Toughening the Saysquacks for Combat Duty

February 15th, 1917

Letter from Captain Branwell Browntrout to Lieutenant Horace S. Browntrout

Dear Father,

As you know I was transferred off the line and given charge of training the entire British Expeditionary Saysquack Corps. Of everyone, you of all people will know how hard it has been to train and equip a Saysquack fighting force. They resist discipline in every way. Their habits are slothful and movements lackadaisical. They possess no natural inclination to fight, nor any aggressive instinct. When faced with force, they turn away, cower, or run headlong in the other direction. They have no interest in weapons. I am at sixes and sevens to understand why you were pressured by High Command to recruit them in the first place. Did you not tell them that Stanley is not the typical Saysquack, that you have known and trained him for years, that he is utterly loyal, more British than Saysquack, will follow you anywhere, do anything you ask of him? They have given me three months to make a fighting force of a large group of pacifist leaf-eating anthropoids. I hold them as dear as you do, and therefore I can’t understand what you’ve gotten us all in to.

No reward motivates them. Saysquacks do not understand the concept of “leave,” or “go on holiday,” or “cigarettes,” so when you offer them these things or threaten to take them away you are merely met with an indifferent “umph.” If you threaten to take away the leaf they are chewing, they will simply and happily revert to grass as readily as a cow. We — the overtaxed drill instructors and I — have been forced to use extreme measures to motivate them to learn their drill commands. We have imported schoolmasters — and upperclassmen (especially known bullies) — from Wooly Acres Boarding School for Children of Gentlemen Explorers and other boarding schools to use their methods to obtain movement from the Saysquacks. This has resulted in rotten eggs being thrown, the wearing of the dunce cap, being forced to stand on a stool, and use of the hose. None of us are keen to deploy such barbaric methods, but what else can we do? We have so little time? My goal is to help these Saysquacks survive the trenches. To do that, somebody has got to toughen them up.

Which brings me to the point of this letter. Why did it have to be me? You know how much I love Stanley and his ilk? Was this some cruel joke on your part, to have me taken away from the honor of serving next to my mates — many of whom have now died — so that I could humiliate our anthropoid friends that shouldn’t even be here?

I hope you and Stanley are alive and well. I hear you are behind the lines in enemy territory and that is all the Arab Bureau will divulge to me or Mother. We do worry about your health and safety, and that of Stanley.

Your son,

Branwell

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