"We'll take you at your word, anyhow," said the doctor. "You're too good a man physically to lose for the Army."
Thus it was that John Williams took the King's Shilling, and swore to serve his country as a soldier should.
One of the most wonderful things about the British Army is the way that recruits are gradually fashioned into soldiers. There are thousands of men fighting on our different fronts who, a year ago, hated the thought of discipline and order; they are now amongst the best soldiers we have. But there are exceptions—Private John Williams was one. In a little over a year of military service, he had absented himself without leave no fewer than eleven times, and the various punishments meted out to him failed signally in their object to break him of his habit. In every respect save one he was a good soldier, but, do what it would, the Army could not bring him to see the folly of repeated desertion; the life in the Army is not the life for a man with the wander thirst of centuries in his blood. Williams had all the gipsy's love of wandering and solitude, and not even a threatened punishment of death will cure a man of that.
So it came about that John Williams sat outside his billet one September evening, and watched the white chalk road that ran over the hill towards Amiens. After the flat and cultivated country of Flanders, the rolling hills called with an unparalleled insistence, and the idea of spending the two remaining days before the battalion went back to the trenches in company with sixty other men in a barn grew more and more odious. If he were to go off even for twenty-four hours, he would receive, on return, probably nothing more than a few days Field Punishment, which, after all, was not so bad when one grew used to it. He was sick of the life of a soldier, sick of obeying officers half his age, sick of being ordered to do things that seemed senseless to him; he would be quit of it all for twenty-four hours.
John Williams went to the only shop in the village to buy food, with the aid of fifty centimes and a wonderful Lingua Franca of his own, and when his companions collected in their billet that night he was already far away on the open road. He walked fast through the still September evening, and as he walked he sang, and the woods echoed to the strange songs that gipsies sing to themselves as they squat round their fires at night. When at last he came to a halt he soon found sleep, and lay huddled up in his greatcoat at the foot of a poplar tree, until the dawn awoke him.
All through the summer day he walked, his Romany blood singing in his veins at the feel of the turf beneath his feet, and evening found him strolling contentedly through the village to his billet. Suddenly a sentry challenged: "'Alt! who goes there?"
"Downshires," came the reply.
"Well, what the 'ell are you doin' of 'ere?"
"I be going back to my regiment."