get into uniform; come over to the recruiting office and I'll have you
enlisted."

He yawned and answered, "I don't care if you came forty thousand
miles, no one asked you to," and he walked on. The girl gave me a
sneering look; I was speechless.

I recruited for three weeks and nearly got one recruit.

This perhaps was not the greatest stunt in the world, but it got back
at the officer who had told me, "Yes, we take anything over here." I
had been spending a good lot of my recruiting time in the saloon bar
of the "Wheat Sheaf" pub (there was a very attractive blonde barmaid,
who helped kill time--I was not as serious in those days as I was a
little later when I reached the front)--well, it was the sixth day
and my recruiting report was blank. I was getting low in the pocket--
barmaids haven't much use for anyone who cannot buy drinks--so I
looked around for recruiting material. You know a man on recruiting
service gets a "bob" or shilling for every recruit he entices into
joining the army, the recruit is supposed to get this, but he would
not be a recruit if he were wise to this fact, would he?

Down at the end of the bar was a young fellow in mufti who was very
patriotic--he had about four "Old Six" ales aboard. He asked me if
he could join, showed me his left hand, two fingers were missing, but
I said that did not matter as "we take anything over here." The left
hand is the rifle hand as the piece is carried at the slope on the
left shoulder. Nearly everything in England is "by the left," even
general traffic keeps to the port side.