A little while after I was gazetted there was a call for officers for the A.S.C. As soon as the O.C of the training camp heard that I knew something about the grocery trade (I didn’t let on that I’d actually been behind the counter), he told me to send my name in. That went through all right, and I was just about to leave for another training-school for A.S.C. officers somewhere in the Midlands when there was a demand for a young officer, with knowledge of the grocery trade, to act as some kind of secretary to Sir Joseph Cheam, who was a big noise in the A.S.C. God knows why they picked me out, but at any rate they did so. I’ve since thought that they probably mixed my name up with somebody else’s. Three days later I was saluting in Sir Joseph’s office. He was a lean, upright, rather handsome old boy with grizzled hair and a grave-looking nose which immediately impressed me. He looked the perfect professional soldier, the K.C.M.G., D.S.O. with bar type, and might have been twin brother to the chap in the De Reszke advert, though in private life he was chairman of one of the big chain groceries and famous all over the world for something called the Cheam Wage-cut System. He stopped writing as I came in and looked me over.

“You a gentleman?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Then perhaps we’ll get some work done.”

In about three minutes he’d wormed out of me that I had no secretarial experience, didn’t know shorthand, couldn’t use a typewriter, and had worked in a grocery at twenty-eight shillings a week. However, he said that I’d do, there were too many gentlemen in this damned Army and he’d been looking for somebody who could count beyond ten. I liked him and looked forward to working for him, but just at this moment the mysterious powers that seemed to be running the war drove us apart again. Something called the West Coast Defence Force was being formed, or rather was being talked about, and there was some vague idea of establishing dumps of rations and other stores at various points along the coast. Sir Joseph was supposed to be responsible for the dumps in the south-west corner of England. The day after I joined his office he sent me down to check over the stores at a place called Twelve Mile Dump, on the North Cornish Coast. Or rather my job was to find out whether any stores existed. Nobody seemed certain about this. I’d just got there and discovered that the stores consisted of eleven tins of bully beef when a wire arrived from the War Office telling me to take charge of the stores at Twelve Mile Dump and remain there till further notice. I wired back “No stores at Twelve Mile Dump.” Too late. Next day came the official letter informing me that I was O.C. Twelve Mile Dump. And that’s really the end of the story. I remained O.C. Twelve Mile Dump for the rest of the war.