Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, August 1, 1917.

Excerpt

DUSTBIN.

He dropped in to tea, quite casually; forced an entry through the mud wall of our barn, in fact. No, he wouldn't sit down—expected to be leaving in a few minutes; but he didn't mind if he did have a sardine, and helped himself to the tinful. Yes, a bit of bully, thanks, wouldn't be amiss; and a nice piece of coal; cockchafers very good too when, as now, in season; and, for savoury, a little nibble with a yard of tarred string and an empty cardboard cigarette-box. Thank you very much.

"Why, the little brute's a perfect dustbin," said my mate; and "Dustbin" the puppy was throughout his stay with us.

For six weeks did Dustbin—attached for rations and discipline—accompany us on our sanitary rounds; set us a fine example of indifference to shell fire, even to the extent of attempting to catch spent shrapnel as it fell; and proved the wettest of wet blankets to the "socials" of the local rats. Then, as happens with sanitary inspectors in France, there arrived late one afternoon a despatch requesting the pleasure of my society—in five hours' time—at a village some twenty kilos distant as the shell flies. I found I should have fifteen minutes in which to pack, four hours for my journey, and forty-five minutes between the packing and the start in which to find a home for Dustbin.

"Take the little dorg off you?" said a Sergeant acquaintance in the D.A.C. "I couldn't, Corp'l. Why, I don't even know how I'm goin' to take the foal yonder"—he glared reproachfully at a placid Clydesdale mare and her tottering one-day-old; "and 'ow I'm goin' to take my posh breeches—"

I left him hovering despondently over his equipment and a pile of dirty linen.

We tried the M.G.C. We were on the best of terms and always had been; they said so. They apologised in advance for the insanitary conditions I might find; inquired after my health; offered me some coffee and generally loved me; but they couldn't love my dog. The Cook even went so far as openly to associate my guileless puppy with a shortage of dried herrings in the sergeants' mess.

Passing through the E.A.M.C. transport lines I rescued Dustbin from a hulking native mongrel wearing an identity disc. I judged the Ambulance would not be wanting another dog; but there was still hope with the Salvage Company.

The Salvagier whom I met upon the threshold of the "billet" (half a limber load of bricks and an angle iron) was quite sure the Salvage Company couldn't take a dog, as they had an infant wild boar and two fox cubs numbering on their strength; but he thought that he could plant my prodigy with a friend of his, a bombardier in the E.G.A., the only other unit within easy distance. We headed for the E.G.A.

It was just at this point that there occurred one of those little incidents so dear to the comic draughtsman, but less popular with "us." A moaning howl, a rushing hissing sound, a moment of tense and awful silence, a devastating crash, and the E.G.A. officers' bath-house, "erected at enormous trouble and expense" by a handful of T.U....