Sometimes, more
particularly when the railway was flooded, the congestion was so great that
one tent to sixteen men was considered a liberal allowance by the
authorities. The men thought otherwise. Once the sixteen were safely wedged
in, there they stopped for the night. There was, indeed, no encouragement
to wander abroad even if you could get out without the aid of a shoe-horn.

Frequently a tent collapsed under the weight of its responsibilities, and
there are few things more disconcerting to a sleeping man than suddenly to
be enveloped in a mass of cold, clammy canvas. Mr. Jerome, in _Three Men in
a Boat_, speaks amusingly of his efforts at putting up a tent; by the same
token, his description as an onlooker of the efforts of sixteen sleepy but
infuriated soldiers, indifferently protected by a ground-sheet against the
cold blast and the pouring rain, struggling to erect a tent in ankle-deep
mud would have been deliriously comic. One party acquired a number of
wooden boxes--once the home of tins of "Ideal" milk--with which to make a
floor for their tent. This answered satisfactorily for a time, until the
heavens opened and the rain descended almost solidly for three days. On the
third night the sleepers were awakened by the sound of rushing waters.
Their floor was afloat, a raft on a sea of mud and rain, and in a few
moments the tent made an unsuccessful attempt to act as a sail.
Subsequently the use of makeshift floor-boards was strongly discouraged; it
was better to sleep in the mud.

It is a relief to turn from these doubtful amusements to the more solid joy
of a little horse-racing. It is safe to say that no form of relaxation was
more popular amongst the troops. Considering that we made our own
race-courses, with all the appurtenances thereto, the military race
meetings were astonishingly successful. There was even a totalisator for
those, which meant everybody who could obtain an advance on his pay-book,
who liked what is called in racing circles "a flutter"; and there were
always several amateur "bookies" as well. The only adjunct familiar to the
race-courses at home missing from our meetings was the professional
tipster, with his information "straight from the horse's nosebag." As was
natural in an army largely composed of cavalry, there were several crack
riders well known at home, amongst them at least one who had won the Grand
National. This officer, by the way, so the story goes, was turned out of a
ridi