Within the battalion they were an aristocracy. Members of the blessed freemasonry of the tracks, confident that wherever they went they would meet ‘one of the boys’ from Clapton, from White City or from Harringay, they were the wonder of the country boys who formed the bulk of the Fifth Battalion.

They lacked nothing. In winter, when the rest of the men had four blankets each, every Doggy Boy had six. While the rest of the battalion supped on bread and cheese and cocoa in a cold, gloomy dining hall, the Doggy Boys resorted every night to the officers’ mess kitchen, where they sat at their ease with only a thin partition between them and the colonel and dined, course by course, with the unsuspecting officers. They were in possession of books of weekend-pass forms and of railway warrants which they had removed from the orderly room; they had hirelings in the office who obediently brought them the battalion’s rubber stamp on request. They were as dandified as they had been in civilian life, and had the run of the stores. They ran a thriving black market in boots, socks and underclothes which they sold to the rest of the battalion and to the villagers. When they wanted to get a load of stolen goods out of camp Sergeant Bender would take it out in one of his carriers. Higgs, the colonel’s batman, was their servant and spy. The little man had big ears that protruded like butterflies’ wings; thanks to him, the Doggy Boys missed nothing. They were Londoners, but they had attracted to themselves the most desperate spirits in the battalion – little MacGuinness, who was gambling mad and who, in a fight, would kick his opponent’s face in when he had him down; Sergeant Ferrissey, the lean, dark poacher; Scannock the Scouse, the battalion’s most dangerous drunkard, from the slums of Liverpool; and more like them. Yet the Doggy Boys themselves were not desperate characters. They were highly skilled at staying on the right side of the law. They were all masters of insolence and could drive a sergeant crazy and get away with it. None of them was ever drunk; and though they whored with gusto when they were in London, they disdained to pursue the village women to whom their comrades were attracted. Living amongst men who were poor for half the week and penniless for the other half, they all had bulging wallets; and all of them were wildly generous. It was a commonplace in the battalion that you could always cadge a quid off one of the Doggy Boys and no questions asked.