Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/159

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HEADQUARTERS
129


sat down, blessing the Army Service Corps for all it had placed before us. In the confusion names had been lost, but in addition to the medical officers there were two men whose khaki carried the black facings of the church. The chaplain next to me, tall, slender, a little grey-haired, had spent a good deal of time in America. We discovered common friends. We asked each other's names. Since his is a nom de plume perhaps the censor will let it through "If you would know of me at all," he said modestly," it would be as G. A. Birmingham."

The thought of those rollicking Irish stories and plays made his presence here seem an injustice. It gave the lie again to the so-called British apathy. It was one more example of how every social and intellectual class is feeding this monster of war.

While we talked some one produced Harry Lauder on the gramophone, a hymn or two, and a waltz, Williams closed the entertainment with the announcement that we had a forty mile drive to General Headquarters ahead of us.

One goes rapidly in these military cars. There is no speed limit outside of villages where transport parks, cavalry, or billets make it necessary. In each of these, sturdy men whose khaki carried a black sleeve band with M. P. in red, stepped out