Sullivan letter diary, 27 October 1915-9 October 1917 / Eugene Sullivan - Page 33
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[Page 33]
towards bottles, glass, and bones. I have been accused of overlooking the other scraps, and of trying to realise on the bones and bottles. Of course you know I would never think of doing such a thing. I have not mentioned my most arduous task here. It is killing time. For one thing it is too blood thirsty a job for me, and besides the only weapon I have is a chess-board. It is a very cute little thing about the size of a pocket-book, made of leather, with little celluloid chips for men, painted to represent the different pieces, which fit into slots in the leather.
Another hard job I have is to keep fit without doing anything. The A.A.M.C. are extremely short of any gymnastic appliances, and in despair I am afraid I will be driven in invest in those most murderous weapons - a pair of boxing gloves. In the infantry lines the men have medicine balls, footballs, gloves, and often toy rapiers or rather single sticks and guns with padded bayonets which slide in on a spring when anything is struck. Even these are only among the men who are leaving almost immediately, having been purchased to amuse them on the long voyage.
Medicine balls are the only ones which are anyway general. This is not very surprising in the Infantry as there one has no time to spare and is only too glad to rest in any spare moments. I hope to be attached to a Ward before long and I will then be able to tell you of the rapid recovery of the patients under my care.
We have a parson in our ward and we get a great deal of amusement out of him. He is a very serious individual and takes everything we say in that light. We start conversations about him when he is present and are always sure of a bite. We had him worked up into a great state the other day and he threatened to fight one of the most insulting of us. The culprit put on the gloves but by that time the parson had cooled down and