The Iron Stallions (7 page)

‘Can’t think how you imagined you could get away with it,’ Ellesmere said. ‘You’d have been spotted earlier if I hadn’t been on attachment to the RASC learning about lorries.’

The Colonel’s advice was sound. ‘You’re going to find some of the other ranks will try to take advantage of the fact that they ate, slept and drank alongside you,’ he said. ‘On the whole, though, they’re a pretty sensible lot who’ll appreciate things are different now. But–’ the Colonel leaned forward ‘–make sure you stay your side of the fence and they stay theirs. Have no nonsense about familiarity. You’re an officer now and you’ve got to behave like one. And you have quite a name to keep up. Personally, I think you’ll have little trouble and, in any case, we’re all going to have our hands full before long. They want to take away our horses and give us armoured cars.’

It turned out to be easier than Josh expected. No one tried to be familiar. One or two of the old soldiers eyed him askance and since he was not returned to Morby-Smith’s squadron but placed in Ellesmere’s, whose commanding officer was Leduc, there were few difficult moments. The NCOs were distant and respectful and his old friends welcoming. Syd Dodgin greeted him with a broad smile.

‘Good Heavens, sir,’ he said, stiffening to give him a tremendous salute. ‘Just look ’oo’s turned up.’

Eddie Orne was more wary and when Josh saw him waiting for a bus into the town and offered him a lift in the old bull-nosed Morris he’d bought, he sat for a long time in stiff silence.

‘Come on, Ed,’ Josh said at last. ‘Spit it out. You’re dying to say something, I know.’

There was a change of atmosphere at once and Orne visibly relaxed.

‘Yes–’ Orne stopped then went on with a rush ‘–sir! I nearly called you “Josh”, sir.’

‘Under the circumstances, I don’t think a lot of harm would have been done. I see you’ve got your skater.’

‘Yes, sir. They gave me yours.’

There was another long silence then Orne spoke again. ‘You’ll have no trouble from me, sir,’ he said earnestly. ‘You’re an officer now and good luck to you. I reckon, coming from where you do, it’s best – not only for you, but for us.’

‘How’s that, Ed?’

Orne smiled. ‘It comes out, sir. The best officers are always them whose families have been in the army for generations. Lord Ellesmere, sir. Mr Morby-Smith. I’ve seen their names on the roll of honour. One or two of them are bastards – if you’ll excuse the expression, sir, because it’s meant with no disrespect – but they know what they’re about and they know their responsibilities. The worst ones, sir, are the ones who just fancy themselves as officers because it’s smart.’

‘I think I know what you mean, Ed.’

‘I’m sure you do, sir. And, one of these days, when we’ve all got used to each other again, I’d consider it an honour, sir, if you could get me into your troop.’

The following week, Josh found himself talking to a new batch of recruits who had arrived in Leduc’s squadron.

‘You’d better do it,’ Ellesmere said. ‘I’m sure you know it by heart.’

‘First of all,’ Josh found himself saying, ‘consider yourselves lucky. We’re a good regiment and the only cavalry regiment in the British army to wear green…’

It seemed the first duty of a junior subaltern was to be seen and not heard. In addition to not speaking to his seniors, it seemed also that he was expected by tacit agreement to do a great deal of their work. It was also his task on Balaclava Day – when the Regiment celebrated its appearance in that auspicious disaster by offering its men free beer, its sergeants free spirits, and its officers a slap-up dinner – to give, after the King and the Regiment, the Plague Toast, a toast that had fallen to the youngest officer since 1763 when one Jeremiah Harkness, a total newcomer, had been the only man on his feet after cholera had decimated the regiment. There were squadron, regimental and guard-mounting parades and duty officer came round with depressing frequency. Only the imminent arrival of Toby Reeves cheered him with the thought that Reeves, once his senior but now his junior in the Army list, would soon be relieving him of some of his burdens.

The rumours that they were to have their horses taken away came to nothing, but it was always hanging in the air over their heads like the sword of Damocles. Despite those officers who claimed that Balaclava proved that cavalry moving at speed could overwhelm guns, there were the others who pointed to Mars-la-Tour, the charge of the Chasseurs d’Afrique at Floing, and the disasters to the cavalry in France between 1914 and 1918.

Ellesmere, who was a tank advocate, made his views felt very clearly. ‘It was proved over and over again that tanks were the answer to the machine gun,’ he said.

Morby-Smith was less convinced. ‘Horses are essential for shock action,’ he said. ‘And tanks are slow. Charging cavalry has a demoralising effect on infantry.’

‘It didn’t have at High Wood. We lost half the regiment there.’

‘All the same, élan and dash, and perfection in manoeuvres are of inestimable value.’

‘Why can’t we have élan and dash in tanks?’

‘At five miles an hour?’

Leduc came down firmly on the side of armour. ‘I went through the last lot,’ he observed, ‘and the fact that we failed in France was borne out by the number of dead horses one saw. Even the junior char at the War Office could hardly fail to come up with the same conclusions.’

‘But, sir,’ Morby-Smith argued, ‘aren’t the traditionally rural origins of military families the very best thing for the army?’

Leduc gestured with his mangled right hand. ‘The horse is a noble but uncomprehending factor in military stupidity,’ he said, ‘ and it’s too much in evidence. Still, it pulls things, you can ride it, it raises egos, takes the weight off the feet and allows you to go to war sitting down. When it’s cold, you borrow its warmth and when it’s dead you can even eat it. But it has no place on a battlefield. Nevertheless, judging by the observations of some of the half-wits in power, it will still, like the poor, be with us when we next go into battle. Some people will never understand tanks until they can be made to eat hay and shit, and no new tank brigade will ever be assembled while the ranks of the petrified, the ossified and the stupefied remain unthinned.’

Already, however, four regiments had been selected for disbandment and the mess began to take sides.

‘The real trouble,’ Ellesmere said, ‘is that everybody’s sick of war and they’re using it to bring in colossal service cuts.’

‘Trust me to join the army just when it’s beginning to fade away,’ Reeves complained. ‘I didn’t join to see it fall apart. I joined for loot and lust, in that order.’

‘The Regiment’ll lose men,’ Morby-Smith insisted. ‘We’ll have the NCOs deciding to buy themselves out. Wives have a tremendous influence.’

‘Why don’t they amalgamate the regiments?’ someone else asked. ‘The decision would be accepted as a patriotic duty.’

‘They’d make a mess of it,’ Ellesmere decided. ‘The regiment’s the foundation of everything.’

‘There’d be quicker promotion in the slow regiments.’

‘It’d be a self-inflicted wound.’

For every argument there was an answer and for every answer a new argument.

‘What will they do about the traditions, for God’s sake? And what about the uniforms? I can just imagine the 16th giving up their scarlet jackets.’

‘Or us giving up the green. I can also just imagine what’ll happen when they bury some field marshal. They’ll get the whole thing wrong, argue about dress, badges and tunes, and then the trumpeter who sounds the Last Post will have the wrong colour busby bag. It’ll make the poor old bugger turn in his grave.’

If it was baffling to Josh it was even more so to Reeves.

‘Is it always like this?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘Most of the time.’

‘How the blazes do they fight? They spend all their time arguing over niceties of dress or behaviour.’

‘Curiously enough,’ Josh said, ‘that’s the very thing that makes them fight better.’

‘I’m beginning to wish I’d done what my kid brother did and opted for the RAF.’ Reeves Minor, it seemed, had been accepted for Cranwell, the new RAF college. ‘God knows how he’ll manage,’ his brother said. ‘He’s no head for heights. Ailsa had to get him down when he went climbing at Flamborough Head last summer.’

‘How is Ailsa?’ Josh asked.

‘Coming down to London next week-end with my mother for the Armistice Day service at the Cenotaph. You’ll remember I lost my Old Man in 1914 and my Cousin George on the Somme, and since the family’s sending a detachment, I’ve got the week-end off.’

‘So’ve I,’ Josh smiled. ‘I only just qualify, of course, because
my
father actually died
after
the Armistice.’

‘Better join us,’ Reeves suggested. ‘My kid brother’ll be there with his girl friend, and Caroline Brett-Johnston’s coming. She’s half-expecting to get engaged to me, I think.’

‘She’ll have a long wait,’ Josh warned. ‘Subalterns may not marry, captains might, majors should and colonels must. You’ve a long way to go.’

Reeves grinned. ‘Oh, well, it’s no loss. She ain’t as good- looking as she used to be, anyway. Too much hunting. Beginning to look like a horse. If you put a saddle on her and sent her down to the starting post for the four-thirty, nobody would notice. Looks like Ailsa’s wait’s going to be a long one, too.’

‘Who’s Ailsa engaged to?’

‘Nobody. But she’s got her eye on you. Make no mistake about it, old boy. Joining the ranks put the tin lid on it. You can do no wrong.’

In his usual easy-going manner, Toby Reeves dawdled over breakfast and, missing the first train to London, they only just managed to clamber aboard the last coach of the second. As they pushed down the corridor towards a first-class compartment, Reeves smiled and nodded to his right and Josh found himself looking at a girl wearing a cloche hat, with good legs and neat dark hair. Reeves had quite recovered his equanimity, despite the rush, and was just working himself up to trying to make her acquaintance when his face changed.

‘I say, old boy,’ he murmured, ‘Isn’t that your batman, Bawtry?’

Josh peered into the third-class compartment at the man reading a newspaper alongside the girl. ‘Yes, by God, it is,’ he said. ‘It’s also my suit, one of my shirts, my umbrella and my second-best hat.’

Reeves grinned. ‘Tryin’ it on, old man,’ he said. ‘Old rankers stickin’ together.’

When the train arrived in London Josh was out on the platform at once. As he saw Bawtry descend he touched Reeves’ arm. ‘See you later,’ he said.

As Bawtry marched towards the exit, lean, upright and smart in Josh’s checked suit with a handkerchief in his breast pocket and a poppy in his buttonhole, he heard a voice behind him.

‘Morning, Bawtry!’

As Bawtry stopped and turned, the smile on his face died abruptly and he stiffened to attention.

‘Forty-eight hour pass, Bawtry?’ Josh asked quietly.

‘Yes, sir.’ Bawtry’s face had gone red. ‘You was goin’ off for the week-end yourself, sir, so I thought I’d put in for one as well.’

‘I bet you did. And you thought it was safe to borrow my suit, too, didn’t you? Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the train you expected me to catch.’

‘Ah–’ Bawtry began to stammer ‘–well I can explain that, sir–’

‘Don’t bother, Bawtry,’ Josh said grimly. ‘I shall be asking for a new batman. In the meantime, you’d better be getting back to barracks.’

‘Sir, I’m on a forty-eight–!’

‘You
were
, Bawtry, you
were
! You aren’t any more. I could have you up before the CO for this, but I’m not going to and, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as I say. You’ll go back by the next train and tomorrow you will take that suit and hat to the cleaners and that shirt to the laundry. And you will pay the damage. I shall want to see the bill.’

‘Sir.’

‘And I shall check at the guardroom to see what time you returned, so don’t try taking a pint in the local with your pals.’ Josh was about to turn away when he stopped and faced Bawtry once more. ‘And, Bawtry, for the future, don’t try to put anything across me again. I may not be as old as you but, through my family, I’ve been in the army quite as long as you have. Now, beat it.’

‘Sort him out, old fruit?’ Reeves asked as Josh slipped in alongside his family near the Cenotaph.

‘I think so,’ Josh murmured.

‘Up before the CO?’

‘No. But he’ll not do it again.’

‘Be quiet,’ Ailsa hissed. ‘The King’s arrived.’

Their bemedalled surplices stirring in the breeze, padres were intoning prayers, then the voices of soldiers and ex-soldiers lifted in unison.

‘Oh, God our help in ages past–’

The faint hooting of motor cars from Trafalgar Square came over the words of the chaplain reading the lesson, then they sang
O, Valiant Hearts
, and trumpeters of the Household Cavalry raised their instruments for the Last Post. At the first note, the pigeons whirled, clattering, to the roofs but they had settled again on the pavements for the silence as the remembrances were intoned.

‘They shall grow not old, as we who are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn–’

Josh felt his eyes pricking as they had not pricked since his grandfather’s funeral. With his father’s grave at the other end of the Mediterranean, that funeral had had to serve for both of them and an enormous sense of loss flooded over him.

Heels together, chins out, thumbs at the seams of their trousers, they stood stiffly for the two minutes’ silence and the National Anthem. As the final salute was given, the old soldiers marched past behind the bands, heads up in the thin sunshine, campaign medals catching the sun. Josh had no conception of what this ceremony meant to these older men, but he’d heard his grandfather talk of memories. ‘They play puck with your inside,’ he had said once, and it was clear it was playing puck with these men today.

‘What happens to them when it’s over?’ Reeves asked as the last group marched past and the crowd began to disperse.