It was growing dark and a few snowflakes were floating about in the air.  The sky was a murky leaden colour.

As I stood waiting in the dinner queue I had an imaginary fight with our Commanding Officer.  I knocked him down and gloated over him as he lay sprawling in the mud with my hand savagely clutching his throat.  Our pent up feelings often found relief in vindictive dreams.

The queue stretched along the duckboards and in between the tents like a dingy snake in the gathering gloom.  It was rapidly growing in length as more and more men came hurrying up.

But the front of the cook-house was still closed.  The men grew impatient and banged their plates and tins.  There were shouts of “Get a move on.”  Fretful, smouldering impatience increased until it flared up in anger.  “Get a bloody move on—­we want somethin’ ter eat after a ’ard day’s work!... We’ve got a fine bloody lot o’ cooks, keepin’ us waitin’ in the bloody cold—­get a move on, for Christ’s sake!”

The shout was taken up all along the line—­“Get a bloody move on”—­and tins and plates were banged until the uproar was deafening.  It gradually died down again, although curses and resentful remarks were still frequent.

“‘Tain’t worth eatin’ when yer do get it!”

“Bleed’n’ stew, I s’pose, ’nough ter make yer go queer!”

“I wouldn’t feed me dog on the stuff they give yer in the army—­I wouldn’t ’ave the cheek ter orfer it to ’im.”

“Come on ... put a jerk in it”—­the cry was taken up again.  There was hooting and booing and banging of plates until pandemonium reigned once more.

Suddenly the shutter in front of the cook-house was pushed up and one of the cooks appeared in the opening.  The booing changed into loud, ironical cheers: 

“What yer bin doin’ all day?  Swingin’ the lead?”

A squeaky voice retorted:  “I’ve bin up since four in the mornin’ workin’ a bloody sight ’arder ’n what you ’ave.  Yer never satisfied, yer bleed’n’ lot o’....”  The rest was drowned in a storm of derisive shouts.

Then the men in the queue took up the argument again.

“Yer too slow—­yer could’n catch the measles!”

“You come an’ do my job an’ see ’ow yer like it!”

“Do your job!  No bloody fear, why, ’tain’t a man’s job at all, it’s only old women what goes inter the cook-’ouse.”

“Go on, get a move on—­don’t stand there talkin’!”

Another cook appeared.  He dipped his ladle into a receptacle behind the till and emptied into the first man’s plate.  The next man held out his plate, and then the next.  The cumbrous serpent moved forward inch by inch while a counter movement began of men straggling back through the slush, holding up tins or plates of steaming stew.

Two candles were burning inside my tent.  The men were sitting on their kits.  The noisy manner in which they ate was irritating beyond measure.