*Higgins: I was… the youngest lad in our Regiment. In those dark days when Hitler was winning, everyone was young. We’d been going at it with Rommel all over bloody Africa. One night, on patrol, some ‘Jerry’s’ (?) surprised us. No more than the flick of the serpents tail, as it slithered past us, but when it was over, I was the only one in our group left alive. Three days in the desert. I will always blame myself. Somehow, I should have… saved.
Jennifer Chapman: Then what happened?
Higgins: I was sent to a hospital in Cairo in preparitory for being sent home.
Jennifer Chapman: But, you couldn’t desert the Regiment, could you?
Higgins: I taught myself to type, only two fingers because of the bandages, and got myself assigned as ‘Aide-To-Camp’ (?) to an officer on the rise.
Jennifer Chapman: And when you won him over, completely indebted to you, you got him to send you back to your old post. You must have been the most attentive aide in North Africa.
Higgins (laughs): It’s true, but I would have done anything to join the lads.*
This is I think potentially misleading (I don’t mean to quibble). Aide-de-camp (“ADC”), in the usages in which I have seen it in the British or American armies, denoted more of a private secretary or adjutant, i.e., one who assisted a high-ranking officer on an administrative or strategy-level basis. To the extent that “personal assistant” suggests something a bit more menial or clerical (or gofer-like), the British army term would be “batman.”
