The War brought about no more awful clash of personalities than when it threw David and myself into the same dug-out.  Myself, I am the normal man—­the man who wishes he were dead when he is called in the morning and who swears at his servant (1) for calling him; (2) for not calling him.  My batman has learnt, after three years of war, to subdue feet which were intended by nature to be thunderous.  His method of calling me is the result of careful training.  If I am to wake at 7 A.M. he flings himself flat on his face outside my dug-out at 6 A.M. and wriggles snake-like towards my boots.  He extracts these painlessly from under last night’s salvage dump of tin-hats, gas-masks and deflated underclothes, noses out my jacket, detects my Sam Browne, and in awful silence bears these to the outer air, where he emits, like a whale, the breath which he has been holding for the last ten minutes.  And meanwhile I sleep.

At 6.55 A.M. he brings back boots, belt and jacket.  This time he breathes.  He walks softly, but he walks.  He places the boots down firmly.  He begins to make little noises.  He purrs and coughs and scratches his chin, and very gradually the air of the dug-out begins to vibrate with life.  It is like Peer Gynt—­the “Morning” thing on the gramophone, you know; he clinks a toothbrush against a mug, he pours out water.  It is all gradual, crescendo; and meanwhile I am awakening.  At 7 A.M., not being a perfect artist, he generally has to drop something; but by that time I am only pretending to be asleep, and I growl at him, ask him why he didn’t call me an hour ago, and then fall asleep again.  I get up at eight o’clock and dress in silence.  If my batman speaks to me I cut myself, throw the razor at him, and completely break down.  In short, as I say, I am the normal man.

With David it is otherwise.  David is a big strong man.  He blew into my dug-out late one night and occupied the other bed—­an affair of rude beams and hard wire-netting.  He spread himself there in sleep, and silence fell.  At dawn next morning an awful sound hurled me out of dreams towards my revolver.  I clutched it in sweating terror, and stared round the dug-out with my heart going like a machine-gun.  It was not, however, a Hun counter-attack.  It was David calling for his servant.  As the first ray of the sun lights the Eastern sky David calls for his servant.  His servant is a North-countryman.  Sleeping far off in some noxious haunt, he hears David’s voice and instantly begins to speak.  His voice comes swelling towards us, talking of boots and tunics.  As he reaches the dug-out door he becomes deafening.  He and David have a shouting match.  He kicks over a petrol-tin full of water, smashes my shaving mirror, and sits on my feet while picking up the bits.

Meanwhile David is standing on his bed and jodelling, while his batman shrieks to him that his wife said in her last letter to him that if he doesn’t get a leaf soon the home’ll be bruk up.  Then David starts slapping soap on to his face like a bill-sticker with a paste-brush.  His servant drops a field boot on to my stomach, trips over an empty biscuit-tin and is heard grooming a boot without.