‘You asked him?’ echoed Maddison bitterly. ‘God, this British Army is a pantomime. You asked him? I catch the man out, I teach him and a dozen other soldiers a lesson they’ll never forget – a lesson that may save their lives one day – and because he gets a burn and a bit of a fright I’m supposed to tremble in my shoes. Do you know,’ he said, ‘what they do in the German Army? They strap officer candidates in an electric chair and put shocks through them to see how they endure. That’s soldierliness. That’s manhood.’

‘That’s the German army,’ said the colonel, ‘this isn’t.’

Major Maddison had spent a holiday in Germany before the war. He still remembered with a glow the green-clad giants goose-stepping in ranks of sixty-four past the saluting base with burnished spades at the slope; the young men playing volleyball, naked and sunburned, their blond hair all tousled; the avenues of white masts with their flags streaming and crackling in the wind.

‘More’s the pity,’ said Major Maddison. ‘Every time I look at my men I wonder what’ll happen to them when they meet the enemy. Do you know what we’ve got to beat?’ he asked. ‘Soldiers, Spartans, trained and hardened from boyhood, as men should be trained, ruthless and fearless and in love with death, as men should be. Not dragged to war but going gladly. Bound by the mystic communion of soldiers.’

The colonel, like everyone in the officers’ mess, had often heard Maddison talking about the mystic communion of soldiers. Neither the colonel nor the most be-ribboned of his officers had any idea what this was.

‘And then,’ said Maddison disgustedly, ‘I look at this rabble of mongrels we’re trying to turn into soldiers. Slack and spineless in their clothes. Hands in their pockets and cigarettes in the corners of their mouths as soon as your back’s turned. Their only pleasures are to sit with their women gaping at a cinema screen…’ Maddison hated the women whom he saw clinging to the arms of his men; shrill and white-skinned creatures, soft as slugs, stinking of scent; they turned his stomach ‘…or drooping about in a dance hall listening to some Jewboy crooning through a microphone. Not a warrior among them.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said the colonel heartily. ‘Warriors, indeed!’

‘My job,’ said Maddison obstinately, ‘is to train men for battle. The divisional commander approves of my methods. We had casualties every day at the div. battle school. There were no complaints. I was told it showed that I was doing my job. What I want to know now is, are you going to back me up or aren’t you?’

‘What I want to know;’ said the colonel, ‘is… are you going to stick to safety regulations or aren’t you?’

‘Sweat saves blood,’ said Maddison. ‘The men must learn to suffer.’