But the great sifting and sorting machine into which we have been cast is shaking us all out into our appointed places.  The efficient and authoritative rise to non-commissioned rank.  The quick-witted and well-educated find employment on the Orderly Room staff, or among the scouts and signallers.  The handy are absorbed into the transport, or become machine-gunners.  The sedentary take post as cooks, or tailors, or officers’ servants.  The waster hews wood and draws water and empties swill-tubs.  The great, mediocre, undistinguished majority merely go to stiffen the rank and file, and right nobly they do it.  Each has his niche.

To take a few examples, we may begin with a typical member of the undistinguished majority.  Such an one is that esteemed citizen of Wishaw, John Mucklewame.  He is a rank-and-file man by training and instinct, but he forms a rare backbone for K(1).  There are others, of more parts—­Killick, for instance.  Not long ago he was living softly, and driving a Rolls-Royce for a Duke.  He is now a machine-gun sergeant, and a very good one.  There is Dobie.  He is a good mechanic, but short-legged and shorter-winded.  He makes an excellent armourer.

Then there is Private Mellish.  In his company roll he is described as “an actor.”  But his orbit in the theatrical firmament has never carried him outside his native Dunoon, where he follows the blameless but monotonous calling of a cinematograph operator.  On enlistment he invited the attention of his platoon, from the start by referring to his rear-rank man as “this young gentleman”; and despite all the dissuading influences of barrack-room society, his manners never fell below this standard.  In a company where practically every man is addressed either as “Jock” or “Jimmy,” he created a profound and lasting sensation one day, by saying in a winning voice to Private Ogg,—­

“Do not stand on ceremony with me, Mr. Ogg.  Call me Cyril!”

For such an exotic there could only be one destination, and in due course Cyril became an officer’s servant.  He now polishes the buttons and washes the hose-tops of Captain Wagstaffe; and his elegant extracts amuse that student of human nature exceedingly.

Then comes a dour, silent, earnest specimen, whose name, incredible as it may appear, is M’Ostrich.  He keeps himself to himself.  He never smiles.  He is not an old soldier, yet he performed like a veteran the very first day he appeared on parade.  He carries out all orders with solemn thoroughness.  He does not drink; he does not swear.  His nearest approach to animation comes at church, where he sings the hymns—­especially O God, our help in ages past!—­as if he were author and composer combined.  His harsh, rasping accent is certainly not that of a Highlander, nor does it smack altogether of the Clydeside.  As a matter of fact he is not a Scotsman at all, though five out of six of us would put him down as such.  Altogether he is a man of mystery; but the regiment could do with many more such.