My present habitation was a bivouac, rigged up out of a rick-cloth and some posts, which I shared with eleven other troopers. Outside the bivouac I sat, with much equipment still uncleaned after our morning exercises. I had just received a letter, and it was lying on the grass beside me. It was from someone at the War Office whom I knew slightly, it offered me a commission, with the rank of captain, in the Remount Service. I had also got yesterday’s Times, which contained a piece of poetry by Thomas Hardy. “What of the faith and fire within us, men who march away ere the barncocks say night is growing gray?” I did not need Hardy’s “Song of the Soldiers” to warn me that the Remounts was no place for me. Also the idea of my being any sort of officer in the Army seemed absurd. I had already been offered a commission in my own Yeomanry, but how could I have accepted it when everybody was saying that the Germans might land at Dover any day? I was safe in the Army, and that was all I cared about.
I had slipped into the Downfield troop by enlisting two days before the declaration of war. For me, so far, the War had been a mounted infantry picnic in perfect weather. The inaugural excitement had died down, and I was agreeably relieved of all sense of personal responsibility. Cockbird’s welfare was my main anxiety; apart from that, being in the Army was very much like being back at school. My incompetence, compared with the relative efficiency of my associates, was causing me perturbed and flustered moments. Getting on parade in time with myself and Cockbird properly strapped and buckled was ticklish work. But several of the officers had known me out hunting with the Ringwell, and my presence in the ranks was regarded as a bit of a joke, although in my own mind my duties were no laughing matter and I had serious aspirations to heroism in the field. Also I had the advantage of being a better rider than a good many of the men in my squadron, which to some extent balanced my ignorance and inefficiency in other respects.
The basis of my life with the “jolly Yeo-boys” was bodily fatigue, complicated by the minor details of my daily difficulties. There was also the uncertainty and the feeling of emergency which we shared with the rest of the world in that rumor-ridden conjuncture. But my fellow troopers were kind and helpful, and there was something almost idyllic about those early weeks of the War. The flavour and significance of life were around me in the homely smells of the thriving farm where we were quartered; my own abounding health responded zestfully to the outdoor world, to the apple-scented orchards, and all those fertilities which the harassed farmer was gathering in while stupendous events were developing across the Channel. Never before had I known how much I had to lose. Never before had I looked at the living world with any degree of intensity. It seemed almost as if I had been waiting for this thing to happen, although my own part in it was so obscure and submissive.
I belonged to what was known as the “Service Squadron,” which had been formed about three weeks after mobilization. The Yeomanry, as a Territorial unit, had not legitimately pledged themselves for foreign service. It was now incumbent upon them to volunteer. The squadron commanders had addressed their mustered men eloquently on the subject, and those who were willing to lay down their lives without delay were enrolled in the Service Squadron which for a few weeks prided itself on being a corps élite under specially selected officers. Very soon it became obvious that everyone would be obliged to go abroad whether they wanted to or not, and the too-prudent Home Service men were not allowed to forget their previous prudence.
As I sat on the ground with my half-cleaned saddle and the War Office letter, I felt very much a man dedicated to death. And to one who had never heard the hiss of machine-gun bullets there was nothing imaginatively abhorrent in the notion. Reality was a long way off; I had still to learn how to roll my “cloak” neatly on the pommel of my saddle, and various other elementary things. Nor had I yet learned how to clean my rifle; I hadn’t even fired a shot with it. Most of the letters I had received since enlisting had been bills. But they no longer mattered. If the War goes on till next spring, I ruminated, I shall be quite rich. Being in the Army was economical, at any rate!
The bugle blew for twelve o’clock “stables,” and I went down to the horse-lines to take Cockbird to the watering trough. Everyone had been talking about the hundred thousand Russians who were supposed to have passed through England on their way to France. Away across the hot midday miles the bells of Canterbury Cathedral refused to recognize the existence of a war. It was just a dazzling early autumn day, and the gaitered farmer came riding in from his fields on a cob.
As I was leading Cockbird back from watering I passed Nigel Croplady,
