_ of the British Army like all other
things appertaining thereto. Doggie's stomach revolted against most of
the other things. The disregard (from his point of view) of personal
cleanliness universal in the ranks, filled him with dismay. Even on
Salisbury Plain he had managed to get a little hot water for his
morning tub. Here, save in the officers' quarters--curiously remote,
inaccessible paradise!--there was not such a thing as a tub in the
place, let alone hot water to fill it. The men never dreamed of such a
thing as a tub. As a matter of fact, they were scrupulously clean
according to the lights of the British Tommy; but the lights were not
those of Marmaduke Trevor. He had learned the supreme wisdom of
keeping lips closed on such matters and did not complain, but all his
fastidiousness rebelled. He hated the sluice of head and shoulders
with water from a bucket in the raw open air. His hands swelled,
blistered and cracked; and his nails, once so beautifully manicured,
grew rich black rims, and all the icy water in the buckets would not
remove the grime.

Now and then he went into the town and had a hot bath; but very few of
the others ever seemed to think of such a thing. The habit of the
British Army of going to bed in its day-shirt was peculiarly
repellent. Yet Doggie knew that to vary from the sacred ways of his
fellow-men was to bring disaster on his head.

Some of the men slept under canvas still. But Doggie, fortunately as
he reckoned (for he had begun to appreciate fine shades in misery),
was put with a dozen others in a ramshackle hut of which the woodwork
had warped and let in the breezes above, below, and all round the sides.
Doggie, though dismally cold, welcomed the air for obvious reasons.
They were fortunate, too, in having straw palliasses--recently
provided when it was discovered that sleeping on badly boarded floors
with fierce draughts blowing upwards along human spines was strangely
fatal to human bodies--but Doggie found his bed very hard lying. And
it smelt sour and sickly. For nights, in spite of fatigue, he could
not sleep. His mates sang and talked and bandied jests and sarcasms of
esoteric meaning. Some of the recruits from factories or farms
satirized their officers for peculiarities common to their social
caste and gave grotesque imitations of their mode of speech. Doggie
wondered, but held his peace. The deadly stupidity and weariness of it
all! And when the talk stopped and they settl