was. Danger and dog-tiredness and all the ugliness of war--not for
him, but for the others, oui. He knew damned well that if he set
foot in the firing-line, the line would see that the beast got it,
so he ran like hell from it, and stopped where he was. He said
they'd tried all ways to get him, but he'd given the slip to all the
captains, all the colonels, all the majors, and they were all
damnably mad with him. He told me about it. How did he work it? He'd
sit down all of a sudden, put on a stupid look, do the scrim-shanker
stunt, and flop like a bundle of dirty linen. 'I've got a sort of
general fatigue,' he'd blubber. They didn't know how to take him,
and after a bit they just let him drop--everybody was fit to spew on
him. And he changed his tricks according to the circumstances, d'you
catch on? Sometimes he had something wrong with his foot--he was
damned clever with his feet. And then he contrived things, and he
knew one head from another, and how to take his opportunities. He
knew what's what, he did. You could see him go and slip in like a
pretty poilu among the depot chaps, where the soft jobs were, and
stay there; and then he'd put himself out no end to be useful to the
pals. He'd get up at three o'clock in the morning to make the juice,
go and fetch the water while the others were getting their grub. At
last, he'd wormed himself in everywhere, he came to be one of the
family, the rotter, the carrion. He did it so he wouldn't have to do
it. He seemed to me like an individual that would have earned five
quid honestly with the same work and bother that he puts into
forging a one-pound note. But there, he'll get his skin out of it
all right, he will. At the front he'd be lost sight of in the throng
of it, but he's not so stupid. Be damned to them, he says, that take
their grub on the ground, and be damned to them still more when
they're under it. When we've all done with fighting, he'll go back
home and he'll say to his friends and neighbors, 'Here I am safe and