Patrol

by MacDonald, Philip;

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  Patrol

  Philip Macdonald

  TO

  THE OTHER RANKS

  OF

  1914–1918

  CONTENTS

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Glossary

  About the Author

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Abelson

  Brown

  Cook

  Corporal Bell

  Hale

  MacKay

  Morelli

  Pearson

  Sanders

  The Sergeant

  I

  “I don’t exactly know,” said the Sergeant half aloud, “what to do with him.”

  The head which rested on his knee shifted a little and a froth of blood bubbled suddenly at the corners of the mouth.

  “’M!” said the Sergeant. “Bell!”

  The Corporal who stood beside him knelt, peering at the face on the Sergeant’s knee. “That’s that” he said.

  The Sergeant freed his right hand and groped under the boy’s tunic. He looked as if he were listening. Presently his fingers came away. He said:

  “Yes. Pity. Decent boy in some ways. No soldier.” He gently eased down the body until it lay flat upon the sand. He dried his hand upon the side of his breeches and began methodically to empty the pockets of the body’s drill tunic.

  The Corporal rose to his feet and dusted the soft grey-dun sand from his right leg. “There’s those entrenching tools,” he said. “Will I get two-three o’ the blokes to start in?”

  “Yes,” said the Sergeant. He did not look up; he was arranging the contents of the dead subaltern’s pockets in small heaps, tidily.

  Corporal Bell turned and walked slowly, with his lounging gait, back over the twenty yards which separated the body of their officer from the eight troopers who made up the rest of this small patrol. These stood and sat in a listless group. Over an arm of each man were the reins of his horse, standing above and beside him. Both men and horses seemed to droop a little: it was as if the sun which beat down upon them had weighted rays which were pressing them towards the sand.

  The Corporal came up to this group. He said:

  “Morelli, Pearson, Brown—hand over your goras to Hale, put your rifles back in the buckets an’ get those three entrenching tools.”

  Three men rose and gave their reins to a fourth, who now disappeared within a shifting ring of horses, out from which his voice, nasal and Cockney, rose ever and again in bitter, plaintive obscenity.

  “What’s on, Corp?” A giant of a man emerged from the cluster. In his hand was a small, oddly-shaped spade. He looked at it, turning it this way and that. “What’s on?” he repeated.

  “Muriel’s got his,” said the Corporal, “clean through left lung.” He raised his voice. “Come on, you two, Brown’s here. What you playin’ about at? Jildi!”

  They came; two small men: Pearson shuffling, despondent, beads of sweat running down his face from beneath his topee. Morelli stocky, alert, cheerful.

  The Corporal surveyed the three. “Fall in, Sextons,” he said. “Come on!” He led the way.

  “What’s on?” Morelli cocked his head to look up at Brown. “We gotta make nice comfort’ble bed for His Majesty’s Second Lif’tenant A. de C. G. Hawkins?”

  “Comfort hell!” Brown said. “He’s out.”

  “What’s that?” Pearson raised his drawn little face.

  Brown looked down at him. “Muriel,” he said, “is napoo. The officer is dead. Our commander is no longer alive. We are grave-diggers. Understand now, Pansy?”

  “Oh! shut up!” Pearson muttered. He plodded on, shoulders bent.

  “Bleeding queer, that Buddo suddenly poppin’ up like that!” Morelli raised a hand and tilted his topee forward to scratch at the back of his head. “Where’d the bleeder come from?”

  “I nearly got him with my second,” said Brown. “Damn’ fast that horse was, though. But he was a good shot. Bell says right through Muriel’s left lung.” He fell silent as they came up to the Sergeant and the body at his feet.

  “Whereabouts?” asked the Corporal.

  “Anywhere. Anywhere. Only get busy.” The Sergeant was preoccupied. He held a map outspread before him.

  The sand was loose. The three sweated. There was presently a hole pronounced by the Corporal as of sufficient depth. Into this was placed the body of Second-Lieutenant (acting Lieutenant) Arthur de Courcy Grammont Hawkins.

  “Get on! Get on!” said the Sergeant.

  The three entrenching tools and the boots of the Corporal swept back the sand.

  “Going to mark it?” the Corporal asked.

  The Sergeant shook his head. “What’s the good?” He came close and surveyed their work. “Stamp it down a bit,” he said.

  They stamped it down.

  The Sergeant looked again. He said:

  “That’ll do. Bell, get ’em mounted.” He unfolded the map again. “Bring my mare along, Morelli.”

  Three minutes later the little party, riding two abreast but with ten yards or so between each couple, moved off again, heading almost due north. Already loose sand had drifted over the stamped-down square which momentarily had distinguished the subaltern’s grave: now there was no sign, no mark, no indication whatsoever. There had been, here, eleven men. Now ten rode away. A man had been cancelled.

  II

  They had been marching for an hour—ten minutes’ trot, fifteen minutes’ walk, five minutes’ rest.

  After the second rest, as they trotted, the Sergeant, ahead, turned in his saddle.

  “Corporal Bell!” he called.

  The Corporal cantered from his place until he rode level. “Yes,” he said.

  For several moments the Sergeant was silent. At last he said, looking straight ahead of him:

  “Know where we are, Bell?”

  “No,” said the Corporal.

  The Sergeant turned now. “Know what we were meant to do, Bell?”

  “No,” said the Corporal.

  “Neither do I.” He laughed a little.

  “Eh!” said Bell, in a startled voice.

  “You heard me,” said the Sergeant. He jerked his head to indicate the place where the subaltern had been buried. “That young fool! He never told me his orders.”

  “What?” Bell said, and sat upright in his saddle.

  The Sergeant shook his head. “Not a word; not a mutter. I asked him, four or five times. It was always: ‘Yes, yes, Sergeant; I must do that.’ Last time he said: ‘To-morrow.’ To-morrow!” He cleared his throat and spat savagely into the sand. “To-morrow! Well, here’s our to-morrow! Nice one, too! Isn’t it?”

  The Corporal rubbed at his unshaven chin, rasping the strap of his helmet up and down against the blue stubble. “Where’re we heading now?” he asked.

  “I’ve worked it out,” the Sergeant said, “as best I can. We’re goin’ dead north. We ought to hit the river by to-morrow night. That is, assumin’ I’m somewhere near right about where we were when that young fool pegged out.”

  “We may hit the
river,” Bell said slowly. “And that’ll be that? But what else’ll we hit?”

  The Sergeant hunched his shoulders; barely a shrug. “Search me!” he said. “It’s a fine thing—a patrol patrollin’ without known’ what they’re at. An’ the orders locked up in that dead brat. They ought to have ’em on paper. They would in a real army. But here am I: I know the Brigade was movin’ yesterday after we left ’em; I know we were to join ’em. But I don’t know which way they were goin’, or where we were to strike up with ’em.”

  The Corporal’s lips pursed themselves in a soundless whistle. He rubbed at his chin again but did not speak.

  The two rode on in silence unbroken for perhaps five minutes.

  “Don’t say anything,” said the Sergeant at last, “to the men. Not yet.” He held up his arm, easing his horse to a walk. The narrow double line, spread thinly out behind him, ceased jigging.

  Almost at once, with the change, came a thinning of the separate clouds of dusty sand which had enveloped each couple. Brown, riding as first file with Morelli, scrubbed at his lips, first with his naked forearm, then, more usefully, with a foul but at least not sand-covered handkerchief. “Thank God!” he said.

  “Ah,” Morelli agreed. “An’ a gink can’t even spit. Christ! I’m dry.” He spoke with the faintest traces of an American accent, born of those nine months in 1913 when, as the senior and male half of Morel and Moree, he had danced in the lesser vaudeville theatres of New York, Chicago, and Pittsburg.

  “What about a swig?” Brown spoke doubtfully, feeling with tentative fingers at the string of his water-bottle cork.

  “Shouldn’t,” said Morelli.

  “’Spose not.” Brown reluctantly lifted his hand back to the reins again.

  Both men, on a common train of thought, turned to look behind them. There, ten yards away, rode Hale. He had no companion, but led a spare horse across whose back was a pack-saddle of curious shape: at each side of this saddle, below other cases, was strapped a long leather case like a bolster.

  “We’re windy!” Morelli said.

  “Oy!” called Hale. “Wot yer worryin’ abaht? Fink I’ve drunk it all!”

  “—!” said Brown. He smiled. Every one smiled with Hale the military as they had with Hale the prosperous fish-hawker.

  The quarter-hour came to its end. Again the Sergeant flung up his arm, this time halting his horse. The files closed up to him and to each other.

  They dismounted, to form such another group as that of an hour before. They had travelled perhaps eight miles; but this, for all the change in their surrounding, might have been less than ten yards.

  “Might’s well be on the shifting platform at the Lane!” Abelson looked about him, his leering Semite mouth curled in disgust, “Ride, ride, ride, and bleeding well ride. And ride. And nothing to show for it! I says— it! And — it!” He did not repeat himself. — the war! And — the bleeding day I joined up! — it all!”

  Sanders, who had been sitting with his head in his hands, looked up wearily. He said:

  “That foul tongue of yours is a public offence, Abelson.” He spoke English with an accent whose purity would have been remarkable at a dinner of The Pedants: coming from the unshaven lips of an unkept trooper in the British Army it was so incongruous as to be almost an indecency.

  Abelson, who was standing, wheeled round to look down at his attacker. He hunched his shoulders, and his heavy jowl, covered with black stubble, was thrust forward. His eyes closed to slits. The fingers of his right hand bunched themselves into a fist at the end of a heavily-muscled forearm. He said:

  “Yeh praying, oily, bahstud!”

  His tone was an offence greater than the words. Sanders’ thin, high-nosed face showed the rush of blood even beneath the tan and beard and sweat-caked dust. But he closed tighter his thin lips.

  “Yeh—!” said Abelson, bending. “Yeh bloody offal!”

  “Put a sock in it!” Brown said wearily from beside the two. “Leave the feller alone, Abelson.”

  “Leave him alone! Leave him alone?” growled the Jew. “Why don’t he leave me? He’s asking for a poke in the ear! Beggin’ for it.” He looked down at Sanders again, and into Sanders’ bright, mad eyes of pale and blazing blue.

  “Aren’t yeh?” Abelson said. “I’m sick of yeh! Every time I open me mouth, you chip in. And I’ve told yeh what’s coming. Haven’t I now?”

  Sanders climbed stiffly to his feet; a man of medium height and uncertain age, thin and meagre and stooping. In the Regiment’s records his civil occupation was shown enigmatically as “student.”

  “I’m here,” he said. “Hit me if you wish.”

  The Sergeant’s voice came from behind him suddenly. “Saunders! Take that rifle of yours off your saddle. And you, too, Abelson and Hale. You’ll all be in trouble if you’re not careful.”

  These three turned to their horses and each from a long bucket on the off side drew his rifle. The Sergeant passed on.

  At the rear fringe of the group, its penultimate file, Pearson sat alone. Looped round his right arm were the reins of two horses, for to him had fallen the lot of leading the dead subaltern’s charger. The Corporal had told him as if he were conferring an honour… Damn him! the great hulking swine! Why didn’t he lead the horse himself? Bad enough to ride that mare he’d got, which would jig-jig all the time, even when they were at the walk…

  His throat was parched and aching, his mouth full of grit, his tongue stiff and unmanageable. He tried to straighten his bowed shoulders, but the weight and hardness of the laden bandolier seemed suddenly to have increased unbearably, so that, in spite of the heat, he almost wished that his drill tunic were over his shirt rather than, like all the others, with the Regiment’s transport.

  He felt with sly fingers for his water-bottle. He looked cautiously round him. None of the others… how did they manage not to… His hand felt the weight of the cloth-covered bottle; its leather traps and metal neck scorched his fingers. The bottle was light. Too light. He should not have used so much. Presently it would be empty.

  Well, Presently would look after itself. He swung the bottle round to the front of his body. The charger chose this moment to shift away, thus pulling at his right arm.

  “Come up!” whined Pearson, and jerked at its mouth. He got both hands to the bottle and started to ease the cork.

  “Pearson!” said the Sergeant’s voice.

  “Sergeant?” He got somehow to his feet, slipping the bottle again to its place at his side.

  The Sergeant faced him and put out a hand and weighed the bottle in his palm. He said:

  “You’re a fool, Pearson.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Take it off and give it to me.”

  The little man hesitated: he would, he felt, sooner have obeyed an order to cut off one of his fingers.

  “Look slippy!” the Sergeant said. “I shan’t drink it, y’know. And then you’ll have more to-night.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” He slipped the strap from his shoulder and held out the bottle. The Sergeant took it and passed on.

  He came, last, to Cook and MacKay, the inseparables. Cook, sitting, held two rifles embraced by one enormous arm upon which showed dully, through the coated dust, the crude colours of a tattooed snake. Standing with the two horses was MacKay. He held a very small piece of sponge, drenched from his water-bottle, and with this was wiping the caked filth from the nostrils of his chestnut.

  The Sergeant stood watching. MacKay, the nostrils done, slipped the reins of Cook’s black up over his arm, and, with both hands thus free, opened the chestnut’s mouth and scrubbed with the damp sponge at the gums and tongue and roof. He stopped, releasing the lower jaw. The horse pushed its head against the man’s shoulder, then fumbled with caressing lips at his ear.

  “Ye great carrl!” said MacKay gently. He turned to Cook. “Matlow,” he said, and held out the sponge. “Ye just gi’ yon a drop out ye’ boatle.”

  “Ar,” Cook said. He took
the sponge, held it over the neck of his bottle, and shook water on to it.

  MacKay repeated his work upon the black. When he had finished, the Sergeant spoke.

  “It does brighten ’em up,” he said.

  “Ay.” MacKay took his rifle from Cook’s arm, slung it by its webbing band over his shoulder, and surveyed the two horses. They stood noticeably more alert than their fellows. Their heads hung, but not with such utter dejection. They had not, now, that appearance of being upon the point of lying in the sand. “Ay,” said MacKay again. “’F there waur ony ither so’jers heere, horrses wud a’ be like yon.” He tilted back his topee and wiped at the sweat on his forehead with his forearm: the action showed the white hair at his temples and the radiating mesh of wrinkles about his bloodshot eyes. He added: “So they wud, too, ’f Ah waur in charrge.”

  The Sergeant smiled. “That’s all right, Jock,” he said. MacKay was privileged. Once, half-way back through his twenty-five years’ pre-war service, he had been a Squadron-Sergeant-Major. But whisky, at first in easy steps, then with a rushing slide, had brought him low again. He left the army a trooper, as a trooper he enlisted in this regiment when war broke out. A trooper he was still, having steadfastly refused many offers of promotion.

  “What’s a’right?” he said.

  The Sergeant laughed. “About the horses. Next halt, they’ll be watered. I want you to do it, MacKay. Third of a bucket each, or a little less. That right-hand bag mustn’t be touched. Get me?”

  MacKay nodded. “Ay.”

  “But first you’ll draw just a drop from the bag and take it round. They’ll all be sponged out before watering.”

  “Ay.”

  “Right. Start in the minute we halt next time.” The Sergeant turned on his heel and walked back to where Morelli held his horse.

  The patrol mounted and rode on. It was early afternoon and with every minute the sun impossibly grew hotter. They were trotting, and the forty-eight hooves raised each its cloud of grey dust, soft yet gritty. These clouds flew high and joined themselves until around each couple, always with them, enveloping, hung a foul veil in which sight was difficult, speech impossible, and life itself an irksome discomfort. The grey powder hung to their skin, their hair, their clothes: horses and men were dingy, sweating ghosts.