A fresh-looking lot they were; young, most of them, averaging about twenty-three years old; special reservists the senior sergeant told me. The few old hands, who sadly needed a shave and a wash, showed how young the rest of them were. I didn't take much stock of them, then. One doesn't when it's just a conducting job of a few hours, handing over, and back to Headquarters right away.
The men stood to attention, picked up their kits, and, with a "Fours left," we were off to the station down the shimmering, dancing, sandy roads of the Aldershot camps. The A.S.C. major returned to his ledgers and more arithmetic, and the cheery subaltern reclined at lordly ease in a Gunner Mess arm-chair, with a tinkling glass of gin and ginger beer at his elbow, and discussed the striking results of the previous day's battle in the North Sea—which had not taken place.
The station-master, who didn't look as worried as he felt, touched his cap.
"A local to ——, then change and go on to Reigate" (was it Reigate? I forget now, one visited so many out-of-the-way places), "and from there you'll probably get a through train to Portsmouth. If there isn't room in the train you can always turn people out."
Visions of burly, homespun-clad farmers and comfortable market-women being turned out, protesting, by a mere Gunner captain danced through my brain. Actions for assault and battery, damages, bail, prison.
"How an if they will not turn out?" said I.
And then I realised. This was War, red War; and Great Britain was mobilising. The needs of the State were paramount.
"You shall bid them turn out in the Prince's name," and, unlike Dogberry, shall see that you are obeyed.
And I made myself two inches taller because after all a Gunner captain was somebody in the world now. And people looked with a new interest at the lads in khaki and began to realise, perhaps for the first time, that they would have to count on the British Army even though it were "such a little one."
To do the good folk justice there was never a word of protest at the idea of having to turn out. And we had to invite them to do so a good many times before the company finished its tour of the Southern ports. Really it might have been a railway in Germany from the way the civilians gave road to the uniform. This change of attitude was certainly a vivid contrast to the days—last week was it?—when a man in His Majesty's uniform was looked at askance in crowded street and bar.