III

to have forgotten their copious contributions to the Roll of Honour. The streets were empty, for the Cadets were out on their afternoon parades⁠—probably learning how to take compass-bearings, or pretending to shoot at an enemy who was supposedly advancing from a wood nine hundred yards away. I knew all about that type of training. “Half-right; haystack; three fingers left of haystack; copse; nine hundred; at the copse , ten rounds rapid, fire !” There wasn’t going to be any musketry-exercise instructing for me, however. I was only going through the motions of applying for a job with the Cadet Battalion. The orderly room was on the ground-floor of a college. In happier times it had been a library (the books were still there) and the Colonel had been a History Don with a keen interest in the Territorials. Playing the part of respectful young applicant for instructorship in the Arts of War, I found myself doing it so convincingly that the existence of my “statement” became, for the moment, an improbability. “Have you any specialist knowledge?” inquired the Colonel. I told him that I’d been Battalion Intelligence Officer for a time (suppressing the fact that I’d voluntarily relinquished that status after three days of inability to supply the necessary eyewash reports). “Ah, that’s excellent. We find the majority of the men very weak in map-reading,” he replied, adding, “our main object, of course, is to instil first-rate morale. It isn’t always easy to impress on these new army men what we mean by the tradition of the prewar regimental officer.⁠ ⁠… Well, I’m sure you’ll do very good work. You’ll be joining us in two or three weeks, I think? Goodbye till then.” He shook my hand rather as if I’d won a History Scholarship, and I walked out of the college feeling that it was a poor sort of joke on him. But my absence as an instructor was all to the good as far as he was concerned, and I was inclined to think that I was better at saying the War ought to stop than at teaching cadets how to carry it on. Sitting in King’s Chapel I tried to recover my conviction of the nobility of my enterprise and to believe that the pen which wrote my statement had “dropped from an angel’s wing.” I also reminded myself that Cambridge had dismissed Tyrrell from his