Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3823/The Watch Dogs
Dear Charles,—You must forgive my writing this letter with a fountain pen, but to do otherwise would be an act of ingratitude to my servant, Private J. B. Cox. I told him this morning that I had lost my pocket pen, a cheap affair made of tin. I instructed him to find it, and J. B. is one of those perfect factotums who do as they are told. He has a sharp eye and no scruples, and so, owing to the fact that three other officers live in my billet, he was able to find two valuable fountain pens and one stylographic in no time. The exigencies of war necessitate some little irregularity now and then; but how, I asked him, did he justify this excess of zeal? J. B. is distinguished by a lisp among other things "It 'th hetht to be on the thafe thide, Thir," said he.
We had an all-night outpost job on this week, at which my company achieved an unpremeditated success—unpremeditated by the authorities, that is. Before setting out we had been threatened with the heaviest penalties if we were discovered at any moment in a dereliction of duty, which meant that the Adjutant proposed to pay us a surprise visit and had every hope of discovering responsible officers asleep at their posts. Those who know will tell you that the hour before dawn is that during which an attack is most likely in real war; they also assert that this is the most likely period for derelictions in imitation war, and so, as we anticipated all along, this was the time selected for the surprise visit. But we were not caught napping, Sir; every possible approach to our picket was protected by strong groups, each instructed to let no one pass on any account and least of all those who attempted to trick them by a pretence of authority, however realistic that pretence might be. Thus it fell out that when the Adjutant was sighted he was instantly accosted and firmly apprehended. Inasmuch as he refused to be led blindfold through our lines, he was not allowed to approach our august selves at all, but was retained until such time as we cared to approach him. Mind you, I 'm not saying we were asleep; merely I show you how thoroughly we do our work. It is not mine that is the master mind; it is my skipper's, a man upon whose ready cunning I rely to bring me to Berlin and its choicest light beer well in advance of all other victorious forces.
It used to be our Brigadier's fad that officers commanding companies should know the names of all their men, and lately he took upon himself to test it. Captain after captain, upon being asked a to name a selected man, had to confess ignorance; not so my skipper. He knew them all. "What is that man's name?" asked the Brigadier, indicating an inconspicuous and rather terrified private, just that sort of man whose name one would never know or want to know. (It was something rather like Postlethwaite, I believe). "Two paces forward, Private Johnson," ordered my skipper emphatically, fixing an hypnotic eye on the youth, and adding, to prove his accuracy, "Now, my lad, your name's Joh———?" "———nson, Sir," concluded the victim. That night, at dinner, the Brigadier told the C.O. that, among many disappointments, he had found one officer who seemed to know the names of his "almost better than the men did themselves." In accordance with J.B.'s maxim about being on the safe side, it was a company order afterwards that, when asked, all even numbers were to be "Evans" and odd numbers "Hodges," till further notice.
Talking about names, I was quite homesick for old London when, in calling the names and regimental numbers of a party, I found myself bawling angrily for "Gerrard, No. 2784."
Cating, as we do, for all tastes, we have in our rank and file a serio-comic artiste from the lower rungs of the music-hall ladder. We had a busy time with him at our Great Inoculation Ceremony (First Performance) on Saturday. We could not put too strick a discipline upon men into arms arms we were just about to insert fifteen million microbes apiece, and our private was not slow to seize his opportunity. He insisted upon his fifteeen million being numbered off in order to discover whether there were any of them absent from parade; he wished to know if they had all their equipment, and whether each had passed his standard test. As the needle was inserted into his arm, "Move to the left in fours," he ordered them; "form fours—left—in succession of divisions—number one leading—quick-ma-harch." (It was the same humorist who recently took a strong line about protective colouring, and put in an application for a set of khaki teeth.)
At the moment of inoculation we were all, officers and men, very facetious and off-hand about it, but as the evening came on we grew piano even miserable. Mess was not made any less sombre by Wentworth's plaintive observation that "the doctor who had succeeded in making a thousand of us thoroughly ill and debarred us from the cheering influence of alcohol was probably at that very moment himself enjoying a hearty debauch."
The only effect of the dose upon me was to induce a rather morbid contemplation. I recalled the happy times when I was once, even as you are, a barrister who rose at 8.30 a.m. (an incredibly late hour), did next to nothing all day and, when I wanted to go away, just went. I used in those gentle days to take off my hat to ladies (a long-forgotten habit), and I never dreamed of calling anybody "Sir." I used to suppose that I should rise from stuff to silk, from silk to ermine, to conclude as a Judge on the King's Bench. It seems now that I may rise from stars to crowns, from crowns to oakleaves, and end my days as a commissionaire in—who knows?—His Majesty's foyer. I, who had hoped to dismiss your appeals, may come instead to hail your taxi at the theatre door; may even come to call you "Sir." But for the moment I am
Yours thoroughly disrespectfully,
Henry.