The handling of the sick is not so easy a matter as the caring for the wounded in the lines, for the reason that it is not what disease the man has that the medical officer must decide as much as whether he has any disease, or has simply joined the Independent Workers of the World. In other words, is he really ill, or is he just suffering from ennui, has he at last become so "fed up" with it all that he has decided to go sick, running the gauntlet of an irate M.O. with the hope of receiving a few hours or days of rest at the transport or in the hospital? It may be a lucky father who knows his own son, but it is a fortunate medical officer who knows his own battalion. If he does it is fortunate for the M.O., for it makes his toils lighter. But it may not be so fortunate for the poor devil who has just decided that once again he will endeavor to "put it over" the doctor. For the latter gets to know the regular parader, and meets him with a suspicious look of recognition.

"Well, Jones, and what is it this time?" asks the M. O. in tones so cold that the poor victim can almost taste Pill No. 9, or Castor Oil as he listens. If he is not ill, but is simply sick and tired of the mud, dirt, rats, lice, discipline, and discomfort—as we all get at times—he will have to tax his ingenuity and his acting ability to convince the doctor that his pains in his legs and back are real, not imaginary; or that his right knee is swollen, when the practised eye of the physician says it is not. If he is an old soldier and knows the game well, he may get away with it, sometimes with the tacit consent of a sympathetic medical officer.

Tommy is not the only one who endeavors at times to get out of the lines with imaginary ills. His officers, and some medical officers for the matter of that, occasionally set him the example. It is very human on occasions to long for comfort instead of discomfort; cleanliness in place of dirt; a decent, white-sheeted bed in exchange for a hard, uncomfortable, and possibly vermin-infested bunk; and to wish to indulge in peace, quietness, rest, safety, and civilization after the noise, fatigue, dangers, and barbarism that give truth to the saying that war is hell. But the officer gets the same treatment as does his men. On one occasion I saw a colonel removed from an ambulance to make room for a badly wounded Tommy.

And it may safely be said that if the ordinary soldier hates the sick parade, his abhorrence of it is mild in comparison to that felt for it by the battalion representative of the Army Medical Corps. It is a thorn in his side that makes itself felt daily. And the reason is that he is between three fires,—the Assistant Director of Medical Services who expects a low sick rate in the different units; the battalion and company commanders who expect the men on parade, which means fit and on duty, while at the same time insisting, quite rightly, that the men get every attention at the hands of the medical department; and a certain small percentage of the men for whom the novelty and glamour of the war has worn off and who have become tired of the food, and find the work arduous and monotonous. It is this small percentage of the men—not large in numbers, but present in most units—who make the work difficult, for they begin to wonder how they can escape the working parties or the dangers and hardships of the trenches, and if by any chance they have varicose veins, flat feet, rheumatism, short sight, or any of the thousand and one ills that man is heir to, they immediately begin "swinging the lead," as the boys call malingering. In the Royal Army Medical Corps they call it "scrimshanking."

The M.O. is not popular with leadswingers or scrimshankers. A witty Tommy once said that all you can get from an officer of the medical department is a pill number nine—made up mostly of calomel—"an\' if \'e hain\'t got a pill nine \'e\'ll give ye a four an\' a five."

No doubt the man who "swings the lead" is to be sympathized with at times. Often he is given work to do almost beyond human endurance, his dugout may be a mudhole, his clothes soaking from a downpour of rain, his rations short, and, finally, perhaps the rum ration, the one cheery thing on a dark day, is missing. He has done his bit anyway—or thinks he has—and his only possible relief is to say that he is too ill to go on the next day. Occasionally, he has an attack of what a sharp little French Canadian sergeant called frigidity of the feet, and he dreads his next tour in the front line. At any rate, for one cause or another, he decides to go before the M.O. And many funny stories are told of the attempts made by men to get a few days\' "excuse duty," which means a few days with nothing to do. Two men are overheard at the following conversation:

"Say, Bill, what are you goin\' to tell the croaker?"—a common name for a stern M.O.

"Oh, I\'ve got bad rheumatic pains in my back."

"The devil you have; that\'s what I had. Well, I\'ll go strong on diarrhea."

Each tells his story. It depends on how sick they appear or how often they have been before his medical majesty in the past as to the result. The latter at least may work a day off, at the expense of a nauseating dose of castor oil, taken at once, and some lead and opium pills, consigned to the gutter as soon as the sick man is out of sight. The former probably gets M.&D., that is medicine and duty, which translated means, carry on, with perhaps a good rubbing of his back with a strong liniment.

My corporal told me a story of two men who opened a can of bully beef and for four days left it standing on the parapet during hot weather. Then they ate it with the hope of getting ptomaine poisoning.

Another chap is said to have feigned insanity by giving all his attention to snatching up every bit of paper he could find in the trenches or out of them, and studiously endeavoring to make the bits of paper into some important document. He carried out this apparently foolish search so long that at last he was pronounced insane and given his discharge from the forces. On receiving his discharge papers he studied them carefully as he walked away. Another soldier heard him murmur:

"Why, that\'s the paper I have been searching for all the time."

Deafness is one of the commonest complaints of a soldier who is scrimshanking. The soldier tells the M.O. that for some months past his hearing has been lessening and that at last he is so deaf that he cannot carry on. He claims that while on sentry duty or "standing to" in the front line he has already nearly shot one officer and three different men because he could not hear them giving him the password. The M.O. in a loud voice questions him as to his name, place of birth, age, and so on, and so on, keeping his face straight and his lips hidden, to avoid allowing the soldier, if really deaf, to read his lips. Gradually the voice of the officer is lowered, and the man who at first had difficulty hearing his loud tones, unconsciously, if faking, answers the lowered voice till he is answering to a voice that is almost a whisper.

Then comes suddenly a change in the manner of the "croaker." He becomes stern and rebukes the man, ordering him forth to do his duty like the other men of his battalion, and not ever again to dare to come on parade with a plea of deafness, under a threat of marking him plain "DUTY," which means criming and a likelihood of twenty-eight days first field punishment.

Looking backward one can think of many amusing incidents in which some chap tried to get out of the lines, and perhaps succeeded in so doing, by an imaginary ill. A soldier named Jones who had not been long in the lines became a regular caller upon me. As usual at first every consideration was shown to him, but as his face appeared and reappeared almost daily, and as the said face was suffused with the glow of health, his form of the robust type, and his complaints always functional—that is, consisting of symptoms only, with no signs of a real disease to cause them—I began to feel certain that he was a "lead-swinger." On his first call or two he had been "excused duty," but as my suspicions grew firmer that he was simply shifting his work onto the shoulders of some other poor Tommy, my manner toward him grew rather reserved, and finally antagonistic.

About this time he came to see me at one of my daily morning sick parades. He tried to look as ill and dejected as his very healthy appearance would permit.

"Well, Jones, what is the trouble this time?" I asked harshly when his turn came.

"I can\'t swallow, sir. I can\'t get any food down my throat. I don\'t know what\'s the matter, sir, but I had this happen to me ten years ago, and I nearly died. I was in the hospital for three months."

"How long since you have swallowed any food, Jones?"

"Well, I managed to get down a little, night before last, but not a bite since then, not a bite. And I\'m feeling awful weak. I don\'t think I could carry on long like this. But of course I\'ll do my best, sir."

"Yes, I suppose so, Jones," I answered, feeling certain that he was lying. "Of course a few days without food really does most of us good. A friend of mine regularly goes a week on nothing but water whenever he feels a bit \'livery,\' as the English say. And then you remember there was a man once who went forty days fasting. He became quite famous. So another day or two won\'t hurt you, Jones. However, if it went too long it might become serious. So I want you to report back here tomorrow morning, sure, if you have not succeeded in swallowing by that time. I have in my panier a stomach tube, and we\'ll pass it down through your esophagus and open it up. It\'s a very tender passage," I continued without smiling, "and you must expect severe pain from the passing of the tube; unfortunately we have nothing to deaden the pain, but you can stand it if you make up your mind to do so. Now you do your best to swallow like a good fellow, and I think you will succeed, but be sure to come back tomorrow if you don\'t. That\'ll do, Jones. Next."

As a matter of fact I had no stomach or esophageal tube, but I was just trying out a little Christian Scienc............