While these ignoble presences befouled the air of a base, good things, also, were there; but you seldom quite knew which was which. All very well for the King to come out with his “Go, hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques and you were not there.” But if you, too, were not at the battle—if some unlucky effect of combustion compelled you to live as a messmate of Crillon, far, far from Arques when the battle was on, you would have to use tact. Somehow the man who was undisguisedly keen to get back to the centre of things felt a slight coldness pervading the air about him. It was as if a workman, who might have so easily let well alone, had sinned against the trade-union spirit, helped to raise the standard of employers’ expectation, forced the pace of dutifulness in a world where authority could be trusted to speed things up quite enough. Even officers tended to deprecate the higher temperatures of ardour in other ranks of base establishments. “You’re out for distinction,”—one honest rationalist would advise—“that’s what it is. Well, trust to me—up the line’s not the place where you get it. Every time a war ends you’ll find most of the decorations go to the people at G.H.Q., L. of C., and the bases. So, if you want a nice row of ribbons to show to your kiddies, stop here.” And another would put it more subtly: “Isn’t one’s duty, as a rule, just here and now?” Some were good-natured; they were not for keeping the primrose path all to themselves. Others were anxious lest the taking of steep and thorny paths, as they thought them, should come to be “the done thing.”
V
The men who could not shirk the choice of Hercules, for other people, were the doctors. The stay of every N.C.O. or man at a base depot was on probation. Each had to go before a Medical Board soon after he came. It adjudged him either T.B. (Temporary Base) or P.B. (Permanent Base). If marked T.B. he went before the Board again once a week, and each time he might be marked T.B. again, or, if his disablement was thought graver or more likely to last, P.B.; or he might be marked A. (Active Service), and then he would join the next draft from home going up to his own battalion or another battalion of his regiment. When once a man was marked P.B. he only went before the Board once a month, and each time he, too, might be marked either P.B., T.B., or A.
Chance relegated me once for some weeks to a base and gave me the job of marching parties of crocks, total and partial, real, half-real, and sham, across the sand dunes to the place where the faculty did its endeavour to sort them. A picture remains of a hut with a long table in it: two middle-aged army doctors sitting beyond it, like dons at a Viva, and each of my party in turn taking his stand at attention, my side of the table, facing the Board, like so many Oliver Twists. The presiding officer takes a manifest pride in knowing all the guile and subtlety of soldier-men. No taking him in—that is proclaimed in every look and tone. He has had several other parties before him today, and the lamp of his faith, never dazzling while these rites are on, has burnt low.
“Well, my man—cold feet, I suppose?” he begins, to the first of my lamentable party. As some practitioners are said to begin all treatments with a prefatory purge, so would this psychologist start with a good full dose of insult and watch the patient’s reaction under the stimulus.
“No, sir, me ’eart’s thrutched up,” says the examinee. Then, while the Board perforates him from head to foot for some seconds with a basilisk stare of unbelief, he dribbles out at intervals, in a voice that bespeaks falling hope, such ineffective addenda as “Can’t get me sleep” and “Not a smile in me.”
“Very picturesque, indeed,” says the senior expert in doubting. “We’ll see to that ‘thrutched’ heart of yours. Cardiograph case. Next man.”
The suspect, duly spat upon, slinks out. The next man takes his place at the table. The president gives him the Dogberry eye that means: “Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves; and it will go near to be thought so shortly.” What he says is: “Another old hospital bird? Eh? Now, hadn’t you better get back to work before you’re in trouble?”
The target of this consputation is almost convinced by its force that he must be guilty of something, if only he knew what it was. Still, he repeats authority’s last diagnosis as well as he can: “Mine’s Arthuritic rheumatism, sir. An’ piles.”
“Fall out and strip. Next man.” While the next is taking his stand the presiding M.O. has been making a note, and does not look up before saying “Well, what’s the matter with you—besides rheumatism?”
“No rheumatism, sir. And nothing else.” The voice is as stiff as it dares.
The presiding M.O. seems taken aback. Why, here is a fellow
