When I rolled in at night after washing up in the cook-house she would say:  “You must come out and tighten the tent ropes with this gale blowing, it won’t be funny if the whole thing blows over in the night.”  But none of the horrors she depicted ever persuaded me to turn out once I was safely tucked up in my “flea bag” with “Tuppence” acting as a weight to keep the top blankets in place.  In the morning when I awoke after a sound night’s sleep, I would exclaim triumphantly:  “There you are, ‘Squig,’ what price the tent blowing down?  It’s as safe as a rock and hasn’t moved an inch!”

“No?” the long-suffering “Squig” would reply bitterly, “it may interest you to hear I’ve only been up twice in the night hammering in the pegs and fixing the ropes!”

The only time I didn’t bless her manipulation of these things was when I rose at 6.30 a.m., by which time they had been frozen stiff and shrunk to boot.  The ones lacing the flap leading out of the tent were as hard to undo as if they had been made of iron.  On these occasions “Tuppence,” who had hardly realized the seriousness of war, would wake up and want me instantly to go out, half dressed as I was, and throw stones for his benefit!  That dog had no sense of the fitness of things.  If I did not comply immediately he sat down, threw his head in the air, and “howled to the moon!” The rest of the camp did not appreciate this pastime; but if they had known my frenzied efforts with the stiffened ropes “Squig” had so securely fixed over-night, their sympathies would have been with, rather than against, me.

One night we had a fearful storm (at least “Squig” told me of it in the morning and I had no reason to doubt her word), and just as I was rolling out of bed we heard yells of anguish proceeding from one of the other tents.

That one had collapsed we felt no doubt, and, rushing out in pyjamas just as we were, in the wind and rain, we capered delightedly to the scene of the disaster.  The Sisters Mudie-Cooke (of course it would be their tent that had gone) were now hidden from sight under the heavy mass of wet canvas on top of them.  The F.A.N.Y.s, their hair flying in the wind, looking more like Red Indians on a scalping expedition than a salvage party, soon extricated them, and they were taken, with what clothes could be rescued, to another tent.  Their fate, “Squig” assured me, would have assuredly been ours had it not been for her!

Madame came into existence about this time.  She was a poor Frenchwoman whom we hired to come and wash the dishes for us.  She had no teeth, wispy hair, and looked very underfed and starved.  Her “man” had been killed in the early days of the war.  Though she looked hardly strong enough to do anything, Bridget and I, who interviewed her jointly, had not the heart to turn her away, and she remained with us ever after and became so strong and well in time she looked a different woman.

The Mess tent was at last moved nearer the cook-house (I had fallen over the ropes so often that, quite apart from any feelings I had left, it was a preventive measure to save what little crockery we possessed).