Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

I

At the Army School

I

I have said that Spring arrived late in 1916, and that up in the trenches opposite Mametz it seemed as though Winter would last forever. I also stated that as for me, I had more or less made up my mind to die because in the circumstances there didn’t seem anything else to be done. Well, we came back to Morlancourt after Easter, and on the same evening a message from the Orderly Room instructed me to proceed to the Fourth Army School next morning for a month’s refresher-course. Perhaps Colonel Kinjack had heard that I’d been looking for trouble. Anyhow, my personal grievance against the Germans was interrupted for at least four weeks, and a motorbus carried me away from all possibility of dying a murky death in the mine-craters.

Barton saw me off at the crossroads in the middle of the village. It was a fine day and he had recovered his good spirits. “Lucky Kangaroo—to be hopping away for a holiday!” he exclaimed, as I climbed into the elderly bus. My servant Flook hoisted up my bulging valise, wiped his red face with his sleeve, and followed me to the roof. “Mind and keep Mr. Sherston well polished up and punctual on parade, Flook!” said Barton. Flook grinned; and away we went. Looking back, I saw Barton’s good-natured face, with the early sun shining on his glasses.

There were several of us on board (each Battalion in our Brigade was sending two officers) and we must have stopped at the next village to pick up a few more. But memory tries to misinform me that Flook and I were alone on that omnibus, with a fresh breeze in our faces and our minds “making a separate peace” with the late April landscape. With sober satisfaction I watched a train moving out of a station with rumble and clank of wheels while we waited at the crossing gates. Children in a village street surprised me: I saw a little one fall, to be gathered, dusted, cuffed and cherished by its mother. Up in the line one somehow lost touch with such humanities.