The Uniform

I remember looking at my watch to find that only two hours had passed since I had came through those gates, already it seemed a lifetime. We were soon on the move again down to the clothing stores but this time we were marched down. We were put into a single line then a soldier would look you up and down, and then murmur “Oh yes we will fit you all right”.
As I am only 5'1” in height I had my doubts ,although the old soldier never batted an eye. As he tossed me my uniforms he told me to move on to where I would get my underwear, boots, socks, etc. By the time we were finished we were really loaded and had to make two journey's to our billets where we just heaped the lot on our beds.

There was two pairs of everything including under pants of the long John type. They must have been made for the Scots Guards and not the Royal Scots. I will not repeat the comments about all the clothing, but once again white tapes appeared this time to tell us that there would be a parade with our uniforms on so the badly fitting could be rectified by the Regimental tailors. By God they were going to be busy!

After all this activity we were ready for tea. At dinner I had been in too much of a daze to eat much, I had always reckoned I was blessed with quite an appetite until I had a look at some of my new found mates especially one of the lads not much taller than me, like Oliver Twist he kept asking for more!

The strange feeling of that entirely new way of life was still with me. One felt like one of a flock and moved when everybody moved.