Though he gloried in being a private soldier, it is quite evident, too, that he was charmed with his promotion. “I am now a sergeant,” appears on the back of every copy of the well-known “tin-hat” post-card, and in every letter near this date. In more than one intimate letter he says: “I’ll never be anything higher. To get a commission I’d have to go away for three months to school, and then whether or not I was made an officer--I’d be sent to some outfit other than this, and I don’t want to leave this crowd. I’d rather be a sergeant in the 69th than a lieutenant in any other regiment in the world.” “A volunteer regiment, the bravest and best regiment in the army.” “I have a new stripe--an inverted chevron of bright gold on the left cuff for six months’ service ... let my children be proud of it.” And, “a long moustache I have.” For a while he had worked in the Adjutant’s Office, having special charge of recording and reporting statistics. Then he was no longer (“thank God!”) doing statistics. Someone over here had said that he had “a bullet-proof job.” “I had one, but succeeded, after two months intriguing, in getting rid of it.” “At that time I was just an office hack--now I am a soldier, in the most fascinating branch of the service there is--sheer romance, night and day--especially night.” He had become attached to the Regimental Intelligence Section, working as an observer--“very amusing work,” “wonderful life!”--“the finest job in the army!” But “I don’t know what I’ll be able to do in civilian life--unless I become a fireman!” “I am having a delightful time, but it won’t break my heart for the war to end.” “Rouge Bouquet” was his “first attempt at versification in a dug-out.” He had lived in “billets, dug-outs, trenches, observatories and all sorts of queer places.” And at length, he was “(after a most violent and amusing month) resting (six hours out of every twenty-four!) in a beautiful place, among the firs and pines on a lovely mountain top, from which I can see strange things.” “I sleep on a couch made soft with deftly laid young spruce boughs and eat at a table set under good, kind trees.” And with that inimitable, irrepressible and incomparable Kilmerian pleasure he contemplated what he called “my senility”: I picture myself at sixty, with a long white moustache, a pale gray tweed suit, a very large panama hat, I can see my gnarled but beautifully groomed hands as they tremblingly pour out the glass of dry sherry which belongs to every old man’s breakfast. I cannot think of myself at seventy or eighty--I grow hysterical with applause--I am lost in a delirium of massive ebony canes, golden snuff-boxes, and dainty silk hats.