TRIALS OF A CAMOUFLAGE OFFICER.
C. Officer. "NOW THEN, WHAT'S THE MEANING OF THIS?"
C. Painter. "I WAS TELLING 'IM 'E DIDN'T KNOW NOTHING ABOUT CAMERFLARGE, SIR, AND 'E SAYS, 'HO, DON'T I? I'LL SOON SHOW YER. I'LL MAKE YER SO'S YER OWN MOTHER WON'T KNOW YER'; AN' 'E UPS WITH THE PAINT-BUCKET ALL OVER ME, SIR."
L'AGENT PROVOCATEUR.
A short while ago the following advertisement appeared in the "Personal" column of The Times:—
"Artist (33), literary, travelled, mentally isolated, would appreciate brilliant, interesting correspondents; writers' anonymity observed."
Now thereby hang many tales (none of them necessarily true). Here is one of them.
The Colonel of the Blank-blank Blankshires exclaimed (as all proper Colonels are expected to do), "Ha!" Carefully marking with a blue pencil a small paragraph on the front page of The Times, he threw it on the table among the attentive Mess and snorted.
"Ha! A Cuthbert—a genuine shirker! I think some of you might oblige the gentleman."
Then he stepped outside and went into the seventh edition of his impressionist sketch, "Farmyard of a French Farm," with lots of BBB pencil for the manure heap. He was a young C.O. and new to the regiment.
The Mess "carried on" the conversation.
"I'll write to the blighter," shouted the Junior Sub. "I'll be an awf'lly 'interesting correspondent.'"
"And a brilliant one?" queried the Major.
"A Verey brilliant one, Sir," asserted the Sub., giving a sample.
"This sort of slacker," said the Senior Captain bitterly, as with infinite toil he scraped the last of the glaze from the inside of the marmalade pot, "is the sort that doesn't realise that there's a war on."
"Don't you make any mistake," said the Major, "he knows, poor devil! I'm going to write to him and say, 'When I think of the incessant strain of the trench warfare carried on with inadequate support by you civilians of military age against the repeated brutal attacks of tribunals, I marvel at the indomitable pluck you display. In your place I should simply jack it up, plead ill-health and get into the Army."
"I've got an idea," said the Junior Sub., joyously.
"Consolidate it quickly," said the Adjutant, "and prepare to receive counter-attacks. Yes?"
"I've never yet been allowed to explain my side of that confounded affair of the revetments. I'll tell it all to Cuthbert. He'll sympathise with me. I'll tell him all that the C.O. said and all that I should have liked to say to the C.O. To pour out one's troubles into a travelled literary bosom—what a relief!"
"That's rather an idea," said the Senior Captain. "I nurse a private grief of my own beneath a camouflage of—of persiflage. I think I shall ask Cuthbert's opinion, as an artist, of a brother artist who himself does perfectly unrecognisable sketches of farm-yards"—he waved a golden-syrup spoon towards the Colonel and the manure-heap—"and yet demands a finnicking and altogether contemptible realism in the matter of trench maps. Pass the honey, please."
"It seems to me," said the Major reflectively as he rose from table, "that 'Artist, 33, literary, travelled, mentally isolated' (one) is going to be buried beneath the weight of the world's grievances—or the grievances of this battalion, at any rate."
"It's the same thing," observed the Senior Captain gloomily. "Isn't there any preserved ginger? Lord, what a Mess!"
Weary Williams, a time-expired Second Lieutenant—a ticket-of-leave man, as it were, without a ticket-of-leave—who had once commanded the remnants of two companies with honour but not with acknowledgment, poised a fountain-pen, inquiring casually, "What was it the C.O. said about the destruction of Ypres? Ah, yes" (and he began to write), "a Brobdingnagian act of brachycephalic brutality...."
At breakfast about a week later the Colonel seemed to be enjoying his immense pile of correspondence so heartily that many of the Mess, comparatively letterless as they were, directed glances of injured interest towards him—of rather deeper interest than was warranted by military discipline or civilian breeding (which are, of course, the same virtue in different forms).
Then, presently, as he put down one letter and opened another, the Major was seen to stiffen and the Junior Sub. to wilt. The attention of the table became as fixed and frigid as that of the midnight sentry at a loophole. The Colonel toyed happily with another letter (while the Senior Captain made a careful census of the grounds at the bottom of his coffee-cup), took the range of the manure-heap outside the window from the angles of the table-legs, rose, and departed with his correspondence, summoning Williams to follow him.
Outside the Weary One waited respectfully for the Colonel to speak.
"So you saw through my camouflage?" said the latter thoughtfully.
"Yes, Sir."
"How did you do it?"
"Well, Sir, to mention only the internal evidence—an 'Artist'"—Williams waved his hand expressively towards the manure-heap; "'thirty-three'—one of the youngest C.O.'s in the Army, I believe?" He bowed politely.
"Ha!" said the Colonel.
"'Literary'—I remember your stopping Captain Jones's leave for a split infinitive in a ration return. 'Travelled'—you have travelled in Turkey, I think, Sir?"
The Colonel, who had been blown out of a trench at Krithia, nodded shortly.
"'Mentally isolated'—I'm afraid, Sir, our Mess doesn't afford very much for a mind like yours to bite on. I'm afraid, too, that such correspondence as—as mine, for instance—can hardly be called either brilliant or interesting."
"I don't know," said the Colonel. "That was a very good bit about the destruction of Ypres. What was it?—Ha, yes—A Brobdingnagian act—"
"—of brachycephalic brutality, Sir. But that was not original."
"If you can't be original yourself," said the Colonel kindly, "the next best thing is to quote from those who can."
"That's what I thought, Sir."
"Ha! Well, of course the writers' anonymity must be observed—that's a point of honour. Still, I think, Williams—I have been asked to recommend an intelligent officer for a staff appointment—that if I were to name you I should not go far wrong. And—er—if you are ever asked for an opinion of the destruction of Ypres—"
"I shall remember to give the reference, Sir. Thank you, Sir."
W.B.