The Night Club - Herbert George Jenkins

Mrs. Summers was something of an invalid, and whenever he could the Boy would spend hours in wheeling her bath-chair about Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, or sitting with her at home playing "Patience." This he would do, not from a sense of duty; but because of the pleasure it gave him.

He seemed to go through life looking for things that would interest or amuse "the Mater." From France he sent a stream of things, from aluminium rings to a German machine-gun. There had been some trouble with the Authorities over the machine-gun, which had been put on board a French train and the carriage heavily prepaid. The thing had been held up and enquiries instituted, which had resulted in the Boy paying a visit to the orderly-room to explain to his C.O. what he meant by trying to send Government property to S. Kensington.

"But, sir, we took it, and the men didn't want it," the Boy explained ingenuously.

"Boy," said the Colonel, "In war there is only one thing personal to the soldier, and that is his identity disc."

"I'm most awfully sorry, sir," said the Boy with heightened colour.

"Now look here Boy," said the Colonel, "If by chance you happen to capture a battery of howitzers, I must beg of you for the honour of the regiment not to send them home. Look at that!" He indicated a sheaf of official-looking papers lying on the table before him. Between Whitehall and G.H.Q. an almost hysterical exchange of official memoranda had taken place.

"These are the results of your trying to send a German machine-gun to your mother," and in spite of himself the Colonel's eyes smiled, and the Boy saluted and withdrew. There the incident had ended, that is officially; but out of it, however, grew a tradition. Whenever the 8th Westshires captured anything particularly unwieldy, the standing joke among the men was, "Better post it to the Kid's mother."

One day an enormously fat German prisoner was marched up to the Field Post Office labelled for the Boy's mother. The Bosche, a good-humoured fellow, appeared to enter heartily into the joke, not so the post-office orderly, who threatened to report the post-corporal who had tendered the "packet."

The morning following the taking of the B——n Farm after a desperate fight, the Senior Major, then in command, was surprised to see an enormous piece of cardboard fashioned in the shape of a label, attached to the wall. addressed