His criminal carelessness in not removing his sword and leaving it in the Guard-room, when going on sentry after guard-mounting—­“getting the good Sergeant into trouble, too, and making it appear that he had been equally criminally careless “.

The desperate quarrel between Hawker and Bone as to whether the 10th Hussars were called the “Shiny Tenth” because of their general material and spiritual brilliance, or the “Chainy Tenth” because their Officers wore pouch-belts of gold chain-mail....  The similar one between Buttle and Smith as to the reason of a brother regiment being known as “The Virgin Mary’s Body-guard,” and their reluctant acceptance of Dam’s dictum that they were both wrong, it having been earned by them in the service of a certain Maria Theresa, a lady unknown to Messrs. Buttle and Smith....  Dam had found himself developing into a positive bully in his determination to prevent senseless quarrelling, senseless misconduct, senseless humourless foulness, senseless humourless blasphemy, and all that unnecessary, avoidable ugliness that so richly augmented the unavoidable....

Memories ...!

Sitting throughout compulsory church, cursing and mutinous of heart, because after spending several hours of the Day of Rest in burnishing and pipe-claying, blacking and shining ("Sunday spit an’ polish"), he was under orders for sharp punishment—­because at the last moment his tunic had been fouled by a passing pigeon!  When would the Authorities realize that soldiers are still men, still Englishmen (even if they have, by becoming soldiers, lost their birthright of appeal to the Law of the Land, though not their amenability to its authority), and cease to make the Blessed Sabbath a curse, the worst day of the week, and to herd angry, resentful soldiers into church to blaspheme with politely pious faces?  Oh, British, British, Pharisees and Humbugs—­make Sunday a curse, and drive the soldier into church to do his cursing—­make it the chief day of dress “crimes” and punishments, as well as the busiest day, and force the soldier into church to Return Thanks....

The only man in the world flung into church as though into jail for punishment!  Shout it in the Soldier’s ear, “You are not a Man, you are a Slave,” on Sundays also, on Sundays louder than usual....  And when he has spent his Sunday morning in extra hard labour, in suffering the indignity of being compulsorily marched to church, and very frequently of having been punished because it is a good day on which a Sergeant may decide that he is not sufficiently cleanly shaved or his boots of minor effulgence—­then let him sit and watch his hot Sunday dinner grow stone cold before the Colonel stalks through the room, asks a perfunctory question, and he is free to fall to.

“O Day of Rest and Gladness,
 O Day of Joy most Bright....”

Yah!