"Sure you have," said Bill. "We'll just stay here and maybe we'll be made
sergeants."
About six hundred of us stayed! But, believe me, if they had all had as
much military experience as I, we wouldn't have been soldiers yet. When the
adjutant came around, he gave me a look as much as to say: "That kid
certainly has got a lot of nerve." He offered to make Bill a corporal, but
as that would have transferred him from D Company to F Company he declined
rather than leave me.
This will give you some idea of the kind of organization or
non-organization when the First Contingent Canadians was formed. Not only
in our own battalion but nearly anywhere in the regiment almost anybody
could have been a non-commissioned officer--certainly anybody that had
looks and the nerve to tell the adjutant that he had had former military
experience.
It was not very long before we began to realize that soldiering, after all,
was no snap. There was the deuce of a lot to learn, and the deuce of a lot
to do.
To the rookie one of the most interesting things are the bugle calls. The
first call, naturally, that the new soldier learns is "the cook-house," and
possibly the second is the mail-call.
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