The thought of my first cooked meal at camp will stand out 
in my memory long after all other thoughts of camp life 
have been forgotten, for not only did the incident startle 
me, but I learned a new flavouring for thick meaty stews.

It was like this. I had just come from being ducked under 
the cold showers by the seniors, when I was told that my 
patrol was on the kitchen party for dinner. Our Scoutmaster 
had previously told us that we would have to cook the 
dinner, so I set to work cleaning the dirty breakfast billy 
cans, ready to hold the food. When I had finished, I put 
the filthy dish-cloth in one corner of the roped-off 
kitchen, and prepared to scrape the potatoes. The patrol-
leader, however, told me to go off and play football-
cricket with the other patrols, as I had done quite enough 
work and would not leave much for the other junior Scouts 
to do.

After an extremely good game of football-cricket, I 
returned to camp with the other patrols and found dinner 
ready. Being one of the cooks,I went into the kitchen to 
help serve the meal to the rest of the troop, who were 
already lined up and were helpfully chanting "why are we 
waiting?" as I wanted to wipe one of my own plates clean I 
looked for the dirty dish--cloth, but could not find it and 
supposed it to have been thrown away. Imagine my surprise 
and disgust when at last, having served the hungry troop, 
including myself, from the large billy of boiling stew and 
eaten my fill, I found the filthy dish--cloth swilling 
around at the bottom of the billy with the remains of the 
stew.

I said nothing about the cloth to anyone, and I expected to 
see the whole troop go down sick, and all our patrol get 
the blame. As the Scouts passed their dirty plates over the 
kitchen wall to be washed, they all remarked just how good 
the stew had tested. And as far as I can remember no one in 
the camp went sick at all. They seemed to thrive on stew 
and stewed dish--cloth!