He was good to look on. He was big and tall, and held himself upright.
His eyes looked his own height. He moved with the grace of an athlete.
His skin was tanned by a wholesome outdoor life, and his eyes were
clear and wide open. Physically he was a prince among men. We used
to notice, as we marched along the road and passed other officers,
that they always looked pleased to see him. They greeted him with a
cordiality which was reserved for him. Even the general seemed to have
singled him out, and cast an eye of special approval upon him. Somehow,
gentle though he was, he was never familiar. He had a kind of innate
nobility which marked him out as above us. He was not democratic. He
was rather the justification for aristocracy. We all knew instinctively
that he was our superior--a man of finer temper than ourselves, a
"toff" in his own right. I suppose that that was why he could be so
humble without loss of dignity. For he was humble too, if that is the
right word, and I think it is. No trouble of ours was too small for
him to attend to. When we started route marches, for instance, and our
feet were blistered and sore, as they often were at first, you would
have thought that they were his own feet from the trouble he took. Of
course after the march there was always an inspection of feet. That
is the routine. But with him it was no mere routine. He came into our
rooms, and if anyone had a sore foot he would kneel down on the floor
and look at it as carefully as if he had been a doctor. Then he would
prescribe, and the remedies were ready at hand, being borne by the
sergeant. If a blister had to be lanced he would very likely lance
it himself there and then, so as to make sure that it was done with
a clean needle and that no dirt was allowed to get in. There was no
affectation about this, no striving after effect. It was simply that
he felt that our feet were pretty important, and that he knew that we
were pretty careless. So he thought it best at the start to see to the
matter himself. Nevertheless, there was in our eyes something almost
religious about this care for our feet. It seemed to have a touch of
the Christ about it, and we loved and honored him the more.