“Don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again, Busick, but if I do, and there’s anything I can do for you, I’ll be glad to do it,” the lieutenant told him when the job was finished and the last box had been nailed down. It wasn’t very much for a lieutenant to say to his orderly, but it meant a great deal to this trim young trooper. Somehow, in the old Army, orderlies get to thinking a great deal of their officers and Busick happened to be just that particular kind. He had an especially good memory, too. The whirligig of fate that seems to have so much to do with Army affairs sent the lieutenant to the Philippines, where, as colonel of the suicide regiment, he won everlasting honor for his regiment and a Congressional medal for valor for himself. Then on up he jumped until his shoulder-straps bore the single star of a brigadier. Then another star was added, and he became chief of staff and ranking officer in the whole Army. And all the while the whirligig that looks after enlisted men saw to it that Trooper Busick added other colored bars to his service ribbons. And slowly he added pounds to his slim girth and a wife and children to his fireside. But as a heavy girth and a family aren’t exactly synonymous with dashing cavalrymen, Sergeant Busick saw to it that he was transferred from the roving cavalry to the stationary Coast Artillery. And through all the years he remembered the lieutenant and his promise that if he ever wanted anything he would try to get it for him. One month ago Sergeant Busick got a furlough from his Coast Artillery company at Fort McKinley, Portland, Me., and bought a ticket to Camp Upton, New York. There were only a few men here then, so he didn’t have any great difficulty in seeing his old first lieutenant. For half a minute or so General Bell, commanding officer of the Seventy-seventh Division of the National Army and one-time first lieutenant of the Seventh Cavalry, didn’t recognize his old orderly—but it was for only half a minute. “You’ll sleep in our quarters with us tonight,” General Bell ordered. “Tomorrow we’ll see about that old promise.” So that night Sergeant Busick had the room between Major-General Bell’s and Brigadier-General Read’s. But sleeping next to generals was pretty strong for an ordinary sergeant and he didn’t accept General Bell’s invitation to have mess with him. And a little later Busick told his old commander that the big request that he had come across the continent to make was that he be transferred to the Seventy-seventh division and allowed to serve under the General. But army tape is still long and red, so all that the General could do was to send the sergeant back to his post and promise that he would do all that he could. This, it proved, was sufficient.