But you don’t sympathise, not a bit of it; why should you?  I shouldn’t if I were in your place.  I should just cut off the supply of cigarettes and shaving-soap, stop wishing me good luck, and, with haughty contempt, say, “Call yourself a soldier!” Nevertheless, my friend, whatever I may be, I look extraordinarily magnificent, so much so that a short-sighted Major has taken his pipe out of his mouth as I have drawn near and has as good as saluted me.  When he saw I was only a Captain (and a temporary Captain at that) he tried to cover his mistake; but he didn’t deceive me; he didn’t need to take his pipe out of his mouth in order to scratch his head, did he?

There is this to be said about being at war, you never know what is going to happen to you next.  For the most part this is just as well.  There is, however, a decent percentage of pleasant surprises, which is, I suppose, the only thing that makes the business tolerable.  No orderly ever came up to the trenches, when I was in them, but he gave rise to the hope that he had orders for me to come out at once and command in chief.  Some such orderly did arrive at last, but the instructions he gave me said nothing about taking over the B.E.F.  Nevertheless orders were orders and I obeyed them and came out.  Having a private conversation with Fortune on the way down the communication trench, I thanked her very sincerely for her kindness and said I was so grateful that I would never ask her for anything else.

But you know human nature as well as I do; I soon found myself saying what a hard life it was in an office, and how one missed the open-air life one had with one’s regiment and the healthy appetite it gave one.  Besides which, as I pointed out to Fortune, my solid worth wasn’t being recognised as it should be.  “I don’t ask for favours,” I told her.  “All I ask is bare justice.”  Now, if I’d been Fortune, Charles, and a man had spoken to me like that, after all I’d done for him, I’d have had him marching up that communication trench again, with a full pack, at five o’clock in the very next forenoon.

But Fortune, ever kind and forgiving, did no such thing.  She did remonstrate with me gently of nights, when the noise of the bombardments was particularly fierce and prolonged.  “What about those poor fellows right up in front,” she said, “who are sitting out in the wind and the rain and going through that?” “Yes,” said I, “what about them?  Can’t you do something for them?  Do you know that this is their fourth night of it in succession, and the only bit of change you’ve been able to give them was sleet instead of rain on the Sunday?” That used to put Fortune in the cart, and she’d try and work the conversation round to my own case again.  But what with the wind and the noise and the downpour and the mud, I was too hot on the other subject, and I said that Fortune ought to be ashamed of herself, carrying on like that; and it was a disgraceful war and the police ought to stop it, and I’d a very good mind to write to the papers about it.