A WW1 Soldier’s Diary

13th. Jan. 1917.

Did another turn as signal clerk in the office of the “13th Bde” in an empty house down Bearton Rd. As the afternoon was free, Scotty and I went up to the workhouse[which is now the camp hospital] and had a bath apiece. Cost you nothing to go in, but the interest the attendant displays towards you, just as you are about to get inside your overcoat, generally results in you slipping, magnanimously, a few stray coppers, into his palm, which always, when that event approaches, is surprisingly close at hand. It commenced to snow when we had partly put into action a suggestion to “do” the town, so we turned back to billet where I stayed for the night. Scotty was stiff- caught fatigue for half an hour at the stables – watering and feeding up, he slipped off to the pictures after tea, I missed him somehow at that stage of the day.
A bit of excitement prevailed at tea in the mess hut tonight. Two inebriated sons of Australia came into their meal a bit silly and as they were on the way to take their seats at a table which was full, spotted one of those useful but seldom used articles known as a “fire extinguisher” on a bracket on the wall. One of them apparently preferred to regard it as an impudent impersonation of an infant, for he carefully took it down from its comfortable and safe position on the bracket and laying his arms around it, let it recline in an oblique fashion against his front, rocking it gently, evidently considering that he was assisting it to the land of slumbers; His bibulant friend however, professing to be a critic on that art, was not at all satisfied with the way the execution was being effected and perhaps without sufficient warning of his desires to give an exhibition of how it should be done, rather hastily attempted to force his possession of the article, which resulted in the struggle to upset somewhat rapidly the delicate internal organ of the disputed cylinder; for, from a short pipe, which according to the prominent instructions given on the body, you are requested to point at the bottom of the configuration when put to use, came a decidedly energetic and unpleasantly drenching stream of chemically accelerated water, which threatened to annoy those who were most adjacent and but for one clear-brained individual who swiftly obtained possession of the nozzle and with it directed the stream to the floor, it might have made it very uncomfortable for those who were the cause of the trouble. The Sergeant of the hut went absolutely rotten and had the pair who unfortunately forgot the necessity to keep their plaything in the perpendicular attitude during their turn, were put in the guard room for the night. Next day they, as punishment, had to scrub the whole hut out.