Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, April 2, 1919 by Various (different ereaders TXT) 📗

being far and away superior to that of any other British officer for miles around, I am looked upon by the natives as a sort of high military authority in whom they may have the privilege and the pleasure of confiding all their troubles. According to the intensity of their various desires I am addressed crescendo as "Herr Ober-Leutenant," or "Herr Hauptmann," or "Herr Majeur," or "Herr Commandant." They always approach me in a becomingly servile attitude—cap or hat in hand—and await with obvious tension my weighty pronouncements. They hide round corners and wait behind doors or down narrow passages until I come past, and then they spring out on me.

"What about the coal we are burning? The electric light we are using? Who is going to pay?" "So-and-so's charlady, who was out obliging another lady, had a breadknife pinched while she was away from home. Was it one of my Soldaten, perhaps? Did I know anything about it, and if so, would I punish the evildoer and restore the implement?"

The village expert in calf-delivery wants to know whether, in the case of the happy event taking place after 9 P.M. (which it usually does), I would give him permission to leave his home after closing hours, so that he might assist at the function.

The local yokels of this spot and its neighbouring villages want to resume their bi-weekly choral society meetings but cannot reach the rendezvous until 8.45 P.M., which leaves them just a quarter-of-an-hour to have their practice and to take cover for the night. "Would the high-well-born be so fearfully gracious as to allow them to continue until 10 P.M.?"

To be suddenly taken unawares and to have such conundrums volleyed at you in a strange tongue is apt to be rather exhausting. However I have a reputation to live up to and must be as frightful as possible. I find the best thing to do is to refer them to the nearest notice-board, which reads:—

HALT!

VORSICHT!

ALLES VERBOTEN!!!

[pg 260] THE MUD LARKS.

The Visiting Brigadier cracked a walnut and glanced towards the General. "I wonder if you remember a French interpreter by the name of de Blavincourt, Sir? He was with you once, I believe."

The A.P.M. across the way paused in the act of tapping a cigarette on his case. "Little gunner man, wore red plush bags and a blue velvet hat? Yes, up in the salient in '17."

The General puffed three perfect smoke rings towards the chandelier (an accomplishment he had acquired thirty-five years previously at the "Shop" and was still proud of) and smiled. "De Blavincourt? why, yes, I remember him. He knew more about cooking than all the chefs in Europe and taught my poisoner to make rations taste like food. Of course I remember him. Why?"

"Because he came my way just at the end of the War and had rather a curious adventure," said the Brigadier, stirring his coffee. "I thought you might be interested."

"I am," the General replied. "What happened?"

The Brigadier cleared his throat. "We were in front of Tournai at the time, scrapping our way from house to house through Faubourg de Lille, the city's western suburb. My Brigade Major stumped into H.Q. one afternoon looking pretty grim. 'We'd best move out of here, Sir,' said he, 'before we're wafted.'

"'What's the matter now?' I asked.

"'That unutterable little fool de Blavincourt has walked into Germany with a large scale-map in his hand, showing every H.Q. mess and billet.' He tapped a despatch from the forward battalion.

"De Blavincourt, it appeared, had been at work all the morning evacuating unfortunate civilians from the cellars. At noon or thereabouts he sidled along the wall, past a Lewis gun detachment that was holding the street. The corporal shouted a warning, but de Blavincourt sidled on, saying that he was only going to the first house round the corner to rescue some old women he heard were in it. And that was the last of him. Seeing that the Bosch opened fire from the said house seven minutes later his fate was obvious.

"It was also obvious what our fate would be if we continued in those marked billets, so we moved out, bag and baggage, into a sunken road near by and spent the night there in the rain and muck, and were most uncomfortable. What puzzled us rather was that the Hun did not shell our old billets that night—that is, nothing out of the ordinary. 'But that's only his cunning,' we consoled ourselves; 'he knows we know he knows, and he's trying to lure us back. Ah, no, old friend.'

"So we camped miserably on in that sunken sewer. He dropped a lucky one through a barn the same afternoon and lobbed a few wides over during the next night, but again nothing out of the ordinary.

"We were more and more puzzled. Then, just about breakfast-time on the second morning, in walks de Blavincourt himself, green as to the complexion and wounded in the arm, but otherwise intact. I leapt upon him, snarling, 'Where's that map?'

"'I got 'im, Sir,' he gulped, 'safe' (gulp).

"This was his story. He had remembered the corporal shouting something, but so intent on his work was he that he hardly noticed the warning until suddenly, to his horror, he perceived a party of Huns creeping out of a passage behind him. He was cut off! They had not seen him for the moment, so quick as thought he slipped into the nearest house, turned into a front room—a sort of parlour place—and crouched there, wondering what to do.

"He was not left wondering long, for the Bosches followed him into that very house. There was a small table in one corner covered with a large cloth. Under this de Blavincourt dived, and not a second too soon, for the Bosches—seven of them—followed him into that very room and, setting up their machine gun at the window, commenced to pop off down the street. Charming state of affairs for little de Blavincourt—alone and unarmed in a room full of bristling Huns with that fatal map in his possession.

"Sweating all over he eased the map out of his pocket and slowly and silently commenced to eat it.

"You know what those things are like. A yard square of tough paper backed by indestructible calico—one might as well try to devour a child's rag book.

"Anyhow that's what de Blavincourt did. He ate it, and it took him forty hours to do the trick. For forty hours day and night he squatted under that table, with the Huns sitting upon and around it, and gnawed away at that square yard of calico.

"Just before the dawn of the third day he gulped the last corner down and peeped out under the tablecloth. The Bosch on guard was oiling the lock of the machine-gun. Two more he could hear in the kitchen clattering pots about. The remaining four were asleep, grotesquely sprawled over sofas and chairs.

"De Blavincourt determined to chance it. He could not stop under the table for ever, and even at the worst that map, that precious map, was out of harm's way. He crept stealthily from his hiding-place, dealt the kneeling Bosch a terrific kick in the small of the back, dived headlong out of the window and galloped down the street towards our Lewis gunners, squealing, ' Friend! Ros'bif! Not'arf!'—which, in spite of his three years of interpreting, was all the English he could muster at the moment. The Huns emptied their automatics after him, but only one bullet found the target, and that an outer.

"'I weesh it vos t'rough my 'eart,' he told me later, tears rolling down his cheeks. 'Vot more use to me my life, hein? My stomach she is for ever ruin.'"

The General laughed. "Stout fellow for a' that."

"I grant you," said the Brigadier, "but a fellow should be stout along accepted lines. 'To Lieutenant Felix Marcel, Comte de Blavincourt, the Military Cross for eating his map.' No, Sir, it can't be done."

The Horse-master, who was helping himself to old tawny, nodded vigorously and muttered "No, by Jove, it can't."

"You speak with feeling, Coper," remarked the General.

"I do, Sir. I sat up the best part of three nights last March trying to write for official consumption the story of a fellow who seemed to me to qualify for the 'Stout' class. It was a wash-out, though; too absurd."

"Well, give the port a fair wind and let's have the absurdity now," said the General.

The Horse-master bowed to the command.

"I was with the Fifth Army last year when the wave swept us. We were fairly swamped for the moment and all nohow. One evening, retreating on my own line, I came upon some little village—can't remember the name just now, but you know the sort of thing—typical Somme hamlet, a smear of brick-dust with a big notice-board on top, saying, 'THIS IS LE SARS,' or 'POZIÈRES,' or whatever its name was. Anyway, in this village I found a Divisional H.Q., four Brigade H.Q.'s, and oddities of all sorts sitting one on top of t'other waiting for the next thing to happen. The next thing was a single wounded lancer who happened in about four in the morning with the glad tidings that Bosch tanks were advancing on us". Questioned further he admitted that he had only actually [pg 261] seen one and that in the dark. But it was the great-grandfather of all tanks, according to the chap; it stood twenty foot high; it 'roared and rumbled' in its career, and it careered by steam.

"It wasn't any manner of use assuring him that there wasn't a steam tank on anybody's front. He said there was, and we couldn't move him.

"'I saw steam coming from it in clouds,' be mumbled, 'and sparks and smoke.' Then he crumpled slowly on the floor, fast asleep.

"The Divisional General was properly mystified.

"'If only I had a single field-gun or even some gelignite,' he groaned; then turning to me, 'I must get the strength of this; it may be some new frightfulness the Hun is springing. You're an old horse-soldier, I believe? Well, jump on your gee and go scout the thing, will you?'

"I scratched together a rag and bobtail patrol of grooms and pushed off just before daybreak. Our people had the edge of the village manned with every rifle they could collect. A subaltern lying ear to earth hailed me as I passed. 'It's coming,' he called.

"A quarter of a mile further on I could hear the roaring and rumbling myself without lying on the road.

"Light was breaking fast, but there were wisps and shreds of fog blowing about which made observation exceedingly difficult. Still, observation I was out to get, so, spreading my bobbery pack, I worked closer and closer. Suddenly one of my patrol shrilled, 'There y'are, Sir!' and I saw a monstrous shape loom for a moment through a thinning of mist, and rock onwards into obscurity again.

"'It's an armoured car. I seed wheels under it,' gasped one groom. 'More like a blasted Dreadnought,' grunted another. 'Cheer-o, chaps, the 'Un fleet 'as come out.' But nobody laughed or felt like laughing; this mysterious monster, thundering westward wrapped in its barrage of fog, was getting on our nerves."

The Horse-master paused and carefully removed the long ash from his cigar.

"Then the mists rolled up and revealed what I at first took to be a walking R.E. dump, but secondly discovered to be a common ordinary domestic British steam-roller with 'LINCOLN URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL' in dirty white lettering upon its fuel box, a mountain of duck-boards stacked on the cab roof, railway sleepers, riveting stakes and odds and ends of lumber tied on all over it. As I rode up an elderly head, grimy and perspiring, was thrust between a couple of duck-boards and nodded pleasantly to me. ''Ello,' it said, 'seen anythin' o' the lads?'

"I was too dumbfounded to say anything excepting that the lads were in the next village waiting for him.

"'Ah'm right glad o' that,' said he; 'been feeling a bit lonesome-like these last two days;' adding, in case I might not appreciate the situation, 'These yer Germans 'ave been after me, you know, Sir.'

"I replied that my only wonder was that they had not captured him long since.

"'Very nearly did once or twice,' he admitted, and wagged his elderly head; 'but t'owd lass is a great one to travel when she's sweet, an' ah've 'ad a lot o' luck pickin' oop these bits o' firin' along the road;' and he jammed a bunch of riveting stakes into the furnace.

"'Oh, ah reckon we're just keepin' ahead of 'em. Well, best be gettin' along now, s'pose. Good day to you, Sir.'

"He wrenched at a lever and 't'owd lass' rumbled off down the highway towards Albert, rearguard of His Britannic Majesty's Armies in the Field."

PATLANDER.