sky. The deepway side drains, in which our lorries used to
play at submarines, now harbour nothing more exciting than tadpoles. We
are hard-pressed to find mischief for our idle hands to do.

Sherlock the Sleuth keeps himself in fair fettle by prowling round the
countryside and trying to restrain the aborigines from pinching what
little British material they have not already pinched. Yesterday he came
upon a fatigue party of Gauls staggering down a by-way under the shell
of an Armstrong hut. He whooped and gave chase. The Gauls, sighting the
A.P.M. brassard, promptly dumped the hut and dived through a wire fence.
Sherlock hitched his horse to a post and followed afoot, snorting fire
and brimstone. They led him at a smart trot over four acres of boggy
plough, through a brambly plantation, two prickly hedges and a
richly-perfumed drain and went to ground inextricably in some
mine buildings. He returned, blown, battered and baffled, to the
starting-point, to find that some third party had in the meantime
removed the Armstrong hut--also his horse.

Ronald, our only remaining Red Hat, saves his soul from boredom by
keeping all the H.Q. departments open and conducting, on his own, a
brisk correspondence between them. As there are about thirty of these
and he conducts them all himself it will be understood that this entails
a certain amount of movement on his part.

Bob, the Camp Commandant, spends his time trying to square his returns
and interviewing Violet. Violet is a middle-aged gentleman who came to
us from some Labour unit and refuses to leave. He has an enormous head,
a walrus moustache, a hairy nose, and feet which flap as they walk. His
_metier_ is to keep the place tidy and the incinerator fires burning. He
prowls about at night, accompanied by a large ginger tom-cat, harpooning
loose scraps of paper. Any dust he meets he deals with on the
blotting-paper principle, by rolling in it and absorbing it. When his
clothes are so stiff with dirt that they will stand up without any
inside assistance from Violet, they are sawn off him and consigned to
the incinerator and he is given a new suit. Whenever his back hair has
grown so long that it is liable to impede his movements, a _posse_ of
grooms is despatched to his lair to rope, throw and shear him with
horse-clippers. Last time they did it they swear they lost the
instrument twice and that two bats and an owl flew out of his tresses.

He is allowed out only at night,