discipline--accompany us on our sanitary rounds; set us a fine example
of indifference to shell fire, even to the extent of attempting
to catch spent shrapnel as it fell; and proved the wettest of wet
blankets to the "socials" of the local rats. Then, as happens with
sanitary inspectors in France, there arrived late one afternoon
a despatch requesting the pleasure of my society--in five hours'
time--at a village some twenty kilos distant as the shell flies. I
found I should have fifteen minutes in which to pack, four hours for
my journey, and forty-five minutes between the packing and the start
in which to find a home for Dustbin.

"Take the little dorg off you?" said a Sergeant acquaintance in the
D.A.C. "I couldn't, Corp'l. Why, I don't even know how I'm goin' to
take the foal yonder"--he glared reproachfully at a placid Clydesdale
mare and her tottering one-day-old; "and 'ow I'm goin' to take my posh
breeches--"

I left him hovering despondently over his equipment and a pile of
dirty linen.

We tried the M.G.C. We were on the best of terms and always had been;
they said so. They apologised in advance for the insanitary conditions
I might find; inquired after my health; offered me some coffee and
generally loved me; but they couldn't love my dog. The Cook even went
so far as openly to associate my guileless puppy with a shortage of
dried herrings in the sergeants' mess.

Passing through the E.A.M.C. transport lines I rescued Dustbin from
a hulking native mongrel wearing an identity disc. I judged the
Ambulance would not be wanting another dog; but there was still hope