THE REGIMENT WILL LIVE
By MARTIN CASTLETHORPE
HE battalion marched out to its unknown destination at 4 o'clock this morning. The Colonel was informed of the intended move three days ago, but no one else suspected anything until late last evening a midnight parade was ordered. Then the news sped. Four extra men had to be placed at the barracks entrance to hold back the wives and sweethearts, who thronged the column on each side as it made its sad way through the otherwise deserted and silent streets to the station.
Our small advance party heard all this and more from the military policeman at the gate, when later today we came to take over the barracks. He has the well-developed chest of the physical training expert, and wears on his collar the crossed sabres of the assault-at-arms man ; but that night departure evidently moved him deeply. The confidence of the near-bruiser has temporarily forsaken him ; never has a man looked sadder. " . . . and they took all their dogs with them in the dark," he said, " not one have they left behind. But they went with a good heart, they did." He would have told us much more, had we had no work to do.
It is a sad business. Soldiers must leave many things behind them when they march out to war, and the once precious possessions of the previous occupants are now lying everywhere. Moving in with all the relics of their tenancy still about seems not unlike stripping a corpse for its cloth- ing. I walked into the officers' mess and reflected upon the suitability of the word. A half-eaten meal is still on the dining-room table. Amongst it lie copies of last night's evening papers, and a pile of scrunched-up letters and bills with an important-looking document, the Marriage Settle- ment of and Lieut. So-and-So. Everywhere there is evidence of a hasty departure. The passages are dark with the black- out shutters only partly drawn ; from all the rooms leading into them the accumulated rubbish of what seems like a decade is being swept out into large piles of refuse ; the rear-party left to clean up creep stealthily down the dark passages, like jackals prowling from midden to midden ; they seem rather ashamed of the mess and the muddle. Even irreplaceable records have been left to the rear-party to pack. Idly I picked up a long blue morocco-bound volume with the regimental crest embossed in gold on the cover. " Officers' Game Book," I read, " Ambadi Valley, December 3rd, 1925. Three tigers about but no luck." My mind went back to those placid, happy days that now belong to another life- time: week-end shooting camps in the Punjab ; walking up peacock in the paddy fields ; mallard fighting against an orange sky. I picked up another book, even more beauti- fully bound : " The War Diary of Lieut. A. B. Smith, M.C., I915-4918. Presented to his Brother Officers." Then remembered that it was under a Lieut.-Col. A. B. Smith, M.C., that they marched out this morning.
" . . . I went along to Coy. H.Q. to have tea. Just as I was Bitting down a sentry called to me to look and see what was iaappening. All along the German front thick yellow streams of gas were going up into the air and settling down into regular waves which rolled towards us. The next half-hour was somewhat hectic. Everyone was shooting for all they were worth. Ted Soames got his machine gun up on to the parapet as masses of Huns were attacking away on our right. He kept it firing throughout the gas, which was magnificently brave, and undoubtedly saved the two right companies. Our so-called respirators of cotton gauze were useless against the biting, choking fumes of chlorine. Men rolled and suffocated all over the bottom of the trench. Then the air became pure again and one felt surprised to be still alive. It was quiet and one could count the toll. Out of nearly 200 men scarcely 3o were fit for anything. I saw Ted Soames, quite blue, a dreadful sight, carried off on a stretcher to die. . . ."
I shut the book' and went outside, as it was time to meet the other representatives. We assembled at the guard- room, under the mournful eye of that melancholy ex- gymnast : two from my unit, two from the outgoing unit, and two sappers. The sappers, the oldest major I have ever seen, wearing the medal ribands of two wars of last century, and a little man in a greasy trilby and mackintosh, are to note the damages and deficiencies and repair them in their own good time ; but principally they are here to see fair play. On these occasions the outgoing unit tries to get away with as much as possible, so that the newcomers shall foot the bill in due course. A conscientious taking-over officer, with a good eye for broken panes and missing keys, can save his unit a hundred pounds or more.
So we have begun the slow procession which will take us a full week before we have visited every place—the officers' and sergeants' messes, the ten barrack blocks, offices, stores, garages, dining-halls, bath-houses, school and miniature range —going meticulously through the inventory of each. All day we have been haunted by the ghosts of the recently departed : half-filled mugs of tea (the soldier does so love his cup of " char "), a forgotten pair of socks hung up to dry, a letter just begun (" Darling Muv. I hope this finds you as it leaves me in the pink. . . ."). The British soldier's charac- teristics have never shown themselves more plainly than to me this afternoon : his sense of humour (the regimental motto " Firmus Maneo," with chalked underneath it " — means Berlin or Bust "), his love of animals (scores of cats) and his superstition, though this is dying out (we were told that it was no accident that the only equipment left behind was bicycle No. 13). Above all, his never failing ability to inspire affection in all who have dealings with him (" They were the best boys ever," said the girl in the Insti- tute, with tears in her eyes, when we came to count the billiard balls 'and cues.) I saw a spray of artificial cherry blossom that had been trampled in the mud beneath many marching boots. It seemed vaguely connected with some other event in the attic of my mind, and all afternoon it bothered me. Then sud- denly I remembered that when another battalion marched off on active service seven years ago, a crushed red carnation lay in the gutter as we passed. It had fallen from my coat a few hours earlier, for we, too, had had our Duchess of Richmond's Ball ; and (I had almost forgotten) my partner at dinner was Countess Ciano, then the wife of only an obscure vice-consul. But that was active service, on which we fired no shot in anger, and had only one man hit, acci- dentally on the heel by a Jap ricochet.
A little later I came upon more artificial cherry blossom, a whole box of it, and I asked its meaning. I was told that it is their custom to wear cherry blossom in their caps on Oudenarde Day. When moving forward to assault the palisades more than two hundred years ago, the regiment had passed through an orchard in blossom which many had picked. The John Churchill tradition dies hard. I noticed that the regimental crest on the brass gong outside the Orderly Room includes the white horse of Hanover, and underneath the crest is engraved :
" Sands grow cold and seas run dry But Marlborough's Own will never die."
Indifferent verse, perhaps, but as I read the scroll of battle honours inscribed the whole length of the two brass legs, and covering every war I could think of, from Blenheim down to Passchendaele and Cambrai, I realised the undeniable truth of it. The battalion which marched out this morning may be blasted out of existence. But the Regiment will live.
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