"Run away like a good fellow, and bring some shaving water—-have it hot!" Reggy commanded.
"Oh, I'll make it 'ot for you all right, if you don't let me into my office," he retorted angrily.
Might is not always right, so we reluctantly rose. We had had three hours of fitful sleep—not too much for our first night's soldiering. Hot coffee, cheese and biscuits were soon served by our cooks, and we prepared for our first march on English sod.
No one who made that march from Lavington to West Down North will ever forget it. Napoleon's march to Moscow was mere child's play compared with it. Reggy said both his corns were shrieking for Blue Jays and when Bill Barker removed his socks (skin and all) it marked an epoch in his life, for both his feet were clean.
Every fifteen minutes it rained. At first we thought this mere playfulness on the part of the weather; but when it kept right on for weeks on end, we knew it to be distemper. By day it was a steady drizzle, but at night the weather did its proudest feats. Sometimes it was a cloudburst; anon an ordinary shower that splashed in angry little squirts through the canvas, and fell upon our beds.
And the mud! We stood in mud. We walked in mud. We slept in mud. The sky looked muddy, too. Once, and only once, the moon peeped out—it had splashes of mud on its face!
Reggy loved sleep. It was his one passion. Not the sweet beauty sleep of youth, but the deep snoring slumber of the full-blown man. But, oh, those cruel "Orderly Officer" days, when one must rise at dawn! Reggy thought so, too.
Six a.m. The bugle blew "Parade." Reggy arose. I opened one eye in time to see a bedraggled figure in blue pyjamas stagger across the sloppy floor. His eyes were heavy with sleep, and his wetted forelock fell in a Napoleonic curve. The murky dawn was breaking.
Outside the tent we could hear the sergeant-major's rubber boots flop, flop, across the muddy road.
"Fall in, men! Fall in!" His tones, diluted with the rain, came filtering through the tent. It was inspection hour.