The Career of an Untruth
Clements is not dead, and Delarey and his friends are not captured.
I am telling you the latest rumours and anti-rumours, as this letter progresses.
And yet the man I had the first version from had had it from an R.A.M.C. Sergeant, who had it on the most reliable authority of the commandant’s orderly, who had heard the commandant tell it to the P.M.O. He had also been corroborated by a man who had seen the man who took it down from the heliograph. Also one of the hospital runners had heard Dr. —— tell Dr. ——, and a friend of his had a friend who knew a man on the officers’ mess, who had seen it up in orders, distinctly.
A Tommy came in just now and said “Hullo, Corporal!” I shook his flipper weakly and tried the dodge of pretending to recognise him. But I had to give it up, and admit I could not for the moment recognise him, and thought he had made a mistake. To which he replied he had not, and didn’t I remember the soap. I did.
About two months or more ago, having halted at mid-day at some fontein or other en route for Rustenburg, Whiteing and I went down to the nearest stream to have the usual wash. There we found heaps of fellows washing; but, alas! there was a great dearth of soap. A Northumberland man asked me if I could sell him some, and I gave him a small chunk. The demand was great, and there was practically no supply. When we got back to our lines, Whiteing, ever forgetful, discovered he had left his precious brown Windsor behind. It was too late to go back to try and find it, so he gave up all hopes of ever seeing it again. The next day, as we were riding through the infantry advance guard of the Border Regiment, one of the fellows shouted to me, asking if I had lost any soap the day before. I replied “No,” and then recollected Whiteing’s loss added that a friend of mine had. My infantry friend thereupon promised to bring it round in the evening, which he did. In this manner we became acquainted with him. I mention this incident just to show what a really good sportsman the true Thomas is. Here was soap in great request: we were strangers to him, having merely chatted with him and the others as we washed in the mud and water, and yet, without our even making enquiries for the precious lump, he went out of his way to return it.
I asked him why he had come into the hospital, and he told me he and several others had been sent in as unfit for the veldt, and so were to act as hospital orderlies. When I inquired how he liked the idea, he said it was all right, as he was clear of the horrible “hundred-and-fifty,” and he laid his hands significantly where the pouches are wont to decorate the waist of the poor infantryman.
[Note.—I suppose you know the infantryman’s cross is the hated 150 rounds in the two pouches, which after many miles marching become most irksome, especially for the muscles of the stomach.]
I, of course, inquired after Nobby, but he could not tell me anything about him, as Nobby is in “H” Company and his was “B.”
To-day (the 16th) a large number of fellows are leaving here for the base and, the rumour is—home.
The P.M.O. asked a Yeomanry friend yesterday if he would like to go home or join his squadron, and the Yeoman’s reply was he would like to rejoin his squadron—at home. In explanation, he smilingly stated that all of his squadron’s officers, bar one, had gone home, and nearly all the squadron, having been invalided or discharged. Well, I think this is long enough for a letter written by a man who can hardly claim to be “on active service” just at present.