‘THE OFFICER, ‘ said Private Smithy, of the 1st Anchesters, ‘is a new officer. It isn’t the new kind of uniform, or the new Salvation Army cap, or the new silly way of wearing his shoulder sash. He’s a changed officer, if you understand. He don’t look no different, and in many ways he’s not altered a bit. He still plays polo an’ bridge—what’s bridge?’
I explained.
‘Well, he still does all these things just about as much as ever he did, but I tell you ‘e’s an astounding blighter in many ways.’
‘It ain’t so long ago, ‘ reflected this monunment of the First Army Corps, ‘when officers used to come on parade at 10 a.m.—commanding officers’ parade drill order—and we used to look at ‘em hard to discover whether we’d seen ‘em before. They used to troop down from the officers’ mess buttoning up their brown gloves and hooking on their swords under their patrol jackets. They’d stand about for a minute or two yawnin’ their blankey ‘eads orf an’ then the bugled sound ‘Officers come and be blowed, ‘ an’ they’d fall in.