FROM OUR "OTHER” CAMP

Dragon, 1 December 1942, Page 16

FROM OUR "OTHER” CAMP

A visit to a Field Camp of the Battalion was made recently by the Brigade Major, followed a week later by the Staff Captain. Just why this sudden interest in the Battalion's affairs should have been taken by our friends from Brigade Headquarters is a close secret, but we presume it was to ascertain whether we were still in the land of potatoes, cabbages and cows. If that was so, then the visit must have been highly successful, for everybody was present, and what was more fortunate, they were working busily. (It's just as well our secret service is on the alert sometimes).

"The Dragon's" representative was early on the scene, and in order to secure a scoop, he set out to interview the Battalion's brain trust immediately after the departure of the distinguished guests. He wanted to find out for his readers any of the "dinkum oil" that was floating about.

He didn't know who to interview first, so he went about his job alphabetically. His first victim was the Adjutant. "Hello Wildcat," he said to the Adjutant as he stepped breezily into his room, "Can you give me any dope on the visit of the heads from down yonder?" There was no reply and the reporter noticed that the Adjutant was looking very intently out of his office window. Thinking the centre of attraction must have been one of our many W.W.S.A. friends going by in a heavy wind, the visitor hurried to the window also, but all he saw was a row of Valentines. Then the Adjutant began to mutter something about "tomorrow's R.O.'s — delete all referenceshould read ..."

Next on the list tor an interview was the Colonel. He was very keen to meet the reporter and promptly set out to describe how pleased the B.M. and the S.C. had been with the gravelling in the vicinity of Battalion H.Q. "Yes, they did say something about our future movements," he said in reply to a question— you wait until I get that area over yonder gravelled send down for the Brigadier to come up." That was the limit to the reporter's patience and he beat a hasty retreat to the cooks' latrine just in time to hear one of the orderlies confiding to the collection of pig swill. "And the B.M. said we would be fighting the Russians on Stewart Island within a week," he concluded.