' I lit on a sergeant, a little chap with airs, spick
as a daisy, with a gold-rimmed spy-glass--eye-glasses with a tape on
them. He was young, but being a re-enlisted soldier, he had the
right not to go to the front. I said to him, 'Sergeant!' But he
didn't hear me, being busy slanging a secretary--it's unfortunate,
mon garcon,' he was saying; 'I've told you twenty times that
you must send one notice of it to be carried out by the Squadron
Commander, Provost of the C.A., and one by way of advice, without
signature, but making mention of the signature, to the Provost of
the Force Publique d'Amiens and of the centers of the district, of
which you have the list--in envelopes, of course, of the general
commanding the district. It's very simple,' he says.
"I'd drawn back three paces to wait till he'd done with jawing. Five
minutes after, I went up to the sergeant. He said to me, 'My dear
sir, I have not the time to bother with you; I have many other
matters to attend to.' As a matter of fact, he was all in a flummox
in front of his typewriter, the chump, because he'd forgotten, he
said, to press on the capital-letter lever, and so, instead of
underlining the heading of his page, he'd damn well scored a line of
8's in the middle of the top. So he couldn't hear anything, and he
played hell with the Americans, seeing the machine came from there.
"After that, he growled against another woolly-leg, because on the
memorandum of the distribution of maps they hadn't put the names of
the Ration Department, the Cattle Department, and the Administrative
Convoy of the 328th D.
Pages:
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159