Arthur Maddocks

Food

Living in the Army Officers Mess, entitled to the generous rations designed for active soldiers we were overfed at our 4 meals a day. The quantity was fine; that was the main virtue for a 22 year old. Quality was not an issue. Elizabeth David had not yet uttered.
The only snag was food during night shifts. If eating at 7pm did not suit one's sleeping pattern one could pick up a plate from the hot cupboard a few hours later but the roast beef, roast potatoes, cabbage, turnips and gravy would be past their best. Then in the middle of the shift at 3am or 4am one would go to the canteen in the park and tuck into cod and mash with probably more cabbage and turnips. At the end of the shift a regular breakfast was on offer in the mess.

One pleasure that sometimes arose in the canteen at 3am or 4am was that I might catch sight of a particular female officer whom I knew was working in Hut 6 and by glancing at her face I could tell whether the settings that the enemy changed at midnight had been broken or not.( Working in the Testery that was about the total of my knowledge of what went on in Hut 6)
 
Experts

On any social occasion one was likely to come across an expert in some esoteric field. Egyptologists seemed to be everywhere.
One evening a friend from Oxford days,Tom, invited me to dinner at his lodgings in Woburn Sands with his wife and a man in his section whose name I did not catch, some odd foreign thing. After dinner at the bridge table the stranger was my partner. It was soon clear that he was very good; so I said so.
 
 " Oh, I don't take this game seriously."
 " Well, what do you take seriously?"
 " Chess."
 " You must be very good at that."
 " Yes, I am."
He added that chess had a smaller element of chance.
 
I did not pursue this subject but when my partner had left the house I asked Tom to tell me again who I had been playing with. "Harry Golombek", he said and enlightened this non-chessplayer about his history.