The weather took off a little before noon. The carpenters could have put in a good half-day’s work on the sheds, and even if they had been rained upon they had roofs with fires awaiting their return. The batteries had none of these things.
THE GUNNER AT HOME
They came in at last far down the park, heralded by that unmistakable half-grumble, half-grunt of guns on the move. The picketed horses heard it first, and one of them neighed long and loud, which proved that he had abandoned civilian habits. Horses in stables and mews seldom do more than snicker, even when they are halves of separated pairs. But these gentlemen had a corporate life of their own now, and knew what ‘pulling together’ means.
When a battery comes into camp it ‘parks’ all six guns at the appointed place, side by side in one mathematically straight line, and the accuracy of the alignment is, like ceremonial-drill with the Foot, a fair test of its attainments. The ground was no treat for parking. Specimen trees and draining ditches had to be avoided and circumvented. The gunners, their reins, the guns, the ground, were equally wet, and the slob dropped away like gruel from the brake-shoes. And they were Londoners—clerks, mechanics, shop assistants, and delivery men—anything and everything that you please. But they were all home and at home in their saddles and seats. They said nothing; their officers said little enough to them. They came in across what had once been turf; wheeled with tight traces; halted, unhooked; the wise teams stumped off to their pickets, and, behold, the six guns were left precisely where they should have been left to the fraction of an inch. You could see the wind blowing the last few drops of wet from each leather muzzle-cover at exactly the same angle. It was all old known evolutions, taken unconsciously in the course of their day’s work by men well abreast of it.
‘Our men have one advantage,’ said a voice. ‘As Territorials they were introduced to unmade horses once a year at training. So they’ve never been accustomed to made horses.’
‘And what do the horses say about it all?’ I asked, remembering what I had seen on the road in the early days.
‘They said a good deal at first, but our chaps could make allowances for ‘em. They know now.’
Allah never intended the Gunner to talk. His own arm does that for him. The batteries offsaddled in silence, though one noticed on all sides little quiet caresses between man and beast—affectionate nuzzlings and nose-slappings. Surely the Gunner’s relation to his horse is more intimate even than the cavalryman’s; for a lost horse only turns cavalry into infantry, but trouble in a gun team may mean death all round. And this is the Gunner’s war. The young wet officers said so joyously as they passed to and fro picking up scandal about breast-straps and breechings, examining the collars of ammunition-wagon teams, and listening to remarks on shoes. Local blacksmiths, assisted by the battery itself, do the shoeing. There are master smiths and important farriers, who have cheerfully thrown up good wages to help the game, and their horses reward them by keeping fit. A fair proportion of the horses are aged—there was never a Gunner yet satisfied with his team or its rations till he had left the battery—but they do their work as steadfastly and wholeheartedly as the men. I am persuaded the horses like being in society and working out their daily problems of draught and direction. The English, and Londoners particularly, are the kindest and most reasonable of folk with animals. If it were not our business strictly to underrate ourselves for the next few years, one would say that the Territorial batteries had already done wonders. But perhaps it is better to let it all go with the grudging admission wrung out of a wringing wet bombardier, ‘Well, it isn’t so dam’ bad—considerin’.’
I left them taking their dinner in mess tins to their tents, with a strenuous afternoon’s cleaning-up ahead of them. The big park held some thousands of men. I had seen no more than a few hundreds, and had missed the howitzer-batteries after all.
A cock pheasant chaperoned me down the drive, complaining loudly that where he was used to walk with his ladies under the beech trees, some unsporting people had built a miniature landscape with tiny villages, churches, and factories, and came there daily to point cannon at it.