GROUND SHEETS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2644, 13 October 1919, Page 7

GROUND SHEETS.

MAKING SOMETHING OUT OP NOTHING IS TOMMY’S SPECIALITY. If the rifle is a soldier’s best friend the ground-sheet is a good second. He puts it to a variety of uses never contemplated by the designer. On the march, when the rain begins to fall, we wait anxiously for the order, “Ground-sheets on !” In a moment the troops are sheltered under excellent waterproof capes, made by throwing the sheet over the shoulders. The recruit has to hold his in place, the trained man has a bootlace in his pocket, and ties up adjacent eyelets to keep the thing in place, while the old soldier has a cunning arrangement already fixed, so lie has but to pull a string, and the cape is so fastened that no wind can blow the flaps apart. You halt for the night. Your officer, “Field Service Pocket-book” in hand, instructs you as to the making of shelters with a ground-sheet and two sticks. While he is talking your comrade has taken your sheet and his own, and, with two sticks and twelve feet of string, he has made a trim little tent, with ample room for two inside. Next door four men have fixed up a wonderful affair with three ground-sheets—the spare sheet making a carpet. “Blooming marquee !” you shout, expressing your confidence in your own tent.

“Lot of small property round here, boys they remark to one another. If you are a slim man you can make a beautiful sleeping-bag by lacing up the ground-sheet all round, leaving the string loose in the middle. Into the gap you crawl, your blanket tightly rapped round you. When the string is drawn tight you are safe from frost or rain, but as helpless as a log. I once demonstrated this to an admiring group, and when I pulled the string tight there was a wild yell, “Hi ! Here’s old B tied up like a chrysalis ! Roll him about !’’ With great joy they rolled me right round' a large paddock and down a steep bank into a small stream. Nearly all the battalion turned up the nest day for a further demonstration ; but I had turned sociable, and got a share in a “marquee.”