Читать онлайн
The New Army in Training
The New Army in Training
I
THE MEN AT WORK
The ore, the furnace and the hammer are all that is needed for a sword. —Native proverb.
This was a cantonment one had never seen before, and the grey-haired military policeman could give no help.
‘My experience,’ he spoke detachedly, ‘is that you’ll find everything everywhere. Is it any particular corps you’re looking for?’
‘Not in the least,’ I said.
‘Then you’re all right. You can’t miss getting something.’ He pointed generally to the North Camp. ‘It’s like floods in a town, isn’t it?’
He had hit the just word. All known marks in the place were submerged by troops. Parade-grounds to their utmost limits were crowded with them; rises and sky-lines were furred with them, and the length of the roads heaved and rippled like bicycle-chains with blocks of men on the move.
The voice of a sergeant in the torment reserved for sergeants at roll-call boomed across a bunker. He was calling over recruits to a specialist corps.
‘But I’ve called you once!’ he snapped at a man in leggings.
‘But I’m Clarke Two,’ was the virtuous reply.
‘Oh, you are, are you?’ He pencilled the correction with a scornful mouth, out of one corner of which he added, ‘“Sloppy” Clarke! You’re all Clarkes or Watsons to-day. You don’t know your own names. You don’t know what corps you’re in. (This was bitterly unjust, for they were squinting up at a biplane.) You don’t know anything.’
‘Mm!’ said the military policeman. ‘The more a man has in his head, the harder it is for him to manage his carcass – at first. I’m glad I never was a sergeant. Listen to the instructors! Like rooks, ain’t it?’