TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

Then there was the Doctor, who was now away on
leave but would certainly be back before things be-
came lively. Captain Munro had been with the
Second Battalion about eighteen months. The first
time I saw him was when he gave me my anti-
typhoid injection. I looked at him with interest, for
he was already known to me by reputation. "Hullo,
here's Sherston, the man who did stunts with the
First Battalion," he remarked, as I unbuttoned my
shirt for the perforation process. He was giving double
injections, so as to save us the trouble of feeling unwell
twice. "That'll keep you quiet for forty-eight hours,"
he observed; and I retired, with a sickly grin. The
M.O. was a famous character in the Battalion, and I
was hoping to get to know him better. (At the time
of writing I can indeed claim to have achieved my
hope. But the Doctor is a man adverse to the idea of
being applauded in print, and he would regard any
reference to his local renown as irrelevant to this
narrative.)

Equally popular was Bates, the Quartermaster,
who was a burlier prototype of Joe Dottrell, with
fewer political prejudices. When, at Gamp 13, there
had been rumours of a Divisional Race Meeting,
Bates had asked me to ride his mare. The Races had
been cancelled, but the notion had delighted me for a
day or two. This mare could gallop quite well and
was the apple of the Quartermaster's eye. It was said
that on one occasion, when the Transport was having
a rough time, Bates had rigged up a tarpaulin shelter
for his mare and slept out in the open himself. I
was mentally comparing Bates and Dottrell, to their
mutual credit, when we came to the end of our first
fifty minutes and the men fell out at the side of the
road and slipped their packs off. A gang of red and

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