Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Volume 153 September 19 1917 by Various

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Ebook has 214 lines and 16497 words, and 5 pages

Toddles beamed more emphatically than ever. "One in what I took to be the station yard, one right on the line, and one O.K. ammunition truck; terrific explosion--nearly upset me. Three perfectly good shots."

So far Toddles' account agreed very fairly with the two we already had.

"Didn't have any trouble with the release gear, I suppose?" said Grigson. "Nasty thing that. I've known it jam before now."

"Well," answered Toddles, "it did stick a bit, but I just yanked it over and it worked."

"Splendid!" said Grigson brightly. "A nice bit of work, and very thoughtful of you to bring home such jolly souvenirs."

"Look here," replied Toddles with warmth, "who the devil are you getting at?"

"Nothing; oh, nothing at all."

We all went down on hands and knees. Lying placidly in the rack with an air of well-merited ease born of the consciousness that they had, without any effort of their own, avoided a fatiguing duty, were three large bombs.

"Er--ah--hum," said Toddles. "Now then, Sergeant, hurry up and get this machine back into the shed!"

And the Sergeant's face was the best joke of all.

Still, it must not be assumed that life in a garage is necessarily fatal to virtue.

THE WATCH DOGS.

It is a long train and there is only one dining-car. Those who don't get into the car at Amiens don't dine; there is accordingly some competition, especially on the part of the military element, of which the majority is proceeding to Paris on leave and doesn't propose to start its outing by going without its dinner. Only the very fit or the very cunning survive. Having got in myself among the latter category I was not surprised to see, among the former category, a large and powerful Canadian Corporal.

If he can afford to pay for his dinner there is no reason, I suppose, why even a corporal should not dine. If he can manage to snaffle a seat in the car there is certainly no reason why a French Commandant should not dine. There is every reason, I imagine, for railway companies to furnish their dining-cars with those little tables for two which bring it about that a pair of passengers, who have never seen each other before and have not elected to meet on this occasion, find themselves together, for a period, on the terms of the most complete and homely intimacy. Lastly, the attendant had every reason to put the Corporal and the Commandant to dine together, for there was nowhere else to put either of them.

What would have happened if this had taken place ten years ago, and the French Commandant had been an English Major? The situation, of course, simply could not have arisen; it would have been unthinkable. But if it had arisen the train would certainly have stopped for good; probably the world would have come to an end. As it was, what did happen? Let me say at once that both the Corporal and the Commandant behaved with a generosity which was entirely delightful; the Corporal's was pecuniary generosity, the Commandant's generosity of spirit. This was as it should be, and both were true to type.

Quick though the French are at the uptake, it took the good Commandant just a little while to settle down to the odd position. This was not the size and shape and manner of man with whom he was used to take his meals. As an officer one feels one's responsibilities on these public occasions, and I felt I ought to intervene and to do something to rearrange the general position. But at the start I caught the Corporal's eye, and there was in it such a convincing look of "Whatever I may do I mean awfully well," that I just sat still and did nothing.

The awkward pause was over before the soup was finished. Rough good-nature and subtle good sense soon combined to eliminate arbitrary distinctions. The Commandant won the first credit by starting a conversation; it was really the only thing to do. Had the Commandant and I been opposite each other we should probably have dined in polite silence. But the Corporal was one of those red-faced burly people with whom you have, if you are close to them, either to laugh or fight.

A draught or two of champagne has, as you may be aware, the effect of developing to an extreme any friendly feelings you may at the moment happen to possess ...

He wasn't drunk, and I had never said he was, and I was not in the least interested in his theme, until he got to the point of what his main reason was for not being drunk. This, I admit, interested me deeply. "When we get to Parry," said he, "we shall be met by Military Police, and they will ask to see our papers. And if my papers weren't in order and if I wasn't in order myself I should be put under arrest and sent back again. And I don't mean to be sent back, and I have all my papers in order and I'm in order myself." And, dash it all, the fellow was right, and when we got to the Gare du Nord there were the Military Police as large as life, and clearly there was no avoiding them.

At first I didn't quite know what to do about it, but a little thought decided me. "There are your M.P.," I said to the Corporal, as we trooped slowly out of the dining-car. "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to come along with me and interview one of them." Giving him no time to argue, I led him straight to the Police Sergeant and insisted upon this case being dealt with before all others. "I must ask you, Sergeant, to make this man produce his papers. I have reason to doubt whether he is in order."

The Corporal began to expostulate, but the Sergeant adopted the none-of-that-I-know-all-about-your-sort attitude which is so admirable in these officials. The Corporal produced some papers and tendered them indignantly. The Police Sergeant remained impassively unconvinced, but gave me one fleeting look, as if he wondered whether I had put him on to a good thing. "There are papers and papers," said I, as if I too knew all about the business. "Let us see if they are in order." The Sergeant's instinct had already told him that the papers were quite in order, and he was all for cutting the business short and getting out of it as quickly as he could. But I insisted upon the most minute examination and would not give in and admit my mistake until the Sergeant practically ordered us both off the station.

Having given the Sergeant to understand that he was to blame for the Corporal's papers being in order, I allowed myself to be passed on. The Corporal followed me; he wanted an explanation. When we got outside the station I let him catch me up, because I thought he was entitled to one.

"Will you allow me to ask why you did that, Sir?" he said very indignantly but not rudely. "You knew that I had my papers, Sir, and that they were in order."

"Yes," I said. "But I knew that my own weren't."

His cheeks suffused with the most jovial red I have ever seen.

I didn't know that a human laugh could be so loud. On the whole I think it was a good thing that we had arrived in Paris after closing time, since otherwise, in spite of my dislike of the stuff, I'm sure that three more bottles of the most expensive brand would have been cracked. I should have had to stand one; he would have positively insisted on standing two.

Yours ever,

HENRY.

A SIGN OF THE TIMES.

Pessimist!

"WHAT DISABLED SOLDIERS SHOULD KNOW.

Correct.

It is an unfortunate colour, but with a name like that he can always try one of the others.

While the tide of new life that was kindled by the torch of revolution seems destined to crumble into dust.

THE TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS.

There are few phases of the War--subsidiary phases, side-issues, marginalia--more interesting, I think, than the return of the natives: the triumphant progress, through their old haunts and among their old friends, of the youths, recently civilians, but now tried and tested warriors; lately so urban and hesitating and immature, but now so seasoned and confident and of the world. And particularly I have in mind the return of the soldier to his house of business, and his triumphant progress through the various departments, gathering admiration and homage and even wonder. I am not sure that wonder does not come first, so striking can the metamorphosis be.

When he left he was often only a boy. Very likely rather a young terror in his way: shy before elders, but a desperate wag with his contemporaries. He had a habit of whistling during office hours; he took too long for dinner, and was much given to descending the stairs four at a time and shaking the premises, blurring the copying-book and under-stamping the letters. When sent to the bank, a few yards distant, he was absent for an hour. Cigarettes and late hours may have given him a touch of pastiness.

To-day, what a change! Tall, well-set-up and bronzed, he is a model of health and strength. His eyes meet all our eyes frankly; he has done nothing to be ashamed of: there is no unposted letter in his pocket, no consciousness of a muddled telephone message in his head. To be on the dreaded carpet of the manager's room was once an ordeal; to-day he can drop cigarette-ash on it and turn never a hair.

"Oh yes," he says, "he has been under fire. Knows it backwards. Knows the difference in sound between all the shells. So far he's been very lucky, but, Heavens! the pals he's lost! Terrible things happen, but one gets numbed--apathetic, you know.

"What does it feel like to go over the top? The first time it's a rotten feeling, but you get used to that too. War teaches you what you can get used to, by George it does! He wouldn't have believed it, but there--"

And so on. All coming quite naturally and simply; no swank, no false modesty.

"This is his first leave since he went to France, and he thought he must come to see the firm first of all. Sad about poor old Parkins, wasn't it? Killed directly. And Smithers' leg--that was bad too. Rum to see such a lot of girls all over the place, doing the boys' jobs. Well, well, it's a strange world, and who would have thought all this was going to happen?..."

Such is his conversation on the carpet. In the great clerks' room, where there are now so many girls, he is a shade more of a dog. The brave, you know, can't be wholly unconscious of the fair, and as I pass through I catch the same words, but spoken with a slightly more heroic ring.

"Lord, yes, you get used even to going over the top. A rotten feeling the first time, but you get used to it. That's one of the rum things about war, it teaches you what you can get used to. You get apathetic, you know. That's the word--apathetic: used to anything. Standing for hours in water up to your knees. Sleeping among rats." "It is a fact," he swears to them. "Rats running over you half the night, and now and then a shell bursting close by."

Standing at his own old desk as he talks, he looks even taller and stronger than before--by way of contrast, I suppose, and as I pass out I wonder if he will ever be able to bring himself to resume it.

Having occasion, a little while later, to go downstairs among the warehousemen, where female labour has not yet penetrated. I hear him again, and notice that his language has become more free. Safely underground he extends himself a little.

"Over the top?" he is saying. "Yes, three blinking times. What does it feel like the first time? Well--" and he tells them how it feels, in a way that I can't reproduce here, but vivid as lightning compared with his upstairs manner. And still he remains the clean forthright youth who sees his duty a dead sure thing, and does it, even though he may be perplexed now and then.

"So long!" they say, old men-friends and new girl-acquaintances crowding round him as at last he tears himself away . "So long!" they say. "Take care of yourself."

"You bet!" he replies. "But the question is, Shall I be allowed to? What price the Hun?" And with a "So long, all!" he is gone.

All over London, in the big towns all over Great Britain, are these triumphant progresses going on.

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