CHAPTER X
NO LONGER “JUST ROOKIES”
As the September days glided by, Bixton’s threat of speedy vengeance bore no apparent fruit. Whether he was lying in wait for a good opportunity to discredit the four Khaki Boys, or whether he was only the proverbial barking dog that never bites, they neither knew nor cared. To their great relief, the story of the fight did not reach the ear of the acting first sergeant. Thus Ignace escaped the disgrace of being punished in his very first week at Camp Sterling.
On hearing an account of the affair from Ignace himself, Roger was less inclined than ever to blame him for what had happened. He did not say so to Ignace, however. Instead, he sharply pointed out to the crest-fallen pugilist that two wrongs never made a right. He also privately warned Bob and Jimmy, who had been told of the fracas, not to let their sympathies run away with them.
Impetuous Jimmy, however, found it very hard to repress openly, to Ignace, his own satisfaction at the latter’s recent uprising. He secretly wished that Ignace had given Bixton a sound thrashing and “gotten away with it.” Slow of comprehension in some respects, the Polish boy was not too obtuse to divine Jimmy’s attitude toward him. In consequence, he hung about the latter with a dog-like fidelity that signally amused Roger and Bob. Devoted as he was to his three Brothers, Jimmy was rapidly becoming his idol.
The passing of days saw all four young men making progress in the business of soldiering. As has been already stated, Jimmy showed the most dash and snap in that direction. He took to military procedure like a duck to water, and “went to it” heart and soul. Easily the most efficient man in his squad, he was on the road to a corporalship, though he did not suspect it. He drilled with the same zest he would have put into a football game and prided himself on his prompt ability to execute correctly a new movement immediately it had been explained to him. It was the glory rather than the duty of being a good soldier that most impressed him.
On the other hand, Bob and Roger regarded it more from the duty angle. This was only natural, considering that both men had been obliged, when in civil life, to shift for themselves. They tackled drill as they would have wrestled with a new job. It interested but did not enthrall them. It was a means to an end. That end meant, to them, Bob in particular, active service in France. He looked upon “Going Over” as the supreme adventure. If he survived he intended to come home and write a book “that would sell like hot cakes.”
Iggy’s noblest aspiration was to do well and so stay in the same squad with Jimmy and Bixton. Devotion to the former and spite against the latter swayed him equally. He knew that Jimmy was as desirous of his welfare as Bixton was of his downfall. This double motive inspired him to good works. Back of it all, undoubtedly, he was a true patriot. His enlistment in the Army proved that. For the time being, however, the glory of being a soldier was lost in the difficulty of trying to stay one. The drill sergeant was the most awe-inspiring figure on his horizon. Long afterward when the four Brothers had proved their mettle in far-off France, he had been heard to declare soulfully: “Go Over Top no so bad. One drill sergeant more worse twenty Tops!”
In spite of his encounter with Bixton, Ignace was still seized with spells of reciting his rules aloud. It did not take his companions of the barracks long to discover the nature of his frequent fits of mumbling. When it gradually became noised about in the squad-room that Bob Dalton had composed them for his bunkie’s benefit, he was besieged for copies of them. Though he refused to supply them, he good-naturedly recited such as he could recall to several of the men. Very soon hardly a day passed when he was not asked to give one or more of them. As a result it was not long before they achieved the popularity of a topical song and at least half the occupants of the squad-room could recite one or more of them. In time they became circulated throughout the camp and long after Bob had left Camp Sterling behind for “Over There,” his “Military Maneuvers in Rhyme” were passed on to newcomers and gleefully quoted.
October saw the four Khaki Boys long since emerge from the School of the Soldier into the School of the Squad. They had now mastered the basic principles of military training and were beginning to feel a little more like Regulars. They now knew the Manual of Arms and had been fully instructed in the use, nomenclature and care of their rifles. They were no longer just “rookies.”