Pushed and the Return Push | Page 2

sergeant-major manoeuvred me towards the horse
lines to look at the newly made-up telephone cart team.
"You remember the doctor's fat mare, sir--the wheeler, you used to call
her? Well, she is a wheeler now, and a splendid worker too. We got the
hand-wheeler from B Battery, and they make a perfect pair. And you

remember the little horse who strayed into our lines at
Thiepval--'Punch' we used to call him--as fat as butter, and didn't like
his head touched? Well, he's in the lead; and another bay, a twin to him,
that the adjutant got from the --th Division. Changed 'Rabbits' for him.
You remember 'Rabbits,' sir?--nice-looking horse, but inclined to
stumble. All bays now, and not a better-looking telephone team in
France."
And then an anxious moment. Nearest the wall in the shed which
sheltered the officers' horses stood my own horse--dear old Silvertail,
always a gentleman among horses, but marked in his likes and dislikes.
Would he know me after my six months' absence? The grey ears went
back as I approached, but my voice seemed to awake recognition.
Before long a silver-grey nose was nozzling in the old confiding way
from the fourth button towards the jacket pocket where the biscuits
used to be kept. All was well with the world.
A rataplan on a side-drum feebly played in the street outside!--the
village crier announcing that a calf had committed hari-kari on one of
the flag-poles put up to warn horsemen that they mustn't take short cuts
over sown land. The aged crier, in the brown velveteen and the stained
white corduroys, took a fresh breath and went on to warn the
half-dozen villagers who had come to their doorways that uprooting the
red flags would be in defiance of the express orders of Monsieur le
Maire (who owned many fields in the neighbourhood). The veal
resulting from the accident would be shared out among the villagers
that evening.
My camp-bed was put up in a room occupied by the adjutant; and
during and after dinner there was much talk about the programme of
intensive training with which the Brigade was going to occupy itself
while out at rest. For the morrow the colonel had arranged a
scheme--defence and counter-attack--which meant that skeleton
batteries would have to be brought up to upset and demolish the
remorseless plans of an imaginary German host; and there was diligent
studying of F.A.T. and the latest pamphlets on Battery Staff Training,
and other points of knowledge rusted by too much trench warfare.

It was exactly 2 P.M. on the morrow. We were mounted and moving
off to participate in this theoretical battle, when the "chug-chug-chug"
of a motor-cycle caused us to look towards the hill at the end of the
village street: a despatch-rider, wearing the blue-and-white band of the
Signal Service. The envelope he drew from his leather wallet was
marked "urgent."
"It's real war, gentlemen," said the colonel quietly, having read the
contents; "we move at once. Corps say that the enemy are massing for
an attack."
Then he gave quick, very definite orders in the alert confident manner
so well known to all his officers and men.
"Send a cycle orderly to stop Fentiman bringing up his teams! You can
be ready to march by 3 P.M. ... Stone. Townsend, you'd better send off
your groom to warn your battery! Times and order of march will be
sent out by the adjutant within a quarter of an hour! One hundred yards'
distance between every six vehicles on the march! No motor-lorries for
us this time, so all extra kit and things you can't carry will have to be
dumped, and a guard left behind!"
A clatter of horsemen spreading the news followed.
I stood at the door of the village's one café and watched two of our
batteries pass. The good woman who kept it asked if I thought the
Germans would come there again. "They took my husband with them a
prisoner when they went a year ago," she said slowly. My trust in our
strength as I had seen it six months before helped me to reassure her;
but to change the subject, I turned to the penny-in-the-slot music
machine inside, the biggest, most gaudily painted musical box I've ever
seen. "Did the Boches ever try this?" I asked. "No, only once," she
replied, brightening. "They had a mess in the next room, and never
came in here."
"Well, I'll have a pen'orth for luck," said I, and avoiding "Norma" and
"Poet and Peasant," moved the pointer towards a chansonette,
something about a good time coming. Such a monstrous wheezing and

gurgling, such a deafening clang of cracked cymbals, such a Puck-like
concatenation of flat notes and sudden thuds that told of broken strings!
And so much of