The officer in charge, a ranker captain, was not very pleased, but I talked a lot and made him regard himself as vital to my earthly happiness. I painted in vivid colours the smallness of my men's caps; how they fell off when they doubled, and what confusion ensued in the ranks as they all stooped to pick them up. He grew more friendly, and slightly amused, and said he would do what he could. We started to go out to the men, the sergeant helping me wonderfully, but, alas, we met an old man with a red cap and of furious mien who stood looking at my brave soldiers in the distance with much displeasure. He came to me and gave me blazes and ordered me to get out of it. He disliked intensely the fact that my major regarded him as a shop keeper, he, the "D.C.O.S." or something equally dreadful! I explained that the caps did not fit, and that we were desperate men. He said: "They do fit." "Well, sir, will you have a look?" We had to go round, in order to avoid a platform from which stores were loaded into wagons G. S. I jumped this place and quickly told the sergeant to make the men put their caps on the very tip of their heads, to change some, to do anything, but to do it quickly. The men were fools—they took the matter as a joke and commenced exchanging one anothers' caps, laughing and affecting a certain cunning which seemed fatal to me. The general, of course, caught them in the very act, appreciated the situation and roared with laughter. After that it was not difficult. All of my men were supplied, not with new emergency caps, but with beautiful field service khaki caps and they took away with them one hundred extra caps for the men at home. When this operation had finished the general said: "Now is there anything else that you want, for I'm damned if I will have you coming here again in this manner?" It was all wrong, hopelessly wrong, but we were proud soldiers as we marched back into the barracks at Deep Cut, each man wearing a perfect cap and carrying another. Of sixteen batteries, we were the only people who could boast of "caps, service field."
The major, of course, was pleased but if it had not come off I should have been the person to get strafed, and not he.
There are always short cuts, even in the inspection of guns and carriages.
I sometimes wonder how I have managed to get along out here possessing so much ignorance of business. It has been comparatively simple. I had no intention of being clever, even if it were possible, and from the start I took a perfectly honest line, and placed all my cards on the table. I found that this was a fairly unusual manner of doing business and it worked well. I also made the discovery that, instead of being cunning knaves, the American manufacturers of my experience were honest gentlemen. In any case, I decided that if they were cunning the heights of my cunning would never reach theirs, owing to my lack of experience. I also endeavoured to learn from them a "good approach." This helped. I just put it up to them. "Here am I out here to get work from you. We must have it. We've got to strafe the Germans somehow and it is up to you to help me." And they have, bless them, especially the big men. At any rate, I can safely say that anything I have wanted I have got.
I think that I realized the situation. Not only had they mostly "bitten off more than they could chew," but they had not realized the difficulties they were up against. Of course, one had to use a little common sense. During my time here in America one has learnt a great deal, and, indeed, one has met some villains. They were not "Yankee manufacturers."
Do you remember Lady Deadlock's lover in "Bleak House," and the street boy's eulogy after his death, "He was very good to me, he was"? That is how I feel towards the men I have met during my time here. They have been very good to me, all of them. I suppose that if I had been an inspector the matter would have been different. Perhaps I have laughed a little at inspectors, but my job has been child's play compared with theirs.
The average American, like other folk, enjoys a decent fight, but he dislikes killing people by machinery; hence the machinery of war has never been manufactured to any great extent over here. The American is impatient of delay. He wants to get going. When held up, he sometimes fails to see the inspector's point of view. He is an optimist, but optimism in gun and carriage manufacture will often bring some bitterness of heart, and when an optimist develops bitterness, it's awful.