The Balliols by Alec Waugh

Author:Alec Waugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1934-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

IV

A Week later an orderly walked into the ante-room of the machine-gun base depot.

“Are any of the following gentlemen in the mess, please? Mr. Ashworth, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Balliol.…”

“Yes.”

“Sir, you have been posted to the 305th Machine Gun Company. You are to have your kit ready by six o’clock. A lorry will take you to the station.”

“What shall I do then?”

“The R.T.O. will tell you.”

The R.T.O. consulted a sheaf of papers.

“The 305th Machine Gun Company? That’ll be the 131st division. That’ll be Ambreville. They’ll tell you there.”

In England Hugh had experienced that side of war-office officialdom which Ian Hay had christened “the practical joke department.” He had indented for three G.S. wagons and received four mules. His bank account had been mysteriously credited with an allowance for lodging, light and fuel during a month that he had spent in barracks. He had filled up endless forms to account for the loss on night manœuvres of one entrenching tool and finally received in compensation a prismatic compass. But he had imagined that things were run more efficiently in France. It did not seem to be so. Through thirteen long, bleak hours, he changed trains, saluted majors with blue hat bands, shivered in an unheated carriage. He was hurried on from train to train, from R.T.O. to R.T.O. as though the administrative authorities were indulging in some elaborate adult version of “Old Maid”; as though he were the unlucky card, which each player in turn passes on to the next, indifferent to its ultimate destination, with a sigh of thanksgiving the moment he is relieved of his own responsibility. Seven o’clock had come before he reported to the R.T.O. at Ambreville. At last, he thought, at last! He was to repeat those two words a great many times, with a great many varieties of intonation, during the next twelve hours.

The R.T.O., like every other R.T.O. along the track, was affable, courteous, encouraging.

“Mr. Balliol? The 305th Machine Gun Company? Splendid! They’ll be glad to have you. They’re at Rideau now. About fifteen kilometres off.”

“How am I to get there?”

“You’re in luck. On ordinary nights you’d have to walk; to-night the light-duty railway is running a carriage down there. You can go in that as far as Langeais, then walk. It’s quite simple. Anyone will tell you the way. You’re jolly lucky to have the railway.”

With a kindly smile the R.T.O. turned his attention to the next claimant.

Rather dubious about his good fortune, Hugh returned to the railhead, to be informed by a military policeman that the train was due any minute.

“There’s no time for me to get anything to eat, then? “He had existed the whole day on nothing more substantial than the small packet of sandwiches issued to him at the Base depot.

The policeman was somewhat shocked at the implied suggestion that military railheads possessed restaurants.

“Oh no, sir, there be no time for that. Train’s due any minute, it’s the only train to-night. You can’t afford to miss it. Let’s see, where be you going? Rideau, sir? Then you’ll have to change at Lillecourt.

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