Drilling – We lived with the odour of creosote in the cleaned-up horse stables at the Canadian National Exhibition Grounds. Some had uniforms and the remainder had parts of uniforms. We drilled and were taught how to make our bunks up for about ten days. To me, drilling became fun because it was not too long a period of time before I noticed the types who had poor coordination and I would make a point of falling in behind these characters.
When the drill corporal, a little god, hollered at us to get our arms up forward and horizontal from the shoulders, the man in front of me desperately tried to get his left arm up at the same time as he stepped with his left leg, and I would get to laughing. “You there, wipe that grin from your face,” came out of the blue. And while standing in line as a flight we practiced how to turn smartly and sharply on the same spot. The corporal varied the turning from left to right and from right to left. Often he hesitated and would command, “Now, wait for it,” and everybody would be on edge. Without fail, the guy in front always turned in the wrong direction and there he was staring me right in the face. How the blazes did one stop from laughing. I didn’t.
Just re-reading some of these and doing some catch-up. I love the way he writes. It's interesting to know that he stayed in the Ex grounds... I wonder what it was really like back then!
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