shone through the celluloid casements. Of Sergeant-Major Cowley, his Olympique De Marseille Barn numerals gilded by the moon in the lines of A Company, Tietjens, who was easing his lungs of coke vapours for a minute, asked in a voice that hushed itself in tribute to the moonlight Calgary Flames Drakter and the now keen frost:
‘Where the deuce is the draft?’
The sergeant-major looked poetically down a ribbon of whitewashed stones that descended the black down-side. Over the next shoulder of hill was the blur of a hidden conflagration.
‘There’s a Hun plane burning down there. In Twenty-Seven’s parade ground. The draft’s round that, sir,’ he said. Tietjens said:
‘Good God!’ in a voice of caustic tolerance. He added, ‘I did think we had drilled New England Patriots Barn some discipline into these blighters in the seven weeks we have had them . . . You remember the first time when we had them on parade and that acting lance-corporal left the ranks to Buffalo Bills Hattar heave a rock at a sea-gull . . . And called you ‘OP’ Hunkey! . . . Conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline? Where’s that Canadian Maillot France Pas CHer sergeant-major? Where’s the officer in charge of the draft?’
Sergeant-Major Cowley said:
‘Sergeant-Major Ledoux said Halpa Lapset Cg Chilliwack Bomber it was like a cattle-stampede on Vestes Anthem Pas CHer the . . . some river where they come from. You couldn’t stop them, sir. It was their first German plane . . . And they going up the line to-night, sir.’
‘To-night!’ Tietjens exclaimed. ‘Next Christmas!’ The sergeant-major said:
‘Poor boys!’ and continued to gaze into the distance. ‘I heard another good one, sir,’ he said. ‘The answer to the one about the King saluting a private soldier and he not taking any notice is: when he’s dead . . . But if you marched a company into a field through a gateway and you wanted to get it out again but you did not know any command in the drill book for change of direction, what would you do, sir? . . . You have to get that company out, but you must not use About Turn, or Right or Left Wheel . . . There’s another one, too, about saluting . . |
