Observations of an Orderly | Page 6

any means the insignia of a military
as distinct from a civilian hospital. They may or may not contribute to
the comfort of the patient, but they betoken the captaincy of one whose
methodicalness will in other and less visible respects most emphatically
benefit him.
Our hut life was something more than a mere folding-up of bedding on
bedsteads and great-coats on shelves. After midday dinner it was
allowable to unroll the mattress, make the bed, and rest thereon--which
most of us by that time (having been on the run since 6 o'clock parade)
were very ready to do. There was half an hour to spare before 2 o'clock
parade, and a precious half-hour it was. Snores rose from some of the
beds where students of the war had collapsed beneath the newspapers
which they had meant to read. Desultory conversation enlivened those
corners where the denizens of the hut were energetic enough to polish
their boots or sew on buttons. The one or two men who happened to be
"going out on pass"--we were allowed one afternoon per week--were
putting on their puttees and brushing-up the metal buttons of their
walking-out tunics (otherwise known as their Square Push Suits). The
buttons of their working tunics had of course been burnished before
parade. The correct employment of button-sticks and of the magic
cleaner called Soldier's Friend; the polishing of one's out-of-use boots
and their placing, on the floor, with tied laces, and with their toes in
line with the bed's legs; the substitution of lost braces' buttons by

"bulldogs"; the furbishing of one's belt; the propping-up of the front of
one's cap with wads of paper in the interior of the crown; the devices
whereby non-spiral puttees can be coaxed into a resemblance of spiral
ones and caused to ascend in corkscrews above trousers which refuse to
tuck unlumpily into one's socks--these, and a host of other matters,
always kept a proportion of the hut-dwellers awake and busy and
loquacious even in the somnolent post-prandial half-hour before 2
o'clock.
But it was at night, at bedtime, that the hut became generally sociable.
Lights-Out sounded at 10.15; and at 10.10 we were all scrambling into
our pyjamas. In winter our disrobing was hasty; in summer it was an
affair of leisure, and deshabille roamings to and fro in the aisle, and
gossip. When the bugle blew and the electric lights suddenly ceased to
glow, leaving the hut in a darkness broken only by the dim shapes of
the windows and the red of cigarette-ends, many of us still had to
complete our undressing. We became adepts at doing this in the dark
and so disposing of the articles of our attire that they could be instantly
retrieved in the morning. Once between the blankets, conversation at
first waxed rather than waned. The Night Wardmaster, whose duty it
was to make the round of the orderlies' huts, disapproved of
conversation after Lights-Out, and was apt to say so, loudly and
menacingly, when he surprised us by popping his head in at the door.
But--well--the Night Wardmaster always departed in the long run....
And then uprose, between bed and bed, those unconclusive debates in
which the masculine soul delighteth: Theology; Woman; Victuals;
Politics; Art; the Press; Sport; Marriage; Money--and sometimes even
The War; likewise the purely local topics of Sisters and their
Absurdities; Our Officers; The Other Huts; What the Sergeant-Major
Said; Why V.A.D.'s can't replace Male Orderlies; What this Morning's
Operations Looked Like; Whether an Officers' Ward or a Men's Ward
is the nicer; Who Deserves Stripes; C.O.'s Parade and its Terrors;
Advantages of Volunteering for Night Duty; The Cushy Job of being in
charge of a Sham Lunacy Case; Other Cushy Jobs less cushy than They
Sounded; and so forth; until at last protests began to be voiced by the
wearier folk who wanted silence.

Silence it was, except for the thunder of occasional passing trains in the
near-by railway cutting. These had little power to disturb. Tucked in
the brown army blankets, which at first sight look so hard and so
prickly, we slumbered, the twenty-one of us, as one man; until, with a
cruel jolt, at 5.15 that wretched alarm-clock crashed forth its summons
for the fastidious few who liked to rise in ample time to bath and shave
before early parade. Sometimes I was of that virtuous band, and
sometimes I wasn't; but, either way, I hated the alarm-clock at
5.15,--though not so virulently as did those members of the hut who
never by any chance dreamt of rising until five to six. These gentry had
reduced the ritual of dressing, and of rolling up their bedding, to a
speed at which it might almost be compared to expert juggling: the
quickness of the hand deceived the eye. At five