Sergeant-Major Cowley said:
"Sergeant-Major Ledoux said it was like a cattle-stampede on the . . . some river where they come from. You couldn't stop them, sir. It was their first German plane. . . . And they going up the line to-night, sir."
"To-night!" Tietjens exclaimed. "Next Christmas!"
The sergeant-major said:
"Poor boys!" and continued to gaze into the distance. "I heard another good one, sir," he said. "The answer to the one about the King saluting a private soldier and he not taking any notice is: when he's dead. . . . But if you marched a company into a field through a gateway and you wanted to get it out again but you did not know any command in the drill book for change of direction, what would you do, sir? . . . You have to get that company out, but you must not use About Turn, or Right or Left Wheel. . . . There's another one, too, about saluting. . . . The officer in charge of draft is Second-Lieutenant Hotchkiss. . . . But he's an A.S.C. officer and turned of sixty. A farrier he is, sir, in civil life. An A.S.C. major was asking me, sir, very civil, if you could not detail someone else. He says he doubts if Second-Lieutenant Hitchcock . . . Hotchkiss could walk as far as the station, let alone march the men, him not knowing anything but cavalry words of command, if he knows them. He's only been in the army a fortnight. . . ."
Tietjens turned from the idyllic scene with the words:
"I suppose the Canadian sergeant-major and Lieutenant Hotchkiss are doing what they can to get their men to come back."
He re-entered the hut.
Captain Mackenzie in the light of a fantastically brilliant hurricane lamp appeared to be bathing dejectedly in a surf of coiling papers spread on the table before him.
"There's all this bumph," he said, "just come from all the headquarters in the bally world."