During my time in the British Army I was a chef, I had trained as a soldier but thought it better to have a career to fall back on when leaving the army. My first posting on completing my training was as a young 18 year old in the town of  Colchester in Essex, England.

The main kitchen where I first worked was situated in a one storey building with the headquarters of each of the infantry companies either side. I was working one day with another more senior soldier and a company runner came to the open window requesting we fill his pot with tea for the officers in his company. We would do this on two or three occasions. The company runner is supposed to make the tea himself within the company offices not come running to us.

 During the afternoon he returned another time and we said it will take a minute or two as no boiling water is currently available, leave the pot and come back in a few minutes. On his return we smiled and gave the pot of hot liquid as he went off to refill his officers cups. What he did not know we had not filled it with tea, it was gravy browning. Funnily enough he did not come back the next day.

Another amusing incident, this one when I was stationed in Germany. We would get requests to make birthday cakes quite often and one of the other chefs had been leaving hints for many days that his birthday was coming up and it would be nice to receive a cake instead of always making them. On the day of his birthday we noticed him making an additional cake, obviously thinking the rest of us had not heard the constant reminders. We had a cake for him, it was just well hidden. The cake he had made for himself we sabotaged it, removing the cream off the top and replacing it with shaving foam. It worked a treat, as greedy as he was for anything sweet he literally removed the cream in one sweep ready to swallow it and for a brief moment his joy turned to horror of the realization of what he was about to swallow registered in his brain.