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The German heavy artillery took the precaution of bombarding our part of the front, and caused many casualties and much damage in the front line. The whole of C Company batmen were killed by a shell, and 2nd-Lieut. Burt, a new arrival but an old friend, was also killed. Poor lad, he was always certain that he would be killed as soon as he got out to France!
They had an unpleasant time and were more than once heavily shelled, on one occasion having a narrow escape. The officers were sitting in a dug-out when an armour piercing field gun shell passed through the roof and out of the door, hurting no one. Major Griffiths and 2nd Lieut. Dunlop received slight scratches, as also did Adams, one of the batmen, but no serious damage was done.
No man was ever more fortunate in his batmen Adams, a typical regular, fiercely proud of his regiment; Campion, the London Territorial, a commercial traveller in civil life; and Munro, the Royal Scot, who within a month or two of the outbreak of war could no longer suppress the fighting spirit of the Royal Regiment stirring within him, and voluntarily rejoined, leaving a wife and six children behind him.
Most of the officers had either British or Indian servants; in the former case they were known as batmen, and in the latter as bearers; but I decided to follow suit with the minority and get an Arab, and therefore learn Arabic instead of Hindustanee, for the former would be of vastly more general use.
So low were they that all men with rifles the infantry in their trenches, the A.S.C. drivers from their dumps, the transport men from their horse-lines were firing a rapid-fire at the aeroplanes and waiting to see them fall. "Cheeky brutes!" I shouted, and, observing that our batmen were hastily loading their rifles, ran for my revolver, determined to fire something into the air.
Both of us would have liked to take our batmen with us and to say: "Don't trouble, my man will do that for you." We created a gratifying sensation at Kensingtowe. It was exhilarating to have a friend come up to me and exclaim: "By Jove, Ray, you're no end of a dog now," and to notice that he didn't heed my self-depreciatory answer because he was busy looking into every detail of my uniform.
"Of course; and tell the padre to meet the battalion at W Beach at ten o'clock." Down the hillside I went, across the Gully, forging like a steam-pinnace through the water, and up the face of the opposite hill. Full of the glorious bursting weight of good news, I looked down upon our batmen at work in the cookhouse, and roared: "Pack the valises. We're off to-night." I rushed into the dug-out.
Among them was to be numbered the butler. Servants, other than military batmen, were simply not in Joe's world. Only the Uppers were in position to utilise the full time of individuals. Long years past, those tasks which once called for servants had been automated, from automated elevators to automated baby-sitters.
The battalion of Italian troops with its company of skii troops which sailed from England with the American convoy also went to the Murmansk and all the American doughboy saw of Italians in the fighting area of Archangel, North Russia, was the little handful of well dressed Italian officers and batmen in the city of Archangel.
Scraps of information which they gathered while in attendance at the officers' mess dugout were pieced together, and much new material of their own invention added. The striving was for piquancy rather than plausibility. A wild tale was always better than a dull one; furthermore the "batmen" were our only sources of official information, and could always command a hearing.
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