No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [2]
'No reason,' his mate from Pontardulais rather whined in his native sing-song, 'why the bleedin' searchlights, surely to goodness, should light us up for all the ---- 'Un planes to see. I want to see my bleedin' little 'ut on the bleedin' Mumbles again, if they don't.'
'Not so much swear words, 0 Nine Morgan,' the sergeant-major said.
'Now, Dai Morgan, I'm telling you,' 09 Morgan's mate continued. 'A queer cow it must have been whatever. Black-and-white Holstein it wass...
It was as if the younger captain gave up listening to the conversation. He leant both hands on the blanket that covered the table. He exclaimed:
'Who the hell are you to give me orders? I'm your senior. Who the hell...Oh, by God, who the hell...Nobody gives me orders...' His voice collapsed weakly in his chest. He felt his nostrils to be inordinately dilated so that the air pouring into them was cold. He felt that there was an entangled conspiracy against him, and all round him. He exclaimed: 'You and your ---- pimp of a general...!' He desired to cut certain throats with a sharp trench-knife that he had. That would take the weight off his chest. The 'Sit down' of the heavy figure lumping opposite him paralysed his limbs. He felt an unbelievable hatred. If he could move his hand to get at his trench-knife...
09 Morgan said: 'The ----'s name who's bought my bleedin' laundry is Williams...If I thought it was Evans Williams of Castell Goch, I'd desert.'
'Took a hatred for it cawve,' the Rhondda man said. And-look you, before you could say...' The conversation of orfcers was a thing to which they neither listened. Officers talked of things that had no interest. Whatever could possess a cow to take a hatred of its calf? Up behind Caerphilly on the mountains? On an autumny morning the whole hillside was covered with spider-webs. They shone down the sun like spun glass. Overlooked the cow must be.
The young captain leaning over the table began a long argument as to relative seniority. He argued with himself, taking both sides in an extraordinarily rapid gabble. He himself had been gazetted after Gheluvelt. The other not till a year later. It was true the other was in permanent command of that depot, and he himself attached to the unit only for rations and discipline. But that did not include orders to sit down. What the hell, he wanted to know, did the other mean by it? He began to talk, faster than ever, about a circle. When its circumference came whole by the disintegration of the atom the world would some to an end. In the millennium there would be no giving or taking orders. Of course he obeyed orders till then.
To the elder officer, burdened with the command of a unit of unreasonable size, with a scratch headquarters of useless subalterns who were continually being changed, with N.C.O.'s all unwilling to work, with rank and file nearly all colonials and unused to doing without things, and with a depot to draw on that, being old established, felt that it belonged exclusively to a regular British unit and resented his drawing anything at all, the practical difficulties of his everyday life were already sufficient, and he had troublesome private affairs. He was lately out of hospital; the sackcloth hut in which he lived, borrowed from the Depot medical officer who had gone to England on leave, was suffocatingly hot with the paraffin heater going, and intolerably cold and damp without it; the batman whom the M.O. had left in charge of the hut appeared to be half-witted. These German air-raids had lately become continuous. The Base was packed with men, tighter than sardines. Down in the town you could not move in the streets. Draft-finding units were commanded to keep their men out of sight as much as possible. Drafts were to be sent off only at night. But how could you send off a draft at night when every ten minutes you had two hours of lights out for an air-raid? Every man had nine sets of papers and tags that had to be signed by an officer. It was quite proper that the poor devils should be properly documented.