The sergeant of the guard pointed out to me the Camp Adjutant's tent and, leaving the draft in charge of Mulligan, I went across to it. The men were by this time wet to the skin and, as clean sheets and pyjamas were not included in their kit, or, as a matter of fact, any change of clothing except a pair of socks and a clean shirt, it looked as though they would most of them have pneumonia the next morning. However, one thing about active service is that it eliminates most of the minor worries of life. A man who may have a bullet through him before he is many days older is not very much afraid of catching cold when he is wet, and the men, when their tents were shown them, just shook the rain off their caps and turned inside.
The Camp Adjutant was a very fierce individual, and when I inquired about a tent for Mulligan and myself said he did not think there was one; when I asked him what then it would be best for us to do, he was first blasphemous and then completely indifferent. A tent standing by itself behind the men's lines, he said, was a cavalry officer's tent, in fact, the whole camp was really a cavalry camp, and he did not know why the —— we had been sent there.
After he had gone I decided to go and look at the cavalry officer's tent. Pulling aside the flaps cautiously I peered inside and there saw, sitting on his valise and eating a biscuit with jam, a very immaculate young gentleman, with light, white-balled breeches and a large silver eagle on his cap. His head was bent as I looked in, but as he looked up I saw the pink and white, ingenious face of Herbert Beldhurst.
"Hullo!" I said.
"Hullo!" said Herbert, looking at me in polite perplexity, then, remembering who I was: "Oh, hullo! Come inside."
I entered.
"Have a cigarette?"
He produced a huge new leather campaigning cigarette case. Everything in his tent was new and designed, regardless of cost, to make campaigning as comfortable as possible. He had a smart spare saddle with two bright leather revolver holsters, a sandwich-case, a box of Fortnum and Mason's groceries, a special Burberry, and a gorgeous canary-yellow woollen waistcoat.
Hearing of our difficulty he at once offered me a share of his tent, and I had my kit put inside. Mulligan I left to look after himself, with implicit confidence in his power to do so.
Half an hour later Mulligan had billeted himself on two young officers fresh from Sandhurst, combined their rations with ours, and constituted himself president of a joint mess.