Two drivers were stretching pieces of bale wire from pole to pole.
The Colonel asked them if they knew how to do it.
“How many horses have you got for casting?” said the Colonel.
“Do we want to cast any horses, Sergeant-Major?” said I.
“Yes, sir,” said the Sergeant-Major. “We’ve got six.”
It was a delightful morning. Every question that the Colonel asked I passed on to the sergeant-major, whose answer was ever ready. Wherever the Colonel wished to explore, there were men working.
Could a new-fledged infant unversed in the ways of the Army have accomplished it?
One of the sections was down the road, quite five minutes away. During the walk we exchanged views about the war. He confided to me that the ideal was to have in each wagon line an officer who knew no more about gunnery than that turnip, but who knew enough about horses to take advice from veterinary officers.
In return I told him that there ought not to be any wagon lines, that the horse was effete in a war of this nature, that over half the man-power of the country was employed in grooming and cleaning harness, half the tonnage of the shipping taken up in fetching forage, and that there was more strafing over a bad turn-out than if a battery had shot its own infantry for four days running.
The outcome of it all was pure farce. He inspected the remaining section and then told me he was immensely pleased with the marked improvement in the condition of the animals and the horse management generally (nothing had been altered), and that if I found myself short of labour when it came to building a new wagon line, he thought he knew where he could put his hand on a dozen useful men. Furthermore, he was going to write and tell my Colonel how pleased he was.