Anthony Powell - The Military Philosophers

‘Shut down that telephone.’

The captain’s chatter was brought to an end. The general had spoken curtly, but most senior officers would have shown far less forbearance, especially in the presence of a relatively distinguished visiting party of Allied officers. Clearly things were run in their own particular way at Army Group Headquarters. I looked forward to seeing whether the same atmosphere would prevail at the Field-Marshal’s Tactical HQ.

By this time, the Allied advance into Germany had penetrated about a couple of miles across the frontier at its farthest point. Accordingly, we left Belgium and entered that narrow strip of the Netherlands that runs between the two other countries, travelling towards the town of Roermond, still held by the enemy, against which our artillery was now in action. The long straight roads, leading through minefields, advertised at intervals as ‘swept to verges’, were lined on either side with wooden crates of ammunition stacked high under the poplars. Armour was moving in a leisurely manner across this dull flat country, designed by

Mature for a battlefield, over which armies had immemorially campaigned. The identification flash of my old Division had appeared more than once on the shoulder of infantrymen passed on the route. When we stopped to inspect the organization of a bridgehead, I asked the local Conducting Officer from Lines of Communication if he knew whether any of my former Regiment were to be found in the neighbourhood.

‘Which brigade?’

I told him.

‘We should be in the middle of them here. Of course we may not be near your particular battalion. Like to see if we can find some of them? Your funny-wunnies will be happy for a few minutes, won’t they?’

The military attachés would be occupied for half an hour or more with what they were inspecting. In any case, Finn as usual well ahead with time schedule, it would be undesirable to arrive unduly early for the Field-Marshal.

‘I’d like to see if any of them are about.’

‘Come along then.’

The L. of C. captain led the way down a road lined with small houses. Before we had gone far, sure enough, three or four soldiers wearing the Regimental flash were found engaged on some fatigue, piling stuff on to a truck. They were all very young.

‘These look like your chaps — right regiment anyway, if not your actual battalion. You’d better have a word with them.’

I made some enquiries. Opportunity to knock off work was, as usual, welcome. They turned out to be my own Battalion, rather than the other one of the same Regiment within the brigade.

‘Is an officer named Kedward still with you?’

‘Captain Kedward, sir?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Oh yes, the Company Commander, sir?’

‘He actually commands your Company?’

‘Why, yes, he does, sir. That’s him.’

‘You’re all in Captain Kedward’s Company?’

‘We are, sir.’

It seemed astonishing to them that I did not know that already. I could not understand this surprise at first, then remembered that I too was wearing the regimental crest and flash, so that they certainly thought that I belonged to the same brigade as themselves, possibly even newly posted to their own unit. Soldiers often do not know all the officers of their battalion by sight. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the Adjutant to be thought of as the Commanding Officer, because he is the one most often heard giving orders.

‘Is Captain Kedward likely to be about?’

‘He’s in the Company Office just now, sir.’

‘Near here?’

‘Over there, sir, where the swill tubs are.’

‘You stay here, sir,’ said one of them. ‘I’ll get Captain Kedward for you.’

Work was now more or less at a standstill. Cigarettes were handed out. It seemed they had arrived fairly recently in this sector. Earlier, the Battalion had been in action in the Caen area, where casualties had been fairly heavy. I asked about some of the individuals I had known, but they were too young to remember any of them. The L. of C. captain became understandably bored listening to all this.

‘Now you’re back with your long lost unit, I’ll leave you to have a natter,’ he said. ‘Want to check up on some of my own business round the corner. Be with you again in five minutes.’

He went off. At the same moment Kedward, with the young soldier who had offered to fetch him, appeared from the door of a small farmhouse. It was more than four years since I had set eyes on him. He looked a shade older, though not much; that is to say he had lost that earlier appearance of being merely a schoolboy who had dressed up in uniform for fun, burnt-corking his upper lip to simulate a moustache. The moustache now had a perfectly genuine existence. He saluted, seeming to be rather flustered.

‘Idwal.’

‘Sir?’

He had not recognized me.

‘Don’t you remember? I’m Nick Jenkins. We were together in Rowland Gwatkin’s Company.’

Even that information did not appear to make any immediate impression on Kedward.

‘We last saw each other at Castlemallock.’

‘The Casdemallock school of Chemical Warfare, sir?’

On the whole, where duty took one, few captains called a major ‘sir’, unless they were being very regimental. Everyone below the rank of lieutenant-colonel within the official world in which one moved was regarded as doing much the same sort of job, officers below the rank of captain being in any case rare. Responsibilities might vary, sometimes the lower rank carrying the higher responsibility; for example, the CIGS’s ADC, a captain no longer young, being in his way a considerable figure. All the same, this unwonted reminder of having a crown on one’s shoulder did not surprise me so much as Kedward’s total failure to recall me as a human being. The fragile condition of separate identity, perpetually brought home to one, at the same time remains perpetually incredible.

‘Don’t you remember the moment when you took over the Company from Rowland — how upset he was at getting the push.’

Kedward’s face lighted up at that.

‘Why, yes,’ he said. ‘You were with us then, weren’t you, sir? I’m beginning to remember now. Didn’t you come from London? … Was it Lyn Craddock took over the platoon from you? … or Phillpots?’

‘Are they still with you?’

‘Lyn got it at Caen commanding B Company.’

‘Killed?’

‘Yes, Lyn caught it. Phillpots? What happened to Phillpots? I believe he went to one of the Regular battalions and was wounded in Crete.’

‘What became of Rowland Gwatkin?’

‘Fancy you knowing Rowland.’

‘But I tell you, we were all in the same Company.’

‘So we were, but what a long time ago all that was. Rowland living in my home town makes it seem funny you know him.’

‘Is he out here?’

‘Rowland?’

Kedward laughed aloud at such an idea. It was apparently unthinkable.

‘When I last saw him it looked as if he were due for the Infantry Training Centre.’

‘Rowland’s been out of the army for years,’

‘Out of the army?’

‘You never heard?’

Having once established the fact that I knew Gwatkin at all, in itself extraordinary enough, Kedward obviously found it equally extraordinary that I had not kept myself up-to-date about Gwatkin’s life history.

‘Rowland got invalided,’ he said. ‘That can’t have been long after Castlemallock. I know it was all about the time I married.’

‘You got married all right?’

‘Father of two kids.’

‘What sex?’

‘Girls — that’s what I wanted. Wouldn’t mind a boy next.’

‘So Rowland never reached the ITC?’

‘I believe he got there, now you mention it, sir, then he went sick.’