“No-sir, sick-parade-sir!”
“Sick Parade! God bless my soul! Sick! How many men were given medicine and duty?”
“Nine, sir.”
“Nine, out of thirteen.... ‘A’ Company is on a route march this morning, is it not?”
“Yessir.”
“My compliments to Major Bland, Corporal, and I would like him to parade these nine men in heavy marching order and send them on a nine-mile route march, under an officer.”
“Very good, sir!”
Next day there were no representatives of “A” Coy. on sick parade!
BATMEN
This war has produced a new breed of mankind, something that the army has never seen before, although they have formed a part of it, under the same name, since Noah was a boy. They are alike in name only. Batmen, the regular army type, are professionals. What they don’t know about cleaning brass, leather, steel, and general valeting simply isn’t worth knowing. They are super-servants, and they respect their position as reverently as an English butler respects his. With the new batman it is different. Usually the difficulty is not so much to discover what they do not know, as what they do! A new officer arrives at the front, or elsewhere, and he has to have a batman. It is a rather coveted job, and applicants are not slow in coming forward. Some man who is tired of doing sentry duty gets the position, and his “boss” spends anxious weeks bringing him up in the way he should go, losing, in the interval, socks, handkerchiefs, underwear, gloves, ties, shirts, and collars galore! What can be said to the wretched man when in answer to “Where the —— is my new pair of socks?” he looks faint and replies: “I’ve lost them, sir!” Verily, as the “professional” scornfully remarks, are these “Saturday night batmen!”