“Beer,” and D “Don,” and so on.  He salutes the rosy dawn as “Akk Emma,” and eventide as “Pip Emma.”  He refers to the letter S as “Esses,” in order to distinguish it from F. He has no respect for the most majestic military titles.  To him the Deputy Assistant Director of the Mobile Veterinary Section is merely a lifeless formula, entitled Don Akk Don Emma Vic Esses.

He is also a man of detached mind.  The tactical situation does not interest him.  His business is to disseminate news, not to write leading articles about it. (O si sic omnes!) You may be engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the possession of your own parapet with a Boche bombing-party; but this does not render you immune from a pink slip from the Signal Section, asking you to state your reasons in writing for having mislaid fourteen pairs of “boots, gum, thigh,” lately the property of Number Seven Platoon.  A famous British soldier tells a story somewhere in his reminiscences of an occasion upon which, in some long-forgotten bush campaign, he had to defend a zareba against a heavy attack.  For a time the situation was critical.  Help was badly needed, but the telegraph wire had been cut.  Ultimately the attack withered away, and the situation was saved.  Almost simultaneously the victorious commander was informed that telegraphic communication with the Base had been restored.  A message was already coming through.

“News of reinforcements, I hope!” he remarked to his subordinate.

But his surmise was incorrect.  The message said, quite simply:—­

    “Your monthly return of men wishing to change their religion is
    twenty-four hours overdue.  Please expedite.”

There was a time when one laughed at that anecdote as a playful invention.  But we know now that it is true, and we feel a sort of pride in the truly British imperturbability of our official machinery.

Thirdly, the Buzzer is a humourist, of the sardonic variety.  The constant clash of wits over the wires, and the necessity of framing words quickly, sharpens his faculties and acidulates his tongue.  Incidentally, he is an awkward person to quarrel with.  One black night, Bobby Little, making his second round of the trenches about an hour before “stand-to,” felt constrained to send a telephone message to Battalion Headquarters.  Taking a good breath,—­you always do this before entering a trench dug-out,—­he plunged into the noisome cavern where his Company Signallers kept everlasting vigil.  The place was in total darkness, except for the illumination supplied by a strip of rifle-rag burning in a tin of rifle-oil.  The air, what there was of it, was thick with large, fat, floating particles of free carbon.  The telephone was buzzing plaintively to itself, in unsuccessful competition with a well-modulated quartette for four nasal organs, contributed by Bobby’s entire signalling staff, who, locked in the inextricable embrace peculiar to Thomas Atkins in search of warmth, were snoring harmoniously upon the earthen floor.