Tommy Part 8

A week after this Tom's battalion was ordered south, and amidst much excitement the men boarded the train which took them there. He had hoped they would stay in London for at least one night, but only two hours were allowed between the time they reached Euston from the time the train was due to leave Waterloo. Discipline was somewhat relaxed during the journey, and when at length Tom entered the train at Waterloo he noticed that many of the men were the worse for drink.

"What blithering fools they are!" said Penrose to him, as seated in their carriage they saw many of their companions staggering along the platform. Tom was silent at this, nevertheless he thought a great deal.

It was now the beginning of May, and the Surrey meadows were bedecked with glory. Tom, who had never been out of Lancashire before, could not help being impressed with the beauty he saw everywhere. It was altogether different from the hard bare hills which he had been accustomed to in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire. The air was sweet and pure too. Here all nature seemed generous with her gifts; great trees abounded, flowers grew everywhere, while fields were covered with such a glory of green as he had never seen before. By and by the train stopped at a little station, and then commenced the march to the camp for which they were bound. Penrose and Tom walked side by side.

"This is not new to you, I suppose?" Tom queried.

"No," said Penrose, "I know almost every inch round here."

"I saw you looking out of the train at a place we pa.s.sed what they call G.o.dalming; you were looking at a big building on the top of a hill there. What was it?"

"It was my old school," said Penrose, "Charterhouse; the best school in the world."

"Ay, did you go there?" asked Tom. "Why, it was fair grand. How long were you there?"

"Five years," said Penrose.

"And to think of your becoming a Tommy like me!" Tom almost gasped.

"Well, what of that?"

"You might have been an officer if you had liked, I suppose?"

Penrose nodded.

"It wur just grand of you."

"Nothing grand at all," said Penrose. "A chap who doesn't do his bit at a time like this is just a skunk, that's all; and I made up my mind that I would learn what a private soldier's life was like before I took a commission."

"Well, you know now," said Tom, "and you will be an officer soon, I expect."

"My uniform's ordered," said Penrose.

Tom was silent for some time.

"I suppose you won't be friends with me any more, and I shall have to salute you," he remarked presently.

"Discipline is discipline," replied Penrose. "As to friendship, I am not given to change."

The battalion, eleven hundred strong, climbed a steep hill, under great overshadowing trees. Birds were singing gaily; May blossom was blooming everywhere; the green of the trees was wonderful to behold.

Presently they came to a great clearing in a pine forest. The life of the country seemed suddenly to end, and they arrived at a newly improvised town. There were simply miles of wooden huts, while the sound of men's voices, the neighing of horses, and the rolling of wheels were heard on every hand. These huts, from what Tom could see, were nearly all of them about two hundred feet long, while around them were great open s.p.a.ces where all vegetation had been worn away by the tramp of thousands of feet. The men, who had been singing all the way during their march, became silent; the scene was so utterly different from what they had left. That morning they had left a grim, grey, smoky manufacturing town; in the evening they had entered a clearing surrounded by sylvan beauty.

"I feel as though I could stay here for ever," said Tom. "But look at yon'," and he pointed to a long, low hut, at the door of which the letters "Y.M.C.A." were painted. "Why, they're here too!"

"Yes," said Penrose, "there's not a camp in the country where you don't find the Y.M.C.A. huts; for that matter they are on the Continent too."

"But yon' place must have cost a lot of money," said Tom, "you can't build shanties like that without a lot of bra.s.s. Where did they get the bra.s.s from?"

"I expect the people who believe in religious lolly-pops gave it to them," replied Penrose.

It took Tom two or three days before he became accustomed to his new surroundings. He found that in this camp nearly thirty thousand men had gathered; men who had come from every corner of the country--Cameronians, Durhams, Devons, Welsh, Duke of Cornwalls, they were all here. Tom had rather expected that the advent of a new battalion would have caused some excitement, but scarcely any notice seemed to be taken; their coming was a matter of course. Three days before a battalion had left for the Front, and they had come to take their place, that was all. Instead of being billeted at various houses, as they had been in Lancashire, they had now to sleep sixty in a hut. Tom laughed as he saw the sleeping arrangements. Beds were placed close together all around the building; these beds were of the most primitive nature, and consisted of a sack of straw, a couple of rugs, and what might be called a pillow. These sacks of straw were raised some three or four inches from the floor by means of boarding, and had only the suggestion of a spring. No privacy was possible, but everything was clean and well-kept. In a few days Tom got to like it.

The weather was beautiful, the country was lovely, and the air was pure. Tom had a good appet.i.te in Lancashire, now he felt ravenous.

The work was hard, harder than he had had in Lancashire, but he enjoyed it; on the whole, too, he could not help noticing that many of the men seemed of a better type than those which made up his own battalion With the exception of Penrose, nearly all his company were drafted from coal pits and cotton mills. Here were numbers of university men, public-school men, and the like. Truly the Army was a great democracy.

One thing made Tom feel very sad, and that was the loss of Penrose. He had been in Surrey only a few days when he was gazetted and was removed to another camp about four miles away. Still he made new friends and was on the whole happy. He found, too, that even the men, whose conduct was anything but praiseworthy in Lancashire, were sober here.

Only a dozen public-houses existed, within the radius of almost as many miles; and as the rules of the canteen were very strict, there were few temptations to drink. Discipline was far easier, and on the whole the men were better looked after.

At the end of the second day in this Surrey camp, he was going with a message to the officers' quarters, when he stopped suddenly.

"Ay, can that be you?" he said aloud.

"What do you mean, my man?" And then Tom saw that the person whom he recognised wore a lieutenant's uniform.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Tom, saluting, "but--but--yes, sir, it is you."

"Oh, is that you, Pollard? I see you have enlisted, then; that's all right. You'll know me another time, won't you?"

"Yes, Mr. Waterman. That is, yes, sir. I hope you are well, sir."

"Yes, I'm all right. Good night," and the officer pa.s.sed on.

"By George!" said Tom to himself, "I didn't expect to meet Waterman here, but there's nothing to wonder about, after all."

CHAPTER IV

It is not my purpose to give a lengthy account of Tom Pollard's stay in the Surrey training camp, although much of interest took place, and his daily life there would, if truly reported, gladden the hearts of thousands of fathers and mothers who have given their boys to their country at this time. I, who have been to this particular camp, and have talked with the lads there, can testify to this by personal experience. As I have before stated, Tom found the work hard, the discipline strict, and the duties many; at the same time everything was so well arranged and the spirit of such good-fellowship prevailed that thousands of young men were under much more healthy conditions, both physically and morally, than they were at home. Indeed, many told me that they would never care for the cramped life of the office, the workshop, and the factory again, after the free open-air life of a soldier.

Tom, who had been quick to learn his duties and to master his drill, especially after he had--as he termed it to me--"been disgraced, and turned over a new leaf," found the work easy and pleasant.

"Ay," said Tom to me, "it's very funny."

"What?" I asked.

"The way these greenhorns try to learn their drill."

"How's that?" I asked.

"Why, yesterday a chap came up to me wi' tears in his eyes. I asked him what wur the matter, and he said, 'Ay, I have not got brains for it.' 'Brains for what?' I asked. 'Brains for this 'ere drill: a man needs to have a head like Shakespeare to get hold on it. That there formin' fours now: I have tried, and I have tried, and I have better tried, but I can't get a fair grip on it. Ay, I shall have to write a letter to the Colonel and tell him I shall have to give it up.'"

Tom laughed gleefully as he spoke. "Why, it's as easy as winking, sir," he said; "but some chaps are thick-headed, you know--in fact they have no heads at all, they've just got turnips stuck on top of their shoulders. I fair pity the young officers sometimes when they are trying to knock these chaps into shape. But they are doing it fine; and fellows who came a few weeks ago, slack and shuffling, are now straight and smart. It's wonderful what a bit of drilling does."

"And do you find the Y.M.C.A. helpful down here, Tom?" I asked.

"Helpful, sir! I don't know what we should do without it. You see it's different here from what it is in big towns where the men are in billets. We're away, as you may say, from any town that's sizeable, and there's no place to go to of an evening, except the public-house; and if the Y.M.C.A. hadn't been here we should have nothing to do but fool around. But the work they're doing here is just champion. They have entertainments every night, and if you don't feel like going to them, there's a room where you can read the papers, and write your letters or play games; then they have all sorts of good books for us to read."

"And how are you getting on with your French?" I asked.