In the evening went to the neighbouring town with a Scotch chap named Guthrie who was amusing company. We had a meal, a few drinks, smoked cigars and back. Whom should I see lined up for breakfast after stables was over? An unshaven and not so tidy as usual personage – W. He had got out of the D.A.C.* in which he had been put on the night we were separated and he arrived last night, actually passing the night in this barn without knowing I was in it, and “here we are again”, comrades in arms.
This evening we wetted our reunion with canteen beer and hunted out a farmer’s wife willing to wash our dirty clothes. W. had been on similar work to myself but with a much more easy-going crowd – no shave every day – clean buttons etc. as it is with us. Is it not amazing that there should be no uniformity of hours of work and of discipline throughout the army, but that in each unit it should depend on the whim and caprice of the man in charge and so, like Equity in the middle ages, be as variable as the size of not the “Chancellors” but the O.C.’s foot**.
* “Divisional Ammunition Column”, ** “Officer Commanding”.
Walk March 