- dispensable "criminal." At last, after a long stretch
of enforced virtue, he managed, by chicane or his own amazing personality, to seduce five francs from his platoon sergeant and forthwith disappeared. On his return, richly disguised, he sought out his benefactor with a gift under his arm. The rest is in his Sergeant's own words: "'No,' I says, 'go away and sleep it off,' I says, pushin' it away, for 'twas a rum jar he was temptin' me with. ''Tis for you, Sergeant,' he says. 'You're the only man that has thrusted me with a centime since summer.' Thrust him! There was no sergeant of ours had not been remindin' me of those same five francs all the time he'd been away—let alone what I'd got at Company Orders. So I loosed myself upon him, an' I described him to himself the way he'd have shame at it, but shame was not in him. 'Yes, Sergeant,' he says to me, 'full I am, and this is full too,' he says, pattin' the rum jar (and it was!), an' I know where there's plenty more,' he says, 'and it's all for you an' your great thrustfulness to me about them five francs.' What could I do? He'd made me a laughing-stock to the Battalion. An awful man! He'd done it all on those five unlucky francs! Yes, he'd lead a bombin' party or a drinkin' party—his own or any other battalion's; and he was worth a platoon an' a half when there was anything doing, and I thrust in God he's alive yet—him and his five francs! But an awful man!"
Drunkenness was confined, for the most part, to a known few characters, regular and almost privileged in their irregularities. The influence of the Priest and the work of the company officers went hand in hand here. Here is a tribute paid by a brother officer to Captain Gore-Langton, killed on the 10th October, which explains the secret. "The men liked him for his pluck and the plain way in which he dealt with them, always doing his best for the worst, most idle, and stupidest men in our company. . . . One can't really believe he's gone. I always expect to see him swinging round a traverse." The Battalion did not
