24th September

I say Corporal bit of a rum old do with Carruthers, what? He’d managed to get that old tank he’d taken to living in running again, heaven only knows how, last I knew Carstairs had sold the engine to some of the lads in the village and convinced them they could fit it into their old Fordson Major! Top marks for ingenuity I say, they got it in, or more accurately, on the tractor and entered it into the ploughing championship on the estate. They were the talk of the competition; they had four ploughs and bolted them all together, sixteen furrows wide it was! Well they went through once and took up half the field but when they got to the other end darn thing wouldn’t stop! It went straight through the hedge and over the vicars bicycle narrowly missed Mrs. Peabody’s convertible, (I’m beginning to suspect that there’s a rum do developing there I can tell you!) through the car park and ploughed into the side of the General’s car and didn’t stop till it ran out of fuel outside the beer tent. But he managed to turn a lovely straight furrow. Sorry, I digress, Carruthers, he’d managed to find something to get the old tank to run with, I suspect that time will tell us from where. Anyway when the General sent the psychiatrist and his lovely little assistant nurse down to see him and try and talk him down, the good doctor got out of his ambulance and walked towards the tank and Carruthers saw the straight jacket lurking behind his back and turned the turret and fired one of those blank shells at him. Blank or not the wadding made one hell of a hole in the front of the ambulance and lodged itself under the seat between the nurse’s legs. Poor girl passed out with fright! Rumour has it that when they got to her she did have a big smile on her face and was moaning loudly! The MP’s were sent in and dragged him off to the sanitarium shouting loudly about the shadows coming to get him.
Carstairs on the other hand hasn’t been seen at the barracks since he got back from his AWOL episode, always on parade though! Rumour has it that he has moved in with Major Ringbotham and Carstairs has been seen dressed as a woman walking round the park on a Sunday afternoon on Ringbotham’s arm! I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation but I’ll be damned if I can see what it would be!
Since the vicars bicycle was trashed down at the ploughing championships he is being driven everywhere by Mrs. Peabody who he has taken to calling ‘Margie Wargie’! If her father were alive today he would have something to say about it I can tell you. He always seemed to have an unhealthy affection for his daughter if you ask me and always kept any of the chaps away from her and was known on one occasion to chase a much younger Carruthers out of his potting shed with a pitchfork and a twelve bore. It seems that from the potting shed window you could see straight into the young lady’s bedroom.
It would seem also that the General was quite taken with his staff car with one side missing, he had the other one removed and drives around speaking with a decidedly dodgy American accent smoking a big cigar and his Generals hat is now more on the side of his head than it is on the top.
Anyway Corporal, need to go and help remove Carruthers from the chicken coup, someone left his door open last night and he got out. No one realised it until four o’clock this morning when he started crowing. The real rooster was quite put out as Carruthers was better at it than he was!
Tally ho! Over and out.