The true attitude of the fighting-man towards this concert-pitch commotion was expressed by the Major, when he sat up in his sleeping-sack and rubbed his eyes at lunch-time. He looked an absurdly rebellious little figure in his khaki shirt-tails and without a tie or collar. “I tell you what it is; I’m fed up with all this secrecy and nonsense. I don’t wonder that the chaps got drunk; when you’re unconscious is the only time that you possess yourself. I don’t mind the fighting; what I object to is this being mucked about by everybody. I’m not a Major; I’m a policeman. And the Colonels and Generals who boss me, they’re bigger policemen. In the Army everyone who is not a Tommy is a policeman, with a stronger policeman above him to boss him. We interfere with one another to such an extent that we’re disciplined out of our initiative and self-confidence. I’m sick of it all; I’m off.” He then explained in detail what it was he was sick of. He was sick of army-rations; sick of night-marches; sick of the paper-warfare which blew in from Headquarters every hour of the day demanding answers; sick of having to strafe his men and being strafed in his turn by the Colonel. He wanted to get away to where he didn’t have to blow his nose in accordance with King’s Regulations, where he didn’t have to eat what a Government had provided for him, where he didn’t have to do everything in the dread of a calling down from higher authorities. “You’re orderly-dog for today,” he said. “You can carry on. If you have to pull out, leave a mounted man behind to guide me on. I’m going to find a place where the food tastes different; if I find more than I want. I’ll bring you back a portion. I’m going to take Captain Heming with me; the rest of the officers can wander about, so long as they get back by six o’clock and there are always two within call in the event of a movement order.” The rest of the officers are Tubby Grain, the centre section commander, Gus Edwine, the commander of the left section, Sam Bradley, who is in charge of the signallers, and Steve Hoadley, who is attached as spare-officer. Of them all I like Tubby best. He’s fat, and brave, and humourous. He used to mix soft-drinks in a druggist’s store, and started his career at the Front as a sergeant. He has a weakness for referring to himself as a “temporary gent” and, if he weren’t so lazy, would make a cracking fine officer. He’s as scrupulously honourable with men as he is unreliable with women. In his pocket-book he carries a cheap photograph signed, “Yours lovingly, Gertie.” He shows it to you sentimentally as “the picture of my girl,” yet the next moment will recite all manner of escapades.