They were marched into an ex-dye factory, boiled, fourteen in a vat, issued with a change of underclothes and marched on to billets.
The 53rd being a smart regiment, they were given twenty-four hours to lick and polish themselves like unto the stars of the firmament for brightness, or never hear the last of it.
In twenty-four hours they paraded again, according unto orders, and the stars of the firmament also ran.
At noon the same day the party proceeding on Blighty leave was paraded for inspection by the Orderly Officer.
Pending the arrival of the O.O., the Regimental Sergeant-Major gave them a preliminary look over.
They were dressed by the right in file, chests thrown in the air, faces shiny with soap and pink from razoring. Every badge, buckle and button twinkled a challenge back at the sun, every spur shone like a bar of silver, their leatherwork gleamed with the polish bloom of a plum, their puttees and tunics were without spot or blemish, every cap raked slightly over every right ear. They were smart men of a smart regiment, whose boast it was that they lived and died glitteringly.
The R.S.M. ran a grey foxy eye over and through them. At the sixth file from the right he paused, staggered, blanched, and broke into tears.
The Regiment was disgraced, the name gloriously won by dashing generations of light cavalry men was gone for ever. Here was a Fifty-third proposing to go home and swank about England practically naked. Blankety blankety blank. O Lord! The sixth file went pea-green under his tan, instinctively felt for his top left-hand pocket button and did it up.
The R.S.M. went on his way down the line, thrashing his leggings severely with his whip and shaking with emotion. Ten files further down he found a speck of brass polish lurking behind a belt-hook and didn't expect to survive it.
Sixteenth file rubbed it off with a handkerchief, trembling all over.
The O.O. came on the scene, inspected them with a swelling of pride tightening his tunic, found a few faults as a matter of principle, and ordered them away.
The R.S.M. escorted them to the road, dismissed them with his blessing, adjuring them to be good little boys generally, and pay his respects to a publican near the Elephant and Castle if they passed that way.
At 2 p.m. they entrained at the railhead along with carolling parties from the thousand-and-one units that go to make the B.E.F.
At 3 a.m. they detrained in the dim-lit vault of Victoria. As they tramped out of the gates a little man, wearing square clothes and an accent that twanged like a banjo, bored into the crowd.
He let some squads of mud-caked line infantry go by unmolested, threw but a cursory glance over a batch of rain-sodden gunners, then his bright eye caught the brighter buttons of the Fifty-thirds and he swooped upon them, thrusting pasteboards into every hand. The sixteenth file paused with his chum under a lamp and read his card.
It ran as follows:
OUR HEROES' SUPPLY DEPT.
Look the part and have your war-yarns believed at home.
Put yourselves in our hands and then watch the girls gather
round.
LIST OF CHARGES
Mud-spray (patent mud guaranteed to stick for five days) 1s.
Bullet-holes (punched in cap or tunic) 3d. each.
Blood-stains (indelible) 6d.
Prayer-book (with embedded bullet) 2s. 6.
We have also a large stock of souvenirs—shell fragments,
bullets, German caps, helmets, etc., at moderate charges.
Call and see us right now. Depot just round the block.
The sixteenth file looked at his chum, fingering his card uneasily. "Well, Bob, what d'you say? My lassie is won'erful 'ard to convince."
"I'm with you," said his friend. "Mother is a fair terror too."
They tramped after the little man.
A quarter of an hour later they might have been seen tramping back down Victoria Street looking like nothing on earth.