Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 46

It has been inspection of kit, cleanliness, rifles, etc. today and if one had been looking for proof of the efficacy of this time-honoured army institution he had only to have seen my dear, dirty Coy at 9 a.m. parade and then look upon them, brushed and cleaned, at 3.30 p.m. The difference in them was simply marvellous though they are by no means properly clean yet. The trenches leave their marks on a man in more ways than one.

We visited C Coy Mess this evening. It was quite a birthday party. Yet there was no real birthday. That, be it whispered, was Rambottom’s^xviii own unaided invention, and was used solely for the more or less base purpose of beguiling his landlady into letting him entertain his friends up till 10.15pm. Until this night he has been forced to seek his couch at 9.30, his landlady believing in the axiom of ‘early to bed’ and being a woman of very considerable force of character, which, in Ramsbottom’s eyes, is in no way diminished by the fact that she has two charming daughters whom only very respectable young men who go to bed at very respectable hours may converse with. My dear pal Gordon is so awfully susceptible. He confided in me tonight that the young and pretty one had called him her ‘cher Capitaine Gordon’. It had made his heart flutter. I advised him in future not to risk his chances by telling horrid untruths to the desired-one’s parents.