It was useless to grumble at the inevitable.

There was not a man in the mess who could not be spared more easily than he.
For he was indomitable, unfailing, always fulfilling his duties with machine-like regularity, stern, impenetrable, hard as granite.
As to what lay behind that hardness, no one ever troubled to inquire.
They took him for granted, much as if he had been a well-oiled engine guaranteed to surmount all obstacles.

How he did it was nobody's business but his own.

If he suffered in that appalling heat as other men suffered, no one knew of it.

If he grew a little grimmer and a little gaunter, no one noticed.