So much for the "slackers in khaki" which one
extra emphatic writer (himself not in khaki, although younger than
several of the orderlies here) professed to discover in the R.A.M.C.
Those "slackers" may be having an easier time of it than the heroes of
France, Gallipoli, Salonika, Egypt and Mesopotamia. But they are not
having so easy a time as some of their detractors.
The hospital orderly is not (I think I may assert on his behalf) puffed
up with foolish illusions as to his place in the scheme of things. It is
a humble place, and he knows it. His work is almost comically
unromantic, painfully unpicturesque. Moreover--let us be frank--much of
it is uninteresting, after the first novelty has worn off. Work in the
wards has its compensations: here there is the human element. But only a
portion of a unit such as ours can be detailed for ward work: the rest
are either hewers of wood and drawers of water or else have their noses
to a grindstone of clerical monotonousness beside which the
ledger-keeping of a bank employee is a heaven of blissful excitements.
You will find few hospital orderlies who are not "fed up"; you will find
none who do not long for the war's end.
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