breakfast. At 8.45 he parades (drills) with his company or goes on
fatigue according to the orders which have been read out by the
Orderly Sergeant the night previous.

Between 11.30 and noon he is dismissed, has his dinner, and is "on his
own" for the remainder of the day, unless he has clicked for a digging
or working party, and so it goes on from day to day, always "looping
the loop" and looking forward to Peace and Blighty.

Sometimes, while engaged in a "cootie" hunt you think. Strange to say,
but it is a fact, while Tommy is searching his shirt, serious thoughts
come to him. Many a time, when performing this operation, I have tried
to figure out the outcome of the war and what will happen to me.

My thoughts generally ran in this channel:

Will I emerge safely from the next attack? If I do, will I skin
through the following one, and so on? While your mind is wandering
into the future it is likely to be rudely brought to earth by a Tommy
interrupting with, "What's good for rheumatism?"

Then you have something else to think of. Will you come out of this
war crippled and tied into knots with rheumatism, caused by the wet
and mud of trenches and dugouts? You give it up as a bad job and
generally saunter over to the nearest estaminet to drown your moody
forebodings in a glass of sickening French beer, or to try your luck
at the always present game of "House." You can hear the sing-song
voice of a Tommy droning out the numbers as he extracts the little
squares of cardboard from the bag between his feet.