We have barely cleaned tip after the
_p_th--an Augean task--and officers have just concluded messing,
furnishing, and laundry arrangements with the local _banditti_, when
the Practical Joke Department, with its tongue in its cheek, bids us
prepare to go under canvas at C. Married officers hurriedly despatch
advance parties, composed of their wives, to secure houses or lodgings
in the bleak and inhospitable environs of their new station; while
a rapidly ageing Mess President concludes yet another demoralising
bargain with a ruthless and omnipotent caterer. Then--this is the
cream of the joke--the day before we expect to move, the Practical
Joke Department puts out a playful hand and sweeps us all into some
half-completed huts at D, somewhere at the other end of the Ordnance
map, and leaves us there, with a happy chuckle, to sink or swim in an
Atlantic of mud.
So far as one is able to follow the scoring of the game, some of
the squares in the chessboard are of higher value than others. For
instance, if you are dumped down into comparatively modern barracks
at Aldershot, which, although they contain no furniture, are at least
weatherproof and within reach of shops, the Practical Joke Department
scores one point. Barracks condemned as unsafe and insanitary before
the war, but now reckoned highly eligible, count three points;
rat-ridden billets count five.
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