See
that chap over there? He came here last year. He'd never been before,
and one of the things he didn't know was that Cove Reservoir's only
about three feet deep round the sides. He took a running dive, and
almost buried himself in the mud. It's about two feet deep. He told me
afterwards he swallowed pounds of it. Rather bad luck. Somebody ought
to have told him. You can't do much diving here."
"Glad you mentioned it," said Kennedy. "I should have dived myself if
you hadn't."
Many other curious and diverting facts did the expert drag from the
bonded warehouse of his knowledge. Nothing changes at camp. Once get
to know the ropes, and you know them for all time.
"The one thing I bar," he said, "is having to get up at half-past
five. And one day in the week, when there's a divisional field-day,
it's half-past four. It's hardly worth while going to sleep at all.
Still, it isn't so bad as it used to be. The first year I came to camp
we used to have to do a three hours' field-day before brekker. We used
to have coffee before it, and nothing else till it was over. By Jove,
you felt you'd had enough of it before you got back. This is Laffan's
Plain. The worst of Laffan's Plain is that you get to know it too
well. You get jolly sick of always starting on field-days from the
same place, and marching across the same bit of ground.
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