I told the General about the incident the next day and he surprised me by saying, “We’ll give him a surprise, Sergeant.... Garlotz has been a good man all the way through, and anyway we shouldn’t be riding around behind an ordinary private: I think we can find a little extra pay for him before long.” So I didn’t say anything to Ben about the matter, but soon after the General broke the news to him and told him it was a reward for good behavior and especially for his decency to the legless man. Ben thanked him and I expected him to thank me when we were alone, but when that moment came he appeared to be genuinely distressed over the business. “If I fight I get throwed in the jug and stay a private,” he argued. “If I don’t fight, I get congratulations and stripes. What the hell kind of a war is this, anyway?” Well, there was no explaining such things to a man like that, so I just let him argue. CHAPTER 18 THE BEST MAN WINS —1— Well, we got to Paris again and now I was Sergeant Major Canwick and the promotion came about as a result of Captain Winstead’s trying to get me a transfer. He discovered that he would have to talk to General Backett about it and the General promptly and irrevocably declared that he couldn’t get along without me. “Isn’t an old soldier entitled to any consideration in this army?” he asked the Captain. “If I didn’t have Canwick, I wouldn’t have any staff at all.” And the upshot of it was that I received a boost, in appreciation of my services. The General told me, “I had forgot about you, Sergeant, until that Captain came around suggesting that I could get along without you.” So I suppose I had to thank the Captain for it.... Besides, I didn’t know whether I would be any safer with him anyway. No doubt I wouldn’t get caught up by any inspections or anything like that, but when you’re with a man all the time, and you love him as terribly much as I loved the Captain, and there isn’t much to do except love him and let him love you—well, I didn’t think it would be the safest thing in the world. The best thing for us was to get married: but we hadn’t been able to figure out a means of doing it. There were all sorts of obstacles: the army regulations required a lot of information about the girl and the French had a lot of red tape that you had to go through. It looked rather out of the question at present, but the Captain said he’d dope out some way—and I hoped he would, for he was “mon homme” or I was crazy as a bedbug.