From time to time I pottered down on a bicycle for the purpose of strafing criminals and came away each time with a prayer of thanks that there was no new-fledged infant to interfere with the sergeant-major’s methods.
On one occasion he begged me to wait and see an A.D.V.S. of sorts who was due at two o’clock that afternoon and who on his previous tour of inspection had been just about as nasty as he could be. I waited.
Let it be granted as our old enemy Euclid says that the horse standings were the worst in France—the Division of course had the decent ones—and that every effort was being made to repair them. The number of shelled houses removed bodily from the firing line to make brick standings and pathways through the mud would have built a model village. The horses were doing this work in addition to ammunition fatigues, brigade fatigues and every other sort of affliction. Assuming too that a sergeant-major doesn’t carry as much weight as a Captain (I’d got my third pip) in confronting an A.S.C. forage merchant with his iniquities, and I think every knowledgeable person admitted that our wagon line was as good as, if not better than, shall we say, any Divisional battery. Yet the veterinary expert (?) crabbed my very loyal supporter, the sergeant-major, who worked his head and his hands off day in, day out. It was displeasing,—more, childish.
In due course he arrived,—in a motor car. True, it wasn’t a Rolls-Royce, but then he was only a Colonel. But he wore a fur coat just as if it had been a Rolls-Royce. He stepped delicately into the mud, and left his temper in the car. To the man who travels in motors, a splash of mud on the boots is as offensive as the sight of a man smoking a pipe in Bond Street at eleven o’clock in the morning. It isn’t done.
I saluted and gave him good morning. He grunted and flicked a finger. Amicable relations were established.
“Are you in charge of these wagon lines?” said he.
“In theory, yes, sir.”
He didn’t quite understand, and cocked a doubtful eye at me.
I explained. “You see, sir, the B.C. and I are carrying on the war. He’s commanding Group and I’m commanding the battery. But we’ve got the fullest confidence in the sergeant-maj.—”
Was it an oath he swallowed? Anyhow, it went down like an oyster.