The new colonel had been with us less than a week at the time and we had not yet taken his measure. He had been standing rounds of gin in the ante-room and was slightly boisterous when he first took notice of Hooper.
That young officer is one of yours, isn't he, Ryder?' he said to me. 'His hair wants cutting.
'It does, sir,' I said. It did. 'I'll see that it's done.'
The colonel drank more gin and began to stare at Hooper, saying audibly, 'My God, the officers they send us now!'
Hooper seemed to obsess the colonel that evening. After dinner he suddenly said very loudly: 'In my late regiment if a young officer turned up like that, the other subalterns would bloody well have cut his hair for him.'
No one showed any enthusiasm for this sport, and our lack of response seemed to inflame the colonel. 'You.' he said, turning to a decent boy in 'A' Company, 'go and get a pair of scissors and cut that young officer's hair for him.'
'Is that an order, sir?'
'It's your commanding officer's wish and that's the best kind of order I know.'
'Very good, sir.'
And so, in an atmosphere of chilly embarrassment, Hooper sat in a chair while a few snips were made at the back of his head. At the beginning of the operation I left the ante-room, and later apologized to Hooper for his reception. 'It's not the sort of thing that usually happens in this regiment,' I said.
'Oh, no hard feelings,' said Hooper. 'I can take a bit of sport.'
Hooper had no illusions about the Army - or rather no special illusions distinguishable from the general, enveloping fog from which he observed the universe. He had come to it reluctantly, under compulsion, after he had made every feeble effort in his power to obtain deferment. He accepted it, he said, 'like the measles'. Hooper was no romantic. He had not as a child ridden with Rupert's horse or sat among the camp fires at Xanthusside; at the age when my eyes were dry to all save poetry - that stoic, redskin interlude which our schools introduce between the fast-flowing tears of the child and the man - Hooper had wept often, but never for Henry's speech on St Crispin's day, nor for the epitaph at Thermopylae. The history they taught him had had few battles in it but, instead, a profusion of detail about humane legislation and recent industrial change. Gallipoli, Balaclava, Quebec, Lepanto, Bannockburn, Roncevales, and Marathon - these, and the Battle in the West where Arthur fell, and a hundred such names whose trumpet-notes, even now in my sere and lawless state, called to me irresistibly across the intervening years with all the clarity and strength of boyhood, sounded in vain to Hooper.
He seldom complained. Though himself a man to whom one could not confidently entrust the simplest duty, he had an overmastering regard for efficiency and, drawing on his modest commercial experience, he would sometimes say of the ways of the Army in pay and supply and the use of 'man-hours': 'They couldn't get away with that in business.'
He slept sound while I lay awake fretting.
In the weeks that we were together Hooper became a symbol me of Young England, so that whenever I read some public utterance proclaiming what Youth demanded in the Future and what the world owed to Youth, I would test these general statements by substituting 'Hooper' and seeing if they still seemed as plausible. Thus in the dark hour before reveille I sometimes pondered: 'Hooper Rallies', 'Hooper Hostels', 'International Hooper Cooperation', and 'the Religion of Hooper'. He was the acid test of all these alloys.
So far as he had changed at all, he was less soldierly now than when he arrived from his OCTU. This morning, laden with full equipment, he looked scarcely human. He came to attention with a kind of shuffling dance-step and spread a wool-gloved palm across his forehead.
'I wan't to speak to Mr Hooper, sergeant-major ... well, where the devil have you been? I told you to inspect the lines.'
' 'M I late? Sorry. Had a rush getting my gear together.'
'That's what you have a servant for.'
'Well, I suppose it is, strictly speaking. But you know how it is. He had his own stuff to do. If you get on the wrong side of these fellows they take it out of you other ways.'
'Well, go and inspect the lines,now.'
'Rightyoh.'
'And for Christ's sake don't say "rightyoh".'
'Sorry. I do try to remember. It just slips out.'
When Hooper left the sergeant-major returned.
'C.O. just coming up the path, sir,' he said.
I went out to meet him.
There were beads of moisture on the hog-bristles of his little red moustache.
'Well, everything squared up here?'
'Yes, I think so, sir.'
'Think so? You ought to know.'
His eyes fell on the broken window. 'Has that been entered in the barrack damages?'
'Not yet, sir.'
'Not yet? I wonder when it would have been, if I hadn't seen it. '
He was not at ease with me, and much of his bluster rose from timidity, but I thought none the better of it for that.
He led me behind the huts to a wire fence which divided my area from the carrier-platoon's, skipped briskly over, and made for an overgrown ditch and bank which had once been a field boundary on the farm. Here he began grubbing with his stick like a truffling pig and presently gave a cry of triumph. He had disclosed one of those deposits of rubbish which are dear to the private soldier's sense of order: the head of a broom, the lid of a stove, a bucket rusted through, a sock, a loaf of bread, lay under the dock and nettle among cigarette packets and empty tins.
'Look at that,' said the commanding officer. 'Fine impression that gives to the regiment taking over from us.
'That's bad,' I said.
'It's a disgrace. See everything there is burned before you leave camp.'
'Very good, sir. Sergeant-major, send over to the carrier-platoon and tell Captain Brown that the C.O. wants this ditch cleared up.'
I wondered whether the colonel would take this rebuff; so did he. He stood a moment irresolutely prodding the muck in the ditch, then he turned on his heel and strode away.
'You shouldn't do it, sir, ' said the sergeant-major, who had been my guide and prop since I joined the company. 'You shouldn't really.'
'That wasn't our rubbish.'
'Maybe not, sir, but you know how it is. If you get on the wrong side of senior officers they take it out of you other ways.'
As we marched past the madhouse, two or three elderly inmates gibbered and mouthed politely behind the railings.
'Cheeroh, chum, we'll be seeing you'; 'We shan't be long now'; 'Keep smiling till we meet again', the men called to them.
I was marching with Hooper at, the head of the leading platoon.
'I say, any idea where we're off to? '
'None.'
'Do you think it's the real thing?'
'No.'
'Just a flap?'
'Yes.'
'Everyone's been saying we're for it. I don't know what to think really. Seems so silly somehow, all this drill and training if we never go into action.'
'I shouldn't worry. There'll be plenty for everyone in time.'
'Oh, I don't want much you know. Just enough to say I've been in it.'
A train of antiquated coaches was waiting for us at the siding; an R.T.O. was in charge; a fatigue party was loading the last of. the kit-bags from the trucks to the luggage vans. In half an hour we were ready to start and in an hour we started.
My three platoon commanders and myself had a carriage to ourselves. They ate sandwiches and chocolate, smoked and slept. None of them had a book. For the first three or four hours they noted the names of the towns and leaned out of the windows when, as often happened, we stopped between stations. Later they lost interest. At midday and again at dark some tepid cocoa was ladled from a container into our mugs. The train moved slowly south through flat, drab main-line scenery.
The chief incident in the day was the - C.O.'s 'order group'. We assembled in his carriage, at the summons of an orderly, and found him and the adjutant wearing their steel helmets and equipment. The first thing he said was: 'This is an Order Group. I expect you to attend properly dressed. The fact that we happen to be in a train is immaterial.' I thought he was going to send us back but, after glaring at us, he said, 'Sit down.'
'The camp was left in a disgraceful condition'. Wherever I went I found evidence that officers are not doing their duty. The state in which a camp is left is the best possible test of the efficiency of regimental officers. It is on such matters that the reputation of a battalion and its commander rests. 'And' - did he in fact say this or am I finding words for the resentment in his voice and eye? I think he left it unsaid - 'I do not intend to have my professional reputation compromised by the slackness of a few temporary officers.'
We sat with our note-books and pencils waiting to take down the details of our next jobs. A more sensitive man would have seen that he had failed to be impressive; perhaps he saw, for he added in a petulant schoolmasterish way: 'All I ask is loyal cooperation.'
Then he referred to his notes and read:
'Orders.
'Information. The battalion is now in transit between location A and location B. This is a major L of C and is liable to bombing and gas attack from the enemy.
'Intention. I intend to arrive at location B.
'Method. Train will arrive at destination at approximately 2315 hours . . .' and so on.
The sting came at the end under the heading, 'Administration'. 'C' Company, less one platoon, was to unload the train on arrival at the siding where three three-tonners would be available for moving all stores to a battalion dump in the new camp; work to continue until completed; the remaining platoon was to find a guard on the dump and perimeter sentries for the camp area.
'Any questions?'
'Can we have an issue of cocoa for the working party?'
'No. Any more questions?'
When I told the sergeant-major of these orders he said: 'Poor old "C" Company struck unlucky again'; and I knew this to be a reproach for my having antagonized the commanding officer.
I told the platoon commanders.
'I say,' said Hooper, 'it makes it awfully awkward with the chaps. They'll be fairly browned off. He always seems to pick on us for the dirty work.'
'You'll do guard.'
'Okeydoke. But I say, how am I to find the perimeter in the dark?'
Shortly after blackout we were disturbed by an orderly making his way lugubriously down the length of the train with a rattle. One of the more sophisticated sergeants called out 'Deuxieme service.'
'We are being sprayed with liquid mustard-gas,' I said. 'See that the windows are shut.' I then wrote a neat little situation report to say that there were no casualties and nothing had been contaminated; that men had been detailed to decontaminate the outside of the coach before detraining. This seemed to satisfy the commanding officer, for we heard no more from him. After dark we all slept.
At last, very late, we came to our siding. It was part of our training in security and active service conditions that we should eschew stations and platforms. The drop from the running board to the cinder track made for disorder and breakages in the darkness.
'Fall in on the road below the embankment. "C" Company seems to be taking their time as usual, Captain Ryder.'
'Yes, sir. We're having a little, difficulty. with the bleach.'
'Bleach?'
'For decontaminating the outside of the coaches, sir.'
'Oh very conscientious, I'm sure. Skip it and get a move on.'
By now my half-awake and sulky men were clattering into shape on the road. Soon Hooper's platoon had marched off into the darkness; I found the lorries organized lines of men to ass the stores from hand to hand down the steep bank, and, presently, as they found themselves doing something with an apparent purpose in it, they got more cheerful. I handled stores with them for the first half hour; then broke off to meet the company second-in-command who came down with the first returning truck.
'It's not a bad camp,' he reported; 'big private house with two or three lakes. Looks as if we might get some duck if we're lucky. Village with one pub and a post office. No town within miles. I've managed to get a hut between the two of us.'
By four in the morning the work was done. I drove in the last lorry, through tortuous lanes where the overhanging boughs whipped the windscreen; somewhere we left the lane and turned into a drive; somewhere we reached an open space where two drives converged and a ring of storm lanterns marked the heap of stores. Here we unloaded the truck and, at long last, followed the guides to our quarters, under a starless sky, with a fine drizzle of rain beginning now to fall.
I slept until my servant called me, rose wearily, dressed and shaved in silence. It was not till I reached the door that I asked the second-in-command, 'What's this place called?'
He told me and, on the instant, it was as though someone had switched off the wireless, and a voice that had been bawling in my ears, incessantly, fatuously, for days beyond number, had been suddenly cut short; an immense silence followed, empty at first, but gradually, as my outraged sense regained authority, full of a multitude of sweet and natural and long forgotten sounds: for he had spoken a name that was so familiar to me, a conjuror's name of such ancient power, that, at its mere sound, the phantoms of those haunted late years began to take flight.
Outside the hut I stood bemused. The rain had ceased but the clouds hung low and heavy overhead. It was a still morning and the smoke from the cookhouse rose straight to the leaden sky. A cart-track, once metalled, then overgrown, now rutted and churned to mud, followed the contour of the hillside and dipped out of sight below, a knoll, and on either side of it lay the haphazard litter of corrugated iron, from which rose the rattle and chatter and whistling and catcalls, all the zoo-noises of the battalion beginning a new day. Beyond and about us, more familiar still, lay an exquisite man-made landscape. It was a sequestered place, enclosed and embraced in a single, winding valley. Our camp lay along one gentle slope; opposite us the ground led, still unravished, to the neighbourly horizon, and between us flowed a stream - it was named the Bride and rose not two miles away at a farm called Bridesprings, where we used sometimes to walk to tea; it became a considerable river lower down before it joined the Avon - which had been dammed here to form three lakes, one no more than a wet slate among the reeds, but the others more spacious, reflecting the clouds and the mighty beeches at their margin. The woods were all of oak and beech, the oak grey and bare, the beech faintly dusted with green by the breaking buds; they made a simple, carefully designed pattern with the green glades and the wide green spaces - Did the fallow deer graze here still? - and, lest the eye wander aimlessly, a Doric temple stood by the water's edge, and an ivy-grown arch spanned the lowest of the connecting weirs. All this had been planned and planted a century and a half ago so that, at about this date, it might be seen in its maturity, From where I stood the house was hidden by a green spur, but I knew well how and where it lay, couched among the lime trees like a hind in the bracken.
