All in It : K(1) Carries On Part 29

"Well, their bit of trench was being sh.e.l.led one day, and Fortnum, who was in number one bay with five other men, kept shouting out to Mason, who was round a traverse and out of sight, to enquire how he was getting on. 'Are you all right, Bill?' 'Are you _sure_ you're all right, Bill?' 'Are you _still_ all right, Bill?' and so on. At last Bill, getting fed up with this unusual solicitude, yelled back: 'What's all the anxiety abaht, eh?' And Fortnum put his head round the traverse and explained. 'We're getting up a little sweepstake in our bay,' he said, 'abaht the first casuality, and I've drawn you, ole son!'"

Wagstaffe chuckled.

"That must have been the regiment that had the historic poker party,"

he said.

"What yarn was that?"

"I heard it from the Brigadier--four times, to be exact. Five men off duty were sitting in a dug-out playing poker. A gentleman named 'Erb had just gone to the limit on his hand, when a rifle-grenade came into the dug-out from somewhere and did him in. While they were waiting for the stretcher-bearers, one of the other players picked up 'Erb's hand and examined it. Then he laid it down again, and said: 'It doesn't matter, chaps. Poor 'Erb wouldn't a made it, anyway. I 'ad four queens.'"

"Tommy has his own ideas of fun, I'll admit," said Bobby. "Do you remember those first trenches of ours at Festubert? There was a dead Frenchman buried in the parapet--you know how they used to bury people in those days?"

"I did notice it. Go on."

"Well, this poor chap's hand stuck out, just about four feet from the floor of the trench. My dug-out was only a few yards away, and I never saw a member of my platoon go past that spot without shaking the hand and saying, Good-morning, Alphonse!' I had it built up with sandbags ultimately, and they were quite annoyed!"

"They have some grisly notions about life and death," agreed Wagstaffe, "but they are extraordinarily kind to people in trouble, such as wounded men, or prisoners. You can't better them."

"And now there are five millions of them. We are all in it, at last!"

"We certainly are--men and women. I'm afraid I had hardly realised what our women were doing for us. Being on service all the time, one rather overlooks what is going on at home. But stopping a bullet puts one in the way of a good deal of inside information on that score."

"You mean hospital work, and so on?"

"Yes. One meets a lot of wonderful people that way! Sisters, and ward-maids, and V.A.D.'s--"

"I love all V.A.D.'s!" said Bobby, unexpectedly.

"Why, my youthful Mormon?"

"Because they are the people who do all the hard work and get no limelight--like--like--!"

"Like Second Lieutenants--eh?"

"Yes, that is the idea. They have a pretty hard time, you know,"

continued Bobby confidentially: "And nothing heroic, either. Giving up all the fun that a girl is ent.i.tled to; was.h.i.+ng dishes; answering the door-bell; running up and downstairs; eating rotten food. That's the sort of--"

"What is her name?" enquired the accusing voice of Major Wagstaffe.

Then, without waiting to extort an answer from the embarra.s.sed Bobby:--

"You are quite right. This war has certainly brought out the best in our women. The South African War brought out the worst. My goodness, you should have seen the Mount Nelson Hotel at Capetown in those days! But they have been wonderful this time--wonderful. I love them all--the bus-conductors, the ticket-punchers, the lift-girls--one of them nearly shot me right through the roof of Harrod's the other day--and the window-cleaners and the page-girls and the railway-portresses! I divide my elderly heart among them. And I met a bunch of munition girls the other day, Bobby, coming home from work.

They were all young, and most of them were pretty. Their faces and hands were stained a bright orange-colour with picric acid, and will be, I suppose, until the Boche is booted back into his stye. In other words, they had deliberately sacrificed their good looks for the duration of the war. That takes a bit of doing, I know, innocent bachelor though I am. But bless you, they weren't worrying. They waved their orange-coloured hands to me, and pointed to their orange-coloured faces, and laughed. They were _proud_ of them; they were doing their bit. They nearly made me cry, Bobby. Yes, we are all in it now; and those of us who come out of it are going to find this old island of ours a wonderfully changed place to live in."

"How? Why?" enquired Bobby. Possibly he was interested in Wagstaffe's unusual expansiveness: possibly he hoped to steer the conversation away from the topic of V.A.D.'s--possibly towards it. You never know.

"Well," said Wagstaffe, "we are all going to understand one another a great deal better after this war."

"Who? Labour and Capital, and so on?"

"'Labour and Capital' is a meaningless and misleading expression, Bobby. For instance, our men regard people like you and me as Capitalists; the ordinary Brigade Major regards us as Labourers, and pretty common Labourers at that. It is all a question of degree. But what I mean is this. You can't call your employer a tyrant and an extortioner after he has shared his rations with you and never spared himself over your welfare and comfort through weary months of trench-warfare; neither, when you have experienced a working-man's courage and cheerfulness and reliability in the day of battle, can you turn round and call him a loafer and an agitator in time of peace--can you? That is just what the _Bandar-log_ overlook, when they jabber about the dreadful industrial upheaval that is coming with peace. Most of all have they overlooked the fact that with the coming of peace this country will be invaded by several million of the wisest men that she has ever produced--the New British Army. That Army will consist of men who have spent three years in getting rid of mutual misapprehensions and a.s.similating one another's point of view--men who went out to the war ignorant and intolerant and insular, and are coming back wise to all the things that really matter. They will flood this old country, and they will make short work of the agitator, and the alarmist, and the profiteer, and all the nasty creatures that merely make a noise instead of _doing_ something, and who crab the work of the Army and Navy--more especially the Navy--because there isn't a circus victory of some kind in the paper every morning. Yes, Bobby, when our boys get back, and begin to ask the _Bandar-log_ what they _did_ in the Great War--well, it's going to be a rotten season for _Bandar-log_ generally!"

There was silence again. Presently Bobby spoke:--

"When our boys get back! Some of them are never coming back again, worse luck!"

"Still," said Wagstaffe, "what they did was worth doing, and what they died for was worth while. I think their one regret to-day would be that they did not live to see their own fellows taking the offensive--the line going forward on the Somme; the old tanks waddling over the Boche trenches; and the Boche prisoners throwing up their hands and yowling 'Kamerad'! And the Kut unpleasantness cleaned up, and all the kinks in the old Salient straightened out! And Wytchaete and Messines! You remember how the two ridges used to look down into our lines at Wipers and Plugstreet? And now we're on top of both of them! Some of our friends out there--the friends who are not coming back--would have liked to know about that, Bobby. I wish they could, somehow."

"Perhaps they do," said Bobby simply.

It was close on midnight. Our "two old soldiers, broken in the wars,"

levered themselves stiffly to their feet, and prepared to depart.

"Heigho!" said Wagstaffe. "It is time for two old wrecks like us to be in bed. That's what we are, Bobby--wrecks, dodderers, has-beens! But we have had the luck to last longer than most. We have dodged the missiles of the Boche to an extent which justifies us in claiming that we have followed the progress of their war with a rather more than average degree of continuity. We were the last of the old crowd, too.

Kemp has got his Brigade, young c.o.c.kerell has gone to be a Staff Captain, and--you and I are here. Some of the others dropped out far too soon. Young Lochgair, old Blaikie--"

"Waddell, too," said Bobby. "We joined the same day."

"And Angus M'Lachlan. I think he would have made the finest soldier of the lot of us," added Wagstaffe. "You remember his remark to me, that we only had the bye to play now? He was a true prophet: we are dormy, anyhow. (Only cold feet at Home can let us down now.) And he only saw three months' service! Still, he made a great exit from this world, Bobby, and that is the only thing that matters in these days. Ha! H'm!

As our new Allies would say, I am beginning to 'pull heart stuff' on you. Let us go to bed. Sleeping here?"

"Yes, till to-morrow. Then off on leave."

"How much have you got?"

"A month. I say?"

"Yes?"

"Are you doing anything on the nineteenth?"

Wagstaffe regarded his young friend suspiciously.

"Is this a catch of some kind?" he enquired.

"Oh, no. Will you be my--" Bobby turned excessively pink, and completed his request.

Wagstaffe surveyed him resignedly.

"We all come to it, I suppose," he observed.

"Only some come to it sooner than others. Are you of age, my lad? Have your parents--"

"I'm twenty-two," said Bobby shortly.

"Will the bridesmaids be pretty?"

"They are all peaches," replied Bobby, with enthusiasm. "But nothing whatever," he added, in a voice of respectful rapture, "compared with the bride!"