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Only a very fat quartermaster-sergeant lay asleep in the sun and snored, while an ancient and dissolute old warrior, near by, was engaged in clearing out a drain as part of his Field Punishment, and had just discovered a dead dog in it. He was not singing blithely: he had no cheery smile of confidence on his face: he was just talking gently to himself. The field was on a slight ridge.
At the next place I came to I learned that he had been with the army, as quartermaster-sergeant; then he went mad over a lawsuit he lost, and was shut up in an asylum for some time. Now in the spring his trouble broke out again; perhaps it was my coming that had given the final touch. But the lightning insight in his eyes at the moment when the madness came upon him!
There were Soult, Lobau, and Bertrand; but, for all their talents, I had rather, when it came to hard knocks, have a single quartermaster-sergeant of Hussars at my side than the three of them put together.
Abbot is forced to confess that he knows nothing of his antecedents, and that he was made quartermaster-sergeant at Hollins's request, at a time when nobody had a very adequate idea of what his duties might be. "Who had charge of the distribution of the regimental mail all winter and spring?" asks the secret-service man, after looking over some memoranda. "The quartermaster, ordinarily.
The rations are unloaded at the entrance to the communication trenches and are "carried in" by men detailed for that purpose. The Quartermaster-Sergeant never goes into the front-line trench. He doesn't have to, and I have never heard of one volunteering to do so. The Company Sergeant-Major sorts the rations, and sends them in. When it is possible, he gets tea and stew.
Then you'll have to relieve Jake Warder as Sergeant of the Guard, for Jake's hardly able to be around." The Orderly strode off toward the Quartermaster's tent at such a pace that it gave the boys all they could do to keep up with him. Arriving there he called out sharply to the Quartermaster-Sergeant: "Wes, give me seven blankets."
He was just a man with a prophetic instinct, who, while others passed blindly by, picked up things because they might come in useful some day and they always did. Finally, the Q.-B. was companionable. He could tell a good story, and make merry decorously, as befitted a Company Quartermaster-Sergeant. Of the other sergeants I will make no individual mention.
It is a poor day for the British soldier when he cannot find some little dainty for his horse, or "win" an extra handful of grain when the quartermaster-sergeant is looking the other way; his first thought is always for his horse. When we had snatched a hurried meal we set out to look for water. The only known wells were at Deir el Belah, whither we proceeded.
Leaping to my feet with an instinctive impulse to do likewise, I was confronted in the doorway by a stalwart Confederate officer fully uniformed and armed. Behind him was his quartermaster-sergeant. This was a government party collecting the tax in kind, which at that time throughout the Confederacy was the tenth part of all crops and other farm productions. It was an ugly surprise.
An A.S.C. Sergeant mentions casually to a regimental Quartermaster that he has heard it said at the Supply Dépôt that heavy firing has been going on in the Channel. The Quartermaster, on returning to the Transport Lines, observes to his Quartermaster-Sergeant that the German Fleet has come out at last.
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