Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

there had occurred what, under normal conditions, would be described as an appalling catastrophe. Bombs had been dropped on the station and one of them had hit the front carriage of the noon express to Cambridge. Horrified travellers were hurrying away. The hands of the clock indicated 11:50; but railway-time had been interrupted; for once in its career, the imperative clock was a passive spectator. While I stood wondering what to do, a luggage trolley was trundled past me; on it lay an elderly man, shabbily dressed, and apparently dead. The sight of blood caused me to feel quite queer. This sort of danger seemed to demand a quality of courage dissimilar to front-line fortitude. In a trench one was acclimatized to the notion of being exterminated and there was a sense of organized retaliation. But here one was helpless; an invisible enemy sent destruction spinning down from a fine weather sky; poor old men bought a railway ticket and were trundled away again dead on a barrow; wounded women lay about in the station groaning. And one’s train didn’t start.⁠ ⁠… Nobody could say for certain when it would start, a phlegmatic porter informed me; so I migrated to St. Pancras and made the journey to Cambridge in a train which halted good-naturedly at every station. Gazing at sleepy green landscapes, I found difficulty in connecting them (by the railway line) with the air-raid which (I was afterwards told) had played hell with Paternoster Avenue. “It wouldn’t be such a bad life,” I thought, “if one were a stationmaster on a branch line in Bedfordshire.” There was something attractive, too, in the idea of being a commercial traveller, creeping about the country and doing business in drowsy market towns and snug cathedral cities.

If only I could wake up and find myself living among the parsons and squires of Trollope’s Barsetshire, jogging easily from Christmas to Christmas, and hunting three days a week with the Duke of Omnium’s hounds.⁠ ⁠…

The elms were so leafy and the lanes invited me to such rural remoteness that every time the train slowed up I longed to get out and start on an indefinite walking tour⁠—away into the delusive Sabbath of summer⁠—away from air-raids and inexorable moral responsibilities and the ever-increasing output of munitions.

But here was Cambridge, looking contented enough in the afternoon sunshine, as though the Long Vacation were on. The Colleges appeared to have forgotten their copious contributions to the Roll of Honour. The streets were empty, for the Cadets were out on their afternoon parades⁠—probably learning how to take compass-bearings, or pretending to shoot at an enemy who was supposedly advancing from a wood nine hundred yards away. I knew all about that type of training. “Half-right; haystack; three fingers left of haystack; copse; nine hundred; at the copse, ten rounds rapid, fire!” There wasn’t going to be any musketry-exercise instructing for me, however. I was only going through the motions of applying for a job with the Cadet Battalion. The orderly room was on the ground-floor of a college. In happier times it had been a library (the books were still there) and the Colonel had been a History Don with a keen interest in the Territorials. Playing the part of respectful young applicant for instructorship in the Arts of War, I found myself doing it so convincingly that the existence of my “statement” became, for the moment, an improbability. “Have you any specialist knowledge?” inquired the Colonel. I told him that I’d been Battalion Intelligence Officer for a time (suppressing the fact that I’d voluntarily relinquished that status after three days of inability to supply the necessary eyewash reports). “Ah, that’s excellent. We find the majority of the men very weak in map-reading,” he replied, adding, “our main object, of course, is to instil first-rate morale. It isn’t always easy to impress on these new army men what we mean by the tradition of the prewar regimental officer.⁠ ⁠… Well, I’m sure you’ll do very good work. You’ll be joining us in two or three weeks, I think? Goodbye till then.” He shook my hand rather as if I’d won a History Scholarship, and I walked out of the college feeling that it was a poor sort of joke on him. But my absence as an instructor was all to the good as far as he was concerned, and I was inclined to think that I was better at saying the War ought to stop than at teaching cadets how to carry it on. Sitting in King’s Chapel I tried to recover my conviction of the nobility of my enterprise and to believe that the pen which wrote my statement had “dropped from an angel’s wing.” I also reminded myself that Cambridge had dismissed Tyrrell from his lectureship because he disbelieved in the War. “Intolerant old blighters!” I inwardly exclaimed. “One can’t possibly side with people like that. All they care about is keeping up with the other colleges in the casualty lists.” Thus refortified, I went down to the river and hired a canoe.

IV

Back at Butley, I had fully a fortnight in which to take life easily before tackling “wilful defiance of military authority.” I was, of course, compelled to lead a double life, and the longer it lasted the less I liked it. I am unable to say for certain how far I was successful in making Aunt Evelyn believe that my mind was free from anxiety. But I know that it wasn’t easy to sustain the evangelistic individuality which I’d worked myself up to in London. Outwardly those last days of June progressed with nostalgic serenity. I say nostalgic, because in my weaker moods I longed for the peace of mind which could have allowed me to enjoy having tea out in the garden on fine afternoons. But it was no use trying to dope my disquiet with Trollope’s novels or any of my favourite books. The purgatory I’d let myself in for always came