My second posting was to an army assembly plant at An Nasiriyah where the main job was the uncrating and assembly of those vehicles from the USA that were to be forwarded to the fighting areas My task there was insignificant and lasted only about three days. The boss man was a Colonel D'Albuquerque and he had arranged something that I thought novel for the army; he set a daily quota for the output of vehicles and when that target was reached then work finished for the day. A window in his office was fitted with a cuscus tatty, a poor man's air conditioner similar to the units fitted to the ambulances; water had to be sprayed over the unit and whenever his office became a little too warm he would summon an Indian soldier and using the universal mixed language would shout, "Pani, Pani, Pumpee, Pumpee," whereupon the Indian would grin and start pumping. While I was there a shortage of small springs became apparent and some assemblies were held up; now the crates invariably held every last item required to build the vehicles so a kit inspection was ordered; nothing was found. On further investigation an unusual bed was discovered; the owner had decided to improve his creature comforts and had diverted the springs and linked them together to provide a more luxurious charpoy for himself; his pleasure didn't last very long however, the colonel saw to that. I left before I could find out what punishment he got. It was generally accepted that in the army a batman, an officer's servant, was a volunteer who wanted a softer life and a little more cash. Not always true. We had an officer who was so unpopular that nobody wanted the job and since it was infra-dig for a commissioned man to look after himself one soldier was ordered so to serve. If you doubt this then you should ask the aforementioned Lafferty who did his best to get out of this chore but without success. He tried to refuse to take the cash but was ordered to accept it; he held this job until someone else could be persuaded to take it on. Of course Lafferty should have thrown the money away or else given it to a deserving Arab.