E.?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Church of England. Most of 'em do."

Awful thoughts of church parade flashed through my mind.

"Right you are--Quaker!" said I.

"Quaker! Is that a religion?" he asked doubtfully.

"Yes."

I watched him write it down.

"Right, that'll do. Report at Munster Road recruiting station, Fulham,
to-morrow."

We were all dressed by this time. After a lot more waiting about outside
in a yard, a sergeant came and took about eight of us into a room where
there was a table and some papers and an officer in khaki.

I spotted a Bible on the table. We had to stand in a row while he read
a long list of regulations in which we were made to promise to obey
all orders of officers and non-commissioned officers of His Majesty's
Service. After that, he told us he would swear us in. We had to hold up
the right hand above the head, and say, all together: "Swhelpmegod!"

I immediately realised that I had taken an oath, which was not in
accordance with my regimental religion!

No sooner were we let out than I began to feel the ever-tightening
tangle of red tape.

What the dickens had I enlisted for? I asked myself. I had lost all
my old-time freedom: I could no longer go on in my old camping and
sketching life. I was now a soldier--a "tommy"--a "private." I loathed
the army. What a fool I was!

The next day I reported at Fulham. More hours of waiting. I discovered
an old postman who had also enlisted in the R.A.M.C., and as he
"knew the ropes" I stuck to him like a leech. In the afternoon an old
recruiting sergeant with a husky voice fell us in, and we marched, a
mob of civilians, through the London streets to the railway station.
Although this was quite a short distance, the sergeant fell us out near
a public-house, and he and a lot more disappeared inside.

What a motley crowd we were: clerks in bowler hats; "knuts" in brown
suits, brown ties, brown shoes, and a horse-shoe tie-pin; tramp-like
looking men in rags and tatters and smelling of dirt and beer and rank
twist.

Old soldiers trying to "chuck a chest"; lanky lads from the country
gaping at the houses, shops and people.

Rough, broad-speaking, broad-shouldered men from the Lancashire
cotton-mills; shop assistants with polished boots, and some even with
kid gloves and a silver-banded cane. Here and there was a farm-hand in
corduroys and hob-nailed, cowdung-spattered boots, puffing at a broken
old clay pipe, and speaking in the "Darset" di