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I

MY FIRST DAY

The sergeant in charge of the clothing store was curt. He couldn't help it: he had run short of tunics, also of "pants"—except three pairs which wouldn't fit me, wouldn't fit anybody, unless we enlisted three very fat dwarfs: he had kept on asking for tunics and pants, and they'd sent him nothing but great-coats and water-bottles: I could take his word for it, he wished he was at the Front, he did, instead of in this blessed hole filling in blessed forms for blessed clothes which never came. Impossible, anyhow, to rig me out. I was going on duty, was I? Then I must go on duty in my "civvies."

It was a disappointment. Your new recruit feels that no small item of his reward is the privilege of beholding himself in khaki. The escape from civilian clothes was, at that era, one of the prime lures to enlistment. I had attempted to escape before, and failed. Now at last I had found a branch of the army which would accept me. It needed my services instantly. I was to start work at once. Nothing better. I was ready. This was what I had been seeking for months past. But—I confess it—I had always pictured myself dressed as a soldier. The postponement of this bright vision for even twenty-four hours, now that it had seemed to be within my grasp, was damping. However—! The Sergeant-Major had told me that I was to go on duty as orderly in Ward W—an officers' ward—at 2 p.m. prompt. I did not know where Ward W was; I did not know what a ward-orderly's functions should amount to. And I had no uniform. I was attired in a light grey lounge suit—appropriate enough to my normal habit, but quite too flippant, I was certain, for a ward-orderly. Whatever else a ward-orderly might be, I was sure that he was not the sort of person to sport a grey lounge suit.

Still, I must hie me to Ward W. I had got my wish. I was in the army at last. In the army one does not argue. One obeys. So, having been directed down an interminable corridor, I presented myself at Ward W.

On entering—I had knocked, but no response rewarded this courtesy—I was requested, by a stern-visaged Sister, to state my business. Her sternness was excusable. The visiting-hour was not yet, and in my unprofessional guise she had taken me for a visitor. My explanation dispelled her frowns. She was expecting me. Her present orderly had been granted three days' leave. He was preparing to depart. I was to act as his substitute. Before he went he would initiate me into the secrets of his craft. She called him. "Private Wood!" Private Wood, in his shirt-sleeves, appeared. I was handed over to him.

Herein I was fortunate, though I was unaware of it at the time. Private Wood, who was not too proud to wash dishes (which was what he had at that moment been doing), is a distinguished sculptor and a man of keen imagination. At a subsequent period that imagination was to bring forth the masks-for-facial-disfigurements scheme which gained him his commission and which has attracted world-wide notice from experts. Meanwhile his imagination enabled him to understand the exact extent of a novice's ignorance, the precise details which I did not know and must know, the essential apparatus I had to be shown the knack of, before he fled to catch his train.

He devoted just five minutes, no more, to teaching me how to be a ward-orderly. Four of those minutes were lavished on the sink-room—a small apartment that enshrines cleaning appliances, the taps of which, if you turn them on without precautions, treat you to an involuntary shower bath. The sink-room contains a selection of utensils wherewith every orderly becomes only too familiar: their correct employment, a theme of many of the mildly Rabelaisian jests which are current in every hospital, is a mystery—until some kind mentor, like Private Wood, lifts the veil. In four minutes he had told me all about the sink-room, and all about all the gear in the sink-room and all about a variety of rituals which need not here be dwelt on. (The sink-room is an excellent place in which to receive a private lecture.) The fifth minute was spent in introducing me, in another room, the ward kitchen, to Mrs. Mappin—the scrub-lady.

A scrub-lady is attached to each ward; and most wards, it should in justice be added, are attached to their scrub-ladies. Certainly I was to find that Ward W was attached to Mrs. Mappin. Mrs. Mappin was washing up. Private Wood had been helping her. The completion of his task he delegated to me. "Mrs. Mappin, this is our new orderly. He'll help you finish the lunch-dishes." Private Wood then slid into his tunic, snatched his cap from a nail in the wall, and vanished.

Mrs. Mappin surveyed me. "Ah!" she sighed—she was given to sighing. "He's a good 'un, is Private Wood." The inference was plain. There was little hope of my becoming such a good 'un. In any case, my natty grey tweeds were against me. One could never make an orderliesque impression in those tweeds. "Better take your jacket off," sighed Mrs. Mappin. I did so, chose a dishcloth, and started to dry a pyramid of wet plates. For a space Mrs. Mappin meditated, her hands in soapy water. Then she withdrew them. "I think," she sighed, "you an' me could do with a cup of tea."

And presently I was having tea with Mrs. Mappin.

I was afterwards to learn that this practice of calling a halt in her labours for a cup of tea was a highly incorrect one on Mrs. Mappin's part, and that my share in the transaction was to the last degree reprehensible. But I was also to learn that faithful, selfless, honest, and diligent scrub-ladies are none too common; and the Sister who discovers that she has been allotted such a jewel as Mrs. Mappin is seldom foolish enough to exact from her a strict obedience to the letter of the law in discipline. Mrs. Mappin, in her non-tea-bibbing interludes, toiled like a galley-slave, was rigidly punctual, and never complained. Her sighs were no index of her character. They were not a symptom of ennui (though possibly—if the suggestion be not rude—of indigestion caused by tannin poisoning). She was the best-tempered of creatures. It is a fact that if I had been so disposed I need never have given Mrs. Mappin any assistance, though it was within my province to do so. She would, without a murmur, shoulder other people's jobs as well as her own. Having finished with bearing children (one was at the Front—it was Mrs. Mappin who, on being asked the whereabouts of her soldier son, said, "'E's in France; I don't rightly know w'ere the place is, but it's called 'Dugout'"), she had settled down, for the remainder of her sojourn on this plane, to a prospect of work, continuous work. A little more or a little less made no difference to her. She had nothing else to do, but work; nothing else to be interested in, except work—and her children's progress, and her cups of tea. Her ample figure concealed a warm heart. Behind her wrinkled old face there was a brain with a limited