"That's so, old man. There was a chance of my being made A.D.M.S. at the
Base some day if I'd stayed on, but I wanted to get up to the Front, and
I've worked it at last. Besides I'm not too fond of playing Bo-peep with
my pals in the R.A.M.C. Beastly job, always worrying the O.C.'s. Talking
about A.D.M.S.'s, did I ever tell you the story of how I pulled the leg
of old Macassey in South Africa?"

"No," I said, although B---- had a way of telling the same stories twice
over occasionally. The one story he never told, not even once, was how
he got the D.S.O. at Spion Kop. I had heard it often enough from other
men in the service, and could never hear it too often. And let me tell
you that to know B---- and have the privilege of his friendship, is to
be admitted to the largest freemasonry of officers in the British Army.

"Well, it was like this," continued B----. "The A.D.M.S. was a thorn in
the side of every O.C. at the Base, walking up and down like the very
devil, seeking whose reputation he might devour, and ordering every
O.C. to turn his hospital upside down. He took a positive delight in
breaking men. You know the type, the kind of man who breaks his wife's
heart not because he's bad, but because he's querulous. The nagging
type. Nothing could please him. So one day he came to Simpson's show,
where I was second in command. "How many patients have you got
accommodation for here?" he asked me, Simpson being laid up with a
recurrence of his malaria. "Four hundred and fifty, sir," I said. "Very
good, have accommodation for a thousand to-morrow night," said Macassey
with a cock of his eye that I knew only too well. We were not full up,
as it was, although pretty hard-worked, being short-handed and with a
devil of a lot of enteric, and there wasn't the remotest likelihood of
any more patients arriving, as they were switching them off to Durban.
However, it was no use grousing, that only made old Macassey more wicked