After a lot of clearing of throats, whisky—the fatal word— was mentioned. No sooner was it out of the mouth of the officer who had had the temerity to mention it, than Sergeant Shotspur cut him short with a clearing of the throat that boded no good for anybody. He stiffened, his eye took on a steely glare, and he apostrophized them as follows:
'I'm no booze artist!' he thundered. 'I'm no booze artist, gentlemen, and I'd have you know it! I've been teetotal from birth! I was reared on milk and milk is still my drink. If a man wants a drop of Scotch, okay. I'm not a bigot. But you won't catch me sniffing round it. A principle's a principle, gentlemen—them are mine and I'll stand by them so help me God! It's not to a booze artist you're speaking. Whisky says nothing to me.'
There was a dead silence in the Mess. With drawn faces we cast guilty looks at each other. Then one of the bolder spirits ventured a remark.
'We had no intention at all Sergeant of suggesting you were I fond of the bottle. You've missed the point of this. All we were
! suggesting was that not only the bottles but whole cases
disappear. They vanish!'
'Vanish! I don't get you sir. The stuff disappears because it ! is swallowed V
The outspoken officer gently shook his head.
'We know, sergeant,' he said, 'that some of the whisky disappears that way. We drink some of it ourselves.'
'Yes sir,' the unbending Shotspur answered shortly.
'That we fully realize, sergeant,' the officer went on very soothingly. 'But there is far more of this whisky that disappears without our getting a chance of swallowing it. That's what we're complaining about. We hoped, sergeant, that you might be able to account for that.'
With such circumlocution, it was at last made perfectly clear that there was more than one way of getting rid of a bottle of whisky. There were other artists, besides 'booze-artists'. There were financial wizards, for instance. These latter might have other uses for a bottle of whisky than the vulgar one of pouring it down the throat.
The Sergeant's face slowly cleared.
'I get your meaning sir,' he said. 'The whisky might have been soldi'
Everybody nodded his head brightly, with an air of the most intense relief.
'You got it, sergeant!' they responded in eager chorus.
They beamed assent at the sergeant, and the sergeant—his honour safe, prepared now to relax—beamed back at them.
'Of course—I do see that, gentlemen. That might quite well have occurred,' he agreed. 'I never thought of that.'
'You can't suggest how this leakage might have come about, sergeant,' someone diffidently enquired.
The sergeant shook his head.
'No sir,' he said. 'There I can't help you. I can't understand how they can be short. I think they are. I thought myself there was a few missing.' He frowned. It evidently had given him a little cause for uneasy thought. 'I can't figure out who
would take any of them. There aren't any thieves in this Mess, gentlemen. Not among us.*
He paused, and eyed the company, in a way none too flattering to the company.
'We've got clean hands!' he said, his voice rising a little.
'Of course, of course, sergeant,' hastily remarked the senior officer present. 'Thank you, sergeant. We just thought we'd ask you. I guess that will do, sergeant!'
Sergeant Shotspur saluted, stamped menacingly, about-turned, and marched out of the room. The Mess looked at each other in silence for some moments. Then it burst out laughing, slapping its thighs and bucking about on its chairs.
'Well, well, well!' cried a big booted major, standing up and pulling down his belt. 'I guess we'll have to call that enquiry closed!'
'Yes—I don't think any more will disappear just yet!' said the senior officer grimly.
'What has been happening to the whisky?'1 asked my neighbour.
'Happening to it? He's been selling cases of it at a time. He got three bucks a bottle!'
'He must be tolerably well off.'
'You've said it!' my neighbour laughed. 'It had to be stopped. One day last week he ran out of it—we had to have lime juice.'
CHAPTER XV
King John
Augustus John arrived at Canadian Corps Headquarters a few days later. He had been made a major in the Canadian Army. He was the only officer in the British Army, except the King, who wore a beard. In consequence he was a constant source of anxiety and terror wherever he went. Catching sight of him coming down a road any ordinary private would display every sign of the liveliest consternation. He would start saluting a mile off. Augustus John—every inch a King George—would solemnly touch his hat and pass on.
We lived in a large chateau. Our life there was uneventful— quiet, dignified, and aloof. The contrast to the squalid mud hovels of the Front was a little startling. And we had a staff car at our disposal which reported for duty every morning.
I ran down to my battery in the car—to my new Canadian battery. It was a '6 inch How' battery. I had nothing to do with it, of course, except to paint it. It stood by itself, in the great open spaces of Vimy Ridge. There was nothing near it.
This battery seldom fired. Everything was different in this part of the Line—so different that to start with I could scarcely believe my eyes, or ears.
Nobody ever fired on the Vimy Front, at the time I was there. Nobody thought of war. I was told that for months nothing had happened there. Complete peace had reigned on both sides of the Line. By mutual consent the Hun and the Canuck abstained from hostilities, except for a shot or two now and then. Nothing was to be gained by fighting in this sector. So why fight? Away in the distance, over in the ruins of Lens, a shell would fall occasionally. That was all; like a big door banging far away in the distance. After my recent experiences this peace was almost uncanny. They always say that it is impossible to start a war again after an armistice. This local peace must have been very enervating for the troops, I should think. I did not like to ask them about this as I thought they might interpret it as swank, as if I were saying I'd just come from a very hot part of the Line.
I made the acquaintance of the officers and men of the battery. I was my own master, of course. Next day I went down again with my sketchbook, took up my position and began to make a few drawings of the guns. It was a fine sunny winter's day, there was no battery or anything at all in sight. Just a rolling expanse of old battlefields, gradually softening into an effect like a rather untidy looking common.
I took up my pencil and was just about to make a mark on the paper, when immediately overhead a great angry shrapnel burst occurred, spraying the ground all round and, in this idyllic scene, causing such an uproar that all the birds in the neighbourhood began dashing about—the officers came flying up out of the Mess dugout, shouting in amazement, 'What's that?' and as to the gunners, pottering about the guns, they just vanished to right and left as if they'd been shot.
I know this will scarcely sound credible. But it is exactly what happened. It was just as if the Germans had got wind of my activities, and had said, 'Ha! We will put a little shell-fire into this picture!'
I felt in some way guilty for this outrage. But of course I could offer no explanation for it. On their side, the officers, when they had recovered from their stupefaction, seemed to feel the need of an apology too. They assured me that nothing of the sort had happened for longer than they could remember. But I assured them that I held them in no way responsible for this event. It was, in fact, the sort of thing that might happen anywhere, during a war. And I, for my part, did not even hold the Germans responsible. The gun probably went off by mistake while they were cleaning it.
There was nothing further of this kind, I am glad to say. It was the first and last shell I saw fired in anger on the Vimy Ridge (if it had been fired in anger, which I very much doubt). I made the necessary sketches. The unnecessary sketches, I should perhaps say, as I could draw a gun with my eyes shut of course. I completed my group of designs—at my leisure needless to sa
y. For frankly, I liked the life.
Augustus John was working very hard, on his side, though not neglecting the social side of life. No artist who neglects the social side of life is an artist—he is a square peg in a round hole. One day we decided to go in search of Ian Strang, who was a Camouflage Officer (a divine job) in another beautiful chateau not too far away. It was not far from Arminteers, I think.
I believe this half-ruined city was Arminteers, where the famous young lady came from, but I can't be certain. It looked as though it might be.
We got to this town anyhow, and discovered an excellent hotel to lunch at. In its courtyard upon a trestle table was the most surprising collection of English pornographic literature I have ever encountered. (It must have been Arminteers.) All the Anglo-Saxon pornography of the Paris quays and the Palais Royal transported to the Front, for dugout-reading, and the dolce par niente of rest billets.
The lunch was good. This was war, and my superior officer and myself did ourselves proud. We should have done so if it hadn't been war, but that made no difference. I have an extremely strong head. It is that one of my many manly virtues which perhaps becomes me most. What is more I am civil when I'm drunk, which is more than can be said for some people.
Time is not a dimension that I hold in very great esteem as you would know if you knew me better, but I drew my friend's attention to the manner in which it was slipping away (that's one of the things I don't like about it) and we returned to our car. Augustus John (looking very like the late King, only after an awfully good lunch, and petrifying all troops within sight) commanded the chauffeur to drive to £the Camouflage Section'. That was admittedly a bit vague but I was in no mood to insist upon a precision of outline which was alien to the large sweep of our purely excursionist plans. John waved his hand over to the left and said 'You know where it is, don't you? It's somewhere over there. Not far!' and got into the car.
We started off and bowled along a high road at a pretty smart pace. John and I were discussing one thing and another and the time slipped away, in its usual sly way. The chauffeur stopped and I leant out of the window.
'Aren't you sure of the route?' I asked.
'No, sir,' he said in his curt Canadian fashion.
'Not think we're on the right road? Of course it's the right road!' shouted John. 'Go straight ahead. We'll be there presently.'
We proceeded, and again John and I spoke of this thing and that. Time slipped away—after its customary underhand fashion. Suddenly I thought I noticed a shell-burst, of all peculiar things, in a harmless-looking field we were passing, though otherwise the landscape looked normal enough for anything. I decided I must have been mistaken. A cow must have been kicking the earth up as a change from chewing the cud. Then at the next cross-roads I remarked that the sentry was crouching in his dugout and had his tin-hat pulled down over his eyes. At the same moment I noticed, not far away to our left, the tower of a church, and this time it was unmistakeable. The tops of not one burst but two or three at least were plainly visible.
Stopping the car, I got out and approached the sentry.
'Where does this road lead?' I asked him.
'To the Front Line, sir,' he answered.
'To the Front Line?' I asked him, sternly.
'Yes, sir!' His voice trembled, he cowered a little, for he saw the King, he thought, in the car at my back. 'It's just up the road there a short way, sir.'
He stared at me tongue-tied after that, for he had a vision of the King of England being driven right into the Front Line and possibly over it into the German Line.
I ordered the Canadian chauffeur to take us down the road to the left—presumably parallel to the Front Line and not far behind it. In a couple of minutes we entered a village street. There were two howitzer batteries firing away for all they were worth on the side of the road, the gunners crouching close up to the guns. Shells were whooping down every few seconds in front of the batteries and in the neighbourhood of the Church. I told the chauffeur to stop at a dressing station, and got out.
The Camouflage Officer I learnt was to be found about a mile or two behind the village; and as speedily as possible with the able collaboration of the chauffeur, I got us out of this incredibly warlike hamlet. The troops of course all thought it was the King—but whether they considered I was abducting him or that he had insisted on looking into the war at first-hand I do not know.
As we left Augustus John peered out of the celluloid window at the back of our heads, to gaze, I suppose, at these hideous happenings that we were leaving behind. But he caught sight of something else which arrested his attention.
'Look!' he said pointing upwards.
I peered out of the little window, too, up in the sRy. There were half-a-dozen aeroplanes whirling round each other, obviously with some sinister intention. Augustus John screwed up his eyes and nose with his Romany craftiness, and grinned with mischievous satisfaction.
'Well,' he drawled, 'no once can say we haven't been under fire, can they, what!' And he gave a gruff little laugh to himself, at the funny things that happen to a man—in the most unlikely places, too.
PART IV
Captain Guy Baker—In Memoriam
The War ended, I was of course in the 'post-war', and you know what I think of that. That period was just what you would have expected after the morass of mud, uplift, Tipperary, easy money, heartbreak house—in a word, the squalid serio-comedy the Great War was.
The War went on for far too long, or too long for a 'totalitarian' war, as it would now be called. It was too vast for its meaning, like a giant with the brain of a midge. Its epic proportions were grotesquely out of scale, seeing what it was fought to settle. It was far too indecisive. It settled nothing, as it meant nothing. Indeed, it was impossible to escape the feeling that it was not meant to settle anything—that could have any meaning, or be of any advantage, to the general run of men.
Meanwhile the War had demoralized the world, in accustoming it to purposeless and incessant violence. And the terrible futility of the 'Welsh Wizard's' phrases did the rest. It was they, more than anything else, that drove the iron into the soul of an overtaxed humanity. They provoked a bitter laugh, where it would have been better to .keep laughter out of it.
Without Mr. Lloyd George's labelling, the War might have sunk out of sight, an almost anonymous horror. They gave it as it were a name, a satiric identity. It was 'the War to end War'. It was 'the War to make the world safe for democracy'. It was 'the War to make England a place fit for heroes to live in'.
What a terrible felicity of expression to convey, with a merciless blatancy, all that things are not! If only Mr. Lloyd George had kept his little lawyer's mouth shut, things would have been easier.
These slogans were like insults. It was adding insult to injury to utter them.
The 'Post-war' started under the shadow of this verbiage. Quite at its opening a fearful plague overwhelmed the world in which more people were wiped out than in all the war put together. I was in a military hospital with double pneumonia; enormous Anzacs, the flower of colonial England, were dying like flies, having escaped all the hazards of war. Our hospital was full of them. When I came out of my delirium I found I had made a notable recovery. My poor friend Guy Baker, on the other hand, not so strong as I was, succumbed—resourceful to the last, and attempting to persuade Frederick Etchells, the artist, who had come to visit him, to put him into his kit-bag which was beneath the hospital bed and smuggle him out. I believe Etchells should have done it. If he had not found Baker dead in the kitbag at the end of the bus-journey, he might have recovered, and we should still to-day be assisting at his orgasms of overpowering mirth. For he was a man who could get drunk on a bottle of ginger beer (as Augustus John once said of him). Such a man we could not afford to lose.
When the War started Captain Guy Baker was I suppose about forty. He had left the Army some years before, owing to ill-health. I never knew what was the matter with him, but he was pretty sick most of t
he time, both before and after his brief war service. He hobbled round and attested, nevertheless. They did not make him a colonel as I think he had expected. Actually he went to France as a captain in the infantry.
Before that he had sprained his shoulder. He was a very conscientious soldier and one extremely alive to what was due to military rank. One day at Aldershot he was about to enter a hut when suddenly a General emerged and took him unawares. He was determined to be wanting in nothing where a respectful and soldierly smartness was concerned; he swung up his right arm in a spectacular arc to the salute, his hand convulsively waggling an inch from the peak of his cap. He showed me (as best he could, poor fellow) how he did it. He put all his soul into that salute. But he nearly broke his arm. For weeks he wore it in a sling.
When he got to France something of the same sort happened. He went 'over the top' with his battalion. But with his customary zeal, he literally leapt over the top; with the result— wracked as he was with rheumatism—that might have been expected. His leg cracked under him. He rose and hobbled after his battalion, which by this time was snugly installed in shell-holes fifty yards ahead. In the most leisurely way—it was the only way that was open to him—under a withering fire, he followed his men. He was dragged down into a shellhole, everybody marvelling at his gallantry, so he told me. After a short stay there, he returned, with the survivors, to the trench. By this time he was suffering the agonies of the damned. And when he returned to England he was for over a year on crutches —in addition to the fact that his arm never recovered entirely from the effects of the terrific salute.
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