In India the medical officer announced he was going to run a chiropodist course for his medical orderlies. He was going to teach them how to deal with foot troubles. It's incredible to think back know, that the Army weren't organised in this respect. They never had a chiropodist.
The medical officer put a notice on the notice board, to say that if anybody had foot troubles they could go on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon and gets them attended to while he instructed his class. I put my name down and appeared one Tuesday afternoon for treatment for my corn. It seems queer again, that it should be me I don't know how many fellas went for treatment for corns. The medical officer had me out in front of the class, he had a scalpel and began pairing away at this corn of mine. As he was pairing way he said to the class, "On no account must you draw blood, if you do then pack up right away and wait until it heals before having another go." As he said that he 'nicked' my toe. I'm sure that was just to demonstrate to the class, that if you draw blood you should stop. Well I thought, "Bugger this for a lark." So I put my boot back on and that was the last he saw of me. Well it wasn't the last, this will come further in the tale. I was determined not to go back for further treatment.
Sometime later I was lying on my bed one hot afternoon. In India it got that hot on the plains, (we were under canvas at the time,) that we couldn't do anything in the daytime. The sweat just poured off us. We used to get up at about four thirty to five o'clock in the morning. We'd then do a few parades or training exercises, then after breakfast the day was ours. We went back to bed usually, because you just couldn't make use of your time, you'd be sweating too much. After teatime when it went cooler we'd do a few more parades.
This particular afternoon I was laying on my bed, when I heard this, almost a wailing coming down the lines. It sounded something like this, "Corn wallow, in growin' toe nails." At the end of every utterance, this bloke reached a higher pitch with his voice. I was curious, I thought, "What the bloody hells this coming down?" Well I looked outside the tent and I saw this little Indian bloke with a little attaché case walking down the lines between the two rows of tents. So I collared him showed him my corn. He had all the typical 'bull shit' on the side of his attaché case, 'expert and this that and the bloody other. he motioned to me, "Atcha sab," that means to say very good. He opened his case and took out a little ..END OF 487 WORD SAMPLE OF 1,480 WORDS.
