"Diet! He don't eat no diet, sir. He eats every darn thing in sight and looks for more," was the sneering reply.
"I thought so. Now, Jones," I said sternly, "if you come on sick parade again, when you are not sick I'm going to put in a crime charge against you for malingering. Now, get out."
And he got out, and that was the last time I saw him on sick parade.
The chaps who fake are nearly always new arrivals in the line. One such came hopping into my dugout in the middle of the night, with his boot, sock, and puttee, off one foot which he carefully kept off the ground. He said he had been blown up by a shell and buried, severely injuring the foot he had bared. I examined the foot tenderly and found a swelling half the size of an egg just over the inner side of the ankle. He howled with pain when I touched it, so my examination was rather cursory--that is hurried. Without diagnosing the condition, I swabbed it with iodine, merely to do something, and applied a dressing, telling my assistant to make out a hospital entry card for him. After leaving him to go back to my bunk, for I was tired, I happened to glance around and saw a broad grin on his face. Stepping back I took off the dressing, and carefully examined the swelling notwithstanding his protest that it was very painful. I found then that it was simply a fatty tumor--an excess, but harmless, growth of fat in a localized area--which had probably been there for years. He then admitted the fact that the swelling had been there for years, but of course still claimed that he had hurt his ankle a few minutes before. As it showed no sign of it, he went back to duty!
Every medical officer has many such incidents after a few months of service. They often add a bit of humor to a dull business. Rather strangely, the parades are always larger out of the lines than in them, for the vast majority of the men hold it as a point of honor to stick it out, no matter how rough it may be, while in the line. But as soon as the battalion gets out of the line and hard training, route marches, equipment cleaning and inspection begin, the parades increase in size. Often the men hope that they will be given excuse duty, which means that they have nothing to do for that day. Or, should the parade be held at a late hour, some few of them prefer to stand about the M.O.'s tent awaiting their turn, to doing some drill or route march. The sick parade is held daily at a fixed hour, and as a rule the earlier the parade the smaller the number who come. If it is held before all other parades, only the really ill come, for the others would but add to their daily number of parades if they came pretending to be ill.