Читать книгу The Grey Wave - A. Hamilton Gibbs - Страница 11

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Reveille was at 5.30.

Grunts, groans, curses, a kick,—and you were sleepily struggling with your riding breeches and puttees.

The morning bath? Left behind with all the other things.

There were horses to be groomed and watered and fed, stables to be “mucked out,” much hard and muscular work to be done before that pint of tea and slab of grease called bacon would keep body and soul together for the morning parade. One fed first and shaved and splashed one’s face, neck, and arms with water afterwards. Have you ever cleaned out a stable with your bare hands and then been compelled to eat a meal without washing?

By nine o’clock one paraded with cleaned boots, polished buttons and burnished spurs and was inspected by the sergeant-major. If you were sick you went before the doctor instead. But it didn’t pay to be sick. The sergeant-major cured you first. Then as there weren’t very many horses in barracks as yet, we were divided half into the riding school, half for lance and sword drill.

Riding school was invented by the Spanish Inquisition. Generally it lasted an hour, by which time one was broken on the rack and emerged shaken, bruised and hot, blistered by the sergeant-major’s tongue. There were men who’d never been on a horse more than twice in their lives, but most of us had swung a leg over a saddle. Many in that ride were grooms from training stables, riders of steeple-chasers. But their methods were not at all those desired in His Majesty’s Cavalry and they suffered like the rest of us. But the sergeant-major’s tongue never stopped and we either learned the essentials in double-quick time or got out to a more elementary ride.

It was a case of the survival of the fittest. Round and round that huge school, trotting with and without stirrups until one almost fell off from sheer agony, with and without saddle over five-foot jumps pursued by the hissing lash of the sergeant-major’s tongue and whip, jumping without reins, saddle or stirrups. The agony of sitting down for days afterwards!

Followed a fifteen-minute break, after the horses were led back to the stables and off-saddled, and then parade on the square with lance and sword. A lovely weapon the lance—slender, irresistible—but after an hour’s concentrated drill one’s right wrist became red-hot and swollen and the extended lance points drooped in our tired grasp like reeds in the wind. At night in the barrack room we used to have competitions to see who could drive the point deepest into the door panels.

Then at eleven o’clock “stables” again: caps and tunics off, braces down, sleeves rolled up. We had a magnificent stamp of horse, but they came in ungroomed for days and under my inexpert methods of grooming took several days before they looked as if they’d been groomed at all.

Dinner was at one o’clock and by the time that hour struck one was ready to eat anything. Each squadron had its own dining-rooms, concrete places with wooden tables and benches, but the eternal stew went down like caviar.

The afternoon parades were marching drill, physical exercises, harness cleaning, afternoon stables and finish for the day about five o’clock, unless one were wanted for guard or picquet. Picquet meant the care of the horses at night, an unenviable job. But guard was a twenty-four hours’ duty, two hours on, four hours off, much coveted after a rough passage in the riding school. It gave one a chance to heal.

Hitherto everything had been a confused mass of men without individuality but of unflagging cheerfulness. Now in the team work of the squadron and the barrack room individuality began to play its part and under the hard and fast routine the cheerfulness began to yield to grousing.

The room corporal of my room was a re-enlisted man, a schoolmaster from Scotland, conscientious, liked by the men, extremely simple. I’ve often wondered whether he obtained a commission. The other troopers were ex-stable boys, labourers, one a golf caddy and one an ex-sailor who was always singing an interminable song about a highly immoral donkey. The caddy and the sailor slept on either side of me. They were a mixed crowd and used filthy language as naturally as they breathed, but as cheery and stout a lot as you’d wish to meet. Under their grey shirts beat hearts as kindly as many a woman’s. I remember the first time I was inoculated and felt like nothing on earth.

“Christ!” said the sailor. “Has that perishin’ doctor been stickin’ his perishin’ needle into you, Mr. Gibbs?”—For some reason they always called me Mr. Gibbs.—“Come over here and get straight to bed before the perishin’ stuff starts workin’. I’ve ’ad some of it in the perishin’ navy.” And he and the caddy took off my boots and clothes and put me to bed with gentle hands.

The evening’s noisiness was given up. Everybody spoke in undertones so that I might get to sleep. And in the morning, instead of sweeping under my own bed as usual, they did it for me and cleaned my buttons and boots because my arm was still sore.

Can you imagine men like that nailing a kitten by its paws to a door as a booby-trap to blow a building sky high, as those Boches have done? Instead of bayoneting prisoners the sailor looked at them and said, “Ah, you poor perishin’ tikes!” and threw them his last cigarettes.

They taught me a lot, those men. Their extraordinary acceptation of unpleasant conditions, their quickness to resent injustice and speak of it at once, their continual cheeriness, always ready to sing, gave me something to compete with. On wet days of misery when I’d had no letters from home there were moments when I damned the war and thought with infinite regret of New York. But if these fellows could stick it, well, I’d had more advantages than they’d had and, by Jove, I was going to stick it too. It was a matter of personal pride.

Practically they taught me many things as well. It was there that they had the advantage of me. They knew how to wash shirts and socks and do all the menial work which I had never done. I had to learn. They knew how to dodge “fatigues” by removing themselves just one half-minute before the sergeant came looking for victims. It didn’t take me long to learn that.

Then one saw gradually the social habit emerge, called “mucking in.” Two men became pals and paired off, sharing tobacco and pay and saddle soap and so on. For a time I “mucked in” with Sailor—he was always called Sailor—and perforce learned the song about the Rabelaisian donkey. I’ve forgotten it now. Perhaps it’s just as well. Then when the squadron was divided up into troops Sailor and I were not in the same troop and I had to muck in with an ex-groom. He was the only man who did not use filthy language.

It’s odd about that language habit. While in the ranks I never caught it, perhaps because I considered myself a bit above that sort of thing. It was so childish and unsatisfying. But since I have been an officer I think I could sometimes have almost challenged the sergeant-major!