‘Don’t know what you’re whining about, young Pegg, Mr Carmichael never got round to that flogging that Captain Eddington ordered, did he?’ One of the others crossed himself unobtrusively at the name of their dead officer, whilst Pegg busied himself, filling his kettle for the next brew.
Promotion had quite changed Richard Carmichael. His confidence, far from being dented by his unexplained absence during the fighting at the river, had soared. The company had been used to Captain Eddington’s attention to detail, to his insistence that weapons, ammunition and the like were kept in good order, but they could see the point in this. What they couldn’t understand was Carmichael’s fussiness. Water bottles had to be worn on the right hip, the right hip, mind, not the left. Firewood could only be
