“Our leaders march with fusees,
And we with hand-grenades,
We throw them from the glacis
About the enemy’s ears.
With a tow-row-row,” etc.
Well, now we didn’t. If we had grenades we carried them in aprons, like a market woman, with a skirt full of apples. And if we had a blunderbuss, like the guard of the coach in the “Pickwick Papers,” we kept it, and all the ironmongery that belonged to it, on a hand-barrow, and pushed it in front of us like fish-hawkers on a Saturday night. What a War! Kavanagh was quite right of course. There was neither decency nor dignity left in it. Wouldn’t do to admit that though! And putting on his very best “Good-mornin’-Sah-I-have-been-sent-by-Divisional-Head-quarters” expression, he asked his way to the “office” as they were beginning to call the orderly room in most detachments, and inquired for 469 Battery. Yes. They were to be seen. Orderly room, as a Corps formation, was distant and slightly patronizing, but the information was correct. He could see the Officer commanding the battery. Certainly he could, as soon as morning practice was over. That would do. He made himself as inconspicuous as possible until he saw the various parties being “fallen in” on the range, and heard the uncanny ear-tickling silence that succeeded the ceaseless pop-pop of practice and then drifted casually into the wooden-chair-and-table furnished ante-room, where the month-old English magazines gave one a tremulous home-sickness, and men who had been mildly occupied all the morning were drinking all the vermouth or whisky they could, in the fear of being bored to the point of mutiny in the afternoon.
There was, of course, the usual springtime curiosity as to what the year might bring forth, for every one always hoped against hope that the next offensive would really be the last. An orderly wandering among the tables appeared to be looking for him, and he found himself summoned before the Officer commanding the School.
Although his appointment was new, Colonel Burgess was of the oldest type of soldier, the sort who tell the other fellows how to do it. The particular sort of war in which he found himself suited him exactly. He had the true Indian view of life, drill, breakfast, less drill, lunch, siesta, sport, dinner, cards. So he ruled the mess cook with a rod of iron, took disciplinary action if the stones that lined the path leading to the door of the ante-room and office were not properly white, and left the technical side of the business to Sergeant-instructors who, having recently escaped from the trenches, were really keen on it.
He received Dormer with that mixture of flattery due to anyone from Divisional Head-quarters and suspicion naturally aroused as to what he (Dormer) might be after. He was annoyed that he had not heard of Dormer’s arrival, and hastened to add:
“Not a very full parade this morning, units come and go, y’know. We can never be quite sure what we are going to get! What did you think of our show?”