My dear Donald [he wrote]: Your letter was very guarded, but I’m an old soldier and I can take a hint. So it looks as if you will soon be off to sea to ‘bring home the bacon’. Well, that’s what you want, I know you’re looking forward to it. Glad you had a nice New Year’s party with your friends. You must be running through the £ s. d. pretty fast, so I’m sending you a tenner. Use some of it to take your mother out and buy her a present or two, you should do what you can to take her mind off things, poor mother, the house will be empty with both of us away. I wish I could come home again just for a day or two to say cheerioh, but it’s impossible. We’re doing our little bit too, you know. Still, come down yourself for a day if you can, and if not I know you’ll write again before you go. Must close now. England expects, as you sea-dogs say,

Your affectionate

Dad

The colonel finished his business at the table, went to a sideboard, poured two glasses of whisky and took them across to the stove. A hand reached up from the armchair and took one of the glasses. Both men drank.

The colonel leaned over the armchair and looked at the book that Norman was reading. It was Plato’s Republic. He grunted noncommittally, pulled another armchair up to the stove and settled in it, making satisfied noises. He wriggled about for a moment, and produced from beneath himself a book, on whose cover flaunted an insufficiently-dressed lady and the title, in flaring red letters, But Once a Virgin.

‘Hot stuff this,’ chuckled the colonel, and applied himself to his book.

CHAPTER THREE

On the march

‘B’TTALION…ATTEN…SHAH!’

There was a single crash of boots on the cinder parade ground, then silence; not a man stirred.

‘B’ttalion…slope…HAHP!’

The rifles came up together: smack… two-three; smack… two-three; smack. Not a man stirred.

‘Battalion will advance in column of platoons from the right, Number One Platoon leading. Battalion… right… turn!’

From the flank, the high, desperate voice of a platoon officer: ‘Number One Platoon, by the right, right wheeyell… quick… MARCH!’

The battalion moved off, platoon after platoon.

Colonel Pothecary studied his men as they marched past him. He was happy. These men are proud, he thought, they march as if they like it. They’re beginning to look like a battalion.