ing feet and lay down to sleep; and in the
morning--well, their socks said "Sieda!" to them when they awoke, and
were christened accordingly.... Or again, the socks (or other property)
might have vanished in the night--in which case there had been "hooks
about" (pilferers about). If one of those "hooks" were caught, he would
be first "rammed in the mush" (put in the guardroom), and then, if his
guilt were established, he would be observed "going over the wall" or
"going to stir" (going to the detention prison).

A few other slang words which I have come across in the hospital, and
which seem to me to bear the mark of the old army as distinct from the
new, are: "bondook," a rifle; "sound scoff" (to the bugler, to sound
Rations); "scran," victuals, rations; "weighing out," paying out;
"chucking a dummy," being absent; "get the wind up," be afraid (and "put
the wind up," make afraid); "the home farm," the married quarters;
"chips," the pioneer sergeant (carpenter); "tank," wet canteen;
"tank-wallah," a drinker; "tanked," drunk; "A.T.A. wallah," a
teetotaller (from the Army Temperance Association); "on the cot" or "on
the tack," being teetotal; "jammy," lucky (and "jam," any sort of good
fortune); "win," to steal; "burgoo," porridge; "eye-wash," making things
outwardly presentable; "gone west," died (also applied to things broken,
_e.g._ a broken pipe has "gone west"); "oojah," anything (similar to
thingummy or what-d'ye-call-it); "push," "pusher," or "square push," a
girl (hence "square-push tunic," the "swagger" tunic for walking-out
occasions). The words for drunkenness are innumerable--"jingled,"
"oiled," "tanked to the wide," "well sprung," "up the pole," "blotto,"
etc.; but I smell the modern in some of these; their flavour is of
London taverns rather than of the dusty barrack squares of India, Egypt,
Malta, and Gibraltar.

But who can delve to the ultimate springs of slang? A verb which I never
met before I enlisted was "to spruce." This is almost, if not quite, a
blend of "swinging the lead" and "doing a mike." To spruce is to dodge
duty or to deceive. A man who contrived to slip out of the ranks of a
squad when they were performing some distasteful task would be said to
"spruce off." Or he would be denounced as a "sprucer" if he managed to
arrive late for his meal and yet, by a trick, to secure a front place in
the waiting queue at the canteen. A word in constant employment,
"spruce"! It was new to me when I becam