Explore "The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre" by Frederic Manning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
-"Fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet." -SHAKESPEARE
After another tour in the trenches, their rest billets were changed, and they moved to huts in Bus wood. A court-martial reduced the regimental sergeant-major to the rank of a sergeant, and he was sent to A Company under Sergeant-Major Tozer. He took it very well, but became rather unapproachable, though Bourne sometimes succeeded in drawing him out of himself. Tozer handled him tactfully, never consulting him, and yet taking his opinion, when he offered it, very much as though they were of equal rank. He knew how to nurse a sorry man. The men, too, no longer bore him any ill-will, his punishment wiped out any score they may have had against him; but his manner did not change perceptibly; even though his conduct became more circumspect, he still faced matters in his own rather arrogant and scornful way.