despatch-carrying

Updated: May 27, 2025

This has nearly all left me and I remain a more or less efficient despatch-carrying animal a part of a machine realising the hopeless, enormous size of the machine. The infantry officer after two months of modern war is a curious phenomenon. He is probably one of three survivors of an original twenty-eight. He is not frightened of being killed; he has forgotten to think about it.

William Henry Lowe Watson - Adventures of a Despatch Rider

Surely and steadily the men enclosed behind the walls of the old Prison rose into the ranks of the utterly reliable, the indefatigable, the fearless and the fine, or sank into those of the shifty, unhearty, unreliable, and unworthy save the few who remained steadily mediocre, well-meaning, unsoldierly, fairly trustworthy a useful second line, but not to be sent on forlorn hopes, dangerous reconnoitring, risky despatch-carrying, scouting, or ticklish night-work.

Percival Christopher Wren - Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who: Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life