shed.
Late in November we were moved to a city of wooden huts at Sandling
Junction, to make room for newly recruited units. The dwellings were but
half-finished, the drains were open ditches, and the rains descended and
the floods came as usual. We lived an amphibious and wretched existence
until January, when, to our great joy, we were transferred to billets in
the Metropole, one of Folkestone's most fashionable hotels. To be sure,
we slept on bare floors, but the roof was rainproof, which was the
essential thing. The aesthetically inclined could lie in their blankets at
night, gazing at richly gilded mirrors over the mantelpieces and
beautifully frescoed ceilings refurnishing our apartments in all their
former splendor. Private Henry Morgan was not of this type. Henry came in
one evening rather the worse for liquor and with clubbed musket assaulted
his unlovely reflection in an expensive mirror. I believe he is still
paying for his lack of restraint at the rate of a sixpence per day, and
will have canceled his obligation by January, 1921, if the war continues
until that time.

* * * * * *

Although we were poorly equipped and sometimes wretchedly housed, the
commissariat was excellent and on the most generous scale from the very
beginning. Indeed, there was nearly as much food wasted as eaten.
Naturally, the men made no complaint, although they regretted seeing such
quantities of food thrown daily into the refuse barrels. I often felt
that something should be done about it. Many _exposes_ were, in fact,
written from all parts of England. It was irritating to read of German
efficiency in the presence of England's extravagant and unbusinesslike
methods. Tommy would say, "Lor, lummy! Ain't we got no pigs in England?
That there food won't be wasted. We'll be eatin' it in sausages w'en we
goes acrost the Channel"; whereupon he dismissed the whole question from
his mind. This seemed to me then the typical Anglo-Saxon attitude.
Everywhere there was waste, muddle-headedness, and apparently it was
nobody's business, nobody's concern. Camps were sited in the wrong places
and buildings erected only to be condemned. Tons of food were purchased
overseas, transported across thousands of miles of ocean, only to be
thrown into refuse barrels. The Government was robbed by avaricious
hotel-keepers who made and were granted absurd claims for damages done to
their property by billet