The Valley of Bones

2

THE MOVEMENT ORDER came not much more than a week afterwards, before I had properly awakened from the dream through the perspectives of which I ranged, London as remote from me as from Kedward, Isobel’s letters the only residuum of a world occupied by other matters than platoon training or turning out the guard. As if by the intoxication of a drug, or compulsive hypnotic influences on the will, another world had been entered by artificial means, through which one travelled irresistibly, ominously, like Dr Trelawney and his fellow magicians, borne by their spells out on to the Astral Plane. Now, at last, I was geared to the machine of war, no longer an extraneous organism existing separately in increasingly alien conditions. For the moment, routine duties scarcely allowed thought. There was a day frantically occupied with packing. Then the whole Battalion was on parade. Orders were shouted. We moved off in column of route, leaving behind us Sardis, one of the Seven Churches of Asia, where the garments were white of those few who remained undefiled. The men, although departing from their own neighbourhoods and country, were in a fairly buoyant mood. Something was beginning at last. They sang softly:

‘Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,

Pilgrim through this barren land:

I am weak, but thou art mighty,

Hold me with thy powerful hand,

Bread of heaven,

Bread of heaven

Feed me till I want no more …’

This singing on the march, whatever form it took, always affirmed the vicissitudes of life, the changes, so often for the worse, that beset human existence, especially in the army, especially in time of war. After a while they abandoned the hymn, though not those accustomed themes of uncertainty, hardship, weariness, despondency, vain effort, contemplation of which gives such support to the soldier:

‘We had ter join,

We had ter join,

We had ter join Belisha’s army:

Ten bob a week,

Bugger all to eat,

Great big boots and blisters on yer feet.

We had ter join,

We had ter join,

We had ter join Belisha’s army:

Sitting on the grass,

Polishing up the brass,

Great black spiders running up yer — back.

We had ter join — we had ter join—

We had ter join — we had ter join …’

Gwatkin was in a state of unconcealed excitement. He bawled out his commands, loud as if through a megaphone, perpetually checking Kedward, Breeze and myself about minor matters. I could just see Bithel plodding along with his platoon at the rear of the company immediately ahead of us. He had turned up on parade carrying a small green leather dressing-case, much battered, which he grasped while he marched.

‘Didn’t like to trust it with the heavy baggage,’ he said, adjusting the worn waterproof cover, while we stood easy at the railway station. ‘The only piece of my mother’s luggage I have left. She’s gone to a Better Place now, you know.’

The train set out towards the north. This was the beginning of a long journey to an unknown destination. Night fell. Hours later, we detrained in stygian darkness. Here was a port. Black craft floated on a pitchy, infernal lake. Beyond the mouth of the harbour, the wash of waves echoed. The boat on which the Battalion embarked was scarcely large enough to accommodate our strength. The men were fitted in at last, sitting or lying like the cargo of a slave ship. The old steamer chugged away from the jetty, and into open sea. Wind was up. We heaved about in choppy waters. There was not going to be much sleep for anyone that night. After much scurrying about on the part of officers and NCOs, Sergeant Pendry reported at last that all was correct. He was accompanied by Corporal Gwylt, one of the Company’s several wits, tiny, almost a dwarf, with a huge head of black curly hair; no doubt a member of that primitive race of which the tall, fair Celt had become overlord. Not always to be relied upon to carry out purely military duties to perfection, Gwylt was acceptable as an NCO because he never stopped talking and singing, so that his personality, though obtrusive, helped the Platoon through some of the tedium inseparable from army life.

‘Has everyone had their cocoa issue, Sergeant Pendry?’

‘That they have, sir, very good it was.’

‘Some of the boys was too sick to drink their cocoa, sir,’ said Corporal Gwylt, who felt his comment always required.

‘Are a lot of the Platoon sea-sick?’

‘I told them to lie still and it would pass,’ said Sergeant Pendry. ‘They do make a lot of fuss, some of them.’

‘Oh, bloody sick, some of them,’ said Corporal Gwylt, like a Greek chorus. ‘That fair boy, Jones, D., bloody sick he has been.’

The boat ploughed through wind and wave. Was this the night journey on the sea of a thousand dreams loaded with hidden meaning? Certainly our crossing was no less mysterious than those nocturnal voyages of sleep. Towards morning I retired below to shave, feeling revived when I returned to deck. The sky was getting lighter and land was in sight. An easterly breeze was blowing when we went ashore, which sprayed about a gentle drizzle. Beyond the harbour stretched a small town, grey houses, factory chimneys. In the distance, mountains were obscured by cloud. Everything looked mean and down-at-heel. There was nothing to make one glad to have arrived in this country.

‘March your men ashore promptly when the order comes, platoon commanders,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Show initiative. Don’t hang about. Get cracking.’

He looked rather green in the face, as if, like Jones, D., he too had been sick during the crossing, himself far from the condition required for ‘getting cracking’. The companies filed down the gangway, one by one, forming up later by a railway line. There were the usual delays. The rain, borne towards us on a driving wind, was increasing in volume. The Battalion stood easy, waiting for word from the Embarkation Staff. Girls with shawls over their heads were on their way to work. Disregarding the rain, they stopped and watched us from the side of the road, standing huddled together, talking and laughing.

‘Aigh-o, Mary,’ shouted Corporal Gwylt. ‘Have you come to see the foreigners?’

The girls began to giggle purposefully.

‘It’s no brave day ye’ve brought with ye,’ one of them called back.

‘What was that you said, Mary, my love?’

‘Why did ye not bring a braver day with ye, I’m asking. ‘Tis that we’ve been wanting since Sunday, sure.’

‘What kind of a day, Mary, my own?’

‘Why a brave day. ‘Tis prosperous weather we’re needing.’

Corporal Gwylt turned to Sergeant Pendry and made a gesture with his hand to convey absolute incredulity at such misuse of language.

‘Brave day?’ he said. ‘Did you hear what she called it, Sergeant Pendry?’

‘I did that, Corporal Gwylt.’

‘So that’s a funny way to talk.’

‘That it is.’

‘Now you can tell the way people speak we’re far from home.’

‘You’ll be getting many surprises in this country, my lad,’ said Sergeant Pendry. ‘You may be sure of that.’

‘Will some of them be nice surprises, Sergeant?’

‘Ask not that of me.’

‘Oh, don’t you think I’ll be getting some nice surprises, Sergeant Pendry,’ said Corporal Gwylt in a soft wheedling tone, ‘like a plump little girl to keep me warm at night.’

CSM Cadwallader was pottering about nearby, like a conscientious matron at a boys’ school determined to make sure all was well. He had the compact professional feeling of the miner, which he combined with a rather unusual taste for responsibility, so that any company commander was lucky to claim his services.

‘We’ll be keeping you warm, Corporal Gwylt,’ he said. ‘Make no mistake. There’ll be plenty of work for you, I’ll tell you straight. Do not worry about the night-time. Then you will want your rest, not little girls, nor big ones neither.’

‘But a plump little girl, Sergeant-Major? Do not yourself wish to meet a plump little girl?’

‘Put not such ideas into the Sergeant-Major’s head, Corporal Gwylt,’ said Sergeant Pendry. ‘He does not wish your dirty things.’

‘Nor me, the dirty girls,’ said Corporal Gwylt. ‘I never said the dirty ones.’

‘Nor then the clean ones, understand.’

‘Oh, does he not?’ said Corporal Gwylt, in feigned astonishment. ‘Not even the clean ones? Do you think that indeed, Sergeant Pendry?’

‘I do think that, I tell you.’

‘And why, whatever?’

‘The Sergeant-Major is a married man, you must know.’

‘So you think girls are just for young lads like me, Sergeant-Major? That is good for me, I’m sure.’

‘Never mind what I think, Corporal.’

‘He is a lucky man, the Sergeant Major,’ said Sergeant Pendry sententiously. ‘You will be glad when you reach his age, no longer foolish and running after girls.’

‘Oh, dear me, is it true what Sergeant Pendry says, Sergeant-Major, that girls are for you no longer? I am that sorry to hear.’

CSM Cadwallader allowed himself a dry smile.

‘Have you never heard, Corporal Gwylt, there’s those to find many a good tune played on old fiddles?’ he said benevolently.

The Embarkation Staff Officer turned up at that moment with a sheaf of papers. The Battalion was on the move again. Corporal Gwylt had just time to blow a kiss to the girls, who waved frantically, redoubling their gigglings. The Company tramped off towards the train in a siding.

‘Now then, there,’ shouted the Sergeant-Major, ‘pick up the step in the rear files. Left — left — left, right, left …’

We steamed through bare, dismal country, wide fields, white cabins, low walls of piled stones, stretches of heather, more mountains far away on the horizon.

‘This will give us better training areas than back home,’ said Gwatkin.

He had recovered from his sea sickness and the tension brought on by the move. Now he was relatively calm.

‘We shall be more like soldiers here,’ he said with satisfaction.

‘What happens when we arrive, Rowland?’ Breeze asked. ‘I hope there’ll be something to eat.’

Breeze’s questions were usually aimed to score the textbook answer from Gwatkin.

‘The second echelon of the supply column will have preceded us,’ said Gwatkin sharply.

‘And what do they do?’

‘They will have broken bulk and be ready to issue to units. You should spend more time on your Field Service Pocket Book, Yanto.’

We arrived at a small, unalluring industrial town. Once more the Battalion formed up. By now the men were tired. Singing was sombre as we marched in:

‘My lips smile no more, my heart loses its lightness,

No dream of the future my spirit can cheer,

I only would brood on the past and its brightness,

The dead I have mourned are again gathered here.

From every dark nook they press forward to meet me,

I lift up my eyes to the broad leafy dome.

And others are there looking downward to greet me,

The ashgrove, the ashgrove, alone is my home.

Gwatkin was right about being more like soldiers in these new surroundings. Barracks had been created from a disused linen factory, the long narrow sheds in which the flax had formerly been treated offering barrack-rooms stark as a Foreign Legion film set. Officers were billeted in a forlorn villa on the outskirts of the town, a house that had no doubt once belonged to some successful local businessman. It was a mile or more away from the barracks. There, I still shared a room with Kedward, Breeze and Pumphrey, the last of whom had not yet achieved his RAF transfer. Another subaltern, Craddock, was in with us too, brother of the girl to whom Kedward was engaged. Craddock, fat and energetic, was Messing Officer, which meant he returned to billets in the middle of the night several times a week, when he would either turn on the light, or blunder about the room in the dark, falling over other people’s camp-beds in a fruitless effort to find his own. Both methods were disturbing. There was, in any case, not much room to manoeuvre round the beds, even when the light was on. Craddock’s midnight arrivals were not the only inconvenience. Breeze left old razor blades about in profusion, causing Pumphrey to cut his foot one morning. Kedward talked in his sleep throughout the night, shouting commands, as if he were drilling a company: ‘At the halt — on the left — form close column of — platoons …’

Pumphrey, inclined to bicker, would throw towels about and sponges. A window pane was broken, which no one ever seemed responsible for mending, through which the night wind whistled, while cold struck up insistently from the floor, penetrating the canvas of a camp-bed. Snow had returned. I record these conditions not as particularly formidable in the circumstances, but to indicate they were sufficiently far from ideal to encourage a change, when, as it happened, opportunity arose. This came about through Gwatkin in an unexpected manner. During the weeks that followed our arrival in these new surroundings, I began to know him better. He was nearer my own age than the other subalterns, except Bithel. Even the captains tended to be younger than Gwatkin and myself, as time went on, some of the older ones being gradually shifted, as insufficiently proficient at their job, to Holding Battalions or the Infantry Training Centre.

‘We’re getting rid of the dead wood,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Just as well.’

His own abrupt manner of speaking continued, and he loved to find fault for its own sake. At the same time, he evidently wanted to be friendly, while fearing that too easy a relationship with a subordinate, even one of similar age, might be unmilitary. There were unexpected sides to Gwatkin, sudden displays of uncertainty under a façade meant to be very certain. Some of his duties he carried out very well; for others, he had little or no natural talent.

‘A company commander,’ said Dicky Umfraville, when we met later that year, ‘needs the qualifications of a ringmaster in a first-class circus, and a nanny in a large family.’

Gwatkin aspired to this dazzling combination of gifts — to become (as Pennistone later said) a military saint. Somehow he always fell short of that coveted status. His imperfections never derived from any willingness to spare himself. On the contrary, inability to delegate authority, insistence that he must do everything himself, important or unimportant, was one of Gwatkin’s chief handicaps in achieving his high aim. For example, he instituted a ‘Company Officer of the Day’, one of whose duties was to make sure all was well at the men’s dinners. This job, on the whole redundant, since the Orderly Officer of necessity visited all Mess Rooms to investigate ‘any complaints’, was made additionally superfluous by Gwatkin himself appearing as often as not at dinners, in order to make sure the Company Officer of the Day was not shirking his rounds. In fact, he scarcely allowed himself any time off at all. He seemed half aware that this intense keenness was not, in final result, what was required; at least not without more understanding on his own part. Besides, Gwatkin had none of that faculty, so necessary in the army, of accepting rebuke — even unjust rebuke — and carrying on as if nothing had happened. Criticism from above left him dreadfully depressed.

‘It’s no good letting the army get you down,’ the Adjutant, Maelgwyn-Jones, used to say. ‘Just remember, when you’re worrying about the Brigadier’s inspection, that day will pass, as other days in the army pass.’

Maelgwyn-Jones himself did not always act upon this teaching. He was an efficient, short-tempered Regular, whose slight impediment of speech became a positive stutter when he grew enraged. He wanted to get back to the battalion he came from, where there was more hope of immediate action and consequent promotion. Thoroughly reliable as an officer, hard working as an adjutant, Maelgwyn-Jones did not share — indeed was totally unapprehending of — Gwatkin’s resplendent vision of army life. When he pulled up Gwatkin for some such lapse as unpunctual disposal of the Company’s swill, Gwatkin would behave as if his personal honour had been called into question; then concentrate feverishly on more energetic training, smarter turn-out. In a sense, of course, that was correct enough, but the original cause of complaint was not always put right in the most expeditious manner. The fact was Gwatkin lacked in his own nature that grasp of ‘system’ for which he possessed such admiration. This deficiency was perhaps connected in some way with a kind of poetry within him, a poetry which had somehow become a handicap in its efforts to find an outlet. Romantic ideas about the way life is lived are often to be found in persons themselves fairly coarse-grained. This was to some extent true of Gwatkin. His coarseness of texture took the form of having to find a scapegoat after he himself had been in trouble. The scapegoat was usually Breeze, though any of the rest of the Company might suffer. Bithel, usually in hot water of some kind, would have offered an ever available target for these punitive visitations of Gwatkin’s, but Bithel was in another company. All the same, although no concern of his in the direct sense, Bithel’s appearance and demeanour greatly irked Gwatkin in a general way. He spoke of this one afternoon, when Bithel, wearing one of his gaiters improperly adjusted, crossed our path on the way back from afternoon training.

‘Did you ever see such an unsoldierly type?’ Gwatkin said. ‘And his brother a VC too.’

‘Is it certain they’re brothers, not just fairly distant relations?’

I was not sure whether Bithel’s words to me on that earlier occasion had been spoken in confidence. The tone he had adopted suggested something of the sort. Besides, Bithel might suddenly decide to return to the earlier cycle of legends he had apparently disseminated about himself to facilitate his Reserve call-up; or at least he might not wish to have them specifically denied on his own authority. However, Gwatkin showed no wish to verify the truth, or otherwise, of Bithel’s alleged kinships.

‘Even if they are not brothers, Bithel is a disgrace for a man with a VC in the family,’ Gwatkin said severely. ‘He should be ashamed. That VC ought to give him a pride in himself. I wish a relative of mine had won the VC, won an MC even. And it is my belief, I am telling you, Nick, that all about Bithel’s rugger is tommy-rot.’

That last conviction was unanswerable by this time. No one who had seen Bithel proceeding at the double could possibly suppose his abilities in the football field had ever been more than moderate.

‘Do you know when Idwal was Orderly Officer last week,’ said Gwatkin, ‘he found Bithel in his dressing-gown listening to the gramophone with the Mess waiters. Bithel said he was looking for Daniels, that servant of his I don’t much like either. And then we are expected to keep discipline in the unit.’

‘That bloody gramophone makes a frightful row at all hours.’

‘So it does, too, and I’m not going to stay in those billets any longer. I have had enough. My camp-bed was taken down to the Company Office this morning. That is the place for a company commander to be. Half the day is lost in this place walking backwards and forwards from billets to barracks. We are lucky enough to have an office next door to the Company Store. The bed can be folded up and go into the store for the day.’

We had reached a fork in the road. One way led to barracks, the other to billets. Gwatkin seemed suddenly to come to a decision.

‘Why don’t you come down to the Company Office too?’ he asked.

He spoke roughly, almost as if he were demanding why I had disobeyed an order.

‘Would there be room?’

‘Plenty.’

‘We’re pretty thick on the ground where I am at present, even though Idwal is on the Anti-gas course at the moment.’

‘It won’t be so lively sleeping in the office.’

‘I can stand that.’

‘The great thing is you’re on the spot. Near the men. Where every officer should be.’

I was flattered by the suggestion. Kedward was at the Corps School of Chemical Warfare at Castlemallock — usually known as the Anti-gas School — so that Breeze and I were Gwatkin’s only subalterns at that moment, and there was a lot of work to do. As I have said, accommodation at the billets had little to recommend it. The Company Office was at least no worse a prospect. To be in barracks would be convenient, not least in its reduction of continual trudging backwards and forwards to the billets.

‘I’ll have my kit taken down this evening.’

That was the beginning of my comparative intimacy with Gwatkin. Sharing with him the Company Office at night altered not only our mutual relationship, but also the whole tempo of night and morning. Instead of the turmoil of Kedward, Breeze, Pumphrey and Craddock getting dressed, talking, scuffling, singing, there was only the occasional harsh, serious, professional comment of Gwatkin; his tense silences. He slept heavily, often dropping off before the electric light was out and the blackout down; never, like myself, lying awake listening to the talk in the Company Store next door. The partition between the store and the office did not reach all the way to the ceiling, so that conversation held in the store after Lights Out, although usually carried out in comparatively low tones — in contrast with the normal speech of the unit — was often audible. Only the storeman, Lance-Corporal Gittins, was supposed to sleep in the store at night, but, in practice, the room usually housed several others; semi-official assistants of Gittins, friends, relations, Company personalities, like Corporal Gwylt. These would gather in the evening, if not on guard dudes, and listen to the wireless; several of those assembled later staying the night among the crates and piles of blankets, to slumber in the peculiar, musty smell of the store, an odour somewhere between the Natural History Museum and an oil-and-colour shop. Lance-Corporal Gittins was CSM Cadwallader’s brother-in-law. He was a man not always willing to recognise the artificial and temporary hierarchy imposed by military rank.

‘Now, see it you must, Gareth,’ I heard the Sergeant-Major’s voice once insisting on the other side of the partition. ‘In time of peace — in the mine — you are above me, Gareth, and above Sergeant Pendry. Here, that is not. No longer is it the mine. In the Company we are above you. It would be good you remember that, Gareth.’

Gittins was a figure of some prestige in the Company, not only on account of dominion over valuable stock-in-trade, but also for his forcible character. Dark, stocky, another strongly pre-Celtic type, he could probably have become sergeant — even sergeant-major — without difficulty, had he wished for promotion. Like many others, he preferred to avoid such responsibilities, instead ruling the store, where he guarded every item as if it were his own personal property acquired only after long toil and self-denial. Nothing was more difficult than to extort from him the most insignificant replacement of kit.

‘I tell you, not without the Skipper’s direct order,’ was his usual answer to such requests. This circumspection was very generally respected. To coax anything from Gittins was considered a triumph. One of the attractions of the store was its wireless, which would sometimes be tuned in to Haw-Haw’s propaganda broadcast from Germany. These came on just after midnight:

‘… This is Chairmany calling … Chairmany calling … These are the stations Koln, Hamburg and DJA … Here is the news in English … Fifty-three more British aircraft were shot down over Kiel last night making a total of one hundred and seventeen since Tuesday … One hundred and seventeen more British aircraft have been shot down in forty-eight hours … The British people are asking their Government why British pilots cannot stay in the air … They are asking why British aircraft is inferior to Chairman aircraft … The British people are asking themselves why they have lost the war in the air … They are asking, for example, what has happened to the Imperial Airways Liner Ajax … Why is the Imperial Airways Liner Ajax three weeks overdue, they are asking … We can tell you.. The Imperial Airways Liner Ajax is at the bottom of the sea … The fishes are swimming in and out of the wreckage of the Imperial Airways Liner Ajax … The Imperial Airways Liner Ajax and her escort were shot down by Chairman fighter planes… The British have lost the war in the air … They have lost the war in the air … It is the same on the water … The Admiralty is wondering about the Resourceful … They are worried at the Admiralty about the Resourceful … They need not worry about the Resourceful any more … We will tell them about the Resourceful … The Resourceful is at the bottom of the sea with the Imperial Airways Liner Ajax … The Resourceful was sunk by a Chairman submarine … The Admiralty is in despair at Chairman command of the sea … Britain has lost the war on the sea … One hundred and seventy-five thousand gross registered tons of British shipping was sent to the bottom last week … The British Government is in despair at these losses in the air and on the water … That is not the only thing that makes the British Government despair … Not by any means … The food shortage in Britain is becoming acute … The evacuated women and children are living in misery … Instead of food, they are being fed on lies … Government lies … Only Chairmany can tell you the truth … The Chairman radio speaks the truth … The Chairman radio gives the best and latest news … Chairmany is winning the war … Think it over, Britain, think it over … Chairmany is winning the war … Listen, Britain … Listen, Britain … We repeat to all listeners in the Far East … Listen, South America …’

Someone in the store turned the button. The nagging, sneering, obsessive accents died away with a jerk, as if a sack had been advantageously thrust over the speaker’s head, bestowing an immediate sense of relief at his extinction. There was a long pause next door.

‘I do wonder he can remember all that,’ said a voice, possibly that of Williams, W.H., one of the singers of Sardis, now runner in my platoon.

‘Someone writes it down for him, don’t you see,’ said another voice that could have been Corporal Gwylt’s.

‘And do they give him all those figures too?’

‘Of course they do.’

‘So that is it.’

‘You must know that, lad.’

‘What a lot he do talk.’

‘That’s for they pay him.’

‘Bloody sure he is Germany will win the war. Why does he call it like that — Chairmany — it’s a funny way to speak to be sure.’

‘Maybe that’s the way they say it there.’

‘If Hider wins the war, I tell you, lad, we’ll go down the mine for sixpence a day.’

No one in the store attempted to deny this conclusion. There was another pause and some coughing. It was not easy to tell how many persons were collected there. Gittins himself appeared to have gone to sleep, only Gwylt and Williams, W. H., unable to bring the day to a close. I thought they too must have nodded off, when suddenly Williams’s voice sounded again.

‘How would you like to go up in an aircraft, Ivor?’

‘I would not mind that so much.’

‘I hope I do not have to do that.’

‘We are not in the RAF, lad, what are you thinking?’

‘I would not like it up there I am sure too.’

‘They will not put you up there, no worry.’

‘You do not know what they will do, look at those parachutists, indeed.’

‘You make me think of Dai and Shoni when they went up in a balloon.’

‘And what was that, I wonder.’

‘They took two women with them.’

‘Did they, then?’

‘When the balloon was in the sky, the air began to leak something terrible out of it, it did, and Dai was frightened, so frightened Dai was, and Dai said to Shoni, Look you, Shoni, this balloon is not safe at all, and the air is leaking out of it terrible, we shall have to jump for it, and Shoni said to Dai, But, Dai, what about the women? and Dai said, Oh, fook the women, and Shoni said, But have we time?’

‘We shall not have any time to sleep till morning break, I am telling you, if you will jaw all through the night,’ spoke another voice, certainly Lance-Corporal Gittins, the storeman, this time. ‘How many hundred and hundred of those Dai and Shoni stories have I in all my days had to hear, I should like to know, and most of them said by you, Ivor. Is tarts never out of your thought.’

‘Why, Gareth, you talk about tarts too,’ said Williams, W. H. ‘What was that you was telling my butty of Cath Pendry yesterday?’

‘What about her?’

Gittins sounded more truculent this time.

‘Her and Evans the checkweighman.’

‘You was not meant to hear that, I tell you, Williams, W. H.’

‘Come on, Gareth,’ said Gwylt.

‘Never mind you, Ivor.’

‘Oh, that do sound something I would like to hear.’

No one answered Gwylt. There was a lot more coughing, some throat clearing, then silence. They must all have gone to sleep. I was on the point of doing the same, had even reached a state of only semi-consciousness, when there was a sudden exclamation from the direction of Gwatkin’s bed. He had woken with a start and was feeling for his electric torch. He found the torch at last and, clambering out of bed, began to put up the blackout boards on the window frame.

‘What is it, Rowland?’

‘Turn the light on,’ he said, ‘I’ve got this board fixed now.’

I switched on the light, which was nearer my bed than his.

‘I’ve just thought of something,’ Gwatkin said agitatedly. ‘Do you remember I said units had been issued with a new codeword for intercommunication within the Brigade?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did I do with it?’

He seemed almost to be talking in his sleep.

‘You put it in the box, didn’t you?’

Gwatkin’s usual treatment of the flow of paper that entered the Company Office daily was to mark each item with the date in the inked letters of the Company’s rubber-stamp, himself initialling the centre of its circular mauve impression. He would treat the most trivial printed matter in this way, often wryly smiling as he remarked: ‘This becomes a habit.’ The click of the instrument on an official document, together with his own endorsement ‘R. G.’ — written with a flourish — seemed to give him a feeling of having settled that matter once and for all, a faint but distinct sense of absolute power. If classified as ‘Secret’ or ‘Confidential’, the stuff was put in a large cashbox, of which Gwatkin himself kept the key. The Company’s ‘Imprest Account’ was locked away in this box, together with all sorts of other papers which had taken Gwatkin’s fancy as important. The box itself was kept in a green steel cupboard, the shape of a wardrobe, also locked, though its key was considered less sacred than that of the cashbox.

‘Are you sure I put it in the box?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘Codewords are vital.’

‘I know.’

‘I’d better make certain.’

He put on a greatcoat over his pyjamas, because the nights were still fairly cold. Then he began fumbling about with the keys, opening the cupboard and bringing out the cash-box. There was not much room in the Company Office at the best of time, when both beds were erected, scarcely any space at all in which to operate, so that the foot of my own bed was the only convenient ledge on which to rest the box while Gwatkin went through its contents. He began to sort out the top layer of papers, arranging them in separate piles over the foot of my bed, all over my greatcoat, which was serving as eiderdown. I sat up in bed, watching him strew my legs with official forms and instructional leaflets of one kind or another. He dealt them out with great care, as if diverting himself with some elaborate form of Patience, military pamphlets doing duty for playing cards. The deeper he delved into the cashbox, the more meticulously he arranged the contents. Among other items, he turned out a small volume bound in faded red cloth. This book, much tattered, was within reach. I picked it up. Opening at the fly-leaf: I read: R. Gwatkin, Capt.’, together with the designation of the Regiment. The title-page was that of a pocket edition of Puck of Pook’s Hill. Gwatkin gave a sudden grunt. He had found whatever he was seeking.

‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Thank God. I remember now. I put it in a envelope in a special place at the bottom of the box.’

He began to replace the papers, one by one, in the elaborate sequence he had ordained for them. I handed him Puck of Pook’s Hill. He took the book from me, still apparently pondering the fearful possibilities consequent on failure to trace the codeword. Then he suddenly became aware I had been looking at the Kipling stories. He took the little volume from me, and pushed it away under a Glossary of Military Terms and Organization in the Field. For a second he seemed a shade embarrassed.

‘That’s a book by Rudyard Kipling,’ he said defensively, as if the statement explained something.

‘So I see.’

‘Ever read anything by him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Read this one?’

‘Ages ago.’

‘What did you think of it?’

‘I liked it.’

‘You’ve read a lot of books, haven’t you, Nick?’

‘I have to in my profession.’

Gwatkin locked the tin box and replaced it in the cupboard.

‘Turn the light out,’ he said. ‘And I’ll take the blackout down again.’

I switched out the light. He removed the window boards. I heard him arranging the greatcoat over himself in the bed.

‘I don’t expect you remember,’ he said, ‘but there’s a story in that book about a Roman centurion.’

‘Of course.’

‘That was the one I liked.’

‘It’s about the best.’

‘I sometimes read it again.’

He pulled the greatcoat higher over him.

‘I’ve read it lots of times really,’ he said. ‘I like it. I don’t like any of the others so much.’

‘The Norman knight isn’t bad.’

‘Not so good as the centurion.’

‘Do you like his other books?’

‘Whose?’

‘Kipling’s.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. I know he wrote a lot of other books. I did try one of them. I couldn’t get on with it somehow.’

‘Which one did you try?’

‘I can’t remember the name. Can’t remember much about it, to tell the truth. I just didn’t like it. All written in a special sort of language I didn’t understand. I don’t read much. Got other things to do. It’s not like you, reading more or less as a business.’

He stopped speaking, was almost immediately asleep and breathing heavily. This was the first evidence come to light that anyone in the unit had ever read a book for pleasure, unless Bithel’s ‘digests’ might be thought to have brought him to a public library in search of some work on sexual psychology. This was an interesting discovery about Gwatkin. By now snores were sounding from the store. I rolled over towards the wall and slept too. The following day Gwatkin made no reference to this nocturnal conversation. Perhaps he had forgotten about it. Leaving barracks that evening there was a small incident to illustrate the way in which he took failure to heart. This happened when Gwatkin, Kedward and I were passing the vehicle park, where the bren-carriers stood.

‘I’d like to try driving one of those buses,’ Kedward said.

‘They’re easy enough,’ said Gwatkin.

He scrambled into the nearest carrier and started up the engine. However, when he put the vehicle in gear, it refused to move, only rocking backwards and forwards on its tracks. Gwatkin’s small head and black moustache bobbed up and down at the end of the carrier, so that he seemed part of the chassis, a kind of figurehead, even the front half of an armoured centaur. There was also something that recalled a knight in the game of chess, immensely large and suddenly animated by some inner, mysterious power. For a time Gwatkin heaved up and down there, as if riding one of the cars on a warlike merry-go-round; then completely defeated by the machinery, perhaps out of order, he climbed slowly to the ground and rejoined us.

‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said, humiliated.

All the same, this sort of thing did not at all impair his confidence in himself when it came to dealing with the men. Gwatkin prided himself on his relationship with the ‘other ranks’ in his company. He did not talk about it much, but the conviction was implicit in his behaviour. His attitude towards Sayce provided a good example. That was clear even before I witnessed their great scene together. Sayce was the Company bad character. He had turned up with another couple of throw-outs voided as unsuitable for employment from one of the regular battalions. His previous unit must have been thankful to get rid of him. Small and lean, with a yellow face and blackened teeth, his shortcomings were not to be numbered. Apart from such recurrent items as lateness on parade, deficiency of shaving kit, lack of clean socks, mislaid paybook, filthy rifle, generally unsatisfactory turnout, Sayce would produce some new, hitherto unthought-of crime most days. Dirty, disobliging, quarrelsome, little short of mutinous, he was heartily disliked by all ranks. Although a near criminal, he possessed none of the charm J. G. Quiggin, as a reviewer, used to attribute to criminals who wrote memoirs. On the contrary, Sayce, immoderately vain, was also stupid and unprepossessing. From time to time, in order to give him a chance to redeem himself from a series of disasters, he would be assigned some individual task, easy to undertake, but within range of conferring credit by its simple discharge. Sayce always made a hash of it; always, too, for the worst of reasons. He seemed preordained for detention.

‘It will be the Glasshouse for that bugger Sayce,’ Sergeant Pendry, who got along pretty well with almost everyone, used often to remark.

In dealing with Sayce, therefore, it might be thought Gwatkin would assume his favoured role of martinet, imposing a series of punishments that would eventually bring Sayce before the Commanding Officer; and certainly Sayce took his share of CBs from Gwatkin in the Company Office. At the same time, their point of contact, at least on Gwatkin’s side, was not entirely unsympathetic. The fact was, Sayce appealed to Gwatkin’s imagination. Those stylized pictures of army life on which Gwatkin’s mind loved to dwell did not exclude a soldier of Sayce’s type. Indeed, a professional bad character was obviously a type from which no army could remain wholly free. Accordingly, Gwatkin was prepared to treat Sayce with what many company commanders would have considered excessive consideration, to tolerate him up to a point, even to make serious efforts to reform him. Gwatkin had spoken to me more than once about these projects for Sayce’s reformation, before he finally announced that he had planned a direct appeal to Sayce’s better feelings.

‘I’m going to have a straight talk with Sayce,’ he said one day, when Sayce’s affairs had reached some sort of climax. I’d like you to be present, Nick, as he’s in your platoon.’

Gwatkin sat at the trestle table with the army blanket over it. I stood behind. Sayce, capless, was marched in by CSM Cadwallader and a corporal.

‘You and the escort can leave the room, Sergeant-Major,’ said Gwatkin. ‘I want to have a word with this soldier in private — that is to say myself and his Platoon Commander, Mr Jenkins.’

The Sergeant-Major and other NCO withdrew.

‘You can stand easy, Sayce,’ said Gwatkin.

Sayce stood easy. His yellow face showed distrust.

‘I want to speak to you seriously, Sayce,’ said Gwatkin. ‘To speak to you as man to man. Do you understand what I mean, Sayce?’

Sayce made some inaudible reply.

‘It is not my wish, Sayce, to be always punishing you,’ said Gwatkin slowly. ‘Is that clear? I do not like doing that at all.’

Sayce muttered again. It seemed very doubtful that he found Gwatkin’s statement easy to credit. Gwatkin leant forward over the table. He was warming up. Within him were deep reserves of emotion. He spoke now with that strange cooing tone he used on the telephone.

‘You can do better, Sayce. I say you can do better.’

He fixed Sayce with his eye. Sayce’s own eyes began to roll.

‘You’re a good fellow at heart, aren’t you, Sayce?’

All this was now beginning to tell on Sayce. I had to admit to myself there was nothing I should have liked less than to be grilled by Gwatkin in this fashion. A week’s CB would be infinitely preferable. Sayce began swallowing.

‘You are, Sayce, aren’t you?’ Gwatkin repeated more pressingly, as if time were becoming short for Sayce to reveal that unexpected better side of himself, and gain salvation.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Sayce, very low.

He spoke without much conviction. That could scarcely be because there was doubt in his mind of his own high qualifications. He probably suspected any such information, freely given, might be a dangerous admission, lead to more work.

‘Well, Sayce,’ said Gwatkin, ‘that is what I am going to believe about you. Believe you are a good fellow. You know why we are all here?’

Sayce did not answer.

‘You know why we are all here, Sayce,’ said Gwatkin again, louder this time, his voice shaking a little with his own depths of feeling. ‘Come on, Sayce, you know.’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘Don’t, sir.’

‘Come on, man.’

Sayce made a great effort.

‘To give me CB for being on a charge,’ he offered wretchedly.

It was a reasonable hypothesis, but Gwatkin was greatly disturbed at being so utterly misunderstood.

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘I don’t mean why we are in the Company Office at this moment. I mean why we are all in the army. You must know that, Sayce. We are here for our country. We are here to repel Hitler. You know that as well as I do. You don’t want Hitler to rule over you, Sayce, do you?’

Sayce gulped again, as if he were not sure.

‘No, sir,’ he agreed, without much vigour.

‘We must all, every one of us, do our best,’ said Gwatkin, now thoroughly worked up. ‘I try to do my best as Company Commander. Mr Jenkins and the other officers of the Company do their best. The NCOs and privates do their best. Are you going to be the only one, Sayce, who is not doing his best?’

Sayce was now in almost as emotional a state as Gwatkin himself. He continued to gulp from time to time, looking wildly round the room, as if for a path of escape.

‘Will you do your best in future, Sayce?’

Sayce began sniffing frantically.

‘I will, sir.’

‘Do you promise me, Sayce.’

‘All right, sir.’

‘And we’re agreed you’re a good chap, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Indeed, Sayce seemed moved almost to tears by the thought of all his own hitherto unrevealed goodness.

‘Never had a chance since I’ve been with the unit,’ he managed to articulate.

Gwatkin rose to his feet.

‘We’re going to shake hands, Sayce,’ he said.

He came round to the front of the table and held out his palm. Sayce took it gingerly, as if he still suspected a trick, a violent electric shock, perhaps, or just a terrific blow on the ear administered by Gwatkin’s other hand. However, Gwatkin did no more than shake Sayce’s own hand heartily. It was like the termination of some sporting event. Gwatkin continued to shake hands for several seconds. Then he returned to his seat behind the table.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’m going to call in the escort again, so stand to attention, Sayce. All right? Get them in, Mr Jenkins.’

I opened the door and said the word. CSM Cadwallader and the corporal returned to their places, guarding Sayce.

‘Prisoner admonished,’ said Gwatkin, in his military voice.

The Sergeant-Major was unable to conceal a faint tightening of the lips at the news of Sayce escaping all punishment. No doubt he had supposed it would be a matter for the Commanding Officer this time.

‘Prisoner and escort — about turn — quick march — left wheel—’

They disappeared into the passage, like comedians retiring in good order from their act, only music lacking, CSM Cadwallader, with an agility perfected for such occasions, closing the door behind him without either pausing or turning.

Gwatkin sat back in his chair.

‘How was that?’ he asked.

‘All right. Jolly good.’

‘You thought so?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I think we shall see a change in Sayce,’ he said.

‘I hope so.’

This straight talk to Sayce on the part of Gwatkin had a stimulating effect, as it turned out, on Gwatkin, rather than Sayce. It cheered up Gwatkin greatly, made him easier to work with; Sayce, on the other hand, remained much what he had been before. The fact was Gwatkin needed drama in his life. For a brief moment drama had been supplied by Sayce. However, this love of the dramatic sent Gwatkin’s spirits both up and down. Not only did his own defeats upset him, but also, vicariously, what he considered defeats for the Battalion. He felt, for example, deeply dishonoured by the case of Deafy Morgan, certainly an unfortunate incident.

‘Somebody ought to have been shot for it,’ Gwatkin said at the time.

When we had arrived on this side of the water, Maelgwyn-Jones had given a talk to all ranks on the subject of internal security.

‘This Command is very different from the Division’s home ground,’ he said. ‘The whole population of this island is not waging war against Germany — only the North. A few miles away from here, over the Border, is a neutral state where German agents abound. There and on our side too elements exist hostile to Britain and her Allies. There have been cases of armed gangs holding up single soldiers separated from their main body, or trying to steal weapons by ruse. You may have noticed, even in this neighbourhood, that some of the corner boys look sullen when we pass and the children sing about hanging up washing on the Maginot — rather than the Siegfried — Line.’

Accordingly, rifles were checked and re-checked, and Gwatkin was given additional opportunity for indulging in those harangues to the Company which he so greatly enjoyed delivering:

‘Stand the men easy, Sergeant-Major,’ he would say. ‘No talking. Move up a little closer at the back so that you can hear me properly. Right. Now I want you all to attend very clearly to what I have to say. The Commanding Officer has ordered me to tell you once again you must all take care of your rifles, for a man’s rifle is his best friend in time of war, and a soldier is no longer a soldier when his weapon is gone from him. He is like a man who has had that removed which makes him a man, something sadder, more useless, than a miner who has lost his lamp, or a farmer his plough. As you know, we are fighting Hitler and his hordes, so this Company must show the stuff she is made of, and you must all take care of your rifles or I will put you on a serious charge which will bring you before the Colonel. There are those not far from here who would steal rifles for their own beastly purpose. That is no funny matter, losing a rifle, not like long hair nor a dirty button. There is a place at Aldershot called the Glasshouse, where men who have not taken proper care of their rifles do not like to visit a second time. Nevertheless, I would not threaten you. That is not how I wish to lead you. It is for the honour of the Regiment that you should guard your rifles, like you would guard your wife or your little sister. Moreover, it may be some of the junior NCOs have not yet a proper sense of their own responsibilities in the matter of rifles and others. You Corporals, you Lance-Corporals, consider these things in your hearts. All rifles will be checked at Pay Parade each week, so that a man will bring his rifle to the table when he receives his due, and where you must remember to come smartly to attention and look straight in front of you without moving. That is the way we shall all pull together, and, as we heard the Rev. Popkiss, our Chaplain, read out at Church Parade last Sunday, so may it be said of this Company: Arise Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam. So let your rifles be well guarded and be the smartest company of the Battalion both on parade and in the field. All right, Sergeant-Major …’

I was impressed by the speech, though there were moments when I thought Gwatkin’s listeners might deride the images he conjured up, such as a man losing what made him a man, or little sisters who had to be protected. On the contrary, the Company listened spellbound, giving a low grunt of emphasis when the Glasshouse was mentioned, like a cinema audience gasping aloud in pleasurable appreciation of some peculiarly agonising sequence of horror film. I remembered Bracey, my father’s soldier-servant, employing that very same phrase about his rifle being the soldier’s best friend. After twenty-five years, that sentiment had stood up well to the test of time and the development of more scientific weapons of war.

‘It does the lads good to be talked to like that,’ said CSM Cadwallader afterwards. ‘Captain does know how to speak. Very excellent would he have been to preach the Word.’

Even Gittins, whose inherent strain of scepticism was as strong as any in the Battalion, had enjoyed Gwatkin’s talk.

He told me so when I came to the Store later, to check supplies of web equipment held there.

‘A fine speech that was, the Skipper’s,’ said Gittins. ‘That should make the boys take care of their rifles proper, it should. And the rest of their stuff, too, I hope, and not come round here scrounging what they’ve lost off me, like a present at Christmas, it was.’

Kedward was less impressed

‘Rowland doesn’t half love jawing,’ he said, ‘I should just say so. But what’s he going to be like when we get into action, I wonder, he is so jumpy. Will he keep his head at that?’

The doubts Kedward felt about Gwatkin were to some extent echoed by Gwatkin himself in regard to Kedward.

‘Idwal is a good reliable officer in many ways,’ he confided his opinion to me, ‘but I’m not sure he has just the quality for leading men.’

‘The men like him.’

‘The men can like an officer without feeling he inspires them. Yanto told me the other day he thought the men liked Bithel. You wouldn’t say Bithel had the quality of leadership, would you?’

Gwatkin’s dislike of Bithel was given new impetus by the Deafy Morgan affair, which followed close on the homily about rifles. Deafy Morgan, as his cognomen — it was far more than a mere nickname — implied, was hard of hearing. In fact, he was as deaf as a post. Only in his middle to late thirties, he gave the impression — as miners of that age often do — of being much older than his years. His infirmity, in any case, set him apart from the hurly-burly of the younger soldiers’ life, giving him a mild, even beatific cast of countenance, an expression that seemed for ever untroubled by moral turmoil or disturbing thought. It was probably true to say that Deafy Morgan did not have many thoughts, disturbing or otherwise, because he was not outstandingly bright, although at the same time possessing all sorts of other good qualities. In short, Deafy Morgan was the precise antithesis of Sayce. Always spick and span, he was also prepared at all times to undertake boring or tedious dudes without the least complaint — in what could only be called the most Christlike spirit. Even among good soldiers, that is a singular quality in the army. No doubt it was one of the reasons why Deafy Morgan had not been relegated to the Second Line before the Division moved. Not at all fit, he would obviously have to be transferred sooner or later to the rear echelons. However, his survival was mainly due not so much to this habit of working without complaint, rare as that might be, as to the fact that everyone liked him. Besides, he had served as a Territorial longer than any other soldier in the ranks, wanted to remain with his friends — he was alleged to possess at home a nagging wife — so that no one in authority had had the heart to put Deafy Morgan’s name on whatever Army Form was required to effect his removal. He was in Bithel’s platoon.

Bithel himself had recently been appointed Musketry Officer. This was not on account of any notable qualifications for that duty, simply because the Battalion was short of officers on the establishment, several being also absent on courses. By this time Bithel’s individual status had become more clear to me. He was a small-town misfit, supporting himself in peacetime by odd jobs, preferably those on the outskirts of the theatrical world, living a life of solitude and toping, always on the verge of trouble, always somehow managing to extricate himself from anything serious. In the Battalion, there had been no repetition of the dance of love round the dummy, not anything comparable with that in exoticism. All the same, I suspected such expressions of Bithel’s personality were dormant rather than totally suppressed. He was always humble, even subservient, in manner, but this demeanour seemed to cloak a good opinion of himself, perhaps even delusions of grandeur.

‘Have you ever been interested in the Boy Scout movement?’ he asked. ‘I was keen about it at one time. Wonderful thing for boys. Gives them a chance. I threw it up in the end. Some of them are little brutes, you know. You’d never guess the things they say. I was surprised they knew about such matters. And their language among themselves. You wouldn’t credit it. I was told I was greatly missed after my resignation. They have a great deal of difficulty in getting suitable fellows to help. There are some nasty types about.’

The army is at once the worst place for egoists, and the best. Thus it was in many ways the worst for Bithel, always being ordered about and reprimanded, the best for Gwatkin, granted — anyway up to a point — the power and rank he desired. Nevertheless, in the army, as elsewhere, nothing is for ever. Maelgwyn-Jones truly said: ‘That day will pass, like other days in the army.’ Gwatkin’s ambition — the satisfaction of his ‘personal myth’, as General Conyers would have called it — might be temporarily realized, but there was always the danger that a re-posting, promotion, minor adjustment of duties, might alter everything. Even the obstacles set in the way of Bithel indulging the pottering he loved, could, for the same reasons, be alleviated, if not removed entirely. For instance, Bithel was tremendously pleased at being appointed Musketry Officer. There were several reasons for this. The job gave him a certain status, which he reasonably felt lacking, although there was probably less to do at the range than during the day by day training of a platoon. In addition, Bithel’s soldier-servant, Daniels, was on permanent duty at the butts.

‘I call him the priceless jewel,’ Bithel used to say. ‘You know how difficult it is to get a batman in this unit. They just don’t want to do the job, in spite of its advantages. Well, Daniels is a little marvel. I don’t say he’s always on time, or never forgets things. He fails in both quite often. But what I like about him is that he’s always got a cheerful word in all weathers. Besides, he’s as clean as a whistle. A real pleasure to look at when he’s doing PT, which is more than you can say for some of them in early morning. In any case, Daniels is not like all those young miners, nice boys as they are. He is more used to the world. You’re not boots for three months at the Green Dragon in my home town without hearing some gossip.’

Others took a less favourable view of Daniels, who, although skilled in juggling with dummy grenades, was in general regarded as light-fingered and sly. There was, I found in due course, nothing unusual in an officer being preoccupied — one might almost say obsessed — by the personality of his servant, though on the whole that was apt to occur in ranks senior to subaltern. The relationship seems to develop a curious state of intimacy in an unintimate society; one, I mean, far removed from anything to be thought of as overstepping established limits of propriety or everyday discipline. Indeed, so far from even approaching the boundaries of sexual aberration or military misconduct, the most normal of men, and conscientious of officers, often provided the most striking instances. Even my father, I remembered, had possessed an almost mystic bond with Bracey, certainly a man of remarkable qualities. It was a thing not easily explicable, perhaps demanded by the emotional conditions of an all-male society. Regular officers, for example, would sometimes go to great pains to prevent their servants suffering some deserved minor punishment for an infringement of routine. Such things made Bithel’s eulogies of Daniels no cause for comment. In any case, even if Bithel enjoyed the presence of Daniels at the range, it was not Daniels, but Deafy Morgan, who was source of all the trouble.

‘Why on earth did Bith ever send Deafy back there and then?’ said Kedward afterwards. ‘That bloody rifle could perfectly well have waited an hour or two before it was mended.’

The question was never cleared up. Perhaps Bithel was thereby given opportunity for a longer hob-nob with Daniels. Even if that were the object, I am sure nothing dubious took place between them, while the ‘musketry details’ were still at the butts. Anything of the sort would have been extremely difficult, even if Bithel had been prepared to take such a risk. Much more likely — Deafy Morgan being one of his own men — Bithel had some idea of avoiding, by immediate action, lack of a rifle in his platoon. Whatever the reason, Bithel sent Deafy Morgan back to barracks by himself with a rifle that had developed some defect requiring the attention of the Sergeant-Armourer. The range, where musketry instruction took place, was situated in a deserted stretch of country, two or three miles by road from the town. This distance could be reduced by taking a short cut across the fields. In wet weather the path across the fields was apt to be muddy, making the journey heavy going. Rain was not falling that day — some thing of a rarity — and Deafy Morgan chose the path through the fields.

‘I suppose I ought to have ordered him to go by road,’ Bithel said later. ‘But it takes such a lot of shouting to explain anything to the man.’

The incident occurred in a wood not far from the outskirts of the town. Deafy Morgan, by definition an easy victim to ambush, was surrounded by four young men, two of whom threatened him with pistols, while the other two possessed themselves of his rifle. Deafy Morgan struggled, but it was no good. The four of them made off at a run, disappearing behind a hedge, where, so the police reported later, a car had been waiting. There was nothing for Deafy Morgan to do but return to barracks and report the incident. Sergeant Pendry, as it happened, was Orderly Sergeant that day. He handled the trouble with notable competence. Contact was made with the Adjutant, who was touring the country in a truck in the course of preparing a ‘scheme’: the Constabulary, who handled such matters of civil subversion, were at once informed. Deafy Morgan was, of course, put under arrest. There was a considerable to-do. This was just such an incident as Maelgwyn-Jones outlined in his ‘internal security’ talk. The Constabulary, perfectly accustomed to ambuscades of this type, corroborated the presence of four suspects in the neighbourhood, who had later withdrawn over the Border. It was an unhappy episode, not least because Deafy Morgan was so popular a figure. Gwatkin, as I have said, was particularly disturbed by it. His mortification took the form of blaming all on Bithel.

‘The CO will have to get rid of him,’ Gwatkin said. ‘It can’t go on. He isn’t fit to hold a commission.’

‘I don’t see what old Bith could have done about it,’ said Breeze, ‘even though it was a bit irregular to send Deafy back on his own like that.’

‘It may not have been Bithel’s fault directly,’ said Gwatkin sternly, ‘but when something goes wrong under an officer’s command, the officer has to suffer. That may be unjust. He has to suffer all the same. In my opinion, there would be no injustice in this case. Why, I shouldn’t wonder if the Colonel himself was not superseded for this.’

That was true enough. Certainly the Commanding Officer was prepared for the worst, so far as his own appointment was concerned. He said so in the Mess more than once. However, in the end nothing so drastic took place. Deafy Morgan was courtmartialled, getting off with a reprimand, together with transfer to the Second Line and his nagging wife. He had put up some fight. In the circumstances, he could hardly be sent to detention for losing his weapon and failing to capture four youngish assailants for whom he had been wholly unprepared; having been certainly too deaf to hear either their approach, or, at an earlier stage, the substance of Maelgwyn-Jones’s security talk. The findings of the court-martial had just been promulgated, when the Battalion was ordered to prepare for a thirty-six-hour Divisional exercise, the first of its kind in which the unit had been concerned.

‘This is the new Divisional Commander making himself felt,’ said Kedward. ‘They say he is going to shake us up, right and proper.’

‘What’s he called?’

To those serving with a battalion, even brigadiers seem infinitely illustrious, the Divisional Commander, a remote, godlike figure.

‘Major-General Liddament,’ said Gwatkin. ‘He’s going to ginger things up, I hope.’

It was at the start of this thirty-six-hour exercise — reveille at 4.30 a.m., and the first occasion we were to use the new containers for hot food — that I noticed all was not well with Sergeant Pendry. He did not get the Platoon on parade at the right time. That was very unlike him. Pendry had, in fact, shown no sign of breaking down after a few weeks energetic work, in the manner of Breeze’s warning about NCOs who could not perform their promise. On the contrary, he continued to work hard, and his good temper had something of Corporal Gwylt’s liveliness about it. No one could be expected to look well at that hour of the morning, but Sergeant Pendry’s face was unreasonably greenish at breakfast, like Gwatkin’s after the crossing, something more than could be attributed to early rising. I thought he must have been drinking the night before, a foolish thing to do as he knew the early hour of reveille. On the whole, there was very little drinking throughout the Battalion — indeed, small opportunity for it with the pressure of training — but Pendry had some reputation in the Sergeants’ Mess for capacity in sinking a pint or two. I thought perhaps the moment had come when Breeze’s prediction was now going to be justified, that Pendry had suddenly reached the point when he could no longer sustain an earlier efficiency. The day therefore opened badly, Gwatkin justifiably angry that my Platoon’s unpunctuality left him insufficient time to inspect the Company as thoroughly as he wished, before parading with the rest of the Battalion. We were to travel by bus to an area some way from our base, where the exercise was to take place.

‘Oh, I do like to ride in a smart motor-car,’ said Corporal Gwylt. ‘A real pleasure it is to spin along.’

Sergeant Pendry, usually as noisy as any of them, sat silent at the back of the bus, looking as if he might vomit at any moment. Outside, it was raining as usual. We drove across a desolate plain set against a background of vast grey skies, arriving at our destination an hour or two later. Gwatkin had gone ahead in his Company Commander’s truck. He was waiting impatiently by the road when the platoons arrived.

‘Get the men off the buses at once,’ he said, ‘and on to the other side of the road — and get some ack-ack defence out, and an anti-gas scout — and have the buses facing up the lane towards that tree, with No. 2 Platoon’s vehicle at the head, not where it is now. Do that right away. Then send a runner to B Company to cancel the earlier message that we are going to recce the country on the left flank between us. That order has been changed to the right flank. Now, I want to say a word of warning to all Platoon Commanders before I attend the Commanding Officer’s conference for Company Commanders. I wish to make clear that I am not at all satisfied so far today. You’ve none of you shown any drive up to date. It’s a bad show. You’ve got to do better, or there will be trouble. Understand? Right. You can rejoin your platoons.’

He had draped a rubber groundsheet round him like a cloak, which, with his flattish-brimmed steel helmet, transformed him into a figure from the later Middle Ages, a captain-of-arms of the Hundred Years War, or the guerrilla campaigning of Owen Glendower. I suddenly saw that was where Gwatkin belonged, rather than to the soldiery of modern times, the period which captured his own fancy. Rain had wetted his moustache, causing it to droop over the corners of the mouth, like those belonging to effigies on tombs or church brasses. Persons at odds with their surroundings not infrequently suggest an earlier historical epoch. Gwatkin was not exactly at odds with the rest of the world. In many ways, he was the essence of conventional behaviour. At the same time, he never mixed with others on precisely their own terms. Perhaps people suspected — disapproved — his vaulting dreams. The platoons had by this time, after much shouting and commanding, unwillingly withdrawn from the comfort of the buses into the pouring rain, and were gloomily forming up.

‘Rowland is in a bloody rotten temper this morning,’ said Breeze. ‘What did he want to bite our heads off for?’

‘He’s in a state,’ said Kedward. ‘He nearly left his maps behind. He would have done, if I had not reminded him. Why were you late, Nick? That started Rowland being browned off.’

‘Had some trouble with Sergeant Pendry. He doesn’t seem well today.’

‘I heard the Sergeant-Major say something about Pendry last night,’ said Breeze. ‘Did you hear what it was, Idwal?’

‘Something about his leave,’ said Kedward. ‘Just like old Cadwallader to tackle Rowland about an NCO’s leave when he was in the middle of preparing for the exercise.’

Gwatkin returned some minutes later, the transparent talc surface of his map-cover marked all over with troop dispositions shown in chinagraph pencil of different colours. ‘The Company is in support,’ he said. ‘Come over here, Platoon Commanders, and look at the map.’

He started to explain what we had to do, beginning with a few general principles regarding a company ‘in support’; then moving on to the more specific technical requirements of the moment. These two aspects of the operation merged into an interwoven mass of instruction and disquisition, no doubt based, in the first instance, on sound military doctrine, but not a little confusing after being put through the filter of Gwatkin’s own complex of ideas. He had obviously pondered the theory of being ‘in support’, poring in his spare time over the pages of Infantry Training. In addition, Gwatkin had also memorized with care phrases used by the Commanding Officer in the course of his issue of orders … start-line … RVs … forming-up areas … B echelon … These milestones in the efficiency of the manoeuvre were certainly intended to be considered in relation to ground and other circumstances; in short, left largely to the discretion of the junior commander himself. However, that was not the way Gwatkin looked at things. Although he liked saying that he wanted freedom to make his own tactical arrangements, he always found it hard to disregard the words of the textbook, or those of a comparatively senior officer. By the time he had finished talking, it was clear the Company was to be put through every movement possible to associate with the state of being ‘in support’.

‘Right,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Any questions?’

There were no questions; chiefly because of the difficulty in disentangling one single item from the whole. We checked map references; synchronised watches. Rain had stopped falling. The day was still grey, but warmer. When I returned to my platoon trouble was in progress. Sayce, the near criminal, was having an altercation with Jones, D., who carried the anti-tank rifle. As usual, Sayce was morally in the wrong, though technically perhaps on this occasion in the right. That was if Sayce were telling the truth, in itself most improbable. The row was something to do with a case of ammunition. In ordinary circumstances, Sergeant Pendry would have cleared up in a moment anything of this sort. In his present state, higher authority had to be brought in. I adjudicated, leaving both contestants with a sense of grievance. We moved off across open country. At first I closely followed Gwatkin’s instructions; then, finding my Platoon lagging behind Breeze and his men, took them on at greater speed. Even so, when we arrived, later in the morning, at the field where the Company was to reassemble, much time had been lost by the formality of the manoeuvring. The men were ‘stood easy’, then allowed to lie on the grass with groundsheets beneath them.

‘Wait orders here,’ said Gwatkin.

He was still in that tense state which desire to excel always brought about in him. However, his temper was better than earlier in the day. He spoke of the ingenuity of the tactical system as laid down in the book, the manner in which the Company had put this into practice.

‘It’s all worked out to the nearest minute,’ he said.

Then he strolled away, and began to survey the country through field-glasses.

‘That’s bloody well wrong,’ said Kedward, under his breath. ‘We ought to be a mile further on at least, if we’re going to be any use at the Foremost Defended Localities when the moment comes.’

Holding no strong views on the subject myself, I was inclined to think Kedward right. All was confusion. I had only a very slight idea what was happening by now, and what role the Company should rightly play. I should have liked to lie on the ground and stretch my legs out like the men, instead of having to be on the alert for Gwatkin’s next order and superintend a dozen small matters. Some minutes later a runner came up with a written message for Gwatkin.

‘Good God,’ he said.

Something had evidently gone badly amiss. Gwatkin took off his helmet and shook the rain from it. He looked about him hopelessly.

‘It hasn’t worked out right,’ he said agitatedly.

‘What hasn’t?’

‘Fall in your men at once,’ he said. ‘It’s long past the time when we should have been in position. That’s what the message says.’

Instead of being close up behind the company we were supposed to support, here we were, in fact, hanging about miles away; still occupied, I suppose, with some more preliminary involution of Gwatkin’s labyrinthine tactical performance. Kedward was right. We ought to have been advancing at greater speed. Gwatkin had done poorly. Now, he began to issue orders right and left. However, before anything much could happen, another runner appeared. This one carried an order instructing Gwatkin to halt his company for the time being, while we ‘let through’ another company, by now close on our heels. Like golfers who have lost their ball, we allowed this company to pass between our deployed ranks. They were on their way to do the job assigned to ourselves. Bithel was one of their platoon commanders. He trotted by quite near me, red in the face, panting like a dog. As he came level, he paused for a moment.

‘Haven’t got an aspirin about you?’ he asked.

‘Afraid not.’

‘Forgot to bring mine.’

‘Sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said, loosening the helmet from his forehead for a moment, ‘just felt an aspirin might be the answer.’

His teeth clicked metallically. He hurried on again to catch up his men, rejoining the platoon as they were already beginning to disappear from sight. We ‘stood by’ for ages, awaiting an order.

‘Can the men sit down again?’ asked Breeze.

‘No,’ said Gwatkin.

He was deeply humiliated by these circumstances, standing silent, fidgeting with his revolver holster. At last the order came. Gwatkin’s company was to proceed by road to Battalion Headquarters in the field. He was himself to report to the Commanding Officer forthwith.

‘I’ve let the whole Battalion down,’ he muttered, as he went off towards his Company Commander’s truck.

Kedward thought the same.

‘Did you ever see such frigging about,’ he said. ‘Why, even as it was, I was behindhand in bringing my platoon up level with the main body of the Company, and by then I’d cut out at least half the things Rowland had told me to do. If I’d done them all, it would have taken a week. We wouldn’t even have got as far as that field where we had a breather.’

We set off for Battalion HQ. By the time I brought my platoon in, it was late in the afternoon. Rain had begun to fall again. The place was a clearing in some woods where field kitchens had been set up. At last there was prospect of something to eat, a subject much on the men’s minds, scarcely less on my own. I was very ready for a meal, breakfast soon after 5 a.m. by now a long way off. For some reason, probably because it was becoming hard to obtain, I carried no chocolate in my haversack. Gwatkin was waiting for us when we arrived. From his appearance it was clear he had been hauled pretty roughly over the coals by the Commanding Officer for failure to bring up the Company in time earlier that day. His face was white.

‘You are to take your platoon out at once on patrol,’ he said.

‘But they’ve had no dinner.’

‘The men just have time for a mouthful, if they’re quick. You can’t. I’ve got to go over the map with you. You are to make a recce, then act as a Standing Patrol. It can’t be helped that you haven’t eaten yourself.’

He gave the impression of rather enjoying this opportunity for working off his feelings. There seemed no necessity to underline the fact that I was to starve until further notice. Whatever the Commanding Officer had said had certainly not improved Gwatkin’s state of mind. He was thoroughly upset. His hand shook when he pointed his pencil at names on the map. He was in a vile temper.

‘You will take your men up to this point,’ he said. ‘There you will establish an HQ. Here is the canal. At this map reference the Pioneers have thrown a rope bridge across. You will personally cross by the rope bridge and make a recce of the far bank from here to here. Then return to your platoon and carry out the duties of a Standing Patrol as laid down in Infantry Training, having reported the map reference of your HQ by runner to me at this point here. In due course I shall come and inspect the position and receive your report. All right?’

‘Yes.’

He handed over some map references.

‘Any questions?’

‘None.’

Gwatkin strode off. I returned to my platoon, far from pleased. The fact that missing a meal or two in the army must be regarded — certainly by an officer — as all in the day’s work, makes these occasions no more acceptable. Sergeant Pendry was falling in the men when I returned to the area of the wood that had been allotted to the Platoon. They were grumbling at the hurried nature of dinner, complaining the stew had ‘tasted’ from being kept in the new containers. The only bright spot was that we were to be transported by truck some of the distance towards the place where we were to undertake these duties. Thirty men take an age to get on, or off, a vehicle of any kind. Jones, D., slipped while climbing up over the wheel, dropping the anti-tank rifle — that inordinately heavy, already obsolete weapon — on the foot of Williams, W. H., the platoon runner, putting him temporarily out of action. Sayce now began a long story about feeling faint, perhaps as a result of eating the stew, and what the MO had said about some disease he, Sayce, was suffering from. These troubles were unwillingly presented to me through the sceptical medium of Corporal Gwylt. I was in no mood for pity. If the meal had made Sayce feel queasy, that was better than having no meal at all. Such was my answer. All these things obstructed progress for about ten minutes. I feared Gwatkin might return to find reasonable cause for complaint in this delay, but Gwatkin had disappeared, bent on making life uncomfortable for someone else, or perhaps anxious only to find a quiet place where he could himself mope for a short period, while recovering his own morale. Sergeant Pendry was still showing less than his usual vigour in keeping things on the move. There could be no doubt Breeze had been right about Pendry, I thought, unless he turned out to be merely unwell, sickening for some illness, rather than suffering from a hangover. He dragged his feet when he walked, hardly able to shout out a command. I took him aside as the last man settled into the truck.

‘Are you feeling all right, Sergeant?’

He looked at me as if he did not understand.

‘All right, sir?’

‘You got something to eat with the others just now?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘Enough?’

‘Plenty there, sir. Didn’t feel much like food, it was.’

‘Are you sick?’

‘Not too good, sir.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Don’t know just what, sir.’

‘But you must know if you’re feeling ill.’

‘Had a bit of a shock back home, it was.’

This was no time to go into the home affairs of the platoon’s personnel, now that at last we were ready and I wanted to give the driver the order to move off.

‘Have a word with me when we get back to barracks.’

‘All right, sir.’

I climbed into the truck beside the driver. We travelled several miles as far as some crossroads. There we left the truck, which returned to its base. Platoon HQ was set up in a dilapidated cowshed, part of the buildings of a small farm that lay not far away across the fields. When everything was pretty well established in the cowshed, including the siting of the imaginary 2-inch mortar which travelled round with us, I went off to look for the rope bridge over the canal. This was found without much difficulty. A corporal was in charge. I explained my mission, and enquired about the bridge’s capacity.

‘It do wobble a fair trifle, sir.’

‘Stand by while I cross.’

‘That I will, sir.’

I started to make the transit, falling in after about three or four yards. The water might have been colder for the time of year. I swam the rest of the way, reaching the far bank not greatly wetter than the rain had left me. There I wandered about for a time, making notes of matters to be regarded as important in the circumstances. After that, I came back to the canal, and, disillusioned as to the potentialities of the rope bridge, swam across again. The canal banks were fairly steep, but the corporal helped me out of the water. He did not seem in the least surprised to find that I had chosen this method of return in preference to his bridge.

‘Very shaky, those rope bridges,’ was all he said.

By now it was dark, rain still falling. I returned to the cowshed. There a wonderful surprise was waiting. It appeared that Corporal Gwylt, accompanied by Williams, W. H., had visited the neighbouring farm and managed to wheedle from the owners a jug of tea.

‘We saved a mug for you, sir. Wet you are, by Christ, too.’

I could have embraced him. The tea was of the kind Uncle Giles used to call ‘a good sergeant-major’s brew’. It tasted like the best champagne. I felt immediately ten years younger, hardly wet at all.

‘She was a big woman that gave us that jug of tea, she was,’ said Corporal Gwylt.

He addressed Williams, W. H.

‘Ah, she was,’ agreed Williams, W. H.

He looked thoughtful. Good at running and singing, he was otherwise not greatly gifted.

‘She made me afraid, she did,’ said Corporal Gwylt. ‘I would have been afraid of that big woman in a little bed.’

‘Indeed, I would too that,’ said Williams, W. H., looking as if he were sincere in the opinion.

‘Would you not have been afraid of her, Sergeant Pendry, a great big woman twice your size?’

‘Shut your mouth,’ said Sergeant Pendry, with unexpected force. ‘Must you ever be talking of women?’

Corporal Gwylt was not at all put out.

‘I would be even more afeared of her in a big bed,’ he said reflectively.

We finished our tea. A runner came in, brought by a sentry, with a message from Gwatkin. It contained an order to report to him at a map reference in half an hour’s time. The place of meeting turned out to be the crossroads not far from the cowshed.

‘Shall I take the jug back, Corporal?’ asked Williams, W. H.

‘No, lad, I’ll return that jug,’ said Corporal Gwylt. ‘If I have your permission, sir?’

‘Off you go, but don’t stay all night.’

‘I won’t take long, sir.’

Gwylt disappeared with the jug. The weather was clearing up now. There was a moon. The air was fresh. When the time came, I went off to meet Gwatkin. Water dripped from the trees, but a little wetness, more or less, was by then a matter of indifference. I stood just off the road while I waited, expecting Gwatkin would be late. However, the truck appeared on time. The vehicle drew up in the moonlight just beside me. Gwatkin stepped out. He gave the driver instructions about a message he was to take and the time he was to return to this same spot. The truck drove off. Gwatkin began to stride slowly up the road. I walked beside him.

‘Everything all right, Nick?’

I told him what we had been doing, giving the results of the reconnaissance on the far side of the canal

‘Why are you so wet?’

‘Fell off the rope bridge into the canal.’

‘And swam?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was good,’ he said, as if it had been a brilliant idea to swim.

‘How are things going in the battle?’

‘The fog of war has descended.’

That was a favourite phrase of Gwatkin’s. He seemed to derive support from it. There was a pause. Gwatkin began to fumble in his haversack. After a moment he brought out quite a sizeable bar of chocolate.

‘I brought this for you,’ he said.

‘Thanks awfully, Rowland.’

I broke off a fairly large portion and handed the rest back to him.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all for you.’

‘All this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you really spare it?’

‘It’s meant for you. I thought you might not have any chocolate with you.’

‘I hadn’t.’

He returned to the subject of the exercise, explaining, so far as possible, the stage things had reached, what our immediate movements were to be. I gnawed the chocolate. I had forgotten how good chocolate could be, wondering why I had never eaten more of it before the war. It was like a drug, entirely altering one’s point of view. I felt suddenly almost as warmly towards Gwatkin as to Corporal Gwylt, though nothing would ever beat that first sip of tea. Gwatkin and I had stopped by the side of the road to look at his map in the moonlight. Now he closed the case, buttoning down its flap.

‘I’m sorry I sent you off like that without any lunch,’ he said.

‘That was the order.’

‘No,’ said Gwatkin. ‘It wasn’t.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘There would have been lots of time for you to have had something to eat,’ he said.

I did not know what to answer.

‘I had to work off on someone that rocket the CO gave me,’ he said. ‘You were the only person I could get at — anyway the first one I saw when I came back from the Colonel. He absolutely took the hide off me. I’d have liked to order the men off, too, right away, without their dinner, but I knew I’d only get another rocket — an even bigger one — if it came out they’d missed a meal unnecessarily through an order of mine.’

I felt this a handsome apology, a confession that did Gwatkin credit. Even so, his words were nothing to the chocolate. There were still a few remains clinging to my mouth. I licked them from the back of my teeth.

‘Of course you’ve got to go,’ said Gwatkin vehemently, ‘lunch or no lunch, if it’s an order. Go and get caught up on a lot of barbed wire and be riddled by machine-gun fire, stabbed to death with bayonets against a wall, walk into a cloud of poison gas without a mask, face a flame-thrower in a narrow street. Anything. I don’t mean that.’

I agreed, at the same time feeling no immediate necessity to dwell at length on such undoubtedly valid aspects of military duty. It seemed best to change the subject. Gwatkin had made amends — one of the rarest things for anyone to attempt in life — now he must be distracted from cataloguing further disagreeable potentialities to be encountered in the course of a soldier’s life.

‘Sergeant Pendry hasn’t been very bright today,’ I said. ‘I think he must be sick.’

‘I wanted to talk to you about Pendry,’ said Gwatkin.

‘You noticed he was in poor shape?’

‘He came to me last night. There wasn’t time to tell you before, with all the preparations going on for the exercise — or at least I forgot to tell you.’

‘What’s wrong with Pendry?’

‘His wife, Nick.’

‘What about her?’

‘Pendry had a letter from a neighbour saying she was carrying on with another man.’

‘I see.’

‘You keep on reading in the newspapers that the women of this country are making a splendid war effort,’ said Gwatkin, speaking with all that passion which would well up in him at certain moments. ‘If you ask me, I think they are making a splendid effort to sleep with as many other men as possible while their husbands are away.’

Even if that were an exaggeration, as expressed by Gwatkin, it had to be admitted letters of this kind were common enough. I remembered my brother-in-law, Chips Lovell, once saying: ‘The popular Press always talk as if only the rich committed adultery. One really can’t imagine a more snobbish assumption.’ Certainly no one who administered the Company’s affairs for a week or two would make any mistake on that score. I asked Gwatkin if details were known about Pendry’s case. None seemed available.

‘It makes you sick,’ Gwatkin said.

‘I suppose the men have some fun too. It isn’t only the women. Not that any of us are given much time for it here — except perhaps Corporal Gwylt.’

‘It’s different for a man,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Unless he gets mixed up with a woman who makes him forget his duty.’

These words recalled a film Moreland and I had seen together in days before the war. A Russian officer — the story had been set in Tsarist times — had reprimanded an unpunctual subordinate with just that phrase: ‘A woman who causes a man to neglect his duty is not worth a moment’s consideration.’ The young lieutenant in the film, so far as I could remember, had arrived late on parade because he had been spending the night with the Colonel’s mistress. Afterwards, Moreland and I had often quoted to each other that stern conclusion.

‘It’s just the way you look at it,’ Moreland had said. ‘I know Matilda, for instance, would take the line that no woman was worth a moment’s consideration unless she were capable of making a man neglect his duty. Barnby, on the other hand, would say no duty was worth a moment’s consideration if it forced you to neglect women. These things depend so much on the subjective approach.’

I wondered if Gwatkin had seen the film too, and memorized that scrap of dialogue as a sentiment which appealed to him. On the whole it was unlikely that the picture, comparatively highbrow, had penetrated so deep in provincial distribution. Probably Gwatkin had simply elaborated the idea for himself. It was a high-minded, hut not specially original one. Widmerpool, for example, when involved with Gypsy Jones, had spoken of never again committing himself with a woman who took his mind from his work. Gwatkin rarely spoke of his own wife. He had once mentioned that her father was in bad health, and, if he died, his mother-in-law would have to come and live with them.

‘What are you going to do about Pendry?’ I asked.

‘Arrange for him to have some leave as soon as possible. I’m afraid that will deprive you of a platoon sergeant.’

‘Pendry will have to go on leave sooner or later in any case. Besides, he’s not much use in his present state.’

‘The sooner Pendry goes, the sooner he will bring all this trouble to a stop.’

‘If he can.’

Gwatkin looked at me with surprise.

‘Everything will come right when he gets back home,’ he said.

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘Don’t you think Pendry will be able to deal with his wife?’

‘I don’t know anything about her.’

‘You mean she might want to go off with this other man?’

‘Anything might happen. Pendry might do her in. You can’t tell.’

Gwatkin hesitated a moment.

‘You know that Rudyard Kipling book the other night?’

‘Yes.’

‘There are sort of poems at the beginning of the stories.’

‘Yes?’

‘One of them always stuck in my head — at least bits of it. I can never remember all the words of anything like that.’

Gwatkin stopped again. I feared he thought he had already said too much, and was not going to admit the verse of his preference.

‘Which one?’

‘It was about — was it some Roman god?’

‘Oh, Mithras.’

‘You remember it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Extraordinary.’

Gwatkin looked as if he could scarcely credit such a mental feat.

‘As you said, Rowland, it’s my profession to read a lot. But what about Mithras?’

‘Where it says “Mithras also a soldier—”’

Gwatkin seemed to think that sufficient clue, that I must be able to guess by now all he hoped to convey. He did not finish the line.

‘Something about helmets scorching the forehead and sandals burning the feet. I can’t imagine anything worse than marching in sandals, especially on those cobbled Roman roads.’

Gwatkin disregarded the logistic problem of sandal-shod infantry. He was very serious.

‘ “—keep us pure till the dawn”,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘What do you make of that?’

‘Probably a very necessary prayer for a Roman legionary.’

Again, Gwatkin did not laugh.

‘Does that mean women?’ he asked, as if the notion had only just struck him.

‘I suppose so.’

I controlled temptation to make flippant suggestions about other, more recondite vices, for which, with troops of such mixed origin as Rome’s legions, the god’s hasty moral intervention might be required. That sort of banter did not at all fit in with Gwatkin’s mood. Equally pointless, even hopelessly pedantic, would be a brief exegesis explaining that the Roman occupation of Britain, historically speaking, was rather different from the picture in the book. At best one would end up in an appalling verbal tangle about the relationship of fact and poetry.

‘Those lines make you think,’ said Gwatkin slowly.

‘About toeing the line?’

‘Make you glad you’re married,’ he said. ‘Don’t have to bother any more about women.’

He turned back towards the place where we had first met. There was the sound of a car further up the road. The truck came into sight again. Gwatkin abandoned further speculations about Mithras. He became once more the Company Commander.

‘We’ve talked so much I haven’t inspected your platoon position,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing special I ought to see there?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Bring your men right away to the place I showed you on the map. We’ve got some farm buildings for a billet tonight. It’s not far from here. Everyone will have a bit of a rest. Nothing much expected of us until midday tomorrow All right?’

‘All right.’

He climbed into the truck. It drove off again. I returned to the platoon. Sergeant Pendry came forward to report. He looked just as he had looked that morning; no better, no worse.

‘Captain Gwatkin just had a word with me about your leave, Sergeant. We’ll arrange that as soon as the exercise is over.’

‘Thank you very much, sir.’

He spoke tonelessly, as if the question of leave did not interest him in the least.

‘Fall the platoon in now. We’re billeted in a farm near here. There’s prospect of some sleep.’

‘Right, sir.’

As usual, the distance to march turned out further than expected. Rain came on again. However, the farm buildings were pretty comfortable when we arrived. The platoon was accommodated in a thatched barn where there was plenty of straw. Corporal Gwylt, as always, was unwilling to believe that agricultural surroundings could ever be tolerable.

‘Oh, what nasty smells there are here,’ he said. ‘I do not like all these cows.’

I slept like a log that night. It must have been soon after breakfast the following morning, when I was checking sentry duties with Sergeant Pendry, that Breeze hurried into the barn to issue a warning.

‘A staff car flying the Divisional Commander’s pennon has just stopped by the road,’ Breeze said. ‘It must be a snap inspection by the General. Rowland says get all the men cleaning weapons or otherwise usefully occupied forthwith.’

He rushed off to warn Kedward. I set about generating activity in the barn. Some of the platoon were at work removing mud from their equipment. Those not so obviously engaged on a useful task were found other commendable occupations. All was in order within a few minutes. This was not a moment too soon. There was the sound of a party of people approaching the barn. I looked out, and saw the General, his ADC and Gwatkin slopping through the mud of the farmyard.

‘They’re coming, Sergeant Pendry.’

They entered the barn. Sergeant Pendry called those assembled to attention. It was at once obvious that General Liddament was not in the best of tempers. He was a serious looking man, young for his rank, cleanshaven, with the air of a scholar rather than a soldier. His recent taking over of the Division’s command was already to be noticed in small matters of routine. Though regarded by regular soldiers as something of a military pedant — so Maelgwyn-Jones had told Gwatkin — General Liddament was said to be an officer with ideas of his own. Possibly in order to counteract this reputation for an excessive precision in approach to his dudes, an imperfection of which he was probably aware and hoped to correct, the General allowed himself certain informalities of dress and turn-out. For example, he carried a long stick, like the wand of a verger in a cathedral, and wore a black-and-brown check scarf thrown carelessly about his neck. A hunting horn was thrust between the buttons of his battle-dress blouse. Maelgwyn-Jones also reported that two small dogs on a lead sometimes accompanied General Liddament, causing great disturbance when they squabbled with each other. Today must have been too serious an occasion for these animals to be with him. The presence of dogs would have increased his air of being a shepherd or huntsman, timeless in conception, depicted in the idealized pastoral scene of some engraving. However, General Liddament’s manner of speaking had none of this mild, bucolic tone.

‘Tell them to carry on,’ he said, pointing his long stick at me. ‘What’s the name of this officer?’

‘Second-lieutenant Jenkins, sir,’ said Gwatkin, who was under great strain.

‘How long have you been with this unit, Jenkins?’

I told the General, who nodded. He asked some further questions. Then he turned away, as if he had lost all interest in me, all interest in human beings at all, and began rummaging furiously about the place with his stick. After exploring the corners of the barn, he set about poking at the roof.

‘Have your men been dry here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There is a leak in the thatch here.’

‘There is a leak in that corner, sir, but the men slept the other end.’

The General, deep in thought, continued his prodding for some seconds without visible effect. Then, as he put renewed energy into the thrusts of his stick, which penetrated far into the roofing, a large piece of under-thatch all at once descended from above, narrowly missing General Liddament himself, completely overwhelming his ADC with debris of dust, twigs and loam. At that, the General abandoned his activities, as if at last satisfied. Neither he nor anyone else made any comment, nor was any amusement expressed. The ADC, a pink-faced young man, blushed hotly and set about cleaning himself up. The General turned to me again.

‘What did your men have for breakfast, Jenkins?’

‘Liver, sir.’

I was impressed by his retention of my name.

‘What else?’

‘Jam, sir.’

‘What else?’

‘Bread, sir — and margarine.’

‘Porridge?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘No issue, sir.’

The General turned savagely on Gwatkin, who had fallen into a kind of trance, but now started agonisingly to life again.

‘No porridge?’

‘No porridge, sir.’

General Liddament pondered this assertion for some seconds in resentful silence. He seemed to be considering porridge in all its aspects, bad as well as good. At last he came out with an unequivocal moral judgment.

‘There ought to be porridge,’ he said.

He glared round at the platoon, hard at work with their polishing, oiling, pulling-through, whatever they were doing. Suddenly he pointed his stick at Williams, W. H., the platoon runner.

‘Would you have liked porridge?’

Williams, W.H., came to attention. As I have said, Williams, W.H., was good on his feet and sang well. Otherwise, he was not particularly bright.

‘No, sir,’ he said instantly, as if that must be the right answer.

The General was taken aback. It would not be too much to say he was absolutely staggered.

‘Why not?’

General Liddament spoke sharply, but seriously, as if some excuse like religious scruple about eating porridge would certainly be accepted as valid.

‘Don’t like it, sir.’

‘You don’t like porridge?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then you’re a foolish fellow — a very foolish fellow.’

After saying that, the General stood in silence, as if in great distress of mind, holding his long staff at arm’s length from him, while he ground it deep into the earthy surface of the barnhouse floor. He appeared to be trying to contemplate as objectively as possible the concept of being so totally excluded from the human family as to dislike porridge. His physical attitude suggested a holy man doing penance vicariously for the sin of those in his spiritual care. All at once he turned to the man next to Williams, W. H., who happened to be Sayce.

‘Do you like porridge?’ he almost shouted.

Sayce’s face, obstinate, dishonest, covered with pock-marks showed determination to make trouble if possible, at the same time uncertainty as how best to achieve that object. For about half a minute Sayce turned over in his mind the pros and cons of porridge eating, just as he might reflect on the particular excuse most effective in extenuation of a dirty rifle barrel. Then he spoke.

‘Well, sir—’ he began.

General Liddament abandoned Sayce immediately for Jones, D.

‘—and you?’

‘No sir,’ said Jones, D., also speaking with absolute assurance that a negative answer was expected of him.

‘—and you?’

‘No, sir,’ said Rees.

Moving the long stick with feverish speed, as if he were smelling out witches, the General pointed successively at Davies, J., Davies, E., Ellis, Clements, Williams, G.

No one had time to answer. There was a long pause at the end of the line. Corporal Gwylt stood there. He had been supervising the cleaning of the bren. General Liddament, whose features had taken on an expression of resignation, stood now leaning forward, resting his chin on the top of the stick, his head looking like a strange, rather malignant totem at the apex of a pole. He fixed his eyes on Gwylt’s cap badge, as if ruminating on the history of the Regiment symbolized in the emblems of its design.

‘And you, Corporal,’ he asked, this time quite quietly. ‘Do you like porridge?’

An enormous smile spread over Corporal Gwylt’s face.

‘Oh, yes, yes, sir,’ he said, ‘I do like porridge. I did just wish we had had porridge this morning.’

Slowly General Liddament straightened himself. He raised the stick so that its sharp metal point almost touched the face of Corporal Gwylt.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘look, all of you. He may not be the biggest man in the Division, but he is a sturdy fellow, a good type. There is a man who eats porridge. Some of you would do well to follow his example.’

With these words, the Divisional Commander strode out of the barn. He was followed by Gwatkin and the ADC, the last still covered from head to foot with thatch. They picked their way through the mud towards the General’s car. A minute later, the pennon disappeared from sight. The inspection was over.

‘The General is a funny-looking chap,’ said Breeze afterwards. ‘But there’s not much he misses. He asked where the latrines were constructed. When I showed him, he told me dig them downwind next time.’

‘Just the same with me,’ said Kedward. ‘He made some of the platoon turn up the soles of their boots to see if they wanted mending. I was glad I had checked them last week.’

We returned from the exercise to find Germany had invaded Norway and Denmark.

‘The war’s beginning now,’ said Gwatkin. ‘It won’t be long before we’re in it.’

His depression about failing to provide ‘support’ in the field was to some extent mitigated by the Company tying for first place in a practice march across country. In fact, at the time when Sergeant Pendry returned from his leave, Gwatkin certainly felt his prestige as a Company Commander in the ascendant. Pendry on the other hand — who had left for home almost immediately after the termination of the thirty-six-hour exercise — came back looking almost as gloomy as before. He returned, however, far more capable of carrying out his duties. No one knew how, if at all, he had settled his domestic troubles. I had never seen a man so greatly changed in the course of a few weeks. From being broad and heavily built, Pendry had become thin and haggard, his formerly glittering blue eyes sunken and glassy. All the same, he could be relied upon once more as Platoon Sergeant. His energy was renewed, though now all the cheerfulness that had once made him such a good NCO was gone. There was no more lateness on parade or forgetting of orders: there was also no more good-natured bustling along of the platoon. Pendry nowadays lost his temper easily, was morose when things went wrong. In spite of this change, there was little to complain of in his work. I told Gwatkin of this improvement.

‘I expect Pendry put his foot down,’ Gwatkin said. ‘It’s the only way with women. There should be no more difficulty with him now.’

I felt less certain. However, Pendry’s troubles were forgotten. There were other things to think about. He simply settled down as a different sort of person. That happened long before the incident at the road-blocks, by which time everyone was used to Pendry in his new character.

‘When Cadwallader goes, which he’ll have to, sooner or later,’ Gwatkin said, ‘Pendry will have to be considered for CSM.’

The road-blocks were concrete pill-boxes constructed throughout the Command to impede an enemy, should the Germans decide to invade this island in the first instance. In addition to normal guard routines, road-blocks were manned after dark, the Orderly Officer inspecting them in turn throughout the night. This inspection continued, until dawn, when there was time for him to have a couple of hours sleep before coming on parade. Breeze had been Orderly Officer that day: Sergeant Pendry, NCO in charge of roadblocks. By one of the anomalies of Battalion arrangements, Pendry had been on quarter-guard, followed by a Brigade night exercise, so that ‘road-blocks’ made his third night running with little or no sleep. It was bad luck, but for some reason — probably chronic shortage of sergeants — there was no avoiding this situation. I spoke a word of condolence on the subject.

‘Do not worry, sir,’ Pendry said. ‘I do not seem to want much sleep now, it is.’

That was a surprising answer. In the army, sleep is prized more than anything else; beyond food, beyond even tea. I decided to speak again to Gwatkin about Pendry, find out whether, as Company Commander, he thought all was well. I felt guilty about having allowed Pendry’s situation to slip from my mind. He might be on the verge of a breakdown. Disregard for sleep certainly suggested something of the sort. Trouble could be avoided by looking into matters. However, such precautions, even if they had proved effective, were planned too late in the day. The rest of the story came out at the Court of Inquiry. Its main outlines were fairly clear. Breeze had made his inspection of the pill-box where Pendry was on duty, found all correct, moved on in the Orderly Officer’s truck to the next post. About ten minutes after Breeze’s departure, the sentry on duty in the pill-box noticed suspicious movements by some tumbledown sheds and fences further up the road. That is, the sentry thought he saw suspicious movements. This may have been his imagination. The Deafy Morgan affair had shown the possibility of hostility from other than German sources. What was going on in the shadows might indicate preparations for some similar aggression. Sergeant Pendry said he would investigate these activities himself. His rifle was loaded. He approached the sheds, where he disappeared from sight. Nothing was seen in that direction for some minutes; then a dog ran across the road. This dog, it was said afterwards, could have been the cause of the original disturbance. Sergeant Pendry could still not be seen. Then there was the echo of a shot; some said two shots. Pendry did not return. After a while, two men from the pill-box went to look for him. His body was found in a pit or ditch among the shacks. Pendry was dead. His rifle had been fired. It was never cleared up for certain whether an assailant caused his death; whether, in tripping and falling into the pit, his own weapon killed him; whether, alone in that dark gloomy place, oppressed with misery, strung up with lack of sleep, Pendry decided to put an end to himself.

‘He always meant to do it,’ Breeze said.

‘It was murder,’ said Gwatkin, ‘Pendry’s the first. There’ll be others in due course.’

The Court of Inquiry expressed the opinion that Pendry would have acted more correctly in taking a man with him to conduct the investigation. It was doubtful, too, whether he should have loaded his rifle without direct order from an officer. In this respect, standing instructions for roadblock NCOs showed a certain ambiguity. The whole question of ammunition supervision in relation to road-block guards was re-examined, the system later overhauled. Breeze had a trying time while the Court was taking evidence. He was exonerated from all blame, but when opportunity arose, he volunteered for service with one of the anti-tank companies which were being organized on a Divisional basis. Breeze understandably wanted to get away from the Battalion and disagreeable associations. Perhaps he wanted to get away from Gwatkin too. Gwatkin himself, just as he had blamed Bithel for the Deafy Morgan affair, was unwilling to accept the findings of the Court of Inquiry in its complete clearing of Breeze.

‘Yanto was just as responsible for Sergeant Pendry’s death as if he had shot him down from the German trenches,’ Gwatkin said.

‘What could Yanto have done?’

‘Yanto knew, as we all did, that Pendry had talked of such a thing.’

‘I never knew, and Pendry was my own Platoon-Sergeant.’

‘CSM Cadwallader knows more than he will say.’

‘What does the Sergeant-Major think?’

‘He just spoke about Pendry once or twice,’ said Gwatkin moodily. ‘It’s only now I see what he meant. I blame myself too. I should have foreseen it.’

This was another of Gwatkin’s ritual sufferings for the ills of the Battalion. Maelgwyn-Jones took a more robust more objective view, when I went to see him about arrangements for Pendry’s funeral.

‘These things happen from time to Ume,’ he said. ‘It’s just the army. Surprising there aren’t more cases. Here’s the bumph about the firing party to give Rowland.’

‘Almost every man in the Company volunteered for it.’

‘They love this sort of thing,’ said Maelgwyn-Jones. ‘By the way, you’re going to Aldershot on a course next week. Tell Rowland that too.’

‘What sort of a course?’

‘General training.’

I remarked to Gwatkin, when we were turning in that night, how the men had almost fought to be included in the firing party.

‘Nothing brings a company together like death,’ he said sombrely. ‘It looks as though there might be one in my family too. My wife’s father isn’t at all well.’

‘What does he do?’

‘In a bank, like the rest of us,’ said Gwatkin.

He had been thoroughly upset by the Pendry incident. Over the partition, in the store, Lance-Corporal Gittins was still awake. When last seen, he had been sorting huge piles of Army Form ‘ten-ninety-eight’, and was probably still thus engaged. He, too, seemed preoccupied with thoughts of mortality, for, while he sorted, he sang quietly to himself:

‘When I tread the verge of Jordan,

Bid my anxious fears subside,

Death of Death and hell’s destruction,

Land me safe on Canaan’s side:

Songs of praises,

Songs of praises

I will ever give to thee…’