The “Princess Pats” have already been in action. They had a hard fight and many of them have been put out of business. We envied them when they went away and still do, although it only seems yesterday that we were lying together here and now a number of them are lying “somewhere in France.” The jam-making firm of Tickler was awarded a huge contract for the supply of “Tommy’s” daily four ounces of jam; either plum and apple were the cheapest combination or else the crop of these two fruits must have been enormous, because every single tin of jam that went to the training camps, France, Dardanelles, or Mesopotamia, was of this mixture. We became so tired of it that we used the unopened tins to make borders of flower-beds, or we used them to make stepping-stones across puddles. Eventually the world’s supply of plums and apples having been used up, the manufacturers were forced to use strawberries. In the army all food is handled by the Army Service Corps, and as soon as they found real jam coming through they took it for their own and still forwarded on to us their reserve “plum and apple.” The news got around amongst the fighting units: result—the Army Service Corps is now known as the “Strawberry Jam Pinchers.” Reviewed by King George V, and it was indeed a very impressive sight. Although there were only twenty thousand troops, they seemed endless. During the time that the King was on the parade ground in company with Lord Kitchener, two aeroplanes kept guard in the sky. Our K. of K. is a big, fine man who looks the part. An inspection by the King is always a sure sign of a unit’s impending departure. He traveled down on the new railway which had just been built by the defaulters of the Canadian Contingent. At the last minute I managed to get weekend leave and went to London. No Canadians there! I caught sight of a military picket, sergeant and twelve men, looking for stray ones, though. Another picket held me up and made me button my greatcoat. I did! It isn’t clever to argue with pickets at any time! The train was three hours late. Troops’ trains were occupying the lines. From Bulford we walked home in a hail-storm. Got in about five o’clock just as the reveille was blowing in the other lines. They were just leaving for the front, and had made great fires where they were burning up rubbish and stuff they couldn’t take with them. Tons of it! Chairs, mattresses, and tables. When we move, everything except equipment has to be discarded. We can’t do anything with extras. We have to cut our own stuff down to the very smallest dimensions. I walked through the lines afterward of other battalions who had left, and I saw fold-up bedsteads, uniforms, equipment, books, buckets, washing-bowls, cartridges and stoves of every conceivable kind and shape; hundreds, from the single “Beatrice” to the big tiled heaters. Some tents were half full of blankets thrown in, others with harness. All the government stuff is collected, but private stuff is burnt.