body's mind," he exclaimed petulantly. "This morning I was rung up
on the telephone and asked if I would bury a dead horse for the Canadian
Division; I told them I hadn't a Prayer Book and it couldn't be done.
Then two nuns called and asked me to find a discreet soldier--_un soldat
discret_--to escort them to Hazebrouck; I told them to take my servant,
who is a married man with five children. Then an old lady sent round to
ask me to come and drown her cat's kittens; I said it was impossible, as
she hadn't complied with the Notification of Births Act."

The Mess listened to this plaintive recital in unsympathetic silence.
Perhaps they reflected that as the Camp Commandant is one of those to
whom much, in the way of perquisites of office, is given, from him much
may legitimately be expected. "Well, you may think yourself lucky you
haven't my job," said the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General at length.
"I'm getting rather fed up with casualty lists and strength returns. I'm
like the man who boasted that his chief literary recreation was reading
Bradshaw, except that I don't boast of it and it isn't a
recreation--it's damned hard work. I have to read the Army List for
about ten hours every day, for if I get an officer's initials wrong
there's the devil to pay. And I spent half an hour between the telephone
and the Army List to-day trying to find out who 'Teddy' was. The 102nd
Welsh sent him in with their returns of officers' casualties as having
died of heart failure on the 22nd inst."

"Well, but who is 'Teddy,' anyhow?" asked the Camp Commandant.

"He is the regimental goat," replied the D.A.A.G. "I suppose they
thought it amusing. When I tumbled to it I told their Brigade
Headquarters on the telephone that I quite understood their making him a
member of their mess, as they belonged to the same species."

"Wait until you've had to track down a case of typhoid in billets," said
the R.A.M.C. man who looks after infectious diseases. "I've been on the
trail of a typhoid epidemic at La Croix Farm, where a company of the
Downshires are billeted, and it made me sad. They had their filters with
them and they swore they hadn't touched a drop of impure water, and that
they treasured our regulations like the book of Leviticus. And yet the
trail of that typhoid was all over my spot chart, and the thing was
spreading like one of the seven plagues of Egypt. At last I tracked it
down to an Army cook; the rotter had had typhoid about fi