A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  “But I will come back.”

  “’Ow d’you know? What about the gas attack at Wipers? ’Ave you seen the evening papers? The ’Uns let loose a lot o’ chlorine. You might get recalled.”

  “I’ve been out.”

  “Well, you can go agen, can’t you?”

  There was a wonderful party in Freddy’s that night—until the rum proved too much for both Desmond and Phillip.

  *

  When the course ended the commandant read out where each officer was to report. As name after name was read, so many for France, Phillip felt shaky. The newspapers had been filled with details of the second Ypres battle, with appeals for emergency gas-masks to be made by women at home, with accounts of retching French Colonial and Canadian troops dying with liquescent lungs. His name, however, was not among the B.E.F. replacements.

  He was ordered to report to a Territorial unit in Suffolk, for training and duty. “I cannot give officers any leave, but if you apply to the commanding officers of the home-service units where you have to report——”

  Chapter 11

  LIFE IS FUN

  MOST County Regiments in the British Army had two Regular battalions, a third Special Reserve battalion, perhaps a fourth Militia Reserve, and a fifth battalion—the Territorial unit. There were exceptions. The London Regiment was composed of twenty-eight Territorial, with no Regular, battalions; the London Highlanders and the London Rifles were two of them. Their traditions before the war were those of the old Volunteers, their battle honours gained by small detachments sent to the South African War.

  The County Regiment to which Phillip had been ordered to report for training and duty was composed before the war of one territorial battalion only. Soon after the outbreak of war a second-line battalion had been formed, on a cadre of old retired officers and those of the first battalion who had not volunteered for active service. The first battalion had gone to France a few weeks before Phillip was ordered to report for duty to the second battalion, which was stationed in a market town famous for its training stables.

  The officers of the second battalion, none of whom had experience of war, either in the past or in the present campaign, were drawn from occupations and professions long established upon the flat, largely agricultural county, famous for its university and fruit farms, and its smooth rolling heaths, part tilled for oats and hay of fine quality—a perfect country for breeding and training bloodstock.

  The colonel of the second battalion wore the riband of the Territorial Decoration given for long service—equivalent to what in the Regular Army was known as the Rooti, or Bread-eating Medal. He was a university don, an old man with white hair, thin gold spectacles, and nicotine-stained moustache that he had now clipped short, as befitted military efficiency. He was known among the officers, many of whom he had tutored in college, by the nickname of Strawballs, derived from his real name.

  The adjutant had a nickname, also based upon his real name. He was tall and stalky of leg, with a curved middle or elongated paunch, rising to sloping shoulders supporting an egg-shaped Nordic head. Captain Whale, partner in a family firm of County Estate Agents and Auctioneers, having their main office in the university town, was known as Jonah.

  To the peace-time officers of the battalion, mobilisation had come as a tonic, an affirmation of real values, a stimulating change from routine living, most of it at desks. The company commanders and subalterns, with two exceptions, were drawn from members of the established provincial middle-class—lawyers, doctors, schoolmasters, yeoman farmers, wholesale merchants connected with agriculture (the main industry of the county) such as iron foundrymen and implement makers—who, to improve their own family standing, had sent their sons to public school and university.

  The battalion, with three other territorial battalions of adjacent counties, formed a brigade commanded by an old soldier of the Regular Army, who had retired sometime during the reign of Queen Victoria. This “dugout” was reputed to have survived the Charge of the Light Brigade as a cornet of horse in the Crimean War, and was generally known as “Crasher”.

  The colonel of the battalion, whose tutorial background was classical-historical-archaeological, sometimes spoke, with donnish wit, of his command as “The Cantuvellaunians”, a name which went back at least to the time of the Roman Occupation of Britain. All his junior officers had been approved by him for what he called their autochthonous associations with the county; and it was therefore with some slight dismay that this regional patriot heard from his adjutant that half a dozen young temporary officers from “band-box” establishments of the New Armies were to come to the battalion: for temporary duty and training only, he heard with relief from “Jonah” his adjutant.

  Five of these officers of the New Armies had duly reported for duty on the Saturday morning at 9.0 a.m. in the Orderly Room on the ground floor of a house fronting the High Street; the sixth had not appeared just before noon, the hour when the colonel usually went into the Pigskin Club, of which he and all the other officers of the regiment had been made temporary honorary members, for his midday Hollands gin and water.

  The adjutant had gone into the colonel’s room, which gave a view of the High Street beyond its bow windows, exactly at noon, when a loud noise like that of a shot-gun came from outside. At once a string of race-horses, being walked down the broad street opposite, began to rear and plunge under their stable-boys.

  “What the devil can that be?” asked the colonel. “It sounded like a ten-bore.” The adjutant, seeming the more bow-fronted because of his height and the thinness of his legs from the knees downwards tightly encased in new grey canvas leggings, said from his stance by the window:

  “It looks like the missing subaltern, Colonel, on what appears to be a racer motor-cycle.”

  “Horrible things,” said the colonel, shortly. “Why were they ever invented?”

  A few minutes later the orderly-room sergeant knocked on the door, opened it immediately, and said that there was an officer reporting for duty. The adjutant moved towards his orderly room, but stopped when the colonel said:

  “Ask him to come in here, Jonah.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  The seated colonel looked over his glasses at the new officer, noting, during the time that he came to attention with what he considered was a totally unnecessary series of stamps upon the parquet flooring, and saluted, that his service cap, set at a townee angle, was without the wire which usually kept the top flat. The appearance was therefore sloppy. The colonel observed, furthermore, that the button of one tunic pocket was undone, and that an oily mark disfigured one of his puttees.

  “Sir! Second-lieutenant Maddison reporting——”

  The adjutant, also critical of the newcomer’s appearance, said sharply, “You report to the adjutant, not to the Commanding Officer! Didn’t they teach you that at your course?”

  “Sir! I was saluting the senior officer present.”

  There was a pause. Then the colonel said in a guttural voice of slight nasal harshness, aggravated by his Adam’s apple being compressed against his starched light khaki collar, “What is your name, did you say?”

  “Maddison, sir.”

  “Where were you at school, Mr. Maddison?”

  “Heath’s, sir.”

  The colonel said “O-oh,” as though he were none the wiser.

  After a few moments, still standing stiffly to attention, Phillip said, “Sir! Permission to report my arrival to the adjutant!”

  “What do you want my permission for, Mr.-er-Maddison?” enquired the colonel, peering over his gold-wired glasses, as though at some strange wading bird.

  Phillip hesitated; then with a “Sir!” he turned away to face the adjutant with a one-one-two stamp; saluted; and said, “Sir! Second-lieutenant Maddison——”

  “Come come, Mr. Maddison, we are both well acquainted with your name by this time,” remarked the colonel.

  “Why are you late?” said the adjutant.

  �
��Sir! The belt of my motor-cycle broke. I had to push the machine several miles to get a spare link.”

  The colonel listened to his voice, trying to place the young officer with the glistening blue eyes in the face of a small boy. Was there a hint of Kent, or was it Cockney, in some of his vowels? After a few moments he said:

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Wakenham, sir.”

  The colonel seemed to be considering this reply. By long habit a placer of persons, he could not be quite sure about the youth before him.

  “Where is that?”

  “In a part of Kent now blackened by London, sir.”

  “Oh.” After a pause, “Jonah, will you attend to this officer.”

  “Yes, Colonel.” To Phillip he said, “Come with me and I’ll take your particulars.”

  “Sir!”

  Phillip gave the colonel his guardsman salute, without the stamp this time, and followed the adjutant out. In the next room he recited details of address, next-of-kin, religion, age, service, etc. He was about to leave when the adjutant, looking him up and down, remarked sternly, “It is quite out of order that you are wearing your service cap without the wire within. Don’t you know that?”

  “Without the wire within, sir?”

  “That’s what I said, dammit!” replied the adjutant, with some testiness. “And stand to attention when I speak to you!”

  “Sir! I was thinking for the moment you meant ‘without’ in the sense of ‘outside’, sir. Well, sir, we all removed the inside wires in the trenches, because of snipers.”

  “Well, you are not in the trenches here, so get the wire put back before Church Parade tomorrow.”

  “Sir! May I have the honour to apply for leave, to get the wire?”

  “Where is the wire?”

  “Sir! With my kit.”

  “Do you mean to say that you have reported here without your kit?”

  “Sir!”

  “Why?”

  “Sir! I hoped to be given leave to get it. The commandant of the course——”

  “Well, I’m damned if you haven’t got a nerve! Now stand at ease, for heaven’s sake. Have you got a camp-bed? You’ll be in an unfurnished house, and will need one. You will draw half-a-crown a day field allowance, in lieu of a furnished room. Messing is three shillings a day——”

  “I see, sir.”

  “Don’t interrupt, I haven’t finished yet. I was about to say that you’d better go and see your room—Godolphin House is on the corner, on the left towards the Heath, at the bottom of the hill. The mess sergeant will show you. Did you bring no kit at all?”

  “Only a walking stick, sir.”

  “Good God, is that all you had in the trenches?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well, you are given leave until midnight tomorrow, Sunday. On Monday morning you will parade at 6.30 a.m. under the regimental sergeant major, for arms drill, followed by half an hour’s Swedish drill with your platoon. Your posting to ‘C’ company will be in orders tonight.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Phillip saluted and went out, delighted that he would have another Saturday night with Desmond and Eugene at Freddy’s, and the Guild Hall over the road, where, at little tables round a fountain and fish-pond, lots of interesting girls went every night.

  *

  His bedroom in Godolphin House was in one of the attics, three stories up back-stairs of stone. It was a fairly large house, the main staircase being in the centre, where in larger rooms other officers had their canvas beds, each with hired chests of drawers, wash-hand-stands, and bedroom china.

  Phillip shared his attic with a short, rosy-faced youth called by the others “Chick”, so named from his small stature. He was also of Kitchener’s army, attached for duty. Chick said the set of furniture could be hired for 2s. 6d. a week, so Phillip ordered his from the shop named by Chick.

  The routine was much the same every day—6.30 a.m. under the R.S.M., parade, after breakfast, at 9 a.m., march away to the great stretches of grassland sloping to woods and the sky, practice advances in extended order, signs by hand and whistle, rush and lie down to give covering fire—in fact the old useless Bleak Hill routine over again—a matter of expressed scorn by Phillip.

  “They never do it out there like this.”

  He went on to say that the yellow obsolescent Japanese rifles the battalion was armed with were “ridiculous”. What was the point of cleaning them, when they would never be used? When the wag of his platoon, a man called Bellamy, showed his rifle on inspection, to be full of dust, Phillip did not report him. The C.Q.M.S. mentioned this to the junior captain, an eighteen-year-old, who told Phillip that such cases in future must be reported to his company orderly room.

  “A rifle is a soldier’s best friend, sir,” added the C.Q.M.S.

  “I always heard it was a Blighty one, Sergeant-major.”

  Phillip’s company commander was an elderly major, with a cast of mind, and face reflecting that cast, entirely different from the other officers of the battalion. It was a remotely reserved face, as though withdrawn from the hurly-burly of life: the life of the market place.

  Major Wayland spoke with a manner of extreme reserved politeness, which made him appear, in Phillip’s eyes, to be unaware of what was happening about him. He had The Honourable before his name. He seldom came out with the company, which marched away from its parade ground every day under the eighteen-year-old captain, known to everyone, except Phillip, as “the Infant Hercules”. He had left school at Christmas, and seemed to be a favourite of the colonel, because he wrote sonnets and read Greek poets in the original, as well as having been captain of his school, the rugger fifteen and the cricket eleven. He was fair, blue-eyed, with a pink and white complexion. His poems had been published by the firm of which the second-in-command, an elderly university bookseller, was the senior partner. From the same man in the mess, O’Connor, Phillip learned that “Strawballs” had been a friend of the poet who had recently died in the Aegean, soon after the Gallipoli landings. It was for this poet, Rupert Brooke, the colonel wore the black crêpe band on his arm. Phillip felt a slight importance that his Aunt Theodora, in her last letter, had mentioned that she had known Rupert Brooke. The letter had warned Phillip about “treading the primrose path”, a phrase which he did not understand, unless it meant drinking. Anyway, old people were always giving warning of this and that. The only one of his Maddison aunts who had never criticised him was not really a Maddison—only by marriage—and she had tried to get into his bed. Phew, that was a situation! He had been too ashamed even to tell Desmond.

  Phillip thought that “Hercules” was lucky to have three pips. It was probably because his company commander, the old major, was a dugout, with a poor word of command. Major Wayland was an uncle of the Earl of Mersea, a fact that made Phillip realise how small the world was: for Major Wayland must be the brother-in-law of the Dowager Countess, who owned Knollyswood. He did not live in Godolphin House, or come into the mess, except once a week, on guest-nights.

  These weekly guest-nights, Phillip thought, were rather fun. After dinner, they had high-jinks in the ante-room. One of the games was called Kruger. Two officers were blindfolded, and lay on the floor, rolled newspapers in their right hands, and holding each other’s left hand. One cried, “Who goes there?” the other replied “Kruger!” and then had to move his head away from where he had spoken, or be sloshed by the rolled newspaper. Another game was to put two armchairs together, back to back, and taking a run at one, turn a somersault and land sitting down in the other chair. Then to do it blindfold.

  Phillip had heard about this trick from Bertie, who had had it done on him. The joke with a newcomer was to remove a chair while he was being blindfolded, others talking round him to muffle the sound of the castors, and when, having learnt to do it with open eyes, he tried to somersault over the back of one chair blindfold, he went wallop on to the floor.

  Phillip could not see the fun of
it; indeed, remembering how he had hurt his spine years before when Gerry had pulled his chair away, at Gran’pa’s supper party, as he was about to sit down, he thought it was positively dangerous. Knowing what was in store for him, he shook his head and slipped away when Baldersly, the senior subaltern, flushed and smoking a cigar, called out with it between his teeth and his long yellow moustache, “Come on, you new wart, now do it blindfold!”; and waited in the lavatory until he thought Baldersby would have forgotten. There was a lot of clapping and cheering, and unlocking the door, Phillip darted back, in time to see the “Infant Hercules”, resplendent with three new pips, hair ruffled, do the somersault blindfold, to land upright on his feet. The Colonel looked very pleased, and patted “Hercules” on the shoulder. “Hercules”, of course, already knew the trick.

  At ten o’clock the following night the officers went up to the wide gallops of the Heath, for compass reading. Pairs had to advance through darkness on imaginary trenches by given bearings. As Phillip did not have a luminous compass, the officer in charge, Major Howes, the bookseller in private life, kindly lent him his. When all was over, they re-assembled for a brief talk by the senior company commander, known to Phillip merely as the captain who had a Rover motor-cycle with a three-speed Sturmey-Archer gear in its huge rear-wheel hub.

  “In finding your way at night in hostile territory, as any country would be, of course, occupied by the Germans in retreat, the question of silence is all-important. I heard one officer’s voice as I stood out in front, moreover, he was smoking a cigarette. That, of course, would be fatal if done at the front, for he would immediately call down retribution on his head, in the shape of machine-gun fire.”

  “Another point I would like to make, sir!” the captain went on, turning respectfully to the rather stumpy form of Major Howes, the bookseller. “At present progress in the dark on compass bearings is necessarily limited by the length between the compass-bearer and his partner who goes out before him, to mark the direction, and to remain the starting-point for the next advance. It occurs to me that if the marker carried a ball of string in his hand, he could pay it out as he advances, and when the compass-bearer sees he has gone far enough forward, that is to say, well before the point of invisibility, he could give the string a jerk, and stop the marker, without the necessity of any further notice.”