Leaves from a Field Note-Book

t with me to-night by the troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's a bit in the

e eyes, and fair hair, well-built, but somewhat under the

made, we filed int

g like a good burgundy to warm the cockles of your heart." He had the

spital to go up and join a

he Front, and I've worked it at last. Besides I'm not too fond of playing Bo-peep with my pals in the R.A.M.C. Beastly job, always w

he got the D.S.O. at Spion Kop. I had heard it often enough from other men in the service, and could never hear it too often. And let me tel

thing could please him. So one day he came to Simpson's show, where I was second in command. "How many patients have you got accommodation for here?" he asked me, Simpson being laid up with a recurrence of his malaria. "Four hundred and fifty, sir," I said. "Very good, have accommodation for a thousand to-morrow night," said Macassey with a cock of his eye that I knew only too well. We were not full up, as it was, althou

ed, "you know you've the m

ican heat they're beastly. 'Ah, I see,' said Macassey wickedly. 'I see you have some good double-roofed tents here; let me have eight of them sent to me to-morrow night.' That left us with four, and how we were to shift the patients was a problem. 'Very good, sir,' I said, 'but I may forget the number. D'you mind?' And I held out my Field Note-book, having turned over the page." (There are not many people who can say 'No' to B--.) "H

of you, Major," I

, and he wasn't fit to undo the latchet of Simpson's shoes. Why

t?" said

plaint, which had worried the Malta garrison considerably. Now the first thing to do when you are on the track of a fever is, as they say in the children's picture-books, 'Puzzle: Find the Microbe.' It occurred to Simpson to suspect the goat. Why? Well, because he'd noticed that goat's milk was drunk in Malta and Egypt. So he began to st

ne. Please repea

peptone-litmus,"

n, poor man, beggar-man, thief," soliloqu

with a benignant glance. "W

wha

guinea-pigs. No! I don't mean directors in the City, though he might have done worse. And lo! and behold! he found the f

e, Simpso

f thousands. How did he stop it? Why, by doing the obvious, which, you may have observed, no one ever does till a wise man comes along. He got wounds to heal themselves. He promoted a lymphatic flow from the rest of the b

ed a fourth, but

he Major now said monitorily. "Ju

admiringly without comprehending a word of what he said. Wom

e lamp, and by the help of its fitful rays we leapt across the pools of water left in every hollow.

40. Che

tively. "If one Frenchman is equal to three and one-thir

ubaltern brightly. "If it wasn't for mach

said the Major,

s of laces per man is missing, is one of those things that no one has ever been able to understand. Perhaps he has radiographic eyes, and sees through the opaque integument of a ground-sheet at one glance. Also the Medical Officer at the Base Dep?t had endorsed the "Marching Out States," after scrutinising, more or less intimately, each man's naked body, with the aid of a tallow candle stuck in

ss compartment, and a slim figur

? I thought you were gone

- just now. I've been trying to cheer him up," he added. It was evident that the subaltern was now understudying the Major in his star

a plum-pudding and a bottle of whisky a

s and under the seat, with the help of a portable acetylene lamp which burnt with a h

y-stack of things, "what's the regulation al

got round the R.T. officer. Christmas! you know. And I can s

nd in the field-service regulations. But it would never surprise me if I found a performing elephant or a litt

id, "you are

id the Major, with a

What I meant was that you remind me, only rather differently, of the people who get typhoid and recover, but continue to p

e Major put his arm in mine and took me aside, so that the subaltern should not hear. "You've hit t

red things to say, and saying none of them. The train might start at any moment, and such things as we

seen Pat, I think? We christ

ng child, with an aureole of curl

ld nights with the Field Ambulance. I handed back the photograph, and B-- studied it intently for some minutes before re

r met her except once. She must

w me off, and that I was at the top of

other for a mome

e couplings, as C-- sprang in. I grasped B--'s hand

ye, old

bye, o

the front. I nev

ers, which had just arrived by the leave-boat. I took up the Times and looked, as one always looks nowadays

- of the -- Guards, 3rd Battalion, only child of the late Arthur

the desire of thin

a wounded soldier under fire, Major Ronald B--,

e hath no m