The local doctor had said I might take the splint off my arm next day and that was a step in the right direction. I said nothing to Aunt Evelyn about my conspiracy with her old friend until a week later, when I received a favourable letter from the Adjutant. I was to make a formal application for a Special Reserve commission. The Special Reserve was a new name for the old Militia; a temporary commission in the New Army would have been much the same, but Captain Huxtable wanted me to do the thing properly. Greatly as he admired their spirit, he couldn’t help looking down a bit on those Kitchener’s Army battalions.
When I broke the news to Aunt Evelyn she said that of course I was doing the right thing. “But I do hate you doing it, my dear!” she added. Should I have to go all the way to Flintshire, she asked. I said I supposed I should, for the depot was there.
And although I agreed with her that it would have been nice if I’d been somewhere nearer, I had a private conviction that I wanted to make my fresh start among people who knew nothing of me. Dixon had said (when he brought Cockbird to Downfield the day after mobilization) that if I had to be in the ranks I ought to have done it somewhere where I wasn’t so well known. I found afterwards that there was a great deal of truth in his remark. The Yeomanry would have been more comfortable for me if none of the officers had known me before I joined. I now felt strongly in favour of getting right away from my old associations. Captain Huxtable had given me all I needed in the way of a send-off. Aunt Evelyn was helping at the Voluntary Aid Detachment Hospital, which, as she said, took her mind off things.
Stephen, when I wrote and told him about it, replied that since I was so keen on getting killed I might as well do it properly dressed, and gave me the name of his military tailor, which was a rather unfortunate one—Craven & Sons. He had been expecting to get a week’s leave, but it had been “stopped owing to the big strafe” which was imminent; (the Battle of Neuve Chapelle happened soon afterwards).
Ordering my uniform from Craven & Sons was quite enjoyable—almost like getting hunting clothes. Situated in a byway off Bond Street, the firm of Craven & Sons had been established a century ago in the cathedral city of Wintonbury. To the best of my knowledge the firm was exclusively military, though there may have been a demure ecclesiastical connection at the “and at Wintonbury” shop. I was warmly welcomed by a florid gentleman with a free and easy manner; he might almost have been a major if he had not been so ostensibly a tailor. He spoke affectionately of the Flintshire Fusiliers (“The Twenty-Fifth” he called them); he had “been up at the depot only the other day,” and he mentioned a few of the first and second battalion officers by name; one might almost have imagined that he had played polo with them, so dashing was his demeanour as he twirled his blond moustache. This representative of Craven & Sons was like the royal family; he never forgot a name. He must have known the Army List from cover to cover, for he had called on nearly every officers’ mess in the country during the periodical pilgrimages on which the prosperity of his firm depended. Newly gazetted subalterns found themselves unable to resist his persuasive suggestions, though he may have met his match in an occasional curmudgeonly colonel. Mr. Stoving (for that was his name) chatted his way courageously through the War; “business as usual” was his watchword. Undaunted by the ever more bloated bulk of the Army List, he bobbed like a cork on the lethal inundation of temporary commissions, and when I last saw him, a few months before the Armistice, he was still outwardly unconscious of the casualty lists which had lost (and gained) him such a legion of customers.
As soon as he had put me at ease I became as wax in his hands. He knew my needs so much better than I did that when I paid a second visit to try on my tunics, there seemed no reason why he shouldn’t put me through a little squad drill. But he only made one reference to the cataclysm of military training which was in progress, and that was when I was choosing khaki shirts. “You can’t have them too dark;” he insisted, when my eye wandered toward a paler pattern. “We have to keep those in stock—they’re for the East of course—but it’s quite impermissible the way some of these New Army officers dress: really, the Provost-Marshal ought to put a stop to all these straw-coloured shirts and ties they’re coming out in.” He lifted his eyes in horror. …
A few weeks later (a second lieutenant in appearance only) I arrived at the training depot of the “Twenty-Fifth.” The whole concern had recently migrated from the small peacetime barracks in Flintshire to a new camp of huts on the outskirts of Liverpool. On a fine afternoon at the end of April I got out of the local electric railway at Clitherland Station. Another evidently new officer also climbed out of the train, and we shared a cab up to the camp, with our brand new valises rolling about on the roof. My companion was far from orthodox in what he was wearing, and from his accent I judged him to be a Yorkshireman. His good-humoured face was surmounted by a cap, which was as soft as mine was stiff. His shirt and tie were more yellow than khaki. And his breeches were of a bright buff tint. His tunic was of the correct military colour, but it sat uneasily on his podgy
