Although he was the soul of courtesy, some peculiarly obstinate streak in him made it galling for him to say "sir" to an officer, as laid down in the strict rules and regulations that govern the conduct. of a private soldier in the British army. In his own regiment this little idiosyncrasy mattered not at all, since the officers knew how to exact obedience from their men. Certain English officers, however, who took it upon themselves to reprimand him. insisted upon the "sir." When Salisbury was knee-deep in liquid mud the trouble began through a particularly youthful-looking subaltern who had imbibed too freely at the officers' mess. He disputed the narrow strip of dry sidewalk with Jake, who was on his way from camp to the town of Salisbury. That was in the first year of the war, when the only requirement for a commission as a second lieutenant in the English army was an uncle. The subaltern, who had the chest of a consumptive, the shoulders of a ginger-ale bottle, the voice of a schoolgirl, and the manners of a pampered Pekingese, ordered Jake to step off the dry sidewalk that he might pass. The argument was short; a St. Bernard might so have argued with a lap-dog. The big Colonial seized the subaltern by the coatcollar, swung him round behind him, and proceeded. "They 'll soon be wheeling. 'em up in baby-carriages to give them commissions," was his only comment. The enraged subaltern followed him closely, demanding at thirty-second intervals, "I say, my man, what is your name and numbah?" There is one form of torturing prisoners that German ingenuity has so far failed to devise; compared with it, crucifying with bayonets or inoculating with tetanus. germs is merciful. It consists in saying to a private soldier, "I say, my man, what is your name and numbah?" Usually in the British army it precedes an inquisition before the commanding officer, resulting in anything from two-days confinement to camp to fourteen-days field punishment No. 2, which consists of being spreadeagled every day for two hours to the wheel of an artillery-wagon. It is a form of reprisal practised by fledgling lieutenants on home duty toward men returned from active service, who are guilty of such heinous offenses as not saluting or forgetting to button their greatcoats. At Salisbury Plain in 1914 there were many men to whom the question was a veritable sword of Damocles. To this category Jake belonged. Into the town of Salisbury he strode, apparently unaware of the existence of the subaltern panting behind. More than ever the combination resembled the St. Bernard and the Pekingese. Through the streets of Salisbury Jake proceeded, stopping frequently at places that displayed alluring signs setting forth "Ales, Wines, and Intoxicating Liquors, Licensed to be Drunk on the Premises." Always the officer followed him, and always the yapping cry rang out behind him, "I say, my man, what is your name and numbah?" Ever and anon the officer appealed to other Colonials to arrest the man; but they shrugged their shoulders, disclaiming any duty of obedience to an officer not of their own battalion. Some of them told him frankly, "We 'll be damned if we 'll arrest one of our own men"; but others, more wily, desiring to be beyond reproof, asserted sickness. Scornfully careless of the riot he created, Jake swung along, pausing only at intervals to refresh himself, and behind the frantic subaltern followed his comrades, taking up the wail, "I say, my man, what is your name and numbah?" The officer's patience was rewarded when Jake fell asleep on a bench and leaned his bulk against one of the signs, blotting out the part that referred to the liquors. The picture he presented was of a gigantic young man sleeping heavily against a sign which read "Licensed to be Drunk on the Premises." An hour later a corporal's guard, sent by the subaltern, found him there, loaded him into a cart, and took him with much indignity to the guard tent on Salisbury Plain. The next day the colonel of Jake's battalion heard the complaint of the young "I SAY, MY MAN, WHAT IS YOUR NAME AND NUMBAH?" " officer, and although he hated any interference with his battalion, discipline had to be maintained. He lectured Jake on the necessity of respecting the uniform of a superior officer, and sentenced him to four days "C. C." for being drunk. This, translated, means four days confined to camp. To Jake this mattered very little, since all his money was gone and all his headache was not. The four days passed as all days pass, and the headache disappeared the way of all headaches, but the legend of Jake's parade through town endured. Among the First Colonials it is a classic. Some of them have read of "Sherman's March to the Sea," and a few of them of "Paul Revere's Ride," but in days to come, when Sherman is only a name and Paul Revere is forgotten, the survivors of the First Colonials will tell their children's children of the night that "Name and Number" marched through Salisbury and of his ignoble ride back. Beginning with that night life changed for Jake; he could not live down that nickname. Thenceforth it was a usual thing to see young Richards, the seventeenyear-old bantam drummer, petted, spoiled, and beloved of every one, stride behind Jake, piping up at intervals in an absurd falsetto voice, to the huge amusement of onlookers, "I say, my man, what is your name and numbah?" Through ten months of training in the British Isles and in Egypt the legend pursued him, and for officers of battalions other than his own Jake fostered a hatred that was the greater since he found few opportunities to vent it. A less goodnatured man might have become soured, but toward his comrades his attitude of easy-going friendship remained always the same. He answered as cheerfully to "Name and Number" as if it had been his real name, and through the weeks that the First Colonials sweltered in their marquees on the edge of the desert near Cairo the question he had made famous ranked with the one attributed to the Governor of North Carolina. No matter how sultry the day or how thick the flies, there was always a response. Into a marquee where twenty men listlessly smoked cigarettes and swatted flies between whiffs some one would stick his head and inquire in a voice tinged with an exaggerated English drawl, "I say, my man, what is your name and numbah?" No call to arms or official command could ever move them as did that question. The twenty would rise. and shout as one man in a monotonous singsong, "Jake Bolton, 551, B Company, First Colonials." At last the First Colonials went to the Dardanelles, and no sooner had the battalion landed on the peninsula than Jake fulfilled the promise of his physique and training. He became one of the best soldiers in the battalion. Through the long days, monotonous and fly-infested, when the well-nigh intolerable heat brought complaints and grumblings from his companions, he lay on the firing-step of the trench, contentedly puffing at a large pipe. Through ghastly nights, when the whine. of bullets ticked off the minutes, he crawled through no-man's-land, his deerstalking experience standing him in good stead. On trench raids, in listening-posts, lying through mud-soaked hours as silent as a snake and just as dangerous, wriggling through dank, uncut grass of neglected orchards, he was unequaled. At such work he was at home; to him every sound in that ghoulish hunting-ground was pregnant with meaning. The sharp crack of a broken twig that went unnoticed by others he interpreted rightly as the movement of the wily sniper. In accordance with the law of mutation, therefore, he became a sharp-shooter, and thenceforth was free to go and come as he pleased. For the sharp-shooter is an arrogant king of the trenches; his attitude toward the ordinary soldier is that of a senior of a small college toward a freshman. He calls no one his superior unless it is another sniper with more kills to his credit. Thenceforth Jake was as nearly happy as mortal can be. Thereafter he was wont, just as dusk made indistinct the landmarks of no-man's-land, disguising them with nature's own camouflage, to take his rifle, examine the telescopic sights carefully, clean it painstakingly, equip himself with sufficient bully beef and biscuits, and disappear for two or three days at a time, until he returned in answer to some ingenious signal displayed by young Richards just in time for the semi-weekly distribution of rum. Sweltering heat, sameness of food, lack of sleep, and scarcity of water made no difference to him. He found it all strange, exciting, and stimulating; and while the bulk of the battalion sickened, he waxed strong. In two months the First Colonials had been reduced to one third of their original strength; the remainder, each doing two men's work, toiled on. Jake, returning one drizzly night from four hours' digging in a new communication trench, sought young Richards, who was to relieve him. The latter shivered in his blankets, and instead of his usual bantering, said simply, "I'm sick." Jake felt the throbbing forehead, gave him a drink of his own precious rum, then, seizing his own blanket, wrapped the young drummer in it, and returned to the communication trench. "I made a mistake," he explained. "It's not your turn yet. I'll call you when it is." After that he always took the turn of young Richards in digging communication trenches, so that the little drummer who had been his chief tormentor might sleep. "If we had a regiment of men like him," said the general who was inspecting the lines, and came upon Jake working, "we 'd dig our way to Constantinople." That was when the First Colonials had been on the peninsula only two months, and had advanced only four miles inland. Despite the fact that one hundred and forty miles separated them from Constantinople, the First Colonials visualized the entire distance traversed by trenches that they had dug. At any rate, the general's statement encouraged Jake and his friends to dig through tangled ravines and hills. scarred and torn by shells a winding communication trench, deep and narrow, down the four miles that separated the firing-line from the beach, thus forming one of the highways for the supplies of ammunition and food. Through this newly completed trench one moonlight night came a tall Sikh, bearded and dignified. "Some nights ago," he said, speaking carefully and slowly to Lieutenant Townsend, who had been hurriedly summoned by the sentry, "my mule-cart was blocked. God was good, and sent to help me some men of your regiment. They were in search of mail, which they found not. On the beach which is called Kangaroo Landing there are now ten bags of mail for the First Colonials." Having, by returning a favor, thus lived up to one of the first principles of the Sikh religion, he saluted gravely, turned on his heel, and disappeared. "I want ten volunteers to get that mail," said Lieutenant Townsend. Four Four times that number volunteered, because it meant a trip to the beach, where there was a possibility of meeting artillery men, who usually had numerous cigarettes. Jake was one of the ten selected, and he set off with his usual good nature. During the trip down the sinuous communication trench, save for the occasional sharp crack of an explosive bullet or the whine of one that was spent, there was nothing to indicate that men were fighting. The party emerged upon a broad plateau, flanked by hills, one of which formed an effective barrier to Turkish artillery fire, and served as an excellent location for dugouts. Through slits in the canvas coverings of these, candles guttered in the wind, and their light guided the party past the first-aid dressing-station, but did not prevent them from almost blundering into a battery disguised as a clump of bushes, whence some artillery men cursed them. Thence they skirted the Indian transport, warned therefrom by the squealing of mules, shaping their course by the Red Cross that flapped bravely in the fresh breeze above the hospital tent, fronted by a row of silent motor ambulances, finally emerging upon a rocky foreland from which many piers and floats ran out into the angry, wind-swept waters of the Ægean Sea. This was Kangaroo Landing. One side of the beach was piled high with boxes landed recently from the lighters that incessantly plowed a spray-covered course from the piers to deeper water, where the transports lay beyond the range of Turkish fire. The other side was given over to a dump in which were piled the kits of the dead, together with those of the wounded, who had been relieved of them before they were taken off to the hospital ship, the red cross of which, outlined in electric light, now shone, steady and unwinking, far out in the bay, now and then obscured by some fantastic, unsubstantial gray shape of a war-ship flitting to and fro in the moonlight, superintending the landing of reinforcements. A little beyond the heap of piled-up equipments a lone Australian paced slowly back and forth outside the barbed-wire inclosure that contained the Anzac dead who had been killed in the landing. The lonely sentinel stopped long enough to greet them, indicated the dugout where they might find their mail, and resumed his march. "Be careful to-night," he cautioned; "they 're shelling the beach." "Is it Beachy Bill?" queried Jake, referring to a battery of three-inch guns the shells of which cleaned up the beach every night at stated intervals. "It's another one this time," answered the Australian; "heavy six-inch shells 'from a battery on the Asiatic shore. This one is Beachy Bill's sister. Down here we call her Asiatic Annie.” Evidently Asiatic Annie had sung her hymn of hate for that night, and the party were enabled to secure their ten bags of mail. In a dugout they found them, and each man selected a bag, hoisted it to his shoulder, and began the return journey. All the lighter bags had been taken by the others, and the heaviest one fell to Jake, who had lingered to chat further with the Australian. But his bulk and muscle were well equal to the load, and his good nature surpassed both. Without complaint he placed the bag on his shoulders, pushed past the others, and fell in at the head of the line. |