Another said, "Hell!" in a whisper. The adjutant answered the
colonel's questions in a formal way, but thinking hard and studying
the colonel's face anxiously.
"Do you mean to say we are going into the line again, sir? At once?"
The colonel laughed.
"Don't look so scared, all of you! It's only a field-day for
training."
The officers of the Gordons breathed more freely. Poof! They had been
fairly taken in by the "old man's" leg-pulling . . . No, it was clear
they did not find any real joy in the line. They would not choose a
front-line trench as the most desirable place of residence.
XVI
In queer psychology there was a strange mingling of the pitiful and
comic--among a division (the 35th) known as the Bantams. They were all
volunteers, having been rejected by the ordinary recruiting-officer on
account of their diminutive stature, which was on an average five feet
high, descending to four feet six. Most of them came from Lancashire,
Cheshire, Durham, and Glasgow, being the dwarfed children of
industrial England and its mid-Victorian cruelties.
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