It was not all office work because we were also given some military training including physical exercises, running around a battle course though not under live firing as some poor souls were. Additionally we were instructed in unarmed combat but it was nowhere near as intensive as infantry training. Also on Sundays we had church parades, marching up the main street behind a band to have our souls saved. With others I objected to this religious nonsense and asked to be exempt. I was offered two alternatives, either march to the church and stand to attention for the duration of the service or opt for fatigue duties; twice I chose the former but then decided that peeling potatoes gave me the opportunity to vent my frustrations on the poor tubers, slicing them into cubes or sculpting faces on them. I thought that my best move would be to approach the padre and ask to change my religious designation. "To what?" he enquired. "To agnostic," I answered, "it means I don't know." "I'm well aware of what it means," he said "but the army doesn't recognise agnostics and since you say that you don't know then keep coming to church and we'll teach you to believe." I realised at that moment why so many of the soldiers' bawdy songs are sung to hymn tunes, sung quietly to themselves it let them feel that although the army had control of them physically it could not tame their thinking. About this time, having been in the army for more than three years I sewed the dog's hind leg, an inverted chevron, on my blouse cuff. This lasted until one evening when on guard duty the guard commander didn't turn up. "Who's the senior soldier?" asked the orderly sergeant. He looked around and espied my chevron and "All right, you, you're now the acting guard commander. March them off. I did. The next day I removed the chevron. It was then that I decided not to volunteer for anything, nor try to evade anything, I would let life unfold as it would. My rationale was that if ever I found myself in a tough spot I could always blame the system, never myself for being such a fool. I had volunteered twice, once when I joined up and again when I applied for a transfer out of the Royal Signals and I decided that was enough.