The truth was that the only explosive weapon I owned before the war was a toy pistol which made a noise but discharged nothing. Sitting in the wrong-way leave train I remembered how, when about nine years old, I used to go up to the little sweet-shop in the village and buy “three penn’orth of percussion caps” for my pistol; and how the buxom old woman used to ask briskly, “Anything else today, Master George?” Whereupon I would be compelled to decide between clove and peppermint bulls’ eyes, with a bar of chocolate-cream to make it up to sixpence. Twenty years was a long time ago; but already the village green as I saw it last week was beginning to seem almost as remote. … However, it was no use dreaming about all that now; Kinjack’s salmon was my immediate problem, and as soon as I was on board the crowded boat, I consulted an obliging steward and my fishy insurance policy was providentially accommodated in the cold-storage cupboard. Consequently my mind was unperturbed when we steamed out of Southampton Water. I watched the woods on the Isle of Wight, hazily receding in the heat. And when the Isle of Wight was out of sight—well, there was nothing to be done about it.
At Havre I was instructed, by the all-knowing authority responsible for my return, to get out of the train at Corbie. Havre was a glitter of lights winking on dark slabbing water. Soon the glumly-laden train was groaning away from the wharves, and we nodded and snored through the night. Daylight came, and we crawled past green landscapes blurred with drizzling rain. Of my compartment companions I remember nothing except that one of them talked irrepressibly about his father’s farm in Suffolk. His father, he said, owned a bull who had produced sixty black and white calves. This information was received with apathy. The Battalion was at Bussy, a three mile walk in late afternoon sunshine. I kept to the shady side of the road, for the salmon in its hamper was still my constant care. Bussy came in sight as a pleasant little place on a tributary of the Ancre. A few of our men were bathing, and I thought how young and lighthearted they looked, splashing one another and shouting as they rocked a crazy boat under some lofty poplars that shivered in a sunset breeze. How different to the trudging figures in full marching order; and how difficult to embody them in the crouching imprisonment of trench warfare!
With an unsoldierly sigh I picked up my packages and plodded on in search of C Company, who were billeted in some buildings round a friendly farmhouse. There I found Flook and despatched him to Kinjack’s Headquarters with the hamper and a bottle of brandy. Barton, to whom I entrusted the second bottle, told me that I was a cunning old Kangaroo, and then regaled me with all the rumours about next week’s operations. “The bombardment begins on Saturday,” he said, “so we’re having Battalion Sports tomorrow, in case we get moved back to Morlancourt.” Then Durley came in with Jenkins, one of the new officers who had been posted to the Battalion while I was away. Fewnings, the gentle ex-schoolmaster, had been appointed Lewis Gun officer, but he still messed with us; he now entered with the air of a man who had been teaching Euclid and Algebra all day. The Brigadier, he remarked, had ticked him off that afternoon, because he was wearing a light-coloured shirt; but no fault had been found with his Lewis Gun team organization, and, as he remarked, it wouldn’t make much odds what sort of shirt he was wearing in a week or two. Neither Durley nor I had ever been favoured with a word from our Brigadier, perhaps because our shirts were the orthodox colour. It was odd, how seldom those graduated autocrats found time to realize that a few kind words could make a platoon commander consider them jolly good Generals.
But there was harmony in our Company Mess, as if our certainty of a volcanic future had put an end to the occasional squabblings which occurred when we were on one another’s nerves. A rank animal healthiness pervaded our existence during those days of busy living and inward foreboding The behaviour of our servants expressed it; they were competing for the favours of a handsome young woman in the farmhouse, and a comedy of primitive courtship was being enacted in the kitchen. Death would be lying in wait for the troops next week, and now the flavour of life was doubly strong. As I went to my room across the road, the cool night smelt of mown grass and leafy gardens. Away toward Corbie
