When all
our kitchen gear was clean he would invade, with a kind of fury, the
sink-room and clean the apparatus there. When this was done he would
clean the ward's windows and door handles. Between-times he would clean
his boots and shave patients in bed. The new army is thickly sown with
men like that. They are the salt of the earth. I would place them at the
summit of the commonwealth's salary list, the bank clerk second, and the
business man, the artist and the politician at the bottom. At all events
these were my sentiments when a patient of this type, convalescing,
began to be able to help me with my kitchen chores. But it occasionally
chanced that every single patient in the ward was confined to bed. It
was then that I made my most intimate acquaintance with the catalogue of
horrors I have cited.
You behold me, with my shirt-sleeves rolled up, faced by a heap of
twenty plates, twenty forks, twenty knives and twenty spoons, all
urgently requiring washing. Were these my whole task I should not
shrink. They would be nicely polished-off long ere one-fifteen
arrived--the time when I should (but probably shall not be able to)
leave for my own meal in the orderlies' mess.
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