On coming back I was told to report at the Company
orderly room. Two days C.B.
I got into trouble at another time. I was on sentry go at a dingy
place, a village where the people make their living by selling bad
beer and weak wine to one another. Nearly every house in the place is
an _estaminet_. I slept in the guard-room and as my cartridge pouches
had an unholy knack of prodding a stomach which rebelled against
digesting bully and biscuit, I unloosed my equipment buckles. The
Visiting Rounds found me imperfectly dressed, my shoulder flaps
wobbled, my haversack hung with a slant and the cartridge pouches
leant out as if trying to spring on my feet. The next evening I was up
before the C.O.
My hair was rather long, and as it was well-brushed it looked imposing.
So I thought in the morning when I looked in the platoon mirror--the
platoon mirror was an inch square glass with a jagged edge. My (p. 230)
imposing hair caught the C.O.'s eye the moment I entered the orderly
room. "Don't let me see you with hair like that again," he began and
read out the charge. I forget the words which hinted that I was a
wrong-doer in the eyes of the law military; the officers were there,
every officer in the battalion, they all looked serious and resigned.
It seemed as if their minds had been made up on something relating to
me.
The orderly officer who apprehended me in the act told how he did it,
speaking as if from a book but consulting neither notes nor papers.
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