Accordingly I repaired to a neighbouring port, and when I got there an officer, who appeared to be looking for something, asked me what my rank was.  In peace times I should have loved a little unexpected sympathy like this; as a soldier, quite an old soldier now, I dislike people who take an interest in me, especially if they have blue on their hats.  I thanked him very much for his kind inquiry, but indicated that my lips were sealed.  His curiosity thereupon became positively acute; he was, he said, a man from whom it was impossible to keep a secret.  He still wished to know what my rank was.  I said it all depended which of them he was referring to, since there are three in all, the “Acting,” the “Temporary” and the Rock-bottom one.  In any case, at heart I was and always should remain a plain civilian mister.  Should we leave it at that, and let bygones be bygones?  He was meditating his answer, when I asked him if he realised how close he was standing to the edge of the quay, and when he turned round and looked I also turned round and went....

The fellow who was standing next to me all this time was either too young or too proud to conceal his stars beneath an ordinary waterproof.  Blue-hat didn’t need to ask him what his rank was; he recognized at a glance just the very type of officer he was looking for.  So he led off the poor fellow to the slaughter, and put him in charge of two hundred N.C.O.s and men proceeding on leave to the U.K.  I’ve no doubt the fellow spent the best part of his days on the other side trying to get rid of his party.  I have not been two years in France without discovering that you simply cannot be too careful when you are attempting to get out of it.

When I reached England my feelings with regard to myself changed.  I was no longer reticent about my rank.  I displayed my uniform in a public restaurant, without any reserve.  In consequence they’d only let me eat three-and-sixpence worth for my first meal.  This time I was not so clever, it appeared, as I thought.  I had erroneously supposed that by not being a civilian I should get more than two courses.  As it was I got less, and so it was with a full heart and an empty stomach that I fell in for home.  If I’d known I should have kept my waterproof on for luncheon.

Do you realise how dismal a thing it is for us to be separated from our own by a High Sea all these months and years?  It ain’t fair, Sir, it simply ain’t fair.  In my case there is not only a wife amongst wives, but also a son amongst sons.  Now, Charles, I am the very last person to call a thing good merely because it is my own, nor am I that kind of fool who thinks all his geese are swans.  If my son had a fault I should be the very first to notice and call attention to it.  But he has not; dispassionately and from an entirely detached and impersonal view, I am bound to say that there is about him an outstanding merit which at once puts him on a different level from all others.