“Splendid,” said someone else.  Being the chief person concerned, I hadn’t had a chance to utter word of protest one way or the other!

When I could gasp out something, I murmured feebly that I had thought I was going to drive a car, and had spent most of my leave sitting in a garage with that end in view.

“Oh, yes, of course you are, old thing, but the other cook hasn’t turned up yet.  Bridget (Laidlay) is worked off her feet, so we decided you’d be a splendid help to her in the meantime!”

There was nothing else for it.

I discovered I was to share a tent with Quin, and dragged my kit over to the one indicated.  I found her wringing out some blankets and was greeted with the cheery “Hello, had a good leave?  I say, old thing, your bed’s a pool of water.”

I looked into the tent and there it was sagging down in the middle with quite a decent sized pond filling the hollow!  “What about keeping some gold fish?” I suggested, somewhat peevishly.

Whatever happened I decided I couldn’t sleep there that night, and with Quin’s help tipped it up and spread it on some boxes outside, as the sun had come out.

That night I spent at Lamarck on a stretcher—­it at least had the virtue of being dry if somewhat hard.

When I appeared at the cook-house next morning with the words, “Please mum, I’ve come!” Bridget literally fell on my neck.  She poured out the difficulties of trying to feed seventeen hungry people, when they all came in to meals at different hours, especially as the big stove wouldn’t “draw.”  It had no draught or something (I didn’t know very much about them then).  In the meantime all the cooking was done on a huge Primus stove and the field kitchen outside.  I took a dislike to that field kitchen the moment I saw it, and I think it was mutual.  It never lost an opportunity of “going out on me” the minute my back was turned.  We were rather at a loss to know how to cope with our army rations at first.  We all worked voluntarily, but the army undertook to feed and house (or rather tent) us.  We could either draw money or rations, and at first we decided on the former.  When, however, we realised the enormous price of the meat in the French shops we decided to try rations instead, and this latter plan we found was much the best.  Unfortunately, as we had first drawn allowances it took some days before the change could be effected, and Bridget and I had the time of our lives trying to make both ends meet in the meantime.  That first day she went out shopping it was my duty to peel the potatoes and put them on to boil, etc.  Before she left she explained how I was to light the Primus stove.  Now, if you’ve never lit a Primus before, and in between the time you were told how to do it you had peeled twenty or thirty potatoes, got two scratch breakfasts, swept the Mess tent and kept that field kitchen from going out, it’s quite possible your mind would be a little blurred.  Mine was.