The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [18]
‘The second echelon of the supply column will have preceded us,’ said Gwatkin sharply.
‘And what do they do?’
‘They will have broken bulk and be ready to issue to units. You should spend more time on your Field Service Pocket Book, Yanto.’
We arrived at a small, unalluring industrial town. Once more the Battalion formed up. By now the men were tired. Singing was sombre as we marched in:
‘My lips smile no more, my heart loses its lightness,
No dream of the future my spirit can cheer,
I only would brood on the past and its brightness,
The dead I have mourned are again gathered here.
From every dark nook they press forward to meet me,
I lift up my eyes to the broad leafy dome.
And others are there looking downward to greet me,
The ashgrove, the ashgrove, alone is my home . .
Gwatkin was right about being more like soldiers in these new surroundings. Barracks had been created from a disused linen factory, the long narrow sheds in which the flax had formerly been treated offering barrack-rooms stark as a Foreign Legion film set. Officers were billeted in a forlorn villa on the outskirts of the town, a house that had no doubt once belonged to some successful local businessman. It was a mile or more away from the barracks. There, I still shared a room with Kedward, Breeze and Pumphrey, the last of whom had not yet achieved his RAF transfer. Another subaltern, Craddock, was in with us too, brother of the girl to whom Kedward was engaged. Craddock, fat and energetic, was Messing Officer, which meant he returned to billets in the middle of the night several times a week, when he would either turn on the light, or blunder about the room in the dark, falling over other people’s camp-beds in a fruitless effort to find his own. Both methods were disturbing. There was, in any case, not much room to manoeuvre round the beds, even when the light was on. Craddock’s midnight arrivals were not the only inconvenience. Breeze left old razor blades about in profusion, causing Pumphrey to cut his foot one morning. Kedward talked in his sleep throughout the night, shouting commands, as if he were drilling a company: ‘At the halt – on the left – form close column of – platoons …’
Pumphrey, inclined to bicker, would throw towels about and sponges. A window pane was broken, which no one ever seemed responsible for mending, through which the night wind whistled, while cold struck up insistently from the floor, penetrating the canvas of a camp-bed. Snow had returned. I record these conditions not as particularly formidable in the circumstances, but to indicate they were sufficiently far from ideal to encourage a change, when, as it happened, opportunity arose. This came about through Gwatkin in an unexpected manner. During the weeks that followed our arrival in these new surroundings, I began to know him better. He was nearer my own age than the other subalterns, except Bithel. Even the captains tended to be younger than Gwatkin and myself, as time went on, some of the older ones being gradually shifted, as insufficiently proficient at their job, to Holding Battalions or the Infantry Training Centre.
‘We’re getting rid of the dead wood,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Just as well.’
His own abrupt manner of speaking continued, and he loved to find fault for its own sake. At the same time, he evidently wanted to be friendly, while fearing that too easy a relationship with a subordinate, even one of similar age, might be unmilitary. There were unexpected sides to Gwatkin, sudden displays of uncertainty under a façade meant to be very certain. Some of his duties he carried out very well; for others, he had little or no natural talent.
‘A company commander,’ said Dicky Umfraville, when we met later that year, ‘needs the qualifications of a ringmaster in a first-class circus, and a nanny in a large family.’
Gwatkin aspired to this dazzling combination of gifts – to become (as Pennistone later said) a military saint. Somehow he always fell short of that coveted status. His imperfections never derived from any willingness