Читать книгу The Grey Wave - A. Hamilton Gibbs - Страница 15

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That was the first half of the ordeal.

The second half took place in the afternoon in the barrack square when we went through lance drill and bayonet exercises while the Colonel and the officers walked round and discussed us. At last we were dismissed, trained men, recruits no longer; and didn’t we throw our chests out in the canteen that night! It made me feel that the Nobel prize was futile beside the satisfaction of being a fully trained trooper in His Majesty’s Cavalry, and in a crack regiment too, which had already shown the Boche that the “contemptible little army” had more “guts” than the Prussian Guards regiments and anything else they liked to chuck in.

I foregathered with Bucks that night and told him all about it. Our ways had seemed to lie apart during those intensive days, and it was only on Sundays that we sometimes went for long cross-country walks with biscuits and apples in our pockets if we were off duty. About once a week too we made a point of going to the local music-hall where red-nosed comedians knocked each other about and fat ladies in tights sang slushy love songs; and with the crowd we yelled choruses and ate vast quantities of chocolate.

Two other things occurred during those days which had an enormous influence on me; one indeed altered my whole career in the army.

The first occurrence was the arrival in a car one evening of an American girl whom I’d known in New York. It was about a week after my arrival at Tidworth. She, it appeared, was staying with friends about twenty miles away.

The first thing I knew about it was when an orderly came into stables about 4.30 p.m. on a golden afternoon and told me that I was wanted at once at the Orderly Room.

“What for?” said I, a little nervous.

The Orderly Room was where all the scallawags were brought up before the Colonel for their various crimes,—and I made a hasty examination of conscience.

However, I put on my braces and tunic and ran across the square. There in a car was the American girl whom I had endeavoured to teach golf in the days immediately previous to my enlistment. “Come on out and have a picnic with me,” said she. “I’ve got some perfectly luscious things in a basket.”

The idea was heavenly but it occurred to me I ought to get permission. So I went into the Orderly Room.

There were two officers and a lot of sergeants. I tiptoed up to a sergeant and explaining that a lady had come over to see me, asked if I could get out of camp for half an hour? I was very raw in those days,—half an hour!

The sergeant stared at me. Presumably ladies in motor-cars didn’t make a habit of fetching cavalry privates. It wasn’t “laid down” in the drill book. However, he went over to one of the officers,—the Adjutant, I discovered later.

The Adjutant looked me up and down as I repeated my request, asked me my name and which ride I was in and finally put it to the other officer who said “yes” without looking up. So I thanked the Adjutant, clicked to the salute and went out. As I walked round the front of the car, while the chauffeur cranked up, the door of the Orderly Room opened and the Adjutant came on to the step. He took a good look at the American girl and said, “Oh—er—Gibbs! You can make it an hour if you like.”

It may amuse him to know, if the slaughter hasn’t claimed him, that I made it exactly sixty minutes, much as I should have liked to make it several hours, and was immensely grateful to him both for the extra half hour and for the delightful touch of humour.

What a picnic it was! We motored away from that place and all its roughness and took the basket under a spinney in the afternoon sun which touched everything in a red glow.

It wasn’t only tea she gave me, but sixty precious minutes of great friendship, letting fall little remarks which helped me to go back all the more determined to stick to it. She renewed my faith in myself and gave me renewed courage,—for which I was unable to thank her. We British are so accursedly tongue-tied in these matters. I did try but of course made a botch of it.

There are some things which speech cannot deal with. Your taking me out that day, oh, American girl, and the other days later, are numbered among them.