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Show ATA TJFPrk TTJTQ telegram fiction 1MU ilmUj lilliJ By WARWICK DEEPING SYNOPSIS Stephen Brent, ma. gneHh country doctor, alw wottnf men of W thfcn a rhanc to live quietly at horn with hia wife. Mary. He rnlUts In the World war to avoid the anera of hta frienda and nelshbora.- lie li sent to th DardMiellm. The campaign there is already acknowledged a failure, and Brent find offlrera and men elrk and discouraged. He and Colonel Prost, company officer, become close friends. Brent Is upset when he Is transferred to another post. Front warns hrtn that his new superior, Colonel Skindera, nicknamed Pus and Fury. is bard man to be under. shatter of this ominous little monkey. mon-key. Blourstrth intelligence officer, laughs mechanically at Skindera' stories and, when presented with some piece of information, says with eclat "Is that so, air? How extraordinary!" extraor-dinary!" One morning Just as we have finished fin-ished breakfast and I am due to take sick parade the Turks start shelling our hnes. The enemy guns are spraying shrapnel round about our headquarters, but the mess has against shrapnel I can assume that common sense Justifies me in waiting wait-ing until the morning hate is over, and T fill my pipe and prepare to light it Skindera Is fussing with a ctgaret "I suppose you understand, doctor, that your sick parade ts waiting for you. I expect my officers to set a proper example." Rag Withsrs Something flames In me. So he is sufficiently clever to get me in the wrong and to hint that I can sit In a funk hole while the men on sick parade have to stand in a trench. "I quite see your point sir." And then I am tempted to say a most unwise thing. "Perhaps you would like to see me take the sick parade this morning, sir." I am aware of Carfax looking at m skarply. Bkindere' stalasd 4eaia snow In a sudden snarl. "I don't accept Impertinence from my subordinates. Dr. Brent If It occurs oc-curs again I shall report you." I go down the trench realising that though I may have scored hit the reaction may not be a happy one for me. The shelling la still going go-ing on and a shrapnel bullet plops into the parapet close to me. I find a very small sick parade, half doien men flattened against the sap wall. Sergeant Shrlmpton has taken cover in the aid post. "Not many men reporting sick, sergeant." He grins and shows me the company com-pany lists. "Most of 'em thought better of K, sir." I dont blame them. (Continued Thursday.) (Copyright 1MT, for The Telegram.) to be their Judge. The sergeant in charge of the aid post is waiting for me with the sick lists. He is exceedingly exceed-ingly polite to me, but abrupt to the men. "New. then, fall In." : 1 I sit down on the official box in the aid post and prepare to deal with that long file of men. I re, member Skinners' threat, for I had taken it to be a threat. Am I to propriate my new master by adopting adopt-ing a ruthleas attitude toward the battalion's sick. I can quite understand under-stand that men ' must not be allowed al-lowed to wangle and that a battalion' bat-talion' medical officer's prime problem may be the detecting of the malingerer. I decide to hedge on this first morning, to cultivats a certain severity. se-verity. I find one man with trench sores, three men with Jaundice, two with temperatures of uncertain causation, and I mark them to be sent down. Six evacuations out of a parade of 43. That ought not to exasperate Skindera. When the parade Is over I ask the red-must ached sergeant whether wheth-er he is familiar with, the medical rouline.He Is: I am not There are various returns to be made, medical medi-cal stores to be checked and Indented In-dented for, a weekly report to be made to the A. D. M. & Also. I have to make my dally. Inspection of the trenches with an eye to their sanitation sani-tation and Sergeant Shrlmpton will accompany me. I decide to go and unpack my kit and tell Shrlmpton to report to me in half an hour, but he looks at me with a little superior smile and remedies my innocence. "The C. O. expects you to report to him. sir, after sick parade." "Did Captain Hibbert do so?" "Yes, sir." Back to . Tha Mast I make my way back to the mesa and find Skindera there like a dangerous dan-gerous dog In a kennel. He watches me as if I were a rat." "How many on parade?" Chapter t I am standing in the doorway of a dugout cut In the earth wall of a sap. It is the Fifteenth headquarters mu It. Interior la dark, hut I can distinguish a man sitting at a table with a glass and bottle beside him. Another and younger man is standing behind him. I salute and ask, "Colonel Skln-ders?" Skln-ders?" He Is a little sallow man whose face reminds me of the head of a bad-tempered terrier. He has a hungry, hun-gry, irritable look and teeth that project under a rat-tailed mustache. They are discolored teeth. His eyes are very near together and pin bright under a mean forehead. His fare Is vellum colored save for a patch of redness over each cheek bone and these patches meet on the bridge of his nose. Who Are You? He snarls at me, "Who the hell are you?" ' My ears grow hot. I feel that I hfriild liKt ,n "dreaa him hy ills nickname. Colonel Fuss and Fury. So this is the man under whom I am to serve. "I'm the new medical officer, sir." He stares at me Insolently. "Oh. the new pill merchant What's your name?" "Brent, sir." "Had any experience?" "I have been with the field ambulance am-bulance for some weeks." "That doesn't mean much. I asked them not to send me a pup." The almost incredible rudeness of ths man astonishes me. I happen to look at the officer who is standing stand-ing behind me. Carfax, the adjutant, adju-tant, and there Is something In his eyes that makes me realise that he despises this snarling little beast as much as I dislike him. I stand silently si-lently waiting. "Better see to It. Carfax. Show him in. Has there been any sick parade pa-rade yet?" "No. sir." A Skindera glances up truculently "Forty-three, air." "What! And how many did you I let through?" "Six. sir." "Six!" He Is furious, quite unreasonably furious. I have to describe every case to him and explain my reasons for sending the men down. "Do you know what our parade strength Is. Mr. Brent?" "No, sir." "Four hundred and twenty-three. Ws haven't had a draft for six weeks and the last one was rubbish. Six men a day means about 180 men in a month. How are we to carry on? This is a war, not s hospital out-patient department." There Is something loathesome to me In this man. His crudenesa Is only equaled by his irritable complacency. com-placency. He appears to possess a store of dirty stories. But hia conversation con-versation Is not sll smuttinesa. He pours forth boring, snappy plati- tudes. gives us little bits of historical histori-cal Information, often Inaccurate, and appears to assume that, as our j C. O., he can not only stuff orders down our throat, but compel us to swallow both his bawdiness and his half-baked views upon life in general, gen-eral, I am Interested In Carfax's face and attitude. He sits opposite me, eating pickles and bully feed with fastidious deliberation and looking as if he had learned to dispatch Ms secret soul into other worlds. He attends at-tends to Skindera, but without attention. at-tention. He suggests a man who is infinitely but resignedly weary, but who suffers because he must the at me. "One word, doctor. There has been too much skrim-shanking in this battalion. No slush, mind you. You have got to keep a tight hold on the men. You understand?" "Yes. sir." "And I don't want you to sit about on your bum in some corner. I want every latrine Inspected twice a day. You understand?" "Quite, sir." When I Live Carfax comes out to me and I see brittle scorn in his gray strained eyes. He leads the way along the maia trench and turns Into a kind of blind alley. It is packed with men squatting or leaning in attitudes atti-tudes of boredom and depression against the earth walls. A harsh voice calls them to attention and I am aware of their eyes fixed on me like the eyes of animals as I pass them. The regimental aid post is a sandbagged recess cut into the earth. Carfax walks past K and stops outside a dugout. "This is your hole, doc." Instinctively I look at the roof of ground sheets snd see holes in those sheets. This must havs been Hib-bert's Hib-bert's dugout, the place in which he was hit, and I am conscious of faint nausea and qualms of fear. Am I to sleep In this horrible silt in the soil where my predecessor received his death wound? Carfax appears to divine- my hesitation and to sympathize with me. "I'll have the roof made good, doc." and he adds, "it ought to be a safe spot. Things like that don't happen twice." I give him a forced smile. "I suppose not Is that my sick parade?" "Yes." "Rather a crowd." He gives me a shrewd look. ' "It's your first, you see, doc, snd from the men's point of view s bit of an experiment." I understand him. I am s new man and perhaps raw and gullible and capable of being fooled or cajoled by some of the poor devils who may be feeling as homesick and disillusioned as the man who is |