‘Well, you’ve got a pull over me in other ways.’

‘Yes, but that don’t even things out, it makes ’em worse. I thought there was something in what you said to the Cap’n. Only you didn’t say all that you was thinkin’. …’

‘How the hell can you ever say all that you are thinking to an officer, without being bloody rude?’ said Bourne indignantly.

The sergeant enjoyed the humour of it.

‘You weren’t polite about the quarter-bloke to Mr Marsden.’

‘That was a different thing. It’s so damned silly. A private is ordered to complete some deficiency in his kit, and he goes to the quarter-bloke for it and gets nothing but abuse for his trouble. What can he say to the quarter-bloke? At the next kit inspection, he gets ticked off by the officer for not doing something, that the officer knows bloody well he can’t do. You have never heard me grouse about anything to the men, have you? Very well. I may tell you that there are precious few mistakes made in the army that are not ultimately laid on the shoulders of the men. A fool of a clerk in the orderly-room sends in the wrong state to Brigade, and the men can do without their tea when they come back from a working-party, wet and tired at four o’clock in the morning, having had nothing since five. Yes, Captain Malet put that right, and he was the only company officer I know with guts enough to do it. Some general streaks off in a car, at about forty miles an hour, to go on a binge in Amiens; an unfortunate sentry spots his pennon, just in time to turn out the guard to present arms to a cloud of dust. The general comes back with a fat head next morning, and reports them for slackness, with the result that there’s a parade of guard-mounting, and Jerry comes over and bombs the lot. They’re not exceptional cases, and you know as well as I do, the same sort of stupidities happen every day. I only hope to God Jerry salutes the swine some day with a 59 or something equally effective. The war might be a damned sight more tolerable if it weren’t for the bloody army. I shall get another tin-hat, when I can find one for myself in the trenches, I suppose, because I’m pretty sure I will not get one through the official channels. What do I do, when I want anything now? I go to the snobs for it. But they don’t happen to have a tin-hat, at the moment. I don’t know whether Mr Marsden, and Mr Sothern, think they look impressive when they’re ticking me off; but what I do know is, that a storekeeper, with a lance stripe up, has much more say, in the matter of getting me a tin-hat, than either of them.’

‘Well. there’s something in that,’ said Sergeant Tozer, feeling for his tobacco. ‘But it were silly to repeat what the quarter-bloke said. It didn’t matter, as far as the officers were concerned; but it got up the sergeant-major’s back. If Mr Marsden can’t alter things, do you think you can?’