“Come and have a——” you begin cheerily. Suddenly, in the frosty silence you hear a cool, passionless voice remark,
“Good evening, SIR!”
It is George, the man you loved and trusted, whom you looked on as a friend and brother.
“George, come and have a——” again the words stick in your throat.
George answers, in tones from which all amity, peace, and goodwill towards men have vanished:
“Thanks very much, sir”—oh baleful little word—“but I’ve just started a game of poker.”
Dimly light dawns in your reeling brain; you realise the full extent of your disabilities, and you know that all is over. You are the Adjutant—the voice of the C.O.!
Sadly, with the last glimmer of Adjutant pride and pomp cast from out your soul, you return to Orderly Room, drinkless, friendless, and alone.
“The Staff Captain has been ringing you up, sir. He wants to know if the summary of evidence ...” and so on. In frenzied desperation you seize the telephone. Incidentally you call the Staff Captain away from his dinner. What he says, no self-respecting man—not even an Adjutant—could reveal without laying bare the most lacerated portions of his innermost feelings.
You go to bed, a sadder and a wiser man, wondering if you could go back to the Company, even as the most junior sub., were you to make an impassioned appeal to the C.O.