unobnoxiousness, compared with what was in store for us; for the “Big Push” of last summer and autumn had now found a successor in “the Spring Offensive” (which was, of course, going to “get the Boches on the run”).
Mess, at eight o’clock, was a function which could be used for filling up an hour and a half. While Ormand was making his periodic remark—that his only reason for wanting to go out again was that it would enable him to pay off his overdraft at Cox’s Bank—my eyes would wander up to the top table where the Colonel sat among those good-natured easygoing Majors who might well have adopted as their motto the ditty sung by the troops: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.” At nine-thirty the Colonel went to the anteroom for his game of Bridge. But the second-in-command, Major Macartney, would sit on long afterwards, listening to one or two of his cronies and slowly imbibing port with a hand that trembled nervously. Probably his mind was often back in Ireland, snipe-shooting and salmon-fishing. There was nothing grim about the Major, though his features had a certain severity, slightly reminiscent of the late Lord Kitchener. He was a reserved and dignified man, much more so than the other Majors. These convivial characters were ostensibly directing the interior economy of the Camp, and as the troops were well fed and looked after they must be given credit for it. The training of recruits was left mainly to sergeant-instructors, most of whom were Regular N.C.O. s of the best pattern, hard-worked men who were on their legs from morning to night, and strict because they had to be strict. The raw material to be trained was growing steadily worse. Most of those who came in now had joined the Army unwillingly, and there was no reason why they should find military service tolerable. The war had become undisguisedly mechanical and inhuman. What in earlier days had been drafts of volunteers were now droves of victims. I was just beginning to be aware of this.
But Clitherland had accessible compensations. One of them was the Golf Course at Formby. The electric train took only twenty minutes to get