General Bramble Part 3

A fortnight later Colonel Parker and Aurelle stepped on to the platform at B----, where they were met by Major Baraquin, the officer commanding the garrison, and Captain Pereira, the Portuguese liaison officer.

Major Baraquin was a very old soldier. He had seen service--in the 1870 campaign. All strangers, Allies included, inspired him with a distrust which even his respect for his superiors failed to remove.

When the French War Office ordered him to place his barracks at the disposal of a British colonel, discipline required him to obey, but hostile memories inspired him with savage resistance.

"After all, sir," said Aurelle to Parker, "his grandfather was at Waterloo."

"Are you quite sure," asked the colonel, "that he was not there himself?"

Above all things, Major Baraquin would never admit that the armies of other nations might have different habits from his own. That the British soldier should eat jam and drink tea filled him with generous indignation.

"The colonel," Aurelle translated, "requests me to ask you ..."

"No, no, _no_," replied Major Baraquin in stentorian tones, without troubling to listen any further.

"But it will be necessary, sir, for the Portuguese who are going to land...."

"No, no, _no_, I tell you," Major Baraquin repeated, resolved upon ignoring demands which he considered subversive and childish. This refrain was as far as he ever got in his conversations with Aurelle.

Next day several large British transports arrived, and disgorged upon the quay thousands of small, black-haired men who gazed mournfully upon the alien soil. It was snowing, and most of them were seeing snow for the first time in their lives. They wandered about in the mud, s.h.i.+vering in their spotted blue cotton uniforms and dreaming, no doubt, of sunny Alemtejo.

"They'll fight well," said Captain Pereira, "they'll fight well.

Wellington called them his fighting c.o.c.ks, and Napoleon said his Portuguese legion made the best troops in the world. But can you wonder they are sad?"

Each of them had brought with him a pink handkerchief containing his collection of souvenirs--little reminders of his village, his people, or his best girl--and when they were told that they could not take their pink parcels with them to the front, there was a heart-breaking outcry.

Major Baraquin, with unconscious and sinister humour, had quartered them in the shambles.

"It would be better----" began Colonel Parker.

"Il vaudrait peut-etre mieux----" Aurelle attempted to translate.

"Vossa Excellencia----" began Captain Pereira.

"No, no, _no_," said the old warrior pa.s.sionately.

The Portuguese went to the shambles.

CHAPTER IV

A BUSINESS MAN IN THE ARMY

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."--G. B. Shaw (in _A Revolutionist's Handbook_).

Colonel Musgrave of the R.A.S.C. had been instructed to superintend the supply and transport arrangements of the Portuguese Division, and Lieutenant Barefoot, in charge of a Labour Company, had been detailed to a.s.sist him.

"These men," he explained to Colonel Musgrave, "are all Southampton dockers. In peace time I am their employer, and Sergeant Scott over there is their foreman. They tell me your Labour Companies have often shown rather poor discipline. There's no fear of anything like that with my men; they have been chosen with care, and look up to me as if I were a king. Scott, my sergeant, can do anything; neither he nor my men ever drink a drop. As for me, I am a real business man, and I intend to introduce new methods into the army."

Barefoot was fifty years old; he had a bald head shaped like an egg.

He had just enlisted to serve his King and country, and was overflowing with goodwill.

The next morning twenty of his men were dead-drunk, two were absent at roll-call, and Sergeant Scott had a scar on his nose which seemed to be the result of a somewhat sudden encounter with mother earth.

"No matter," said the worthy N.C.O., "Barefoot is an a.s.s, and never notices anything."

Next day the first batch of Portuguese troops arrived. British tugs towed the huge transports round the tiny harbour with graceful ease, and the decks seethed with ma.s.ses of troops. The harbour captain and the _Ponts et Chaussees_ engineer were loud in protest against these wonders, as being "contrary to the ideas of the Service." The wharves were filled with motor lorries, mountains of pressed hay, sacks of oats and boxes of biscuits.

Colonel Musgrave, who was to take charge of this treasure-store, began to make his plan of campaign.

"To-morrow, Friday," he said, "there will be a parade on the wharf at 7 a.m. I shall hold an inspection myself before work is begun."

On Friday morning at seven, Barefoot, his labourers and the lorries were all paraded on the wharf in excellent order. At eight the colonel got up, had his bath and shaved. Then he partook of eggs and bacon, bread and jam, and drank two cups of tea. Towards nine o'clock his car took him to the wharf. When he saw the men standing motionless, the officer saluting and the lorries all in a row, his face went as red as a brick, and he stood up in his car and addressed them angrily:

"So you are incapable of the slightest initiative! If I am absent for an hour, detained by more important work, everything comes to a standstill! I see I cannot rely on anyone here except myself!"

The same evening he called the officers together.

"To-morrow, Sat.u.r.day," he said, "there will be a parade at 7 a.

m.--and this time I shall be there."

The next morning Barefoot with his men and lorries paraded once more on the wharf, with a sea-wind sweeping an icy rain into their faces.

At half-past seven the lieutenant took action.

"We will start work," he said. "The colonel was quite right yesterday and spoke like a real business man. In our respect for narrow formalism, we stupidly wasted a whole morning's work."

So his men began to pile up the cases, the lorries started to move the sacks of oats, and the day's work was pretty well advanced when Colonel Musgrave appeared. Having had his bath and shaved, and absorbed poached eggs on toast, bread, marmalade and three cups of tea, he had not been able to be ready before ten. Suddenly coming upon all this healthy bustle, he leaped out of his car, and angrily addressed the eager Barefoot, who was approaching him with a modest smile.

"Who has had the impudence to call the men off parade before my arrival?" he said. "So if I happen to be detained elsewhere by more important work, my orders are simply disregarded! I see again that I cannot rely on anyone here except myself!"

Meanwhile the crestfallen Barefoot was meditating upon the mysterious ways of the army. Musgrave inspected the work and decided that everything was to be done all over again. The biscuits were to be put in the shed where the oats had been piled, and the oats were to be put out in the open where the biscuits had been. The meat was to change places with the jam, and the mustard with the bacon. The lorries were to take away again everything they had just brought up.

So that when lunch-time arrived, everything was in exactly the same state as it had been at dawn. The Admiralty announced the arrival of a transport at two o'clock; the men were supposed to find their rations ready for them upon landing.

Musgrave very pluckily decided that the Labour Company were to have no rest, and were just to be content with nibbling a light lunch while they went on with their work.

Barefoot, who had got up at six and was very hungry, approached the colonel in fear and trembling.

"May I leave my sergeant in charge for half an hour, sir?" he asked.

"He can do everything as well as I can. I should like just to run along to the nearest cafe and have something warm to eat."

Musgrave gazed at him in mournful astonishment.

"Really," he said, "you young fellows don't seem to realize that there's a war on." Whereupon he stepped into his car and drove off to the hotel.