CHAPTER IX
A CALL RETURNED
“See here!” said our burly top sergeant, “the Boches have made a call on us, and it seems to me it is up to us to return it, as is usual in polite society.”
“I wouldn’t be so sorry,” growled Sutherland, with a grin, “if I never saw them again.”
“An’ sure, as my mither used to say about the O’Flyns,” said Quinn, “their room is bether than their company.”
But individual preferences do not count in the army. Everything, even human nature, must yield to discipline. The making of a soldier is not the matter of a day, or one of personal preference; it is one of progressive training; and a part of that training is to put in practice that which has been learned in theory.
For illustration: we had been taught, in theory, the importance of personal cleanliness for the preservation of health; but in the squalor of trench life, we were apt to disregard it. Especial care in washing of the feet was enjoined, to prevent trench feet which is not only a painful infliction but one that unfits a soldier for marching or other duty.
“An’ why,” said Quinn, “don’t they put off bein’ so particular until we have more toime?”
“Because,” said Sutherland, “the time to do a thing in the army is when it is the most inconvenient.”
“I belave yees,” said Pat. “They expect us to shave and kape nate as though we were going to a dance, or to call on the prisident, instid of standing on a fire step in a muddy trench, with rats running over us and cooties for steady visitors.”