‘And now,’ I asked, when I had told the tale of the uncommunicative cyclist, ‘what is the matter with your battalion?’
They laughed cruelly at me. ‘Matter!’ said they. ‘We’re just off three months of guarding railways. After that a man wouldn’t trust his own mother. You don’t mean to say our cyclists let you know where we’ve come from last?’
‘No, they didn’t,’ I replied. ‘That was what worried me. I assumed you’d all committed murders, and had been sent here to live it down.’
Then they told me what guarding a line really means. How men wake and walk, with only express troop-trains to keep them company, all the night long on windy embankments or under still more windy bridges; how they sleep behind three sleepers up-ended or a bit of tin, or, if they are lucky, in a platelayer’s hut; how their food comes to them slopping across the square-headed ties that lie in wait to twist a man’s ankle after dark; how they stand in blown coal-dust of goods-yards trying to watch five lines of trucks at once; how fools of all classes pester the lonely pickets, whose orders are to hold up motors for inquiry, and then write silly letters to the War Office about it. How nothing ever happens through the long weeks but infallibly would if the patrols were taken off. And they had one refreshing story of a workman who at six in the morning, which is no auspicious hour to jest with Lancashire, took a short cut to his work by ducking under some goods-wagons, and when challenged by the sentry replied, posturing on all fours, ‘Boo, I’m a German!’ Whereat the upright sentry fired, unfortunately missed him, and then gave him the butt across his ass’s head, so that his humour, and very nearly his life, terminated.
After which the sentry was seldom seen to smile, but frequently heard to murmur, ‘Ah should hev slipped t’ baggonet into him.’
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
‘So you see,’ said the officers in conclusion, ‘you mustn’t be surprised that our men wouldn’t tell you much.’
‘I begin to see,’ I said. ‘How many of you are coal and how many cotton?’
‘Two-thirds coal and one-third cotton, roughly. It keeps the men deadly keen. An operative isn’t going to give up while a pitman goes on; and very much vice versâ.’
‘That’s class-prejudice,’ said I.