II ~~ GETTING EVEN
The battalion awaited its orders to embark for France. A feeling of expectation, a certain nervousness, a half-pleasurable excitement, prevailed in the officers’ mess and among the men. No one thought of service in France as a picnic, or anticipated a good time in the trenches. But there was a general sense of relief that the period of training—a long, tiresome, very dull business—was over at last over or almost over. For the Colonel and certain remote authorities behind the Colonel believed in working the battalion hard up to the last moment. Therefore day after day there were “stunts” and “shows,” field exercises of every conceivable kind. The weather was hot, as hot as weather ought to be in the first week of August Long marches became dusty horrors to the men. Manouvres meant hours of desperate toil. Officers thought longingly of bygone summers, of the cool shade of trees, of tennis played in white flannels, of luscious plates of strawberries and cream. The Colonel, an old soldier, went on inventing new “stunts” and more of them. He had laboured at the training of his battalion, hammering raw boys into disciplined men, inspiring subalterns with something of his own spirit.
On the whole he had been successful. The men sweated, but grumbled very little. The officers kept up a gallant pretence at keenness. Slackness was regarded as bad form, and only one member of the mess made no secret of his opinion that the Colonel was overdoing the “spit and polish” business. This was McMahon, the medical officer; and he did not, properly speaking, belong to the battalion at all. Men and officers alike were drawn for the most part from the English midlands. McMahon was an Irishman. They were born with a sense of discipline and the Colonel worked on material responsive to his methods. McMahon, like most Irishmen, was by temperament a rebel. Yet there was no more popular officer than the Irish doctor. His frank good humour, his ready wit, his unfailing kindliness, won him affection. Even the Colonel liked him, and bore from McMahon behaviour which would have led to the sharp snubbing of anyone else.
There came a day—the 6th of August—for which the Colonel, or some higher authority, devised a “stunt” of the most intense and laborious kind. A very great and remote man, the General in command of the whole district, promised to be present and to witness the performance. Orders were issued in minute detail, and every officer was expected to be familiar with them. Maps were studied conscientiously. Field glasses were polished. Rations were served out. Kits were inspected. The affair was an attack upon a hill supposed to be strongly held by an enemy well provided with machine-guns.
A genuine excitement possessed the battalion. This, so it was felt, was very like the real thing. Just so, some day in France, would an advance be made and great glory won. McMahon alone remained cheerfully indifferent to the energetic fussiness which prevailed.
The day dawned cloudless with promise of intense heat. Very early, after a hurried and insufficient breakfast, B Company marched out. It was the business of B Company to take up a position south of the enemy’s hill, to harass the foe with flanking fire and at the proper moment to rush certain machine-gun posts. B Company had some ten miles to march before reaching its appointed place. McMahon gave it as his opinion that B Company would be incapable of rushing anything when it had marched ten miles in blistering heat and had lain flat for an hour or two in a shadeless field. A party of cooks, with a travelling kitchen, followed B Company. McMahon said that if the cooks were sensible men they would lose their way and come to a halt in a wood, not far from a stream. He added that he was himself very sensible and had already fixed on the wood, about a mile from the scene of the attack, where he intended to spend the day, with a novel.
The other three companies, the Lewis gunners, and a battery of Stokes gun men, attached to the battalion for the attack, marched out later, under the command of the Colonel himself. Cyclist scouts scoured the roads ahead of the advance. McMahon, accompanied by an orderly, marched in the rear and complained greatly of the dust. A Brigadier appeared in a motor and cast a critical eye on the men. Two officers in staff caps, understood to be umpires, rode by.
At noon, the heat being then very great, a motor cyclist dashed up, his machine snorting horribly, the man himself plastered with dust, sweat and oil. He announced that the battalion was under heavy fire from the enemy artillery and that men were falling fast. The Brigadier had sent an urgent message to that effect. The Colonel, who rather expected that something of the sort would occur, gave the orders necessary in such a situation. The men opened out into artillery formation and advanced, by a series of short rushes, to take cover in some trenches, supposed to have been abandoned, very conveniently, by the enemy the day before. The Brigadier, seated in his motor-car in a wood on a neighbouring hill, watched the operation through his field glasses, munched a sandwich, and enjoyed a glass of sherry from his flask. McMahon, for whom short rushes in artillery formation had no attractions at all, slipped through a hedge, skirted a field of ripening oats, and settled himself very comfortably under a beech tree on the edge of a small wood. His orderly followed him and laid down a large package on the grass beside the doctor. The Colonel, an enthusiastic realist, had insisted that McMahon should bring with him a supply of surgical instruments, dressings and other things necessary for dealing with wounds. McMahon opened the package. He took out a novel, a tin of tobacco, a great many packages of cigarettes, two bottles of soda water, two lemons and several parcels of food.
“This,” he said to the orderly, “is the advanced dressing station. When the casualties begin to arrive, we shall be ready for them.”