Action Front Part 3

"Right," said the subaltern. "You can take him with you when you go.

They've got some more prisoners up the line, and you can join them."

It was here that the episode ended so far as Macalister was concerned, and his relations with the German officer thereafter were of the purely official nature of a prisoner's guard. There were some other indignities, but in these Macalister had no hand. They were probably due to the circulation of the tale Macalister had told and demonstrated, and were altogether above and beyond anything that usually happens to a German prisoner. They need not be detailed, but apparently the most serious of them was the removal of a portion of the black mud which masked the German's face, so as to leave a diamond-shaped patch, of staring cleanness over one eye, after the style of a music-hall star known to fame as the White-eyed Kaffir; the ripping of a small portion of that garment which permitted of the extraction of a dangling s.h.i.+rt into a ridiculous wagging tail about a foot and a half long, and a pressing invitation, accompanied by a hint from the bayonet point, to give an exposition of the goose-step at the head of the other prisoners whenever they and their escort were pa.s.sing a sufficient number of troops to form a properly appreciative audience.

Probably a c.o.c.kney-born Highlander was responsible for these pleasantries, as he certainly was for the explanation he gave to curious inquirers.

"He's mad," he explained. "Mad as a coot; thinks he's the devil, and insists on wagging his little tail. I have to keep him marching with his hands up this way, because he might try to grab my rifle. Now, it's no use you gritting your teeth and mumbling German swear words, cherrybim. Keep your 'ands well up, and proceed with the goose-step."

But with all this Macalister had nothing to do. When he had returned as nearly as he could the exact sufferings he had endured, he was quite satisfied to let the matter drop. "I suppose," he said reflectively, when the officer had gone, after giving him orders to see the prisoner back, "as that finishes this play, we'll just need to treat ma lad here like an ordinary preesoner. Has ony o' ye got a wee bit biscuit an'

bully beef an' a mouthful o' water t' gie the puir s.h.i.+verin' crater!"

A BENEVOLENT NEUTRAL

" ... _the enemy temporarily gained a footing in a portion of our trench, but in our counter-attack we retook this and a part of enemy trench beyond_."--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

A wet night, a greasy road, and a side-slipping motor-bike provided the means of an introduction between Second Lieutenant Courtenay of the 1st Footsloggers and Sergeant Willard K. Rawbon of the Mechanical Transport branch of the A.S.C. The Mechanical Transport as a rule extend a bland contempt to motor-cycles running on the road, ignoring all their frantic toots of entreaty for room to pa.s.s, and leaving them to sc.r.a.pe as best they may along the narrow margin between a deep and muddy ditch and the undeviating wheels of a Juggernaut Mechanical Transport lorry.

But a broken-down motor-cycle meets with a very different reception. It invariably excites some feeling compounded apparently of compa.s.sion and professional interest to the cycle, and an unlimited hospitality to the stranded cyclist.

This being well known to Second Lieutenant Courtenay, he, after collecting himself, his cycle, and his scattered wits from the ditch and conscientiously cursing the road, the dark, and the wet, duly turned to bless the luck that had brought about an accident right at the doorstep of a section of the Motor Transport. There were about ten ma.s.sive lorries drawn up close to the side of the road under the poplars, and Courtenay made a direct line for one from which a c.h.i.n.k of light showed under the tarpaulin and sounds of revelry issued from a melodeon and a rasping file. Courtenay pulled aside the flap, poked his head in and found himself blinking in the bright glare of an acetylene lamp suspended in the middle of a Mechanical Transport traveling workshop. The walls--tarpaulin over a wooden frame--were closely packed with an array of tools, and the floor was still more closely packed with a work-bench, vice and lathe, spare motor parts, boxes, and half a dozen men. The men were reading newspapers and magazines; one was manipulating the melodeon, and another at the vice was busy with the file. The various occupations ceased abruptly as Courtenay poked his head in and explained briefly who he was and what his troubles were.

"Thought you might be able to do something for me," he concluded, and before he had finished speaking the man at the vice had laid down his file and was reaching down a mackintosh from its hook. Courtenay noticed a sergeant's stripes on his sleeve, and a thick and most unsoldierly crop of hair on his head plastered back from the brow.

"Why sure," the sergeant said. "If she's anyways fixable, you reckon her as fixed. Whereabouts is she ditched?"

Ten minutes later Courtenay was listening disconsolately to the list of damages discovered by the glare of an electric torch and the sergeant's searching examination.

"It'll take 'most a couple of hours to make any sort of a job," said the sergeant. "That bust up fork alone--but we'll put her to rights for you. Let's yank 'er over to the shop."

Courtenay was a good deal put out by this announcement.

"I suppose there's no help for it," he said resignedly, "but it's dashed awkward. I'm due back at the billets now really, and another two or three hours late--whew!"

"Carryin' a message, I s'pose," said the sergeant, as together they seized the cycle and pushed it towards the repair lorry.

"No," said Courtenay, "I was over seeing another officer out this way."

He had an idea from the sergeant's free and easy style of address that the mackintosh, without any visible badges and with a very visible spattering of mud, had concealed the fact that he was an officer, and when he reached the light he casually opened his coat to show his belts and tunic. But the sergeant made not the slightest difference in his manner.

"Guess you'd better pull that wet coat right off," he said casually, "and set down while I get busy. You boys, pike out, hit it for the downy, an' get any sleep you all can s.n.a.t.c.h. That break-down will be ambling along in about three hours an' shoutin' for quick repairs, so you'll have to hustle some. That three hours is about all the sleep comin' to you to-night; so, beat it."

The damaged cycle was lifted into the lorry and propped up on its stand and before the men had donned their mackintoshes and "beat it," the sergeant was busy dismembering the damaged fork. Courtenay pulled off his wet coat and settled himself comfortably on a box after offering his a.s.sistance and being a.s.sured it was not required. The sergeant conversed affably as he worked.

At first he addressed Courtenay as "mister," but suddenly--"Say," he remarked, "what ought I to be calling you? I never can remember just what those different stars-an'-stripes fixin's mean."

"My name is Courtenay and I'm second lieutenant," said the other. He was a good deal surprised, for naturally, a man does not usually reach the rank of sergeant without learning the meaning of the badges of rank on an officer's sleeve.

"My name's Rawbon--Willard K. Rawbon," said the sergeant easily. "So now we know where we are. Will you have a cigar, Loo-tenant?" he went on, slipping a case from his pocket and extending it. Courtenay noticed the solidly expensive get-up and the gold initials on the leather and was still more puzzled. He rea.s.sured himself by another look at the sergeant's stripes and the regulation soldier's khaki jacket. "No, thanks," he said politely, and struggling with an inclination to laugh, "I'll smoke a cigarette," and took one from his own case and lighted it. He was a good deal interested and probed gently.

"You're Canadian, I suppose?" he said. "But this isn't Canadian Transport, is it?"

"Not," said the sergeant "Neither it nor me. No Canuck in mine, Loo-tenant. I'm good United States."

"I see," said Courtenay. "Just joined up to get a finger in the fighting?"

"Yes an' no," said the sergeant, going on with his work in a manner that showed plainly he was a thoroughly competent workman. "It was a matter of business in the first place, a private business deal that--"

"I beg your pardon," said Courtenay hastily, reddening to his ear-tips.

"Please don't think I meant to question you. I say, are you sure I can't help with that? It's too bad my sitting here watching you do all the work."

The sergeant straightened himself slowly from the bench and looked at Courtenay, a quizzical smile dawning on his thin lips. "Why now, Loo-tenant," he said, "there's no need to get het up none. I know you Britishers hate to be thought inquisitive--'bad form,' ain't it!--but I didn't figure it thataway, not any. I'd forgot for a minute the difference 'tween--" He broke off and looked down at his sleeve, nodding to the stripes and then to the lieutenant's star. "An' if you don't mind I'll keep on forgetting it meantime. 'Twon't hurt discipline, seeing n.o.body's here anyway. Y' see," he went on, stooping to his work again, "I'm not used to military manners an' customs. A year ago if you'd told me I'd be a soldier, _and_ in the British Army, I'd ha' thought you clean loco."

Courtenay laughed. "There's a good many in the same British Army can say the same as you," he said.

"I was in London when the flare-up came, an' bein' interested in business I didn't ball up my intellect with politics an' newspaper war talk. So a cable I had from the firm hit me wallop, an' plumb dazed me.

It said, 'Try secure war contract. One hundred full-powered available now. Two hundred delivery within month.' Then I began to sit up an'

take notice. Y' see, I'm in with a big firm of auto builders--mebbe you know 'em--Rawbon an' Spedding, the Rawbon bein' my dad? No? Well, anyhow, I got the contract, got it so quick it made my head swim. Gee, that fellow in the War Office was buyin' up autos like I'd buy pipe-lights. The hundred lorries was s.h.i.+pped over, an' I saw 'em safe through the specified tests an' handed 'em over. Same with the next two hundred, an' this"--tapping his toe on the floor--"is one of 'em right here."

"I see how the lorry got here," said Courtenay, hugely interested, "but I don't see how you've managed to be aboard. You and a suit of khaki and a sergeant's stripes weren't all in the contract, I suppose?"

"Nope," said the sergeant, "not in the written one, mebbe. But I took a fancy to seein' how the engines made out under war conditions, an'

figured I might get some useful notes on it for the firm, so I fixed it to come right along."

"But how?" asked Courtenay--"if that's not a secret."

"Why, that guy in the testin' sheds was plump tickled when I told him my notion. He fixed it all, and me suddenly discoverin' I was mistook for a Canadian I just said 'M-m-m' when anybody asked me. I had to enlist though, to put the deal through, an' after that there wasn't trouble enough to clog the works of a lady's watch. But there was trouble enough at the other end. My dad fair riz up an' screeched cablegrams at me when I hinted at goin' to the Front. He made out it was on the business side he was kickin', with the att.i.tude of the U-nited States toward the squabble thrown in as extra. Neutrals, he said we was, benevolent neutrals, an' he wasn't goin' to have a son o'

his steppin' outside the ring-fence o' the U-nited States Const.i.tution, to say nothing of mebbe losin' good business we'd been do in' with the Hoggheimers, an' Schmidt Brothers, an' Fritz Schneckluk, an' a heap more buyers o' his that would rear up an' rip-snort an' refuse to do another cent's worth of dealing with a firm that was sellin' 'em autos wi' one hand an' shootin' holes in their brothers and cousins and Kaisers wi' the other. I soothed the old man down by pointing out I was to go working these lorries, and the British Army don't shoot Germans with motor-lorries; and I'd be able to keep him posted in any weak points, if, and as, and when they developed, so he could keep ahead o'

the crowd in improvements and hooking in more fat contracts; and lastly, that the Schmidt customer crowd didn't need to know a thing about me being here unless he was dub enough to tell 'em. So I signed on to serve King George an' his missus an' kids for ever an' ever, or duration of war, Amen, with a mental footnote, which last was the only part I mentioned in mailing my dad, that I was a Benevolent Neutral.

An' here I am."

"Good egg," laughed Courtenay. "Hope you're liking the job."

"Waal, I'll amit I'm some disappointed, Loo-tenant," drawled the sergeant. "Y' see I did expect I'd have a look in at some of the fightin'. I'm no ragin' blood-drinker an' bone-buster by profession, up-bringin', or liking. But it does seem sorter poor play that a man should be plumb center of the biggest war in history an' never see a single solitary corpse. An' that's me. I been trailin' around with this convoy for months, and never got near enough to a sh.e.l.l burst to tell it from a kid's firework. It ain't in the program of this trench warfare to have motor transport under fire, and the program is bein'

strictly attended to. It's some sight too, they tell me, when a good mix-up is goin' on up front. I've got a camera here that I bought special, thinking it would be fun later to show round my alb.u.m in the States an' point out this man being skewered on a bayonet an' that one being disrupted by a bomb an' the next lot charging a trench. But will you believe me, Loo-tenant, I haven't as much as set eye or foot on the trenches. I did once take a run up on the captain's 'Douglas,' thinking I'd just have a walk around an' see the sights and get some snaps. But I might as well have tried to break into Heaven an' steal the choir's harps. I was turned back about ten ways I tried, and wound up by being arrested as a spy an' darn near gettin' shot. I got mad at last and I told some fellows, stuck all over with red tabs and cap-bands and armlets, that they could keep their old trenches, and I didn't believe they were worth looking at anyway."

Courtenay was laughing again. "I fancy I see the faces of the staff,"

he choked.

"Oh, they ante-d up all right later on," admitted the sergeant, "when they'd discovered this column and roped in my captain to identify me.

One old leather-face, 'specially--they told me after he was a General--was as nice as pie, an' had me in an' fed me a fresh meat and canned asparagus lunch and near chuckled himself into a choking fit when I told him about dad, an' my being booked up as a Benevolent Neutral. He was so mighty pleasant that I told him I'd like to have my dad make him a present of as dandy an auto as rolls in France. I would have, too, but he simply wouldn't listen to me; told me he'd send it back freight if I did; and I had to believe him, though, it seemed unnatural. But they wouldn't let me go look at their blame trenches. I tried to get this General joker to pa.s.s me in, but he wouldn't fall for it. 'No, no,' he gurgles and splutters. 'A Benevolent Neutral in the trenches! Never do, never do. We'll have to put some new initials on the Mechanical Transport,' he says, 'B.N.M.T. Benevolent Neutral! I must tell Dallas of the Transport that.' And he shooed me off with that."

The sergeant had worked busily as he talked, and now, as he commenced to replace the repaired fork, he was thoughtfully silent a moment.

"I suppose there's some dandy sna-aps up in those trenches, Loo-tenant?" he said at last.

"Oh, well, I dunno," said Courtenay. "Sort of thing you see in the picture papers, of course."

"Them!" said the sergeant contemptuously. "I could make better sna-aps posin' some of the transport crowd in these emergency trenches dug twenty miles back from the front. I mean real pictures of the real thing--fellows knee-deep in mud, and a sh.e.l.l lobbing in, and such like--real dandy snaps. It makes my mouth water to think of 'em. But I suppose I'll go through this darn war and never see enough to let me hold up my head when I get back home and they ask me what was the war really like and to tell 'em about the trenches. I could have made out if I'd even seen those blame trenches and got some good snaps of 'em."