That floored me completely. I didn’t know what jobs there were in the squadron and told him so.
“Well, come and have dinner to-night and we’ll talk about it,” said he.
Have dinner! My clothes reeked of stables, and I had slept in them ever since I arrived.
“That doesn’t matter,” said the Major. “You come along to-night at half-past seven. You’ve been sick all this week. How are you? Pretty fit again?”
He’s Brigadier-General now and has forgotten all about it years ago. I don’t think I ever shall.
There were the Major, the Captain and one subaltern at dinner that night--an extraordinary dinner--the servant who a moment previously had called me “chum” in the kitchen gradually getting used to waiting on me at the meal, and I, in the same dress as the servant, gradually feeling less like a fish out of water as the officers treated me as one of themselves. It was the first time I’d eaten at a table covered with a white tablecloth for over two months, the first time I had used a plate or drunk out of a glass, the first time I had been with my own kind.--It was very good.
The outcome of the dinner was that I was to become squadron scout, have two horses, keep them at the cottage of the interpreter, where I was to live, and ride over the country gathering information, which I was to bring as a written report every night at six o’clock. While the squadron was behind the lines it was, of course, only a matter of training myself before other men were given me to train. But when we went into action,--vistas opened out before me of dodging Uhlan patrols and galloping back with information through a rain of bullets. It was a job worth while and I was speechless with gratitude.
It was not later than seven o’clock the following morning, Christmas Eve, 1914, that I began operations. I breakfasted at the cottage to which I had removed my belongings overnight, and went along towards the stables to get a horse.
The man with whom I had been mucking in met me outside the farm. He was in the know and grinned, cheerily.
“The sergeant’s lookin’ for you,” he said. “He’s over in the stables.”
I went across. He was prowling about near the forage.
He looked at me and stopped prowling. “Where the----” and he asked me in trooperese where I had been and why I wasn’t at early morning stables. I told him I was on a special job for the Major.