f fury, the
sink-room and clean the apparatus there. When this was done he would
clean the ward's windows and door handles. Between-times he would clean
his boots and shave patients in bed. The new army is thickly sown with
men like that. They are the salt of the earth. I would place them at the
summit of the commonwealth's salary list, the bank clerk second, and the
business man, the artist and the politician at the bottom. At all events
these were my sentiments when a patient of this type, convalescing,
began to be able to help me with my kitchen chores. But it occasionally
chanced that every single patient in the ward was confined to bed. It
was then that I made my most intimate acquaintance with the catalogue of
horrors I have cited.

You behold me, with my shirt-sleeves rolled up, faced by a heap of
twenty plates, twenty forks, twenty knives and twenty spoons, all
urgently requiring washing. Were these my whole task I should not
shrink. They would be nicely polished-off long ere one-fifteen
arrived--the time when I should (but probably shall not be able to)
leave for my own meal in the orderlies' mess. But there are two far more
serious opponents waiting to be subdued--the dinner-tin and the
pudding-basin. This pair are hateful beyond words. Their memory will
for ever haunt me, a spectral disillusionment to spoil the relish of
every repast I may consume in the years that are ahead.

The dinner-tin was a rectangular box some three feet long, twenty inches
wide and six inches deep. It was made of solid metal, was fitted with a
false bottom to contain hot water, and was divided internally into three
compartments to hold meat, vegetables and duff. These viands were loaded
into the tin at the hospital's central kitchen. I had naught to do with
the cookery--which I may mention always seemed to me to be excellent. My
sole concern was with the helping-out of the food to the patients and
the restoration of the dinner-tin to its shelf in the central kitchen.
For unless I restored that tin in a faultless state of cleanliness, the
sergeant in charge of the central kitchen would require my blood. The
tin's number would betray me. The sergeant needed not to know my name:
all he had to do, on discovering the questionable tin, was to glance at
its number and then send for the orderly of the ward with a
corresponding number.

He was a sergeant whose aspect could be very daunting. I never had to
come before him on the subject of