February 8, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
13 
the other. So lliat wlicn llio O.C. sent in ]u> report npon 
liini, on lii^ '' pajHi-work." " boarin.;::," " pnnetnality " 
and" power o£ handlin.!;' men," he marked the hrst three 
•• good," bnt the fourth " excellent." 
The Major must, I think, have taken rather a fancy to 
him, for one day he asked him if he knew anything about 
revolver-shooting and, on being answered in the negative, 
he took him privilv aside and taught him a thing 
or two— hrst. that you mustn't grip the revolver too 
tight or it will throw vour wrist off, second that you really 
hrc with the whole "hand rather tljan with the trigger- 
iinger and should absorb the shock into your whole 
frame, and, last and. greatest of these, that in shooting 
a descending figure you should incline the whole body 
as you lower the arm and never make a series of elbo^\•- 
jerics. At the end of it all he plugged the target with six 
shots in an eight-inch circle and the Major gave him his 
blessing — and his revolver. He was to owe his life more 
than once to what the Major had taught him. 
Then he joined his battalion and was put in command 
of a platoon. 
" It's verv like being a prefect again with the Adjutant 
as the 'Head,' "he wrote to his mother of his first day's 
duty as orderlv officer, and so it was. To carry on as 
orderly officer" from re\eille to tattoo— and later— -re- 
quires tact. Froiii the time when he inspected the issue 
of rations in the early dawn to the hour when he tumgd 
out the quarter-guard just before midnight he was res- 
ponsible fur the ■■ tone " of that camp. He had to .see 
that evervthing from cook-house to guard-room was 
" clean and regular," to examine the rations with the eye 
of an Inspector of Food and Drugs and to smell the 
men's dinners with the nose of a chef, to see that the 
utensils were unspotted from the world and the ritfes 
of the guard, bfirring the safety-catch, ready to go off 
of themsehes. Also he had to hear and adjudicate 
upon " complaints " like a cadi under a palm-tree. 
To do this kind of thing properly you have to be 
vigilant, without being fussy and alert without being 
re:^tive — otherwise yoiu- orderly sergeant and sergeant of 
the guard get fussy and restive too, and that kind of 
thinf 
IS catching and bad for the men. 
He completed 
his report to the ;\djutant next morning with the words, 
" Nothing unusual has occurred during my tour of 
duty with the exception of that noted overleaf." The 
Adjutant said nothing — and an .Adjutant's silence is 
golden. It means that you will do. 
The tirst thing he did was to get to know his men. He 
taught them that cleanliness was next to godliness 
and having commended their souls to the padre he 
devoted himself to their bodies. He made them taUe 
their caj^is off on parade to see if their hair was parted 
and hold out their hands like bishops at confirmation 
to see if their finger-nails were clean. Also he en- 
couraged them to play " footer," which keeps the pores 
open and is an infallible remedy for " grouse " disease. 
And one night he talked to them like a man and a 
brother in one of the hutments on the history of th(^ 
regiment. He told them of a certain glorious episode 
in the defence of the Residency in \-irtue of which they 
were entitled to call themseh-es " I^.I." and how th(" 
soup-tureen, now safely banked with the regimental 
mess-plate, got the hole in it. Also why they were en- 
titled to wear a red flash on their hats and a half-red 
pugaree on their helmets in virtue of their having shown 
the red feather by way of biting their thumbs at Mont- 
calm's men in Quebec. And other such things, till his 
men felt — and, as things turned out later, pro\-ed — that 
the honour of the regiment was dearer to them than their 
lives. They began to think better of the geometry of 
l^ilatoon drill after this, and to see that platoon, advanc- 
ing in column of fours, form forward into column of 
sections when he uttered the words " On the left, form 
sections," was as good as watching the rhythmical 
swing of a well-stroked eight. And by reason of all 
this, the O.C. commended him, the captain of his company 
cherished him, and his platoon-sergeant delighted to do 
his bidding. And when the battalion went route- 
marching over the downs, moving like a long cater- 
pillar as each section of fours rose and fell over the crest, 
and he marched at the head of his platoon, he felt it 
was good, very good, to be alive. 
He went out with his battalion to the front. His. 
letters home told his mother that he was having " a 
ripping time." He did not tell her that he wrote them 
in a cave of clay with his feet in water and his head m a 
cloud of smoke'from damp coke and damper wood. He 
endured without grousing rain and cold and frost arid 
mud and, w hat was far harder to bear, a sad deficiency in 
machine guns ^\K\ trench-mortars that were made out of 
stove-pipes. He went through the second battle of 
Ypres, and when his company officer and all his fellow^ 
ofiicers were knocked out he carried on with a handful of 
men in a hole about the size of a dewpond and saved the 
iwsition. The next thing he knew was that his name 
appeared in the Gazd/c with the Military Cross. The 
only comment he made was that other fellows had a 
better claim to it— which was untrue. And when he 
came home on seven days' leave his mother discovered 
that her bov had become a man. At tw^enty he was wise 
with the wisdom of thirtv-five— wiser, perhaps, for he 
had seen things such as come not once in a generation to 
the sons of men. His leave coincided with one of those 
recurrent interludes in which that elusive mirage " the 
end of the war " appears before the wistful eyes of men, 
and they talked of his future at Oxford. But he shook 
his head. 
" Xo," he said pensively. "I shall never go back, 
Munnny— I couldn't. ]\Iy year's scattered like the leaves 
of the forest," he went on "as, with his back to them, he 
gazed through the window at the dead leaves spinning 
under the beeches in the park. " And anyhow I'm 
too old." This at twenty. But they knew what he 
meant and talked of the Bar, a seat in Parliament. 
Ouarter Sessions. To all of which he returned no answer. 
'" He went back. Thev saw him off by the boat-train 
from Victoria. He held" his mother a long tinre and kissed 
the eyes into which his own had first looked when he 
opened them in wonder upon the world. And father and 
mother went home together to the big country-house 
which suddenly seemed to have grown still bigger- so 
forlorn and empty did it seem. 
One night he had to go out on patrol— a reconnoitring 
patrol, which is always a small affair and does not com- 
mand the full complement of a fighting patrol. He sat 
in his dug-out writing a letter home on the flimsy of a 
"Messages and Signals" form. The N.C.O. appeared 
at the dug-out and raised the screen of sacking. Tony 
folded up the letter, sealed it, addressed it, and marked 
the envelope, " To be forwarded only in the event of my 
death." Then he examined the chambers of his revolver 
and rose and went out into the night. 
***** 
Far away across a sodden land lit up by the flashes of 
guns like sheet-lightning, across a waste of waters where 
a chain of destrovers rose and fell with the Channel swell, 
beyond the rolling downs of the south country, a woman 
in "a great house a; woke with a cry out of a troubled sleep 
and 'put out her hand. " Jack," she said, " Tony's 
dead." 
Her husband woke w4th a start and bent over her. 
" Nonsense, Marv," he said with faltering lips, " you've 
been dreaming." . "She was sitting up in bed, a shower of 
hair, still auburn, and still soft as silk, falling about her 
shoulders as she gazed at the window. She sank back 
and buried her head in the pillows. 
" No ! " she said. " I've seen him.'' 
Thre(! days later a boy came up the drive with an 
orange-coloured envelope in his hand. The father saw 
him approaching from the dining-room window, and 
something pierced, him like a two-edged sword. He 
learnt— but that was later— that Tony had gone out on 
patrol with a corporal ; they had been surprised by a 
party of the enemy and the "^ N.C.O. had got badly hit. 
He begged Tony to leave him. But the boy took hha 
up on his young shoulders and made his way back. 
Sometimes lie fell, for the man was heavy and the ground 
bad, but he laboured on. A star-shell went up behind 
them, and the earth was suddenly stricken with a pallid 
glare of light. Then a hail of bullets enveloped them 
and the boy fell- this time to rise no more. The corporal 
said afterwards— this to the boy's parents when they 
came to see the corporal in hospital— that the boy had 
said something at the last—" something I couldn't quite 
understand, ma'am, not being a scholar like him, some- 
thing that sounded like ' Apollyon.' But I fancy his 
mind was wandering-like. And he never said no more.'' 
