MADE TO MAKE YOUR MOUTH WATER

It was wash day. Earlier on the hapless recruit had been caught skiving, while all the rest had been washing their clothes he had been found sitting against the court yard wall sleeping.
 
Dirty clothes or articles of clothing that were in need of washing were placed in a canvass satchel at the head of the bed. On Sundays we’d take them downstairs to the deep stone troughs and scrub them clean. This was great during the summer, but during the winter it was murder. The water froze in the pipes.
 
The recruit’s satchel at the bed end had been empty. This however was not due to it all being clean, as there was a distinct shortage of clothing inside his locker. He couldn’t be wearing four pairs of pants and socks? Not in mid June, that was for sure.
 
Because he hadn’t been seen washing anything, it had caused a bit of a stir with the rest of the recruits. When they spotted him sleeping wanted to get their heads down too.
 
After a brief but swift search of his bed space, they had found his soiled clothes under his mattress. Shit stains and skid marks abound. His under pants had these bright yellow stains where he had farted and then must have followed through.
 
It was near impossible task to keep your underpants clean. They were after all cotton y-fronts and white at that. The diet didn’t help, lots of pulses and vegetables (cheap filling up foods). As you tended to fart a lot because of the change of diet, when not in the toilets having the world fall out your arsehole that is.
 
The problem was that they were not just wind related they could be  a bit moist shall we say. or at the other end of the scale wet, and very wet one’s at that. That’s why you scrubbed them, once a week, regular like (for some of us in the beginning it was a case of once a night, every night).
 
The recruit was now standing on top of the six foot grey metal locker, his hands cupping his bollocks, not quite managing to hide the stain that was slowly spreading across the front of his tenue. He was pissing himself with fear, literally.
 
The corporals stood around the base of the locker shouting at him and punching his legs. They kept asking if he should be wearing a nappy. Every time he didn’t answer they punched him again. Punch, question, no reply punch again, they should have been in the band, they had rhythm.
 
He was trying to speak, but due to the sobbing it was just incoherent nonsense. The pair of y-front underpants that he had on his head didn’t help either. The soiled, shit stained portion of the pants had been stuffed in his mouth. mmmmmm
 
The idea being that he was to suck the shit stains out of the pants and clean them this way. Having failed to take the opportunity that had been given to wash them in a normal traditional way.
 
It was novel. It was not an idea that he would have considered a year or so ago,  (In the British army you just beat the fuckers up. Plain and simple) but he was learning new methods every living moment. We were waiting to go for the evening meal. Woody and I had decided to sit next to the poor bastard at tea.
 
Eventually the call for the evening meal stopped the torment for the moment. The hapless engage volunteer was pushed off the locker by one of the corporals. Where upon his meeting with the wooden floor produced once more a bit of a swift kicking by the section corporals.
 
Hopefully the ordeal he had just been put through (prior to being kicked half to death). Would not scar him for the rest of his life, but perhaps just long enough for him too not to feel hungry during the approaching meal.
 
We weren’t going to associate with him and express any sympathy towards him. That would be unwise. But Woody and I would sit either side of him at the evening meal. It was more of a selfish reason we had. Nothing to do with the idiot who had been beat up.
 
Where Woody and I would offer our support, would be that we would ensure his ration didn’t go to waste. After all apart from his taste buds being a bit out of action, the loss of a couple of his teeth probably meant he couldn’t chew. We were learning to survive the hard way. Life at the moment was pretty shit. Fortunately we weren’t eating any of it for the moment.
 
It was only done once. But the rest of us got the message. You washed your clothes, or stopped wearing shreddies (underpants). Then you didn’t have to wash them.
 
Later on Woody and I stopped wearing socks, but that was only so we had more money to buy beer each month.
 

Jim Love