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Corporal Hyde’s job was to get us organized. To accomplish this he used to stand on a fire hydrant hose-box on the drill square.

“All the A’s,” roared Corporal Hyde, glaring down at us as we formed ourselves up.

“All the B’s” - mouth agape as usual.

“The B’s” shuffled into position.

“All the C’s!”

“All the” ..............the mouth remained open but nothing further was uttered. Suddenly it became obvious that Corporal Hyde had forgotten his alphabet!

“P’s Corporal!” prompted a wag.

“All the P’s”, came the order. We duly obeyed. And so it went on.

It doesn’t take much imagination to visualise the chaos which ensued at the pay-table. Poor Corporal Hyde got “stick” from the Warrant Officer in charge of the pay parade.

On another occasion we suffered more than we deserved. There was a sick-parade to receive our “jabs”.

We were like human pin-cushions with “jabs! There was tetanus, typhoid, para-typhoid, yellow fever, plague and smallpox vaccination.

Another commandeered hotel had been converted into a “Sick-Quarters”. We were formed up into single file outside the front door, then passed through the foyer, and out via a back door. As we passed through the foyer we encountered an orderly on each side - each armed with a syringe - (generally, it seemed to me, a very blunt syringe). There being six jabs in all, this, of course, meant that we had to file round again and repeat the excise twice more.

In his wisdom Corporal Hyde - instead of separating the front of the line from the rear - had managed to get us into a continuous circle.

This jabbing business seemed to be going on all the morning - until somebody asked how many jabs each was supposed to receive, and it transpired that we were on our fifth time round.

The exercise came to an abrupt halt.

At length a doctor appeared, gave an order, and we were marched at the double to the parade ground, where a P.T. Sergeant exercised us until - one by one - we dropped.

I remember being carried back to my billet alternately sweating and shivering, covered in great-coats and blankets, where I eventually passed out.

I woke - I thought - at nine o’clock next morning. I tried to get up, concerned that I was to be late on parade with the inevitable disciplinary consequences.

I need not have worried, however. It turned out to be the third morning. I had been “out” for two days!

It was Corporal Hyde who found himself on “jankers”! For his ineptitude he was “confined to barracks” that night. He determined to make us pay for his discomfiture. That evening he positioned himself at the hotel entrance of our hotel to catch as many as possible returning late from the town.

We, however, were well organised. We were met down the street by our designated look-out for the evening. He directed us to an open back window which he had arranged for our “emergency entrance”. It so happened that it was into Corporal Hyde’s room. After a fruitless ambush he returned to his room to find his bed covered in muddy boot-marks from the stream of curfew-breakers who were, by that time, safely tucked up in their own beds

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