“I’ve been on duty ten hours,” he said, “and there’s a whole battery of artillery lost somewhere along the line. It never was my fault; but every general in the whole army has been ringing me up about it. The telephone bell hasn’t stopped all day. Damn! There it is again.”
It was; loud, angry and horribly persistent. Even Thompson felt sorry for the R.T.O.
“Never mind,” he said, “you’ll get your Military Cross all right in the end. All you fellows do. Now buck up a bit and find our train for us. It’s X. we want to get to.”
I mention this incident to show the kind of man Thompson is and his way of dealing with difficulties. Under his care I felt that I should travel safely and get to X. in the end. Comfort was not to be expected, but Thompson did all that could be done to mitigate our misery.
We made our start from a platform blocked with piles of officers’ luggage and crowded with confused and anxious men. Subalterns in charge of drafts asked other subalterns what they ought to do and received counter inquiries by way of reply. Sergeants stormed blasphemously at men who had disappeared in search of tea. Staff officers, red tabbed and glorious, tried to preserve an appearance of dignity while their own servants staggering under the weight of kit bags, bumped into them. Hilarious men, going home on leave, shouted sudden snatches of song. A decrepit Frenchman, patient in the performance of duty, blew feeble blasts on a small horn. Thompson, alert and competent, found a compartment. He put me in and then he bundled in my valise. After that he found his own luggage, an enormous kit bag, two sacks, a camp bedstead, a hammock chair and a number of small parcels.
“Get them in somehow,” he said. “We’ll settle down afterwards.”
Thompson did the settling afterwards. He so arranged our belongings that we each had a seat The door by which anyone else might have to get in at another station was hopelessly blocked. The small parcels were put on the rack above our heads. Thompson gave me a list of their contents as he put them in their places. They contained bread, butter, meat, biscuits, cheese, a bottle of wine and a flask of brandy.
“We’re here till two o’clock to-morrow morning—till two o’clock at best. We must have something to eat.”
A selfish traveller—I am profoundly selfish—would have been content to keep that compartment secure from intrusion. We had completely barricaded the door and no one could have got in if we had chosen to defend our position. But Thompson was not selfish. The train stopped at a station every quarter of an hour or so, and Thompson climbing up the barricade, opened the window and took a look out every time we stopped. At one station—it was then about 7 p.m. and quite dark—he discovered a forlorn boy—a second-lieutenant—who was trying to find room for himself and his belongings. Thompson hailed him. The next five minutes were passed in fierce toil by all of us. But before the train started Thompson got the boy and his belongings into our compartment. In my opinion no second-lieutenants ought to be allowed to possess a suit-case as well as a valise. This boy also had three top-coats and a Jaeger rug. We spent nearly half an hour settling down again after that. Then we dined, sharing the food—Thompson’s food—with the second-lieutenant. He was a nice boy and very grateful. I thought him a little garrulous, but Thompson encouraged him to talk. He told us all about his job. It was his duty to go up in captive balloons and send down messages to the artillery. It was, by his account, a sea-sicky business, worse by several degrees than crossing the Channel in the leave boat. Thompson, who has a thirst for every kind of information, questioned and cross-questioned the boy. After dinner—dinner was Thompson’s name for our meal—I prepared to go to sleep. Thompson arranged valises on the floor in such a way that I could stretch my legs. The boy went on talking. He told Thompson that he had dropped out of the ballooning business and that he was going to X. to submit to a special course of training. I forget what it was, bombing probably, or the use of trench mortars, possibly map reading or—a subject part of the school curriculum of our grandmothers—the use of globes. The army has a passion for imparting knowledge of any kind to temporary lieutenants. I went to sleep while Thompson was explaining just where the boy’s particular course of instruction was given, a camp some three or four miles out of X. Thompson has an amazing knowledge of what naturalists would call the habitat of the various parts of the army.
At 3 a.m. I was awakened from my sleep. We had reached, an hour late, the junction at which we had to change. Thompson and the boy were both alert and cheerful. They had, I fancy, been talking all the time. Our junction proved to be a desolate, windswept platform, without a sign of shelter of any kind except a bleak-looking cabin, the habitation of the local R.T.O. Thompson roused him ruthlessly and learned that, with luck, we might expect our next train to start at six. I shivered. Three hours, the very coldest in the twenty-four, on that platform, did not strike me as a pleasant prospect. Thompson used a favourite phrase of his.