When Hooper left the sergeant-major returned.

‘C.O. just coming up the path, sir,’ he said.

I went out to meet him.

There were beads of moisture on the hog-bristles of his little red moustache.

‘Well, everything squared up here?’

‘Yes, I think so, sir.’

‘Think so? You ought to know.’

His eyes fell on the broken window. ‘Has that been entered in the barrack damages?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘Not yet? I wonder when it would have been, if I hadn’t seen it.’

He was not at ease with me, and much of his bluster rose from timidity, but I thought none the better of it for that.

He led me behind the huts to a wire fence which divided my area from the carrier-platoon’s, skipped briskly over, and made for an overgrown ditch and bank which had once been a field boundary on the farm. Here he began grubbing with his walking-stick like a truffling pig and presently gave a cry of triumph. He had disclosed one of those deposits of rubbish, which are dear to the private soldier’s sense of order: the head of a broom, the lid of a stove, a bucket rusted through, a sock, a loaf of bread, lay under the dock and nettle among cigarette packets and empty tins.

‘Look at that,’ said the commanding officer. ‘Fine impression that gives to the regiment taking over from us.’

‘That’s bad,’ I said.

‘It’s a disgrace. See everything there is burned before you leave camp.’

‘Very good, sir. Sergeant-major, send over to the carrier-platoon and tell Captain Brown that the C.O. wants this ditch cleared up.’

I wondered whether the colonel would take this rebuff; so did he. He stood a moment irresolutely prodding the muck in the ditch, then he turned on his heel and strode away.

‘You shouldn’t do it, sir,’ said the sergeant-major, who had been my guide and prop since I joined the company. ‘You shouldn’t really.’

‘That wasn’t our rubbish.’

‘Maybe not, sir, but you know how it is. If you get on the wrong side of senior officers they take it out of you other ways.’

—

As we marched past the madhouse, two or three elderly inmates gibbered and mouthed politely behind the railings.

‘Cheeroh, chum, we’ll be seeing you’; ‘We shan’t be long now’; ‘Keep smiling till we meet again’, the men called to them.

I was marching with Hooper at the head of the leading platoon.

‘I say, any idea where we’re off to?’

‘None.’

‘D’you think it’s the real thing?’

‘No.’

‘Just a flap?’

‘Yes.’

‘Everyone’s been saying we’re for it. I don’t know what to think really. Seems so silly somehow, all this drill and training if we never go into action.’

‘I shouldn’t worry. There’ll be plenty for everyone in time.’

‘Oh, I don’t want much you know. Just enough to say I’ve been in it.’

A train of antiquated coaches was waiting for us at the siding; an R.T.O. was in charge; a fatigue party was loading the last of the kit-bags from the trucks to the luggage vans. In half an hour we were ready to start and in an hour we started.