he has looked down with something like scorn—which is really very funny—on his former favourites. For that group of readers, ‘Treasure Island’ has been a discovery in more senses than one, and to the librarians a boon unspeakable.
We have had, however, a large number of men who in any case care for good literature, and indeed would read nothing else. Needless to say, we have had special pleasure in trying to find them some book which they would be sure to like and which was already in our collection, or else in buying it, and thus adding to our stock. The publishers, too, have been most generous in sending us any current book which has aroused public interest and on which we have set our hearts. For we have tried to acquire not only standard works, but books of the moment bearing on the war, and other subjects too.
The following are items from two or three of our order books. The order books have been chosen at random, but the items are consecutive; and the list will give some idea of the nature of our pilgrimages from one bedside to another bedside, and from one ward to another.
One of Nat Gould’s novels; Regiments at the Front; Burns’s Poems; A book on bird life; ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’; Strand Magazine; Strand Magazine; Wide World Magazine; The Spectator; A scientific book; Review of Reviews; ‘By the Wish of a Woman’ (Marchmont); one of Rider Haggard’s; Marie Corelli; Nat Gould; Rider Haggard; Nat Gould; Nat Gould; Nat Gould; Good detective story; Something to make you laugh; Strand Magazine; Adventure story; ‘Tale of Two Cities’; ‘Gil Blas’; Browning’s Poems; Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’; Sexton Blake; ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’; Nat Gould; Wide World Magazine; Pearson’s Magazine; ‘Arabian Nights’; Jack London; Shakespeare; Nat Gould; ‘The Encyclopædia’; Rex Beach; Wm. Le Queux; Strand Magazine; Nat Gould; Something in the murder line; Country Life; The Story Teller Magazine; one of Oppenheim’s novels; ‘The Crown of Wild Olive’; ‘Kidnapped’; Nat Gould; Shakespeare; Nat Gould; Silas Hocking; Oppenheim; Le Queux; Nat Gould; Nat Gould; Jack London; ‘Handy Andy’; ‘Kidnapped’; ‘Treasure Island’; Book about rose growing; ‘Montezuma’s Daughter’ (Rider Haggard); ‘Prisoner of Zenda’; Macaulay’s Essays; ‘The Magnetic North’ (Elizabeth Robins); Nat Gould; Sexton Blake; Modern High Explosives; ‘Dawn’ (Rider Haggard); ‘Wild Animals’; Book on horse-breaking; ‘Radiography’; ‘Freckles’ (by Gene Stratton-Porter); ‘The Blue Lagoon’; ‘Caged Birds’; ‘The Corsican Brothers’; ‘Sherlock Holmes’; French Dictionary; Kipling; ‘Mysticism’; Nat Gould; ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’; ‘Mystery of Cloomber’ (Conan Doyle); and so on.
These are, of course, only a few items. I should say that on the whole, and leaving out entirely books on technical and special subjects, the authors most frequently asked for by the average soldier are: Nat Gould, Charles Garvice, Wm. Le Queux, Rider Haggard, Guy Boothby, Oppenheim, Rex Beach, Conan Doyle, Marie Corelli, Joseph and Silas Hocking, Jack London, Dickens, Mrs. Henry Wood, Kipling (whose ‘Barrack Room Ballads’ they learnt by heart), Dumas, Ian Hay, Baroness Orczy, and Hornung’s ‘Raffles.’
And very favourite books are those dealing with wild animals and their habits, with ferrets, rats, and birds, and all stories of adventure and travel, and of course detective stories.
The New Zealanders and Australians have always asked for books on England, and also for Bushranger stories, also for their own poets. And even before we began to pay special attention to technical subjects, all books on aeroplanes, submarines, electricity, and wireless telegraphy were much in request. An Encyclopædia was so much asked for that we wrote to Mr. Dent, who most kindly sent us the twelve volumes of the ‘Everyman’s Encyclopædia.’ And they are always ‘out.’ Shakespeare holds his own surprisingly and encouragingly well.
The Society novel is never read, and we weeded it out to make room for another class of book which would be in demand. We have been sometimes astonished by the kind of book asked for by some man who seemed to us a most unpromising reader. The puzzle has been solved when we learnt that he had seen it on the cinematograph. ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’ was one of the books asked for in these circumstances, and our soldier was literally riveted to it until he had finished it, when he passed it on to his neighbour as a sort of ‘real find.’ Similarly, ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ was asked for, and after that several volumes of Shakespeare were taken to that bedside. This experience certainly shows that the cinema has a great possibility of doing good as well as harm.
The magazines most in demand are The Strand, The Windsor, Pearson’s, The Wide World, The Red, and a few others. But some of our readers have refused to be interested in any magazines except their own pet ones. One man, for instance, confined himself entirely to Blackwood’s. He proudly preferred an old number of Maga to a current number of any other magazine on earth. A second man remained loyal to the Review of Reviews, and a third to Land and Water. Another was never satisfied with anything except The Nineteenth Century. Others have asked only for wretched little rags which one would wish to see perish off the face of the earth. But as time has gone on, these have been less and less asked for, and their place has been gradually taken by the Sphere, the Graphic, the Tatler, the Illustrated London News, and the Sketch—another instance of a better class of literature being welcomed and accepted if put within easy reach. In our case this has been made continuously possible by friends who have given subscriptions for both monthly and weekly numbers, and by others who send in their back numbers in batches, and by the publishers, who never fail us.
John Bull deserves a paragraph all to himself. The popularity of his paper is truly remarkable. The average soldier looks upon it as a sort of gospel; and new arrivals from the trenches are cheered up at once by the very sight of the well-known cover. Even if they are too ill to read it, they like to have it near them ready for the moment when returning strength gives them the incentive to take even a glance at some of its pages.
We have found that men who have not naturally been readers have acquired the habit of reading in our Hospital, and there have been many instances of men who have become out-patients asking for permission to continue to use the library. It has been one of our great pleasures to see old friends strolling into the recreation room and picking out for themselves some book by an author whom they have learnt to know and appreciate. Another gratifying feature of the work has been the anxiety of many of our readers to have a book waiting for them after an operation, so that as soon as possible they may begin to read it and forget some of their pains and sufferings. In many instances the author or the subject has been deliberately chosen beforehand.
Our experiences, in fact, have tended to show that a library department organised and run by people who have some knowledge of books might prove to be a useful asset in any hospital, both military and civil, and be the means of affording not only amusement and distraction, but even definite education, induced of course, not insisted on. To obtain satisfactory results it would seem, however, that even a good and carefully chosen collection of books of all kinds does not suffice. In addition, an official librarian is needed who will supply the initiative, which in the circumstances is of necessity lacking, and whose duty it is to visit the wards, study the temperaments, inclinations, and possibilities of the patients, and thus find out by direct personal intercourse what will amuse, help, stimulate, lift—and heal.
LOST HORSES.
A month or so after the traitor Maritz had made his flamboyant proclamation in German South-West Africa, a small body of mounted Union troops was operating in a district which may be described as ‘somewhere near Upington.’ Probably such secrecy of places and names is not at all necessary, but it lends an appropriate military flavour to the small events I describe. I may go so far as to say that the setting I have provided is fictitious, though similar events did, no doubt, occur in the operations against Maritz and Kemp and their heroes. The characters of the roan horse and of the boy Frikkie are true to life, and the small adventures did occur much as described, but in another country in South Africa and upon a different occasion. Accept the story as fiction, not as history; it will at any rate serve to throw a light upon one of the aspects of the fighting in that dry land, and it illustrates the close relationship between horse and man in that country of long distances and sparse population and infrequent water-holes. The conditions are the absolute antithesis of those in Flanders and the trenches.
The risk of losing his riding or pack animals is constantly present to the veld traveller. Fortunately it is seldom the cause of anything more troublesome than a temporary inconvenience, but there are occasions when serious hardships result, the loss of valuable time or of your animals, or risk to your own life. In most cases the loss of your beasts is due merely to the fact that they have strayed. They have, as a rule, either followed the lead of some restless animal who is making back for his stable, or else they have wandered away in search of grass or water.
A horse is less hardy than his hybrid half-brother, and more the slave of his belly. Thirst and hunger pinch him at once, and he is quick in search of comfort; he is therefore more likely to stop and suffer capture at the first patch of good grass he comes to. His superficial character, moreover, generally affords some indication both of the reason he has strayed and the direction he has taken. There are, however, a few horses who are inveterate and troublesome wanderers; they are generally old animals whose accumulated experience has developed a cunning foreign to their normal character. Such animals often possess an irritating facility for choosing the most inconvenient time to stray and the most unlikely direction to go.
If horses are the most frequent offenders, their sins in this respect are seldom serious. In my own experience mules are more liable to travel back along the road they have come than horses; they are more creatures of habit, their memory is more retentive, and they have greater natural intelligence. When a mule has acquired the habit of absenting himself from duty he is a perpetual trouble. The most malignant form of this disease occurs when the beast has developed an insatiable longing for one particular place, a definite goal from which nothing will turn him. This haven of his constant desire is generally the place where he was born, or where he passed the pleasant days of his absurd youth.
There are traits in most horses which, in conjunction with this foundation of congenital simplicity, go to make ‘character.’ Men who have dealt with horses in the less frequented parts of the earth know this well. They will remember one animal who had in a highly developed degree that instinctive correctness of demeanour which can best be described as good manners; a second had a heart like a lion and checked at nothing; another was a prey to an incurable nervousness; while yet another was just simply mean. These mean horses are a perpetual menace; you never know when they will let you down. Sometimes they are clearly actuated by malice; sometimes, however, there is a subtle quality and timeliness in their apparent stupidity which gives you a horrid suspicion that you’ve been had, and that your horse is more of a rogue than a fool. Such an animal is always an old horse, never a young one.
I am not quite clear as to what a scout should look like. The typical scout of the North American Indian days, as exemplified in the person of Natty Bumpo, wore fringed buckskin and moccasins and coon-skin cap, while Texas Bill and his vivid companions had a more picturesque costume still, in which great silver-studded saddles and jingling spurs and monstrous revolvers bore a conspicuous part. I must confess that my own nine sportsmen were scrubby-looking fellows compared to their picturesque predecessors at the game. (The khaki trousers issued by an administration which was always more practical than picturesque do not lend themselves, in this generation at any rate, to romance.) But they were a hard and useful lot, much sunburnt, and with gnarled, scarred hands. Deerslayer himself probably could not have taught them much about their own veld craft. Every one was South African born; three of them were younger sons of loyal Boer farmers. One was a coloured boy, a quiet, capable fellow. He was with us nominally as a sort of groom, but his civil manners and extraordinary capacity soon won him an accepted place in the scouts; though he rode and ate with us, he always sat a little apart in camp. He had spent three or four years up country, where I had first come across him in fact, and had shot some amount of big game; he was excellent on spoor and had a wonderful eye for country, and I really think he was the quickest man on and off a horse, and the quickest and most brilliant shot I ever saw. He stood on the roster as Frederick Collins, but was never known by any other name than Frikkie.
The commandant of the rather nondescript commando, which was officially described, I believe, as a composite regiment, had a sound idea of the value of a few competent and well-mounted scouts, and had done us very well in the matter of horse. We had been ‘on commando’ now for nearly five weeks, and had got to know our animals pretty well. During the confusion and changes of the first fortnight I had got rid of a dozen horses I saw would be of no use for our work, though suitable, no doubt, for slower troop duty, and by a cunning process of selection had got together a very serviceable lot, with four spare animals to carry kit and water on the longer trips away from the main body. Your spirited young things, though well enough to go courting on, are apt to get leg-weary and drop condition too soon on steady work, and all my mob were aged and as hard as nails. I will describe one or two of them presently.
Things were getting a little exciting about that time. Three rebel commandos, or rather bands, were known to be in the neighbourhood, and it was essential to find out what their strength was and who their leaders were. There was not much reason to fear attack, for they were not well found in either guns or ammunition, and their ragamuffin cavalry were concerned to avoid and not invite a stand-up engagement. Rapidity of action was essential to the loyal troops, for the longer the rebellion dragged on the more risk there was of it spreading. It was necessary to find out at once the actual movements of these bands, and the best way of doing so was to keep tally of the water-holes. Men can, if necessary, carry water for themselves, but horses, especially those from the moist high veld of the Transvaal, must have water regularly or they go to pieces very quickly in that dry, hot land. And so the remote and forgotten pit at Ramib had suddenly become of importance, and I had been told to send two men to examine it at once.
It lay within the rocky belt which came down south of the Orange River somewhat to our right; it was supposed to be twenty miles away, but it might prove five miles less or ten miles more. It was known to have held water fifteen months before, and our business was to find out if it still held water, how long that water would be likely to last, and if any of the rebels had been to it recently. No one in the column was aware of its exact location, but I myself knew enough of those parts to guess roughly where it must lie. I decided to take one man and a pack-horse, and to take the patrol myself. No native guide was available, and the Colonel did not, for obvious reasons, care to make use of any of the few local Boers who carried on a wretched existence as farmers in that barren country.
My own horse was a big bay, an uncomfortable beast, but capable of covering much ground; like many big men, he had little mental elasticity and no vices. Frikkie had an unassuming bay of ordinary manners and capacity, and with a natural aptitude for routine and a military life. The third horse was a king of his class. He did not belong to the scouts, but I had borrowed him to carry the pack on that patrol. He was mean all through; in colour a sort of skewbald roan, and in character an irreclaimable criminal. He had a narrow chest, weedy white legs, and a pale shifty eye; he was very free with his heels, and an inveterate malingerer. He had never carried a pack before and we were prepared for trouble, for his malevolent spirit had already acquired a wide reputation.
The patrol left the column a little before sunset, after a windless, baking day. The horses were in excellent fettle. The roan had given some trouble with the pack, but before he could throw himself down or buck through the lines he was hustled out of camp to an accompaniment of oaths and cheers in two languages. Once away and alone he went quietly, but doubtless with hate in his heart, for his beastly eye was full of gall.
Dawn found us hidden on the top of a low stony kopje, the horses tied together among the brown boulders below. It was bitter cold as the light grew, and the sun came up into an empty world. I waited there for half an hour, partly to find any signs of white men, and partly to work out the lay of the land and the probable direction of the pit. Nothing was moving in the whole world. It was clear where the water must be. On the right was the usual barren desert country we had come through during the night, low ridges of stone and shale, and a thin low scrub of milk bush and cactus. On the left the land grew much rougher towards the river; the rocky valleys stretched for miles in that direction. Presently we led the horses down off the kopje, and an hour later saw us looking down at the chain of small holes, still full of good water. I stayed with the hidden horses while Frikkie cut a circle round the pools. There was no sign of life, he reported, only the old sandal spoor of some natives; no horse had been down to the water for weeks, probably for months. We off-saddled in a hidden corner some way from the water, and got a small fire going of thin dry sticks. The horses were given a drink and turned loose. It was criminal foolishness not to have hobbled or knee-haltered the roan, for ten minutes after they were let go Frikkie called out that the horses had completely disappeared.
One realised at once that there was no time to be lost. It was probable that the roan had led them away, and that he meant business. The saddles and pack were hurriedly hidden among some rocks with the billy of half-cooked rice, the fire was put out, and we took up the spoor.
It was soon evident that the animals were travelling, and were not straying aimlessly in search of feed. The spoor of the discoloured strawberry beast was always in front—his footprints were like his character, narrow and close. Above his tracks came those of Ruby, the police horse, round ordinary hoof-marks, and well shod; my own horse’s immense prints were always last, solid and unmistakable. Mile after mile the tracks led into a rockier and more barren country. What little stunted and thorny scrub there was had not yet come into leaf, and there was no shade and no sign of green anywhere. Ridges of sharp gravel and small kopjes of brown stone alternated with narrow valleys without sign of green or water. In the softer ground of these valleys the spoor was plain and could be followed without any trouble, but on the rocky ridges the tracks became difficult to hold where the horses had separated and wandered about. The trail led eastwards, into a rocky, waterless, and uninhabited country. There was no reason for the roan’s choice but just native malice, for he had come from the west the previous day. Doubtless the main camp would be his ultimate destination, but it seemed apparent that he intended to inflict as deep an injury as he could before he set his sour face again to the west.
It was within half an hour of sundown before I came up with the horses, and then only the two bays; the roan’s spoor showed that he had gone on about an hour before. They were standing under a bunch of thorn trees, the only shade they had passed since they were let go that morning. For the last mile or two the tracks, which had become more aimless as the hot afternoon wore on, had turned a little to the north. Probably, as the allegiance of his small following had weakened, the leader’s thoughts had turned to the companionship of the camp, and when they had finally refused to follow him any further he had abandoned the rest of his revenge and had turned frankly for home.
We rounded up the two horses and thought of our camp, probably eight miles away in a direct line. Though they were tired and empty they would not be caught, and it was soon evident that they would not be driven either. I will not ask you to follow the dreadful hour which ensued. This crowning flicker of rebellion at the end of a disastrous day nearly broke our hearts. It was well after dark when we finally abandoned the horses in an area of steep rocky ridges and narrow valleys covered with cactus; it was quite impossible to cope with them in the dark in such a country. We reached camp about ten, but were too tired and disappointed to make a fire. A tin of bully-beef, and the mass of opaque jelly which had once been good Patna rice, were the first pleasant incidents of a baking, hungry day.
The second day began before dawn with as large a breakfast as we could compass: black coffee, the little bread that was left, and a large quantity of rice. I have seldom eaten a more cheerless meal. Three or four pounds of rice, some coffee, a tin or two of bully, and a little sugar were all that remained to us, and there was no chance of getting more. I must confess that at this stage a tactical error was committed which cost us the long day’s work for nothing. A golden rule where lost animals are concerned is to stick to the spoor, but as I thought it very probable that the horses would turn north and west again during the night and make for their last place of sojourn, I tried to save half a dozen hours by cutting the spoor ahead. It was nearly noon, and a mile or two beyond where the roan had left the others, before it became a certainty that the horses had done the unlikely thing, and had gone either south or further east into the broken country. At that moment they were probably ten miles away. I then did what one should have done at first, and went to the point where we had last seen them. That afternoon was hotter and emptier than the last, and sunset found us on a cold spoor going north. We had wisely brought rice and coffee and water-bags with us that morning, and Frikkie had shot a klipspringer—baboons and klipspringer were the only animals we had seen the last two days. If you suppose that we had used any of the water for washing you are making a mistake, though Heaven knows that we both would have been the better for a bath. We slept on the spoor, and bitter cold it was without blankets; there was not scrub enough for a decent fire.
Matters were getting serious. We were then twelve miles from the saddlery and, so far as we knew, the nearest water, and twenty more from the camp. If the horses were not found and caught that day they would have to be abandoned, and we would have to pad the hoof home via the disastrous pools at Ramib.
But fortune does not frown for ever; it is a long worm that has no turning. Within an hour of sunrise we came into the quite fresh tracks of the horses crossing their own spoor. Frikkie exclaimed that there were three horses, and an examination showed the narrow tracks of the red horse with the other two; they had not found water and were evidently on their way back to Ramib. We came on to the animals a few minutes afterwards. Except that they were hollow from want of water they were none the worse, and apparently they were not sorry to see us. By the time the sun was in the north they had had a good drink and were finishing the little grain in the pack. Midnight saw us riding into the main camp—only to find it deserted, for the column had marched. The camp was apparently completely empty, and it felt very desolate under a small moon. I expected I would discover a message of some sort for me at sunrise; in the meantime the obvious thing was to keep out of the way, so I went half a mile off into the veld, and the boy and I kept watch by turn until dawn.
Nothing moved in or round the camp till near sunrise, when three men rode out of some shale ridges about a mile away on the opposite side, and came down to the water. By the white bands round the left arm—the sign of loyal troops—I knew them for our own men; indeed we had recognised the horse one of them was riding. They gave me the message they had stayed behind to deliver. We were to stay and watch the camp site for three or four days, and to patrol daily some distance to the south-east. The water was important, for it was quite probable that one or other of the rebel commandos would come to it. The men had hidden provisions for us and some grain for the horses; they themselves were to hurry on to the column with our report of the Ramib pits. We rode a few miles along the column spoor with them, and then turned off on some gravelly ground and fetched a compass round back to the place in the shale ridges where the men had slept and where the provisions were. We took no more chances with the strawberry horse; he was closely hobbled.
The loss of the animals had been a serious thing, and we were extremely fortunate to have got out of it so easily. It did not lessen the annoyance to realise that it was my own fault for not hobbling the roan, but only a rogue by constitution and habit would have carried his hostility to so dangerous a length. But within a week he was to provide another taste of his quality. This time nothing more serious was involved than the risk of his own loss, for we were never led far from water in so menacing and barren a country as that beyond Ramib.
Most of that day was spent in the stony krantz, from which a view could be obtained over the whole dry, grey landscape, and the pools a mile away. In normal times the laagte was frequently used for sheep grazing, but in these days of mobile and ever-hungry commandos the few farmers in the vicinity were grazing their meagre flocks nearer their homesteads. Except for a few wandering Griquas, and possibly a band of ragged rebels on tired horses, it was not likely that our watch would be interrupted. A rough shelter made of the stunted spiny scrub served as a sentry box; the saddles were hidden in a narrow cleft on the lee side of the ridge, and the horses were kept down in the valleys.
In the afternoon we saddled up and rode south and east, keeping for the most part to the rough ridges, and overlooking the level country along which our column had come, and which was the natural approach from that side for any body of men having wheeled transport with them. We did not ride for more than an hour, but my glasses showed an empty, treeless world for miles beyond. If the commandos did come our way they would probably trek by night; we should hear them arrive and laager about dawn, and sunrise would have seen us well on our way to our own men.
Just at dusk that evening we rode along the lee of the ridge upon which our poor home was. Frikkie was riding the roan. He was leading his own animal, for a single horse could not be left grazing alone, to be picked up, perhaps, by any wandering rebel, or to stray off in search of companionship. When we passed under the highest point of the ridge I stopped and sent Frikkie to the top, for he could spy in both directions from there. I took the led horse from him, and he threw the roan’s reins over the neck to trail on the ground—the accepted instruction to every trained veld horse to stand still. I watched the boy’s slim figure against the sunset sky in the west as he turned about, searching the veld through his binoculars, though it was really getting too dark for prism glasses. He called out that nothing was moving, and presently came lightly down the steep slope in the gathering dusk. As he reached his horse the beast turned his quarters to him and walked away; the boy walked round, but again the horse turned away; and when I put my horse across to check him he lifted his head and trotted off. We knew that we couldn’t catch the beast if his views on the matter did not coincide with ours, so we walked on the half-mile to where the skerm was, thinking the horse would follow up his mates at his leisure.
This was a new, but not unexpected, trait in an already depraved character. Some horses, though they are inveterate strayers, are easy to catch when you do come up with them; others are very difficult to catch, though they seldom go more than a mile from the camp; this hectic degenerate apparently combined both these bad habits.
An hour after dark the horse had not turned up, though our own reliable animals were knee-haltered and turned loose for a time with their nosebags on as decoys. At dawn he was not visible in any of the shallow valleys we could see to the east of the ridge; and to our surprise and concern he was not in the valley where the water was and where the camp had been.
Our own horses were knee-haltered short and let go, and we spent a careful hour examining the margin of the pool, but there was no narrow spoor to show that the roan had been down to drink during the night. I spent the morning with our horses and on the look-out, while the boy cut a wide semicircle round to the south and west of the water. He came in at mid-day, certain that the truant had not gone out in those directions. Then Frikkie took over the sentry work, and I set out to cover the remainder of the circle. I worked methodically along the soft ground of the valleys outside the range of the area already fouled by the spoor of our own animals, and where I would find the roan’s tracks at once. From time to time I climbed one of the low ridges, for the boy was to spread a light-coloured saddle blanket over a prominent rock on the side away from the water as a signal if he saw either the lost horse or anyone approaching from the south, or in case of other danger. Nothing occurred during the long, hot afternoon.
That evening, when I got back to camp, I found two Griquas sitting over the coals with Frikkie. They said they were shepherds, and they may have done a little of that congenial work recently, but they looked to me more like sheep-stealers. They were wild people from the Orange River, and I was sure they had never been any sort of farm labourers. However, they were friendly enough and promised help in the morning. The horse had then been without water since the morning of the previous day. He had not strayed away, for at sunset he must have been still within four or five miles of the camp; if he had intended business we would have cut his outgoing spoor during the day. Horses were too valuable in that country and at that time for the loss of even such a three-cornered abomination as the pink horse to be taken lightly.
Morning showed that the horse had not been to the water during the night. He had then been forty-eight hours without water. The only thing was to take up the spoor where the animal had last been seen, and so stick to it till he was found. The Kalahari bushmen have the reputation of being the finest trackers in South Africa, but these two cross-bred Griqua bushmen gave us an incomparable exhibition of skill. I have had some experience of that game, and Frikkie was a master, but these savages astonished us.
Inch by inch the spoor was picked out from that of the other animals. No proved mark was abandoned until the next was certified, often only an inch or two away. The only slight help they had was the rare and very faint mark where the trailing reins had touched the ground. The first hundred yards took probably an hour to cover, but when the spoor reached comparatively clean ground the work was easier. At this point Frikkie got the water-bags and some food and joined the bushmen, for it was possible that the horse, driven by thirst, had taken it into his head to travel far during the previous night.
Late that evening the trackers returned with the horse. He was emaciated and weak, but otherwise quite well, though for some days his back was tender from the continual ‘sweating’ of the saddle blanket. His spoor showed that he had spent the first night and day wandering about the low ridges and hollows not far from our camp, and that the night before he had commenced to journey away into the empty country to the east. Somewhere about dawn of that third day his trailing reins had hooked up on one of the few bushes in that country strong enough to hold him, and there he was found by the bushmen, the picture of a natural misery, and too dejected to take much notice of his rescuers. Nothing but his own gloomy thoughts had prevented him from going down to the water at any time, or to the companionship of our camp.
Thirty-six hours after this we were back with the main column. It is not necessary to add that we were glad to get a bath and a generous meal, and that I took the first opportunity of handing over the parti-coloured strawberry to troop duty.
In the first of these two offences it is clear that the white-legged roan was animated by spite. Such malevolence is rare enough, but his second performance is much more remarkable. I offer three alternative explanations. The first is that it was just stupidity. I have the poorest opinion of the intelligence of the horse, as distinct from instinct. It is Professor Lloyd Morgan, I think, who defines instinct as ‘the sum of inherited habits,’ and this may be accepted as a sound definition. Elementary necessity, to say nothing of instinct or intelligence, should have driven him to the water soon after he had obtained his freedom. He could not have forgotten where the water was. If his normal mental process was so dislocated by the fact of the saddle on his back without the presence of the masterful human in it, then he was a fool of the first class.
The second solution I offer is that his action was prompted by roguery; for even a very limited intelligence would have warned him that he would be captured if he ventured near either the water or the camp. It may be that when his reins hooked up he was on his way to the free water at Ramib. The third explanation is that he was a little daft. In a long and varied experience of horses I cannot really remember one so afflicted, though I had a pack-mule once that I am certain was a harmless lunatic. You may take your choice of these alternatives; for my part I incline to the second.
John Ridd’s rustic wisdom led him to express the opinion, upon the memorable occasion when John Fry was bringing him home from Blundell’s School at Tiverton, that ‘a horse (like a woman) lacks, and is better without, self-reliance.’
R. T. Coryndon.
‘THE PROGRESS OF PICKERSDYKE.’
Second Lieutenant William Pickersdyke, sometime quarter-master-sergeant of the ⸺th Battery and now adjutant of a divisional ammunition column, stared out of the window of his billet and surveyed the muddy and uninteresting village street with eyes of gloom. His habitual optimism had for once failed him, and his confidence in the gospel of efficiency had been shaken. For Fate, in the portly guise of his fatuous old colonel, had intervened to balk the fulfilment of his most cherished desire. Pickersdyke had that morning applied for permission to be transferred to his old battery if a vacancy occurred, and the colonel had flatly declined to forward the application.
Now one of the few military axioms which have not so far been disproved in the course of this war is the one which lays down that second lieutenants must not argue with colonels. Pickersdyke had left his commanding officer without betraying the resentment which he felt, but in the privacy of his own room, however, he allowed himself the luxury of vituperation.
‘Blooming old woman!’ he said aloud. ‘Incompetent, rusty old dug-out! Thinks he’s going to keep me here running his bally column for ever, I suppose. Selfish, that’s what ’e is—and lazy too.’
In spite of the colonel’s pompous reference to ‘the exigencies of the service,’ that useful phrase which covers a multitude of minor injustices, Pickersdyke had legitimate cause for grievance. Nine months previously, when he had been offered a commission, he had had to choose between Sentiment, which bade him refuse and stay with the battery to whose well-being he had devoted seven of the best years of his life, and Ambition, which urged him, as a man of energy and brains, to accept his just reward with a view to further advancement. Ambition, backed by his major’s promise to have him as a subaltern later on, had vanquished. Suppressing the inevitable feeling of nostalgia which rose in him, he had joined the divisional ammunition column, prepared to do his best in a position wholly distasteful to him.
In an army every unit depends for its efficiency upon the system of discipline inculcated by its commander, aided by the spirit of individual enthusiasm which pervades its members; the less the enthusiasm the sterner must the discipline be. Now a D.A.C., as it is familiarly called, is not, in the inner meaning of the phrase, a cohesive unit. In peace it exists only on paper; it is formed during mobilisation by the haphazard collection of a certain number of officers, mostly ‘dug-outs’; close upon 500 men, nearly all reservists; and about 700 horses, many of which are rejections from other and, in a sense, more important units. Its business, as its name indicates, is to supply a division with ammunition, and its duties in this connection are relatively simple. Its wagons transport shells, cartridges, and bullets to the brigade ammunition columns, whence they return empty and begin again. It is obvious that the men engaged upon this work need not, in ordinary circumstances, be heroes; it is also obvious that their rôle, though fundamentally an important one, does not tend to foster an intense esprit de corps. A man can be thrilled at the idea of a charge or of saving guns under a hurricane of fire, but not with the monotonous job of loading wagons and then driving them a set number of miles daily along the same straight road. A stevedore or a carter has as much incentive to enthusiasm for his work.
The commander of a D.A.C., therefore, to ensure efficiency in his unit, must be a zealous disciplinarian with a strong personality. But Pickersdyke’s new colonel was neither. The war had dragged him from a life of slothful ease to one of bustle and discomfort. Being elderly, stout, and constitutionally idle, he had quickly allowed his early zeal to cool off, and now, after six months of the campaign, the state of his command was lamentable. To Pickersdyke, coming from a battery with proud traditions and a high reputation, whose members regarded its good name in the way that a son does that of his mother, it seemed little short of criminal that such laxity should be permitted. On taking over a section he ‘got down to it,’ as he said, at once, and became forthwith a most unpopular officer. But that, though he knew it well, did not deter him. He made the lives of various sergeants and junior N.C.O.s unbearable until they began to see that it was wiser ‘to smarten themselves up a bit’ after his suggestion. In a month the difference between his section and the others was obvious. The horses were properly groomed and had begun to improve in their condition—before, they had been poor to a degree; the sergeant-major no longer grew a weekly beard nor smoked a pipe during stable hour; the number of the defaulters, which under the new régime was at first large, had dwindled to a negligible quantity. In two months that section was for all practical purposes a model one, and Pickersdyke was able to regard the results of his unstinted efforts with satisfaction.
The colonel, who was not blind where his own interests were concerned, sent for Pickersdyke one day and said:
‘You’ve done very well with your section; it’s quite the best in the column now.’
Pickersdyke was pleased; he was as modest as most men, but he appreciated recognition of his merits. Moreover, for his own ends, he was anxious to impress his commanding officer. He was less pleased when the latter continued:
‘I’m going to post you to No. 3 Section now, and I hope you’ll do the same with that.’
No. 3 Section was notorious. Pickersdyke, if he had been a man of Biblical knowledge (which he was not), would have compared himself to Jacob, who waited seven years for Rachel and then was tricked into taking Leah. The vision of his four days’ leave—long overdue—faded away. He foresaw a further and still more difficult period of uncongenial work in front of him. But, having no choice, he was obliged to acquiesce.
Once again he began at the beginning, instilling into unruly minds the elementary notions that orders are given to be obeyed, that the first duty of a mounted man is to his horses, and that personal cleanliness and smartness in appearance are military virtues not beneath notice. This time the drudgery was even worse, and he was considerably hampered by the touchiness and jealousy of the real section commander, who was a dug-out captain of conspicuous inability. There was much unpleasantness, there was at one time very nearly a mutiny, and there were not a few courts-martial. It was three months and a half before that section found, so to speak, its military soul.
And then the colonel, satisfied that the two remaining sections were well enough commanded to shift for themselves if properly guided, seized his chance and made Pickersdyke his adjutant. Here was a man, he felt, endowed with an astonishing energy and considerable powers of organisation, the very person, in fact, to save his commanding officer trouble and to relieve him of all real responsibility.
This occurred about the middle of July. From then until well on into September, Pickersdyke remained a fixture in a small French village on the lines of communication, miles from the front, out of all touch with his old comrades, with no distractions and no outlet for his energies except work of a purely routine character.
‘It might be peace-time and me a bloomin’ clerk’ was how he expressed his disgust. But he still hoped, for he believed that to the efficient the rewards of efficiency come in due course and are never long delayed. Without being conceited, he was perhaps more aware of his own possibilities than of his limitations. In the old days in his battery he had been the major’s right-hand man and the familiar (but always respectful) friend of the subalterns. In the early days of the war he had succeeded amazingly where others in his position had certainly failed. His management of affairs ‘behind the scenes’ had been unsurpassed. Never once, from the moment when his unit left Havre till a month later it arrived upon the Aisne, had its men been short of food or its horses of forage. He had replaced deficiencies from some apparently inexhaustible store of ‘spares’; he had provided the best billets, the safest wagon lines, the freshest bread with a consistency that was almost uncanny. In the darkest days of the retreat he had remained unperturbed, ‘pinching’ freely when blandishments failed, distributing the comforts as well as the necessities of life with a lavish hand and an optimistic smile. His wits and his resource had been tested to the utmost. He had enjoyed the contest (it was his nature to do that), and he had come through triumphant and still smiling.
During the stationary period on the Aisne, and later in Flanders, he had managed the wagon line—that other half of a battery which consists of almost everything except the guns and their complement of officers and men—practically unaided. On more than one occasion he had brought up ammunition along a very dangerous route at critical moments.
He received his commission late in December, at a time when his battery was out of action, ‘resting.’ He dined in the officers’ mess, receiving their congratulations with becoming modesty and their drink without unnecessary reserve. It was on this occasion that he had induced his major to promise to get him back. Then he departed, sorrowful in spite of all his pride in being an officer, to join the column. There, in the seclusion of his billet, he studied army lists and watched the name of the senior subaltern of the battery creep towards the head of the roll. When that officer was promoted captain there would be a vacancy, and that vacancy would be Pickersdyke’s chance. Meanwhile, to fit himself for what he hoped to become, he spent whole evenings poring over manuals of telephony and gun-drill; he learnt by heart abstruse passages of Field Artillery Training; he ordered the latest treatises on gunnery, both practical and theoretical, to be sent out to him from England; and he even battled valiantly with logarithms and a slide-rule....
From all the foregoing it will be understood how bitter was his disappointment when his application to be transferred was refused. His colonel’s attitude astonished him. He had expected recognition of that industry and usefulness of which he had given unchallengeable proof. But the colonel, instead of saying:
‘You have done well; I will not stand in your way, much as I should like to keep you,’ merely observed,
‘I’m sorry, but you cannot be spared.’
And he made it unmistakably plain that what he meant was:
‘Do you think I’m such a fool as to let you go? I’ll see you damned first!’
Thus it was that Pickersdyke, a disillusioned and a baffled man, stared out of the window with wrath and bitterness in his heart. For he wanted to go back to ‘the old troop’; he was obsessed with the idea almost to the exclusion of everything else. He craved for the old faces and the old familiar atmosphere as a drug-maniac craves for morphia. It was his right, he had earned it by nine months of drudgery—and who the devil, anyway, he felt, was this old fool to thwart him?
Extravagant plans for vengeance flitted through his mind. Supposing he were to lose half a dozen wagons or thousands of rounds of howitzer ammunition, would his colonel get sent home? Not he—he’d blame his adjutant, and the latter would quite possibly be court-martialled. Should he hide all the colonel’s clothes and only reveal their whereabouts when the application had been forwarded? Should he steal his whisky (without which it was doubtful if he could exist), put poison in his tea, or write an anonymous letter to headquarters accusing him of espionage? He sighed—ingenuity, his valuable ally on many a doubtful occasion, failed him now. Then it occurred to him to appeal to one Lorrison, who was the captain of his old battery, and whom he had known for years as one of his subalterns.
‘Dear Lorrison,’ he wrote, ‘I’ve just had an interview with my old man and he won’t agree to my transfer. I’m afraid it’s a wash-out unless something can be done quickly, as I suppose Jordan will be promoted very soon.’ (Jordan was the senior subaltern.) ‘You know how much I want to get back in time for the big show. Can you do anything? Sorry to trouble you, and now I must close.
‘Yours,
‘W. Pickersdyke.’
Then he summoned his servant. Gunner Scupham was an elderly individual with grey hair, a dignified deportment, and a countenance which suggested extreme honesty of soul but no intelligence whatsoever. Which fact was of great assistance to him in the perpetration of his more complicated villainies. He had not been Pickersdyke’s storeman for many years for nothing. His devotion was a by-word, but his familiarity was sometimes a little startling.
‘’E won’t let us go,’ announced Pickersdyke.
‘Strafe the blighter!’ replied Scupham feelingly. ‘I’m proper fed up with this ’ere column job.’
‘Get the office bike, take this note to Captain Lorrison, and bring back an answer. Here’s a pass.’
Scupham departed, grumbling audibly. It meant a fifteen-mile ride, the day was warm, and he disliked physical exertion. He returned late that evening with the answer, which was as follows:
‘Dear Pickers,—Curse your fool colonel. Jordan may go any day, and if we don’t get you we’ll probably be stuck with some child who knows nothing. Besides, we want you to come. The preliminary bombardment is well under way, so there’s not much time. Meet me at the B.A.C.[7] headquarters to-morrow evening at 8 and we’ll fix up something. In haste,
‘Yours ever,
‘T. Lorrison.’
There are people who do not believe in luck. But if it was not luck which assisted Pickersdyke by producing the events which followed his receipt of that note, then it was Providence in a genial and most considerate mood. He spent a long time trying to think of a reasonable excuse for going to see Lorrison, but he might have saved himself the trouble. Some light-hearted fool had sent up shrapnel instead of high explosive to the very B.A.C. that Pickersdyke wanted to visit. Angry telephone messages were coming through, and the colonel at once sent his adjutant up to offer plausible explanations.
Pickersdyke covered a lot of ground that afternoon. It was necessary to find an infuriated artillery brigadier and persuade him that the error was not likely to occur again, and was in any case not really the fault of the D.A.C. section commander. It was then necessary to find this latter and make it clear to him that he was without doubt the most incompetent officer in the allied forces, and that the error was entirely due to his carelessness. And it was essential to arrange for forwarding what was required.
Lorrison arrived punctually and evidently rather excited.
‘What price the news?’ he said at once.
Pickersdyke had heard none. He had been far too busy.
‘We’re for it at last—going to bombard all night till 4.30 A.M.—every bally gun in the army as far as I can see. And we’ve got orders to be ready to move in close support of the infantry if they get through. To move! Just think of that after all these months.’
Pickersdyke swore as he had not done since he was a rough-riding bombardier.
‘And that’s boxed my chances,’ he ended up.
‘Wait a bit,’ said Lorrison. ‘There’s a vacancy waiting for you if you’ll take it. We got pretty badly “crumped”[8] last night. The Bosches put some big “hows” and a couple of “pip-squeak” batteries on to us just when we were replenishing. They smashed up several wagons and did a lot of damage. Poor old Jordan got the devil of a shaking—he was thrown about ten yards. Lucky not to be blown to bits, though. Anyway, he’s been sent to hospital.’
He looked inquiringly at Pickersdyke. The latter’s face portrayed an unholy joy.
‘Will I take his place?’ he cried. ‘Lummy! I should think I would. Don’t care what the colonel says afterwards. When can I join? Now?’
‘As soon as I’ve seen about getting some more wagons from the B.A.C. we’ll go up together,’ answered Lorrison.
Pickersdyke, who had no conscience whatever on occasions such as this, sent a message to his colonel to say that he was staying up for the night (he omitted to say precisely where!), as there would be much to arrange in the morning. To Scupham he wrote:
‘Collect all the kit you can and come up to the battery at once. Say nothing.’
He was perfectly aware that he was doing a wildly illegal thing. He felt like an escaped convict breathing the air of freedom and making for his home and family. Forty colonels would not have stopped him at that moment.