No man was ever paraded before him with a genuine grievance that he did not endeavour to rectify. In some manner he would, nine times out of ten, turn a “hard case” into a good soldier. One of his greatest powers was his particularly winning smile. When his honest eyes were on you, when his lips curved and two faint dimples showed in his cheeks, it was impossible not to like him. Even those who envied him—and among his brother officers there were not a few—could not bring themselves to say anything against him.
If he had a failing it was a weakness for pretty women, but his manner towards an old peasant woman, even though she was dirty and hideous, was, if anything, more courteous than towards a woman of his own class. He could not bear to see them doing work for which he considered they were unfit. One day he carried a huge washing-basket full of clothes down the main street of a little village in Picardy, through a throng of soldiers, rather than see the poor old dame he had met staggering under her burden go a step farther unaided.
The Colonel happened to see him, and spoke to him rather sharply about it. His answer was characteristic: “I’m very sorry, sir. I forgot about what the men might think when I saw the poor old creature. In fact, sir, if you’ll pardon my saying so, I would not mind much if they did make fun of it.”
He loved children. He never had any loose coppers or small change long, and two of his comrades surprised him on one occasion slipping a five-franc note into the crinkled rosy palm of a very, very new baby. “He looked so jolly cute asleep,” he explained simply.
Almost all his fellow-officers owed him money. He was a poor financier, and when he had a cent it belonged to whoever was in need of it at the time.
One morning at dawn, he led a little patrol to examine some new work in the German front line. He encountered an unsuspected enemy listening post, and he shot two of the three Germans, but the remaining German killed him before his men could prevent it. They brought his body back and he was given a soldier’s grave between the trenches. There he lies with many another warrior, taking his rest, while his comrades mourn the loss of a fine soldier and gallant gentleman.
“S.R.D.”
When the days shorten, and the rain never ceases; when the sky is ever grey, the nights chill, and the trenches thigh deep in mud and water; when the front is altogether a beastly place, in fact, we have one consolation. It comes in gallon jars, marked simply “S.R.D.” It does not matter how wearied the ration party may be, or how many sacks of coke, biscuits, or other rations may be left by the wayside, the rum always arrives.
Once, very long ago, one of a new draft broke a bottle on the way up to Coy. H.Q. (The rum, by the way, always goes to Coy. H.Q.) For a week his life was not worth living. The only thing that saved him from annihilation was the odour of S.R.D., which clung to him for days. The men would take a whiff before going on a working-party, and on any occasion when they felt low and depressed.
There are those who would deny Tommy his three spoonfuls of rum in the trenches; those who declare that a man soaked to the skin, covered with mud, and bitterly cold, is better with a cayenne pepper lozenge. Let such people take any ordinary night of sentry duty on the Western front in mid-winter, and their ideas will change. There are not one, but numberless occasions, on which a tot of rum has saved a man from sickness, possibly from a serious illness. Many a life-long teetotaler has conformed to S.R.D. and taken the first drink of his life on the battle-fields of France, not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Only those who have suffered from bitter cold and wet, only those who have been actually “all-in” know what a debt of gratitude is owing to those wise men who ordered a small ration of rum for every soldier—officer, N.C.O., and man—on the Western front in winter.