As soon as you become the “voice of the C.O.,” you lose every friend you ever possessed. You are just about as popular as the proverbial skunk at a garden-party. It takes only two days to find this out. The evening of the second day you decide to have a drink, Orderly Room or no Orderly Room. You make this rash decision, and you tell the Orderly-Room Sergeant--only heaven knows when _he_ sleeps--that you are going out. “I will be back in half an hour,” you say. Then you go forth to seek for George--George, your pal, your intimate, your bosom friend. You find George in your old Coy. head-quarters, and a pang of self-pity sweeps over you as you cross the threshold and see the other fellows there: George, Henry, John, and the rest. “Come and have a----” you begin cheerily. Suddenly, in the frosty silence you hear a cool, passionless voice remark, “Good evening, SIR!” It is George, the man you loved and trusted, whom you looked on as a friend and brother. “George, come and have a----” again the words stick in your throat. George answers, in tones from which all amity, peace, and goodwill towards men have vanished: “Thanks very much, sir”--oh baleful little word--“but I’ve just started a game of poker.” Dimly light dawns in your reeling brain; you realise the full extent of your disabilities, and you know that all is over. You are the Adjutant--the voice of the C.O.! Sadly, with the last glimmer of Adjutant pride and pomp cast from out your soul, you return to Orderly Room, drinkless, friendless, and alone. “The Staff Captain has been ringing you up, sir. He wants to know if the summary of evidence ...” and so on. In frenzied desperation you seize the telephone. Incidentally you call the Staff Captain away from his dinner. What he says, no self-respecting man--not even an Adjutant--could reveal without laying bare the most lacerated portions of his innermost feelings. You go to bed, a sadder and a wiser man, wondering if you could go back to the Company, even as the most junior sub., were you to make an impassioned appeal to the C.O. About 1 A.M. some one comes in and awakens you. “Message from Brigade, sir.” With an uncontrite heart you read it: “Forward to this office immediately a complete nominal roll of all men of your unit who have served continuously for nine months without leave.” That takes two hours, and necessitates the awakening of all unit commanders, as the last Adjutant kept no record. In psychic waves you feel curses raining on you through the stilly night. Having made an application--in writing--to the C.O., to be returned to duty, you go to bed. At 3.30 A.M. you are awakened again. “Movement order from Brigade, sir!”