The smoke from the cook-houses drifted away in the mist and the camp lay revealed as a planless maze of short-cuts, superimposed on the unfinished housing-scheme, as though disinterred at a much later date by a party of archaeologists.

‘The Pollock diggings provide a valuable link between the citizen-slave communities of the twentieth century and the tribal anarchy which succeeded them. Here you see a people of advanced culture, capable of an elaborate draining system and the construction of permanent highways, over-run by a race of the lowest type.’

Thus, I thought, the pundits of the future might write; and, turning away, I greeted the company sergeant-major: ‘Has Mr Hooper been round?’

‘Haven’t seen him at all this morning, sir.’

We went to the dismantled company office, where I found a window newly broken since the barrack-damages book was completed. ‘Wind-in-the-night, sir,’ said the sergeant-major.

(All breakages were thus attributable or to ‘Sappers’-demonstration, sir.’)

Hooper appeared; he was a sallow youth with hair combed back, without parting, from his forehead, and a flat, Midland accent; he had been in the company two months.

The troops did not like Hooper because he knew too little about his work and would sometimes address them individually as ‘George’ at stand-easies, but I had a feeling which almost amounted to affection for him, largely by reason of an incident on his first evening in mess.

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.’