East instead of West Indian, I went in and ordered a meal. They brought me the queerest mess of food I have ever run across. And all of it, from the soup to the rice, was full of terrible curry. I finally gave it up and asked for some plain bread and butter. But they refused on the ground that I had already eaten the one piece which the food controllers allow at a meal. This scheme is really far more effective than the two wheatless days a week which they first tried. For it cuts down the use of white bread more than half, whereas the other way means only a ten or fifteen per cent reduction.
We are saluted everywhere. Once in a while a Tommy gets suspicious and doesn't bother with us, but usually he gives us a real snappy one. It was a lot of fun answering him at first, but when you have to give a couple of thousand every day, it gets tiresome. Of course they think we are commissioned officers or they wouldn't look at us. Even some old veterans of the Crimean war were fooled the other day and I felt so cheap afterwards that I wanted to turn around and tell them what I was. But except for this, our uniforms are a great help. By their aid we managed to hire a Hupmobile for the whole day yesterday, when half a dozen places had told us it was impossible to rent a car on account of the great scarcity of gasoline. They said they didn't even have enough for themselves. We toured
