15th October

Morning Corporal,
Dashed poor show last weekend, what! Should have got Carruthers and his little harem down there to bolster numbers. The tailor down at the QM stores last week thought he had a poltergeist in his work room, every time his back was turned his tailors’ dummies kept moving around. Poor fellow was becoming quite agitated, particularly when one of them threw itself at him late one evening. The medics were called to try and quieten the poor fellow down, when they lifted the dummy off him he sat up and realised that the other four dummies were now missing, complete with the uniforms that were on them that he had been working on. Three WRAC privates and one sergeant. The General was convinced that gerry was stealing them as disguises for some covert infiltration of the ranks, and it took a rather long phone call from the General to convince him that the Germans haven’t been a serious threat for some time. After getting sergeant Foot in from the military police to ‘survey the crime scene’, (I really think that lot watch too much television you know), at great length they announced the results of their findings in a scene straight out of that Hitchcock film. They had established that Carruthers had been hiding in one of the dummies and had stolen the one he was in and three others because he liked the uniforms! Anyway, Sergeant Foot, or Foot of the Yard as he likes to be referred to, managed to track the culprit back to the old
tanks, it seems Carruthers has got fed up with being a tree and is back in one of the tanks only this one has taken on an altogether more sinister prospect, this one has both engine and tracks! He’s got all the dummies lined up ‘on parade’ and was ‘inspecting’ them. Well no one was feeling brave enough to go down there and get them back if Carruthers is armed and now mobile as well! Foot of the Yard went nervously towards the tank and asked in the most authoritative voice he could muster, which to be honest sounded little better than a five year old trembling in front of a teacher on his first day at school, if he could please have his dummies back. Carruthers let fly with one of those blanks he has got hold of, (no one is sure how many he has left), I then realised exactly why that tank was left up there. The barrel is blocked! One hell of a lot of smoke came from everywhere but no wadding came out of the barrel! One just has to hope that they can talk Carruthers down from there before he feels the need to fire another one! Foot of the Yard just stood there and wet himself when the shell was fired and was last seen running for his car. Carruthers is now smitten with his entire little harem and has carried them with him wherever he goes. Bit of a rum do all round I say, what?