DEAR CHARLES,--You must forgive my writing this letter with a fountain
pen, but to do otherwise would be an act of ingratitude to my servant,
Private J. B. COX. I told him this morning that I had lost my pocket
pen, a cheap affair made of tin. I instructed him to find it, and J. B.
is one of those perfect factotums who do as they are told. He has a
sharp eye and no scruples, and so, owing to the fact that three other
officers live in my billet, he was able to find two valuable fountain
pens and one stylographic in no time. The exigencies of war necessitate
some little irregularity now and then; but how, I asked him, did he
justify this excess of zeal? J. B. is distinguished by a lisp among
other things. "It'th betht to be on the thafe thide, Thir," said he.
We had an all-night outpost job on this week, at which my company
achieved an unpremeditated success--unpremeditated by the authorities,
that is. Before setting out we had been threatened with the heaviest
penalties if we were discovered at any moment in a dereliction of duty,
which meant that the Adjutant proposed to pay us a surprise visit and
had every hope of discovering responsible officers asleep at their
posts. Those who know will tell you that the hour before dawn is that
during which an attack is most likely in real war; they also assert that
this is the most likely period for derelictions in imitation war, and
so, as we anticipated all along, this was the time selected for the
surprise visit. But we were not caught napping, Sir; every possible
approach to our picket was protected by strong groups, each instructed
to let no one pass on any account and least of all those who attempted
to trick them by a pretence of authority, however realistic that
pretence might be. Thus it fell out that when the Adjutant was sighted
he was instantly accosted and firmly apprehended. Inasmuch as he refused
to be led blindfold through our lines, he was not allowed to approach
our august selves at all, but was retained until such time as we cared
to approach him. Mind you, I'm not saying we were asleep; merely I show
you how thoroughly we do our work. It is not mine that is the master
mind; it is my skipper's, a man upon whose ready cunning I rely to bring
me to Berlin and its choicest light beer well in advance of all other
victorious forces.
It used to be our Brigadier's fad that officers commanding companies
should know the names of all their men, and lately he took upon himself
to test it. Captain after captain, upon being asked to name a selected
man, had to confess ignorance; not so my skipper. He knew them all.
"What is that man's name?" asked the Brigadier, indicating an
inconspicuous and rather terrified private, just that sort of man whose
name one would never know or want to know. (It was something rather like
Postlethwaite, I believe). "Two paces forward, Private Johnson," ordered
my skipper emphatically, fixing an hypnotic eye on the youth, and
adding, to prove his accuracy, "Now, my lad, your name's Joh----?"
"----nson, Sir," concluded the victim. That night, at dinner, the
Brigadier told the C.O. that, among many disappointments, he had found
one officer who seemed to know the names of his men "almost better than
the men did themselves." In accordance with J. B.'s maxim about being on
the safe side, it was a company order afterwards that, when asked, all
even numbers were to be "Evans" and odd numbers "Hodges," till further
notice.
Talking about names, I was quite homesick for old London when, in
calling the names and regimental numbers of a party, I found myself
bawling angrily for "Gerrard, No. 2784."
Catering, as we do, for all tastes, we have in our rank and file a
serio-comic artiste from the lower rungs of the music-hall ladder. We
had a busy time with him at our Great Inoculation Ceremony (First
Performance) on Saturday. We could not put too strict a discipline upon
men into whose arms we were just about to insert fifteen million
microbes apiece, and our private was not slow to seize his opportunity.
He insisted upon his fifteen million being numbered off in order to
discover whether there were any of them absent from parade; he wished to
know if they had all their proper equipment, and whether each had passed
his standard test. As the needle was inserted into his arm, "Move to the
left in fours," he ordered them; "form fours--left--in succession of
divisions--number one leading--quick-ma-harch." (It was the same
humorist who recently took a strong line about protective colouring, and
put in an application for a set of khaki teeth.)
At the moment of inoculation we were all, officers and men, very
facetious and off-hand about it, but as the evening came on we grew
_piano_, even miserable. Mess was not made any less sombre by
Wentworth's plaintive observation that "the doctor who had succeeded in
making a thousand of us thoroughly ill and debarred us from the cheering
influence of alcohol was probably at that very moment himself enjoying a
hearty debauch."
The only effect of the dose upon me was to induce a rather morbid
contemplation. I recalled the happy times when I was once, even as you
are, a barrister who rose at 8.30 A.M. (an incredibly late hour), did
next to nothing all day and, when I wanted to go away, just went. I used
in those gentle days to take off my hat to ladies (a long-forgotten
habit), and I never dreamed of calling anybody "Sir." I used to suppose
that I should rise from stuff to silk, from silk to ermine, to conclude
as a Judge on the King's Bench. It seems now that I may rise from stars
to crowns, from crowns to oakleaves, and end my days as a commissionaire
in--who knows?--His Majesty's _foyer_. I, who had hoped to dismiss your
appeals, may come instead to hail your taxi at the theatre door; may
even come to call _you_ "Sir." But for the moment I am
Yours thoroughly disrespectfully,