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remained loyal to the Review of Reviews, and a third to Land and
Water. Another was never satisfied with anything except The
Nineteenth Century. Others have asked only for wretched little rags
which one would wish to see perish off the face of the earth. But as
time has gone on, these have been less and less asked for, and their
place has been gradually taken by the Sphere, the Graphic, the
Tatler, the Illustrated London News, and the Sketch—another
instance of a better class of literature being welcomed and accepted
if put within easy reach. In our case this has been made continuously
possible by friends who have given subscriptions for both monthly
and weekly numbers, and by others who send in their back numbers
in batches, and by the publishers, who never fail us.
John Bull deserves a paragraph all to himself. The popularity of his
paper is truly remarkable. The average soldier looks upon it as a sort
of gospel; and new arrivals from the trenches are cheered up at once
by the very sight of the well-known cover. Even if they are too ill to
read it, they like to have it near them ready for the moment when
returning strength gives them the incentive to take even a glance at
some of its pages.
We have found that men who have not naturally been readers
have acquired the habit of reading in our Hospital, and there have
been many instances of men who have become out-patients asking
for permission to continue to use the library. It has been one of our
great pleasures to see old friends strolling into the recreation room
and picking out for themselves some book by an author whom they
have learnt to know and appreciate. Another gratifying feature of the
work has been the anxiety of many of our readers to have a book
waiting for them after an operation, so that as soon as possible they
may begin to read it and forget some of their pains and sufferings. In
many instances the author or the subject has been deliberately
chosen beforehand.
Our experiences, in fact, have tended to show that a library
department organised and run by people who have some knowledge
of books might prove to be a useful asset in any hospital, both
military and civil, and be the means of affording not only amusement
and distraction, but even definite education, induced of course, not
insisted on. To obtain satisfactory results it would seem, however,
that even a good and carefully chosen collection of books of all kinds
does not suffice. In addition, an official librarian is needed who will
supply the initiative, which in the circumstances is of necessity
lacking, and whose duty it is to visit the wards, study the
temperaments, inclinations, and possibilities of the patients, and thus
find out by direct personal intercourse what will amuse, help,
stimulate, lift—and heal.
 LOST HORSES.
A month or so after the traitor Maritz had made his flamboyant
proclamation in German South-West Africa, a small body of mounted
Union troops was operating in a district which may be described as
‘somewhere near Upington.’ Probably such secrecy of places and
names is not at all necessary, but it lends an appropriate military
flavour to the small events I describe. I may go so far as to say that
the setting I have provided is fictitious, though similar events did, no
doubt, occur in the operations against Maritz and Kemp and their
heroes. The characters of the roan horse and of the boy Frikkie are
true to life, and the small adventures did occur much as described,
but in another country in South Africa and upon a different occasion.
Accept the story as fiction, not as history; it will at any rate serve to
throw a light upon one of the aspects of the fighting in that dry land,
and it illustrates the close relationship between horse and man in
that country of long distances and sparse population and infrequent
water-holes. The conditions are the absolute antithesis of those in
Flanders and the trenches.
The risk of losing his riding or pack animals is constantly present
to the veld traveller. Fortunately it is seldom the cause of anything
more troublesome than a temporary inconvenience, but there are
occasions when serious hardships result, the loss of valuable time or
of your animals, or risk to your own life. In most cases the loss of
your beasts is due merely to the fact that they have strayed. They
have, as a rule, either followed the lead of some restless animal who
is making back for his stable, or else they have wandered away in
search of grass or water.
A horse is less hardy than his hybrid half-brother, and more the
slave of his belly. Thirst and hunger pinch him at once, and he is
quick in search of comfort; he is therefore more likely to stop and
suffer capture at the first patch of good grass he comes to. His
superficial character, moreover, generally affords some indication
both of the reason he has strayed and the direction he has taken.
There are, however, a few horses who are inveterate and
troublesome wanderers; they are generally old animals whose
accumulated experience has developed a cunning foreign to their
normal character. Such animals often possess an irritating facility for
choosing the most inconvenient time to stray and the most unlikely
direction to go.
If horses are the most frequent offenders, their sins in this respect
are seldom serious. In my own experience mules are more liable to
travel back along the road they have come than horses; they are
more creatures of habit, their memory is more retentive, and they
have greater natural intelligence. When a mule has acquired the
habit of absenting himself from duty he is a perpetual trouble. The
most malignant form of this disease occurs when the beast has
developed an insatiable longing for one particular place, a definite
goal from which nothing will turn him. This haven of his constant
desire is generally the place where he was born, or where he passed
the pleasant days of his absurd youth.
There are traits in most horses which, in conjunction with this
foundation of congenital simplicity, go to make ‘character.’ Men who
have dealt with horses in the less frequented parts of the earth know
this well. They will remember one animal who had in a highly
developed degree that instinctive correctness of demeanour which
can best be described as good manners; a second had a heart like a
lion and checked at nothing; another was a prey to an incurable
nervousness; while yet another was just simply mean. These mean
horses are a perpetual menace; you never know when they will let
you down. Sometimes they are clearly actuated by malice;
sometimes, however, there is a subtle quality and timeliness in their
apparent stupidity which gives you a horrid suspicion that you’ve
been had, and that your horse is more of a rogue than a fool. Such
an animal is always an old horse, never a young one.
I am not quite clear as to what a scout should look like. The typical
scout of the North American Indian days, as exemplified in the
person of Natty Bumpo, wore fringed buckskin and moccasins and
coon-skin cap, while Texas Bill and his vivid companions had a more
picturesque costume still, in which great silver-studded saddles and
jingling spurs and monstrous revolvers bore a conspicuous part. I
must confess that my own nine sportsmen were scrubby-looking
fellows compared to their picturesque predecessors at the game.
(The khaki trousers issued by an administration which was always
more practical than picturesque do not lend themselves, in this
generation at any rate, to romance.) But they were a hard and useful
lot, much sunburnt, and with gnarled, scarred hands. Deerslayer
himself probably could not have taught them much about their own
veld craft. Every one was South African born; three of them were
younger sons of loyal Boer farmers. One was a coloured boy, a
quiet, capable fellow. He was with us nominally as a sort of groom,
but his civil manners and extraordinary capacity soon won him an
accepted place in the scouts; though he rode and ate with us, he
always sat a little apart in camp. He had spent three or four years up
country, where I had first come across him in fact, and had shot
some amount of big game; he was excellent on spoor and had a
wonderful eye for country, and I really think he was the quickest man
on and off a horse, and the quickest and most brilliant shot I ever
saw. He stood on the roster as Frederick Collins, but was never
known by any other name than Frikkie.
The commandant of the rather nondescript commando, which was
officially described, I believe, as a composite regiment, had a sound
idea of the value of a few competent and well-mounted scouts, and
had done us very well in the matter of horse. We had been ‘on
commando’ now for nearly five weeks, and had got to know our
animals pretty well. During the confusion and changes of the first
fortnight I had got rid of a dozen horses I saw would be of no use for
our work, though suitable, no doubt, for slower troop duty, and by a
cunning process of selection had got together a very serviceable lot,
with four spare animals to carry kit and water on the longer trips
away from the main body. Your spirited young things, though well
enough to go courting on, are apt to get leg-weary and drop
condition too soon on steady work, and all my mob were aged and
as hard as nails. I will describe one or two of them presently.
 Things were getting a little exciting about that time. Three rebel
commandos, or rather bands, were known to be in the
neighbourhood, and it was essential to find out what their strength
was and who their leaders were. There was not much reason to fear
attack, for they were not well found in either guns or ammunition,
and their ragamuffin cavalry were concerned to avoid and not invite
a stand-up engagement. Rapidity of action was essential to the loyal
troops, for the longer the rebellion dragged on the more risk there
was of it spreading. It was necessary to find out at once the actual
movements of these bands, and the best way of doing so was to
keep tally of the water-holes. Men can, if necessary, carry water for
themselves, but horses, especially those from the moist high veld of
the Transvaal, must have water regularly or they go to pieces very
quickly in that dry, hot land. And so the remote and forgotten pit at
Ramib had suddenly become of importance, and I had been told to
send two men to examine it at once.
It lay within the rocky belt which came down south of the Orange
River somewhat to our right; it was supposed to be twenty miles
away, but it might prove five miles less or ten miles more. It was
known to have held water fifteen months before, and our business
was to find out if it still held water, how long that water would be
likely to last, and if any of the rebels had been to it recently. No one
in the column was aware of its exact location, but I myself knew
enough of those parts to guess roughly where it must lie. I decided to
take one man and a pack-horse, and to take the patrol myself. No
native guide was available, and the Colonel did not, for obvious
reasons, care to make use of any of the few local Boers who carried
on a wretched existence as farmers in that barren country.
My own horse was a big bay, an uncomfortable beast, but capable
of covering much ground; like many big men, he had little mental
elasticity and no vices. Frikkie had an unassuming bay of ordinary
manners and capacity, and with a natural aptitude for routine and a
military life. The third horse was a king of his class. He did not
belong to the scouts, but I had borrowed him to carry the pack on
that patrol. He was mean all through; in colour a sort of skewbald
roan, and in character an irreclaimable criminal. He had a narrow
chest, weedy white legs, and a pale shifty eye; he was very free with
his heels, and an inveterate malingerer. He had never carried a pack
before and we were prepared for trouble, for his malevolent spirit
had already acquired a wide reputation.
The patrol left the column a little before sunset, after a windless,
baking day. The horses were in excellent fettle. The roan had given
some trouble with the pack, but before he could throw himself down
or buck through the lines he was hustled out of camp to an
accompaniment of oaths and cheers in two languages. Once away
and alone he went quietly, but doubtless with hate in his heart, for his
beastly eye was full of gall.
Dawn found us hidden on the top of a low stony kopje, the horses
tied together among the brown boulders below. It was bitter cold as
the light grew, and the sun came up into an empty world. I waited
there for half an hour, partly to find any signs of white men, and
partly to work out the lay of the land and the probable direction of the
pit. Nothing was moving in the whole world. It was clear where the
water must be. On the right was the usual barren desert country we
had come through during the night, low ridges of stone and shale,
and a thin low scrub of milk bush and cactus. On the left the land
grew much rougher towards the river; the rocky valleys stretched for
miles in that direction. Presently we led the horses down off the
kopje, and an hour later saw us looking down at the chain of small
holes, still full of good water. I stayed with the hidden horses while
Frikkie cut a circle round the pools. There was no sign of life, he
reported, only the old sandal spoor of some natives; no horse had
been down to the water for weeks, probably for months. We off-
saddled in a hidden corner some way from the water, and got a small
fire going of thin dry sticks. The horses were given a drink and
turned loose. It was criminal foolishness not to have hobbled or
knee-haltered the roan, for ten minutes after they were let go Frikkie
called out that the horses had completely disappeared.
One realised at once that there was no time to be lost. It was
probable that the roan had led them away, and that he meant
business. The saddles and pack were hurriedly hidden among some
rocks with the billy of half-cooked rice, the fire was put out, and we
took up the spoor.
It was soon evident that the animals were travelling, and were not
straying aimlessly in search of feed. The spoor of the discoloured
strawberry beast was always in front—his footprints were like his
character, narrow and close. Above his tracks came those of Ruby,
the police horse, round ordinary hoof-marks, and well shod; my own
horse’s immense prints were always last, solid and unmistakable.
Mile after mile the tracks led into a rockier and more barren country.
What little stunted and thorny scrub there was had not yet come into
leaf, and there was no shade and no sign of green anywhere. Ridges
of sharp gravel and small kopjes of brown stone alternated with
narrow valleys without sign of green or water. In the softer ground of
these valleys the spoor was plain and could be followed without any
trouble, but on the rocky ridges the tracks became difficult to hold
where the horses had separated and wandered about. The trail led
eastwards, into a rocky, waterless, and uninhabited country. There
was no reason for the roan’s choice but just native malice, for he had
come from the west the previous day. Doubtless the main camp
would be his ultimate destination, but it seemed apparent that he
intended to inflict as deep an injury as he could before he set his
sour face again to the west.
It was within half an hour of sundown before I came up with the
horses, and then only the two bays; the roan’s spoor showed that he
had gone on about an hour before. They were standing under a
bunch of thorn trees, the only shade they had passed since they
were let go that morning. For the last mile or two the tracks, which
had become more aimless as the hot afternoon wore on, had turned
a little to the north. Probably, as the allegiance of his small following
had weakened, the leader’s thoughts had turned to the
companionship of the camp, and when they had finally refused to
follow him any further he had abandoned the rest of his revenge and
had turned frankly for home.
We rounded up the two horses and thought of our camp, probably
eight miles away in a direct line. Though they were tired and empty
they would not be caught, and it was soon evident that they would
not be driven either. I will not ask you to follow the dreadful hour
which ensued. This crowning flicker of rebellion at the end of a
disastrous day nearly broke our hearts. It was well after dark when
we finally abandoned the horses in an area of steep rocky ridges and
narrow valleys covered with cactus; it was quite impossible to cope
with them in the dark in such a country. We reached camp about ten,
but were too tired and disappointed to make a fire. A tin of bully-beef,
and the mass of opaque jelly which had once been good Patna rice,
were the first pleasant incidents of a baking, hungry day.
The second day began before dawn with as large a breakfast as
we could compass: black coffee, the little bread that was left, and a
large quantity of rice. I have seldom eaten a more cheerless meal.
Three or four pounds of rice, some coffee, a tin or two of bully, and a
little sugar were all that remained to us, and there was no chance of
getting more. I must confess that at this stage a tactical error was
committed which cost us the long day’s work for nothing. A golden
rule where lost animals are concerned is to stick to the spoor, but as
I thought it very probable that the horses would turn north and west
again during the night and make for their last place of sojourn, I tried
to save half a dozen hours by cutting the spoor ahead. It was nearly
noon, and a mile or two beyond where the roan had left the others,
before it became a certainty that the horses had done the unlikely
thing, and had gone either south or further east into the broken
country. At that moment they were probably ten miles away. I then
did what one should have done at first, and went to the point where
we had last seen them. That afternoon was hotter and emptier than
the last, and sunset found us on a cold spoor going north. We had
wisely brought rice and coffee and water-bags with us that morning,
and Frikkie had shot a klipspringer—baboons and klipspringer were
the only animals we had seen the last two days. If you suppose that
we had used any of the water for washing you are making a mistake,
though Heaven knows that we both would have been the better for a
bath. We slept on the spoor, and bitter cold it was without blankets;
there was not scrub enough for a decent fire.
Matters were getting serious. We were then twelve miles from the
saddlery and, so far as we knew, the nearest water, and twenty more
from the camp. If the horses were not found and caught that day
they would have to be abandoned, and we would have to pad the
hoof home via the disastrous pools at Ramib.
But fortune does not frown for ever; it is a long worm that has no
turning. Within an hour of sunrise we came into the quite fresh tracks
of the horses crossing their own spoor. Frikkie exclaimed that there
were three horses, and an examination showed the narrow tracks of
the red horse with the other two; they had not found water and were
evidently on their way back to Ramib. We came on to the animals a
few minutes afterwards. Except that they were hollow from want of
water they were none the worse, and apparently they were not sorry
to see us. By the time the sun was in the north they had had a good
drink and were finishing the little grain in the pack. Midnight saw us
riding into the main camp—only to find it deserted, for the column
had marched. The camp was apparently completely empty, and it felt
very desolate under a small moon. I expected I would discover a
message of some sort for me at sunrise; in the meantime the
obvious thing was to keep out of the way, so I went half a mile off
into the veld, and the boy and I kept watch by turn until dawn.
Nothing moved in or round the camp till near sunrise, when three
men rode out of some shale ridges about a mile away on the
opposite side, and came down to the water. By the white bands
round the left arm—the sign of loyal troops—I knew them for our own
men; indeed we had recognised the horse one of them was riding.
They gave me the message they had stayed behind to deliver. We
were to stay and watch the camp site for three or four days, and to
patrol daily some distance to the south-east. The water was
important, for it was quite probable that one or other of the rebel
commandos would come to it. The men had hidden provisions for us
and some grain for the horses; they themselves were to hurry on to
the column with our report of the Ramib pits. We rode a few miles
along the column spoor with them, and then turned off on some
gravelly ground and fetched a compass round back to the place in
the shale ridges where the men had slept and where the provisions
were. We took no more chances with the strawberry horse; he was
closely hobbled.
 The loss of the animals had been a serious thing, and we were
extremely fortunate to have got out of it so easily. It did not lessen
the annoyance to realise that it was my own fault for not hobbling the
roan, but only a rogue by constitution and habit would have carried
his hostility to so dangerous a length. But within a week he was to
provide another taste of his quality. This time nothing more serious
was involved than the risk of his own loss, for we were never led far
from water in so menacing and barren a country as that beyond
Ramib.
Most of that day was spent in the stony krantz, from which a view
could be obtained over the whole dry, grey landscape, and the pools
a mile away. In normal times the laagte was frequently used for
sheep grazing, but in these days of mobile and ever-hungry
commandos the few farmers in the vicinity were grazing their meagre
flocks nearer their homesteads. Except for a few wandering Griquas,
and possibly a band of ragged rebels on tired horses, it was not
likely that our watch would be interrupted. A rough shelter made of
the stunted spiny scrub served as a sentry box; the saddles were
hidden in a narrow cleft on the lee side of the ridge, and the horses
were kept down in the valleys.
In the afternoon we saddled up and rode south and east, keeping
for the most part to the rough ridges, and overlooking the level
country along which our column had come, and which was the
natural approach from that side for any body of men having wheeled
transport with them. We did not ride for more than an hour, but my
glasses showed an empty, treeless world for miles beyond. If the
commandos did come our way they would probably trek by night; we
should hear them arrive and laager about dawn, and sunrise would
have seen us well on our way to our own men.
Just at dusk that evening we rode along the lee of the ridge upon
which our poor home was. Frikkie was riding the roan. He was
leading his own animal, for a single horse could not be left grazing
alone, to be picked up, perhaps, by any wandering rebel, or to stray
off in search of companionship. When we passed under the highest
point of the ridge I stopped and sent Frikkie to the top, for he could
spy in both directions from there. I took the led horse from him, and
he threw the roan’s reins over the neck to trail on the ground—the
accepted instruction to every trained veld horse to stand still. I
watched the boy’s slim figure against the sunset sky in the west as
he turned about, searching the veld through his binoculars, though it
was really getting too dark for prism glasses. He called out that
nothing was moving, and presently came lightly down the steep
slope in the gathering dusk. As he reached his horse the beast
turned his quarters to him and walked away; the boy walked round,
but again the horse turned away; and when I put my horse across to
check him he lifted his head and trotted off. We knew that we
couldn’t catch the beast if his views on the matter did not coincide
with ours, so we walked on the half-mile to where the skerm was,
thinking the horse would follow up his mates at his leisure.
This was a new, but not unexpected, trait in an already depraved
character. Some horses, though they are inveterate strayers, are
easy to catch when you do come up with them; others are very
difficult to catch, though they seldom go more than a mile from the
camp; this hectic degenerate apparently combined both these bad
habits.
An hour after dark the horse had not turned up, though our own
reliable animals were knee-haltered and turned loose for a time with
their nosebags on as decoys. At dawn he was not visible in any of
the shallow valleys we could see to the east of the ridge; and to our
surprise and concern he was not in the valley where the water was
and where the camp had been.
Our own horses were knee-haltered short and let go, and we
spent a careful hour examining the margin of the pool, but there was
no narrow spoor to show that the roan had been down to drink
during the night. I spent the morning with our horses and on the look-
out, while the boy cut a wide semicircle round to the south and west
of the water. He came in at mid-day, certain that the truant had not
gone out in those directions. Then Frikkie took over the sentry work,
and I set out to cover the remainder of the circle. I worked
methodically along the soft ground of the valleys outside the range of
the area already fouled by the spoor of our own animals, and where I
would find the roan’s tracks at once. From time to time I climbed one
of the low ridges, for the boy was to spread a light-coloured saddle
blanket over a prominent rock on the side away from the water as a
signal if he saw either the lost horse or anyone approaching from the
south, or in case of other danger. Nothing occurred during the long,
hot afternoon.
That evening, when I got back to camp, I found two Griquas sitting
over the coals with Frikkie. They said they were shepherds, and they
may have done a little of that congenial work recently, but they
looked to me more like sheep-stealers. They were wild people from
the Orange River, and I was sure they had never been any sort of
farm labourers. However, they were friendly enough and promised
help in the morning. The horse had then been without water since
the morning of the previous day. He had not strayed away, for at
sunset he must have been still within four or five miles of the camp; if
he had intended business we would have cut his outgoing spoor
during the day. Horses were too valuable in that country and at that
time for the loss of even such a three-cornered abomination as the
pink horse to be taken lightly.
Morning showed that the horse had not been to the water during
the night. He had then been forty-eight hours without water. The only
thing was to take up the spoor where the animal had last been seen,
and so stick to it till he was found. The Kalahari bushmen have the
reputation of being the finest trackers in South Africa, but these two
cross-bred Griqua bushmen gave us an incomparable exhibition of
skill. I have had some experience of that game, and Frikkie was a
master, but these savages astonished us.
Inch by inch the spoor was picked out from that of the other
animals. No proved mark was abandoned until the next was certified,
often only an inch or two away. The only slight help they had was the
rare and very faint mark where the trailing reins had touched the
ground. The first hundred yards took probably an hour to cover, but
when the spoor reached comparatively clean ground the work was
easier. At this point Frikkie got the water-bags and some food and
joined the bushmen, for it was possible that the horse, driven by
thirst, had taken it into his head to travel far during the previous
night.
 Late that evening the trackers returned with the horse. He was
emaciated and weak, but otherwise quite well, though for some days
his back was tender from the continual ‘sweating’ of the saddle
blanket. His spoor showed that he had spent the first night and day
wandering about the low ridges and hollows not far from our camp,
and that the night before he had commenced to journey away into
the empty country to the east. Somewhere about dawn of that third
day his trailing reins had hooked up on one of the few bushes in that
country strong enough to hold him, and there he was found by the
bushmen, the picture of a natural misery, and too dejected to take
much notice of his rescuers. Nothing but his own gloomy thoughts
had prevented him from going down to the water at any time, or to
the companionship of our camp.
Thirty-six hours after this we were back with the main column. It is
not necessary to add that we were glad to get a bath and a generous
meal, and that I took the first opportunity of handing over the parti-
coloured strawberry to troop duty.
In the first of these two offences it is clear that the white-legged
roan was animated by spite. Such malevolence is rare enough, but
his second performance is much more remarkable. I offer three
alternative explanations. The first is that it was just stupidity. I have
the poorest opinion of the intelligence of the horse, as distinct from
instinct. It is Professor Lloyd Morgan, I think, who defines instinct as
‘the sum of inherited habits,’ and this may be accepted as a sound
definition. Elementary necessity, to say nothing of instinct or
intelligence, should have driven him to the water soon after he had
obtained his freedom. He could not have forgotten where the water
was. If his normal mental process was so dislocated by the fact of
the saddle on his back without the presence of the masterful human
in it, then he was a fool of the first class.
The second solution I offer is that his action was prompted by
roguery; for even a very limited intelligence would have warned him
that he would be captured if he ventured near either the water or the
camp. It may be that when his reins hooked up he was on his way to
the free water at Ramib. The third explanation is that he was a little
daft. In a long and varied experience of horses I cannot really
remember one so afflicted, though I had a pack-mule once that I am
certain was a harmless lunatic. You may take your choice of these
alternatives; for my part I incline to the second.
John Ridd’s rustic wisdom led him to express the opinion, upon
the memorable occasion when John Fry was bringing him home
from Blundell’s School at Tiverton, that ‘a horse (like a woman) lacks,
and is better without, self-reliance.’
R. T. Coryndon.
‘THE PROGRESS OF PICKERSDYKE.’
Second Lieutenant William Pickersdyke, sometime quarter-
master-sergeant of the ⸺th Battery and now adjutant of a
divisional ammunition column, stared out of the window of his billet
and surveyed the muddy and uninteresting village street with eyes of
gloom. His habitual optimism had for once failed him, and his
confidence in the gospel of efficiency had been shaken. For Fate, in
the portly guise of his fatuous old colonel, had intervened to balk the
fulfilment of his most cherished desire. Pickersdyke had that morning
applied for permission to be transferred to his old battery if a
vacancy occurred, and the colonel had flatly declined to forward the
application.
Now one of the few military axioms which have not so far been
disproved in the course of this war is the one which lays down that
second lieutenants must not argue with colonels. Pickersdyke had
left his commanding officer without betraying the resentment which
he felt, but in the privacy of his own room, however, he allowed
himself the luxury of vituperation.
‘Blooming old woman!’ he said aloud. ‘Incompetent, rusty old dug-
out! Thinks he’s going to keep me here running his bally column for
ever, I suppose. Selfish, that’s what ’e is—and lazy too.’
In spite of the colonel’s pompous reference to ‘the exigencies of
the service,’ that useful phrase which covers a multitude of minor
injustices, Pickersdyke had legitimate cause for grievance. Nine
months previously, when he had been offered a commission, he had
had to choose between Sentiment, which bade him refuse and stay
with the battery to whose well-being he had devoted seven of the
best years of his life, and Ambition, which urged him, as a man of
energy and brains, to accept his just reward with a view to further
advancement. Ambition, backed by his major’s promise to have him
as a subaltern later on, had vanquished. Suppressing the inevitable
feeling of nostalgia which rose in him, he had joined the divisional
ammunition column, prepared to do his best in a position wholly
distasteful to him.
In an army every unit depends for its efficiency upon the system of
discipline inculcated by its commander, aided by the spirit of
individual enthusiasm which pervades its members; the less the
enthusiasm the sterner must the discipline be. Now a D.A.C., as it is
familiarly called, is not, in the inner meaning of the phrase, a
cohesive unit. In peace it exists only on paper; it is formed during
mobilisation by the haphazard collection of a certain number of
officers, mostly ‘dug-outs’; close upon 500 men, nearly all reservists;
and about 700 horses, many of which are rejections from other and,
in a sense, more important units. Its business, as its name indicates,
is to supply a division with ammunition, and its duties in this
connection are relatively simple. Its wagons transport shells,
cartridges, and bullets to the brigade ammunition columns, whence
they return empty and begin again. It is obvious that the men
engaged upon this work need not, in ordinary circumstances, be
heroes; it is also obvious that their rôle, though fundamentally an
important one, does not tend to foster an intense esprit de corps. A
man can be thrilled at the idea of a charge or of saving guns under a
hurricane of fire, but not with the monotonous job of loading wagons
and then driving them a set number of miles daily along the same
straight road. A stevedore or a carter has as much incentive to
enthusiasm for his work.
The commander of a D.A.C., therefore, to ensure efficiency in his
unit, must be a zealous disciplinarian with a strong personality. But
Pickersdyke’s new colonel was neither. The war had dragged him
from a life of slothful ease to one of bustle and discomfort. Being
elderly, stout, and constitutionally idle, he had quickly allowed his
early zeal to cool off, and now, after six months of the campaign, the
state of his command was lamentable. To Pickersdyke, coming from
a battery with proud traditions and a high reputation, whose
members regarded its good name in the way that a son does that of
his mother, it seemed little short of criminal that such laxity should be
permitted. On taking over a section he ‘got down to it,’ as he said, at
once, and became forthwith a most unpopular officer. But that,
though he knew it well, did not deter him. He made the lives of
various sergeants and junior N.C.O.s unbearable until they began to
see that it was wiser ‘to smarten themselves up a bit’ after his
suggestion. In a month the difference between his section and the
others was obvious. The horses were properly groomed and had
begun to improve in their condition—before, they had been poor to a
degree; the sergeant-major no longer grew a weekly beard nor
smoked a pipe during stable hour; the number of the defaulters,
which under the new régime was at first large, had dwindled to a
negligible quantity. In two months that section was for all practical
purposes a model one, and Pickersdyke was able to regard the
results of his unstinted efforts with satisfaction.
The colonel, who was not blind where his own interests were
concerned, sent for Pickersdyke one day and said:
‘You’ve done very well with your section; it’s quite the best in the
column now.’
Pickersdyke was pleased; he was as modest as most men, but he
appreciated recognition of his merits. Moreover, for his own ends, he
was anxious to impress his commanding officer. He was less
pleased when the latter continued:
‘I’m going to post you to No. 3 Section now, and I hope you’ll do
the same with that.’
No. 3 Section was notorious. Pickersdyke, if he had been a man of
Biblical knowledge (which he was not), would have compared
himself to Jacob, who waited seven years for Rachel and then was
tricked into taking Leah. The vision of his four days’ leave—long
overdue—faded away. He foresaw a further and still more difficult
period of uncongenial work in front of him. But, having no choice, he
was obliged to acquiesce.
Once again he began at the beginning, instilling into unruly minds
the elementary notions that orders are given to be obeyed, that the
first duty of a mounted man is to his horses, and that personal
cleanliness and smartness in appearance are military virtues not
beneath notice. This time the drudgery was even worse, and he was
considerably hampered by the touchiness and jealousy of the real
section commander, who was a dug-out captain of conspicuous
inability. There was much unpleasantness, there was at one time
very nearly a mutiny, and there were not a few courts-martial. It was
three months and a half before that section found, so to speak, its
military soul.
And then the colonel, satisfied that the two remaining sections
were well enough commanded to shift for themselves if properly
guided, seized his chance and made Pickersdyke his adjutant. Here
was a man, he felt, endowed with an astonishing energy and
considerable powers of organisation, the very person, in fact, to save
his commanding officer trouble and to relieve him of all real
responsibility.
This occurred about the middle of July. From then until well on into
September, Pickersdyke remained a fixture in a small French village
on the lines of communication, miles from the front, out of all touch
with his old comrades, with no distractions and no outlet for his
energies except work of a purely routine character.
‘It might be peace-time and me a bloomin’ clerk’ was how he
expressed his disgust. But he still hoped, for he believed that to the
efficient the rewards of efficiency come in due course and are never
long delayed. Without being conceited, he was perhaps more aware
of his own possibilities than of his limitations. In the old days in his
battery he had been the major’s right-hand man and the familiar (but
always respectful) friend of the subalterns. In the early days of the
war he had succeeded amazingly where others in his position had
certainly failed. His management of affairs ‘behind the scenes’ had
been unsurpassed. Never once, from the moment when his unit left
Havre till a month later it arrived upon the Aisne, had its men been
short of food or its horses of forage. He had replaced deficiencies
from some apparently inexhaustible store of ‘spares’; he had
provided the best billets, the safest wagon lines, the freshest bread
with a consistency that was almost uncanny. In the darkest days of
the retreat he had remained unperturbed, ‘pinching’ freely when
blandishments failed, distributing the comforts as well as the
necessities of life with a lavish hand and an optimistic smile. His wits
and his resource had been tested to the utmost. He had enjoyed the
contest (it was his nature to do that), and he had come through
triumphant and still smiling.
During the stationary period on the Aisne, and later in Flanders, he
had managed the wagon line—that other half of a battery which
consists of almost everything except the guns and their complement
of officers and men—practically unaided. On more than one
occasion he had brought up ammunition along a very dangerous
route at critical moments.
He received his commission late in December, at a time when his
battery was out of action, ‘resting.’ He dined in the officers’ mess,
receiving their congratulations with becoming modesty and their
drink without unnecessary reserve. It was on this occasion that he
had induced his major to promise to get him back. Then he departed,
sorrowful in spite of all his pride in being an officer, to join the
column. There, in the seclusion of his billet, he studied army lists and
watched the name of the senior subaltern of the battery creep
towards the head of the roll. When that officer was promoted captain
there would be a vacancy, and that vacancy would be Pickersdyke’s
chance. Meanwhile, to fit himself for what he hoped to become, he
spent whole evenings poring over manuals of telephony and gun-
drill; he learnt by heart abstruse passages of Field Artillery Training;
he ordered the latest treatises on gunnery, both practical and
theoretical, to be sent out to him from England; and he even battled
valiantly with logarithms and a slide-rule....
From all the foregoing it will be understood how bitter was his
disappointment when his application to be transferred was refused.
His colonel’s attitude astonished him. He had expected recognition
of that industry and usefulness of which he had given
unchallengeable proof. But the colonel, instead of saying:
‘You have done well; I will not stand in your way, much as I should
like to keep you,’ merely observed,
‘I’m sorry, but you cannot be spared.’