was mainly disposed toward a self-pitying estrangement from everyone except the troops in the front-line. (Casualties didn’t count as tragic unless dead or badly maimed.)
When Aunt Evelyn came up to London to see me I felt properly touched by her reticent emotion; embitterment against civilians couldn’t be applied to her. But after she had gone I resented her gentle assumption that I had done enough and could now accept a safe job. I wasn’t going to be messed about like that, I told myself. Yet I knew that the War was unescapable. Sooner or later I should be sent back to the front-line, which was the only place where I could be any use. A cushy wound wasn’t enough to keep me out of it.
I couldn’t be free from the War; even this hospital ward was full of it, and every day the oppression increased. Outwardly it was a pleasant place to be lazy in. Morning sunshine slanted through the tall windows, brightening the grey-green walls and the forty beds. Daffodils and tulips made spots of colour under three red-draped lamps which hung from the ceiling. Some officers lay humped in bed, smoking and reading newspapers; others loafed about in dressing-gowns, going to and from the washing room where they scraped the bristles from their contented faces. A raucous gramophone continually ground out popular tunes. In the morning it was ragtime—“ Everybody’s Doing It ” and “ At the Foxtrot Ball .” (“ Somewhere a Voice Is Calling, God Send You Back to Me ,” and suchlike sentimental songs were reserved for the evening hours.) Before midday no one had enough energy to begin talking war shop, but after that I could always hear scraps of conversation from around the two fireplaces. My eyes were reading one of Lamb’s Essays, but my mind was continually distracted by such phrases as “Barrage lifted at the first objective,” “shelled us with heavy stuff,” “couldn’t raise enough decent N.C.O. s,” “first wave got held up by machine-guns,” and “bombed them out of a sap.”