A form of staff employment which calls for a particular class of man is the post of officer’s servant; it amounts to the regular work of a valet for “first servant,” and that of a groom for “second servant,” and is not always an enviable post, especially if the officer in question is short-tempered or “bad to get on with.” Officers’ servants occupy quarters away from the duty-men, and in the vicinity of the officers’ mess in the case of single officers; married officers’ servants are provided with quarters in their masters’ houses. In addition to the officers’ servants, there is in each unit a regular staff of mess waiters both for officers’ and sergeants’ messes, while all non-commissioned officers from the rank of sergeant upward are permitted to employ a “bâtman” from among the men serving under them. The sergeant’s bâtman, though, is not excused from duty as is the officer’s servant, but has to get through all his own work, and then clean the sergeant’s equipment, keep his bunk in order, groom his horse, and clean his saddle (in cavalry and artillery units), as well as attend all parades from which the sergeant has no power to excuse him. Every staff job carries with it a certain amount of extra-duty pay, and this, in addition to the fact of being excused from at least some of the ordinary parades of the duty soldier, causes a post on the staff to be sought after by most men. There are some, though, who prefer to be at ordinary duty, and the man who is going in for promotion usually avoids staff employ, for the two do not go together. Among non-commissioned officers as well as among the rank and file there is a certain amount of staff employment, but it is a smaller amount, and a good deal of it is unenviable business. The post of provost-sergeant, for instance, although it carries extra-duty pay, is naturally not a popular business, for having control of the regimental police and being responsible for the punishments of delinquents on defaulters’ drill and punishment fatigues does not tend to increase the popularity of a non-commissioned officer. The business of postman in a regiment is usually entrusted to a corporal; as a rule, the oldest corporal is chosen to fill this berth, and one just concluding his term of military service is practically certain to get it as soon as it falls vacant. But staff jobs for non-coms. are far fewer, relatively, than for the rank and file, and, outside the artificers’ shops, the regimental orderly room and quartermaster’s store, practically every non-com. is at duty. CHAPTER X THE NEW ARMY