contemplate the massacre of the young men with an easy conscience. “By Jingo, I suppose you’re right!” I exclaimed, wishing that I were able to express my ideas with such comprehensive clarity.
Supervising a platoon of Cadet Officers at Cambridge would have been a snug alternative to “general service abroad” (provided that I could have bluffed the cadets into believing that I knew something about soldiering). I was going there to be interviewed by the Colonel and clinch my illusory appointment; but I was only doing this because I considered it needful for what I called “strengthening my position.” I hadn’t looked ahead much, but when I did so it was with an eye to safeguarding myself against “what people would say.”
When I remarked to Tyrrell that “people couldn’t say I did it so as to avoid going back to France if I had been given a job in England,” he pulled me up short.
“What people say doesn’t matter. Your own belief in what you are doing is the only thing that counts.” Knowing that he was right, I felt abashed; but I couldn’t help regretting that my second decoration had failed to materialize. It did not occur to me that a Bar to one’s Military Cross was a somewhat inadequate accretion to one’s qualifications for affirming that the War was being deliberately prolonged by those who had the power to end it. Except for a bullet hole in my second best tunic, all that I’d got for my little adventure in April consisted in a gilt-edged card on which the Divisional General had inscribed his congratulations and thanks. This document was locally referred to as “one of the Whincop’s Bread Cards,” and since it couldn’t be sewn on to my tunic I did my best to feel that it was better than nothing.
Anyhow, on a glaring hot morning I started to catch a train to Cambridge. I was intending to stay a night there, for it would be nice to have a quiet look round and perhaps go up to Grantchester in a canoe.