Pillow Talk

A couple of relatives passed through this week, stopping off during a cross-country trip by motorcycle, during which they have spent most of their nights camped out. The wife says that what she misses most is a pillow--clothing stuffed into a bag is not an adequate substitute.

This brought to mind a passage from a letter of Evelyn Waugh's, written to his wife June 2, 1941, just after the battle of Crete:

In case I don't see [his son] again, tell him when he goes to war that the most important thing an officer can carry with him is a pillow. I stuck to mine to the end after I had jettisoned gas-mask & steel helmet & blanket etc & blessed it every hour.

and also the story passed on to Gene Fowler by some Scotch immigrant in Colorado, and recounted in Fowler's Timber Line. According to this, a Scottish clan had gone raiding over the board, and was camped for the night. The patriarch, making a late survey of the camp, found of one of his sons sleeping, wrapped in his plaid, and with his head on a stone. The father kicked the stone out from under his son's head, crying "Never let it be said that any son of mine was raised in the lap of luxury!"