No More Parades · Part I · Chapter 1 4 (3/4)

The whole organization of his confounded battalion fell to pieces. It appeared that a circular had come round three months before⁠—before Tietjens had been given command of that unit⁠—asking for experienced first-class warrant officers capable of serving as instructors in Officers’ Training Corps, with commissions. Sergeant-Major Cowley had been recommended by the colonel of the depot, Sergeant-Major Ledoux by his own colonel. Tietjens felt as if he had been let down⁠—but of course he had not been. It was just the way of the army, all the time. You got a platoon, or a battalion, or, for the matter of that, a dugout or a tent, by herculean labours into good fettle. It ran all right for a day or two, then it all fell to pieces, the personnel scattered to the four winds by what appeared merely wanton orders, coming from the most unexpected headquarters, or the premises were smashed up by a chance shell that might just as well have fallen somewhere else⁠ ⁠… The finger of Fate!⁠ ⁠…

But it put a confounded lot more work on him⁠ ⁠… He said to Sergeant-Major Cowley, whom he found in the next hut where all the paper work of the unit was done:

“I should have thought you would have been enormously better off as regimental sergeant-major than with a commission. I know I would rather have the job.” Cowley answered⁠—he was very pallid and shaken⁠—that with his unfortunate infirmity, coming on at any moment of shock, he would be better in a job where he could slack off, like an O.T.C. He had always been subject to small fits, over in a minute, or couple of seconds even⁠ ⁠… But getting too near a H.E. shell⁠—after Noircourt, which had knocked out Tietjens himself⁠—had brought them on, violent. There was also, he finished, the gentility to be considered. Tietjens said:

“Oh, the gentility!⁠ ⁠… That’s not worth a flea’s jump⁠ ⁠… There won’t be any more parades after this war. There aren’t any now. Look at who your companions will be in an officer’s quarters; you’d be in a great deal better society in any self-respecting sergeants’ mess.” Cowley answered that he knew the service had gone to the dogs. All the same his missis liked it. And there was his daughter Winnie to be considered. She had always been a bit wild, and his missis wrote that she had gone wilder than ever, all due to the war. Cowley thought that the bad boys would be a little more careful how they monkeyed with her if she was an officer’s daughter⁠ ⁠… There was probably something in that!

Coming out into the open, confidentially with Tietjens, Cowley dropped his voice huskily to say:

“Take Quartermaster-Sergeant Morgan for R.S.M., sir.” Tietjens said explosively:

“I’m damned if I will.” Then he asked: “Why?” The wisdom of an old N.C.O.s is a thing no prudent officer neglects.

“He can do the work, sir,” Cowley said. “He’s out for a commission, and he’ll do his best⁠ ⁠…” He dropped his husky voice to a still greater depth of mystery:

“You’re over two hundred⁠—I should say nearer three hundred⁠—pounds down in your battalion stores. I don’t suppose you want to lose a sum of money like that?”

Tietjens said:

“I’m damned if I do⁠ ⁠… But I don’t see⁠ ⁠… Oh, yes, I do⁠ ⁠… If I make him sergeant-major he has to hand over the stores all complete⁠ ⁠… Today⁠ ⁠… Can he do it?”

Cowley said that Morgan could have till the day after tomorrow. He would look after things till then.

“But you’ll want to have a flutter before you go,” Tietjens said. “Don’t stop for me.”

Cowley said that he would stop and see the job through. He had thought of going down into the town and having a flutter. But the girls down there were a common sort, and it was bad for his complaint⁠ ⁠… He would stop and see what could be done with Morgan. Of course it was possible that Morgan might decide to face things out. He might prefer to stick to the money he’d got by disposing of Tietjens’ stores to other battalions that were down, or to civilian contractors. And stand a court martial! But it wasn’t likely. He was a Nonconformist deacon, or pew-opener, or even a minister possibly, at home in Wales⁠ ⁠… From near Denbigh! And Cowley had got a very good man, a first-class man, an Oxford professor, now a lance-corporal at the depot, for Morgan’s place. The colonel would lend him to Tietjens and would get him rated acting quartermaster-sergeant unpaid⁠ ⁠… Cowley had it all arranged⁠ ⁠… Lance-Corporal Caldicott was a first-class man, only he could not tell his right hand from his left on parade. Literally could not tell them⁠ ⁠…

So the battalion settled itself down⁠ ⁠… Whilst Cowley and he were at the colonel’s orderly room arranging for the transfer of the professor⁠—he was really only a fellow of his college⁠—who did not know his right hand from his left, Tietjens was engaged in the remains of the colonel’s furious argument as to the union of the Anglican and Eastern rites. The colonel⁠—he was a full colonel⁠—sat in his lovely private office, a light, gay compartment of a tin-hutment, the walls being papered in scarlet, with, on the purplish, thick, soft baize of his table-cover, a tall glass vase from which sprayed out pale Riviera roses, the gift of young lady admirers amongst the V.A.D.s in the town because he was a darling, and an open, very gilt and leather-bound volume of a biblical encyclopaedia beneath his delicate septuagenarian features. He was confirming his opinion that a union between the Church of England and the Greek Orthodox Church was the only thing that could save civilization. The whole war turned on that. The Central Empires represented Roman Catholicism, the Allies Protestantism and Orthodoxy. Let them unite. The papacy was a traitor to the cause of civilization. Why had the Vatican not protested with no uncertain voice about the abominations practised on the Belgian Catholics?⁠ ⁠…

Tietjens pointed out languidly objections to this theory. The first thing our ambassador to the Vatican had found out on arriving in Rome and protesting about massacres of Catholic laymen in Belgium was that the Russians before they had been a day in Austrian Poland had hanged twelve Roman Catholic bishops in front of their palaces.

Cowley was engaged with the adjutant at another table. The colonel ended his theologico-political tirade by saying:

“I shall be very sorry to lose you, Tietjens. I don’t know what we shall do without you. I never had a moment’s peace with your unit until you came.”

Tietjens said:

“Well, you aren’t losing me, sir, as far as I know.”

The colonel said:

“Oh, yes, we are. You are going up the line next week⁠ ⁠…” He added: “Now, don’t get angry with me⁠ ⁠… I’ve protested very strongly to old Campion⁠—General Campion⁠—that I cannot do without you.” And he made, with his delicate, thin, hairy-backed, white hands a motion as of washing.

The ground moved under Tietjens’ feet. He felt himself clambering over slopes of mud with his heavy legs and labouring chest. He said:

“Damn it all!⁠ ⁠… I’m not fit⁠ ⁠… I’m C3⁠ ⁠… I was ordered to live in an hotel in the town⁠ ⁠… I only mess here to be near the battalion.”

The colonel said with some eagerness:

“Then you can protest to Garrison⁠ ⁠… I hope you will⁠ ⁠… But I suppose you are the sort of fellow that won’t.”

Tietjens said:

“No, sir⁠ ⁠… Of course I cannot protest⁠ ⁠… Though it’s probably a mistake of some clerk⁠ ⁠… I could not stand a week in the line⁠ ⁠…” The profound misery of brooding apprehension in the line was less on his mind than, precisely, the appalling labour of the lower limbs when you live in mud to the neck⁠ ⁠… Besides, whilst he had been in hospital, practically the whole of his equipment had disappeared from his kit-bag⁠—including Sylvia’s two pairs of sheets!⁠—and he had no money with which to get more. He had not even any trench-boots. Fantastic financial troubles settled on his mind.

The colonel said to the adjutant at the other purple baize-covered table:

“Show Captain Tietjens those marching orders of his⁠ ⁠… They’re from Whitehall, aren’t they?⁠ ⁠… You never know where these things come from nowadays. I call them the arrow that flieth by night!”

The adjutant, a diminutive, a positively miniature gentleman with Coldstream badges up and a dreadfully worried brow, drifted a quarto sheet of paper out of a pile, across his tablecloth towards Tietjens. His tiny hands seemed about to fall off at the wrists; his temples shuddered with neuralgia. He said:

“For God’s sake do protest to Garrison if you feel you can⁠ ⁠… We can’t have more work shoved on us⁠ ⁠… Major Lawrence and Major Halkett left the whole of the work of your unit to us⁠ ⁠…”

The sumptuous paper, with the royal arms embossed at the top, informed Tietjens that he would report to his VIth battalion on the Wednesday of next week in preparation for taking up the duties of divisional transport officer to the XIXth division. The order came from Room G 14 R, at the War Office. He asked what the deuce G 14 R was, of the adjutant, who in an access of neuralgic agony, shook his head miserably, between his two hands, his elbows on the tablecloth.

Sergeant-Major Cowley, with his air of a solicitor’s clerk, said the room G 14 R was the department that dealt with civilian requests for the services of officers. To the adjutant who asked what the devil a civilian request for the employment of officers could have to do with sending Captain Tietjens to the XIXth division, Sergeant-Major Cowley presumed that it was because of the activities of the Earl of Beichan. The Earl of Beichan, a Levantine financier and racehorse owner, was interesting himself in army horses, after a short visit to the lines of communication. He also owned several newspapers. So they had been waking up the army transport-animals’ department to please him. The adjutant would no doubt have observed a Veterinary-Lieutenant Hotchkiss or Hitchcock. He had come to them through G 14 R. At the request of Lord Beichan, who was personally interested in Lieutenant Hotchkiss’s theories, he was to make experiments on the horses of the Fourth Army⁠—in which the XIXth division was then to be found⁠ ⁠… “So,” Cowley said, “you’ll be under him as far as your horse lines go. If you go up.” Perhaps Lord Beichan was a friend of Captain Tietjens and had asked for him, too: Captain Tietjens was known to be wonderful with horses.

Tietjens, his breath rushing through his nostrils, swore he would not go up the line at the bidding of a hog like Beichan, whose real name was Stavropolides, formerly Nathan.

He said the army was reeling to its base because of the continual interference of civilians. He said it was absolutely impossible to get through his programme of parades because of the perpetual extra drills that were forced on them at the biddings of civilians. Any fool who owned a newspaper, nay, any fool who could write to a newspaper, or any beastly little squit of a novelist could frighten the Government and the War Office into taking up one more hour of the men’s parade time for patent manoeuvres with jampots or fancy underclothing. Now he was asked if his men wanted lecturing on the causes of the war and whether he⁠—he, good God!⁠—would not like to give the men cosy chats on the nature of the Enemy nations⁠ ⁠…

The colonel said:

“There, there, Tietjens!⁠ ⁠… There, there!⁠ ⁠… We all suffer alike. We’ve got to lecture our men on the uses of a new patent sawdust stove. If you don’t want that job, you can easily get the general to take you off it. They say you can turn him round your little finger⁠ ⁠…”

“He’s my godfather,” Tietjens thought it wise to say. “I never asked him for a job, but I’m damned if it isn’t his duty as a Christian to keep me out of the clutches of this Greek-’Ebrew pagan peer⁠ ⁠… He’s not even Orthodox, colonel.⁠ ⁠…”

The adjutant here said that Colour-Sergeant Morgan of their orderly room wanted a word with Tietjens. Tietjens said he hoped to goodness that Morgan had some money for him! The adjutant said he understood that Morgan had unearthed quite a little money that ought to have been paid to Tietjens by his agents and hadn’t.

Colour-Sergeant Morgan was the regimental magician with figures. Inordinately tall and thin, his body, whilst his eyes peered into distant columns of ciphers, appeared to be always parallel with the surface of his table and, as he always answered the several officers whom he benefited without raising his head, his face was very little known to his superiors. He was, however, in appearance a very ordinary, thin N.C.O. whose spidery legs, when very rarely he appeared on parade, had the air of running away with him as a racehorse might do. He told Tietjens that, pursuant to his instructions and the A.C.P. i 96 b that Tietjens had signed, he had ascertained that command pay at the rate of two guineas a day and supplementary fuel and light allowance at the rate of 6s. 8d. was being paid weekly by the Paymaster-General’s Department to his, Tietjens’, account at his agents’. He suggested that Tietjens should write to his agents that if they did not immediately pay to his account the sum of £194 13s. 4d., by them received from the Paymaster’s Department, he would proceed against the Crown by Petition of Right. And he strongly recommended Tietjens to draw a cheque on his own bank for the whole of the money because, if by any chance the agents had not paid the money in, he could sue them for damages and get them cast in several thousand pounds. And serve the devils right. They must have a million or so in hand in unpaid command and detention allowances due to officers. He only wished he could advertise in the papers offering to recover unpaid sums due by agents. He added that he had a nice little computation as to variations in the course of Gunter’s Second Comet that he would like to ask Tietjens’ advice about one of these days. The colour-sergeant was an impassioned amateur astronomer.

So Tietjens’ morning went up and down⁠ ⁠… The money at the moment, Sylvia being in that town, was of tremendous importance to him and came like an answer to prayer. It was not so agreeable, however, even in a world in which, never, never, never for ten minutes did you know whether you stood on your head or your heels, for Tietjens, on going back to the colonel’s private office, to find Sergeant-Major Cowley coming out of the next room in which, on account of the adjutant’s neuralgia, the telephone was kept. Cowley announced to the three of them that the general had the day before ordered his correspondence-corporal to send a very emphatic note to Colonel Gillum to the effect that he was informing the competent authority that he had no intention whatever of parting with Captain Tietjens, who was invaluable in his command. The correspondence-corporal had informed Cowley that neither he nor the general knew who was the competent authority for telling Room G 14 R at the War Office to go to hell, but the matter would be looked up and put all right before the chit was sent off⁠ ⁠…

That was good as far as it went. Tietjens was really interested in his present job, and although he would have liked well enough to have the job of looking after the horses of a division, or even an army, he felt he would rather it was put off till the spring, given the weather they were having and the state of his chest. And the complication of possible troubles with Lieutenant Hotchkiss who, being a professor, had never really seen a horse⁠—or not for ten years!⁠—was something to be thought about very seriously. But all this appeared quite another matter when Cowley announced that the civilian authority who had asked for Tietjens’ transfer was the permanent secretary to the Ministry of Transport⁠ ⁠…

Colonel Gillum said: