XV
A BLIND MAN'S HOME-COMING 235




I

MY FIRST DAY


The sergeant in charge of the clothing store was curt. He couldn't help
it: he had run short of tunics, also of "pants"--except three pairs
which wouldn't fit me, wouldn't fit anybody, unless we enlisted three
very fat dwarfs: he had kept on asking for tunics and pants, and they'd
sent him nothing but great-coats and water-bottles: I could take his
word for it, he wished he was at the Front, he did, instead of in this
blessed hole filling in blessed forms for blessed clothes which never
came. Impossible, anyhow, to rig me out. I was going on duty, was I?
Then I must go on duty in my "civvies."

It was a disappointment. Your new recruit feels that no small item of
his reward is the privilege of beholding himself in khaki. The escape
from civilian clothes was, at that era, one of the prime lures to
enlistment. I had attempted to escape before, and failed. Now at last I
had found a branch of the army which would accept me. It needed my
services instantly. I was to start work at once. Nothing better. I was
ready. This was what I had been seeking for months past. But--I confess
it--I had always pictured myself dressed as a soldier. The postponement
of this bright vision for even twenty-four hours, now that it had seemed