Anthony Powell: Soldier's Art

Then there were my own hopes and fears. Though by now reduced to the simplest terms, these were not without complication. In the first place, I desired to separate myself from Widmerpool; at the same time, if possible, achieve material improvement in my own military condition. However, as the months went by, no prospect appeared of liberation from Widmerpool’s bottle-washing, still less of promotion. After all, I used to reflect, the army was what you wanted, the army is what you’ve got — in terms of Molière, le sous-lieutenant Georges Dandin . No use to grumble, not to mention the fact that a great many people, far worse off, would have been glad of the job. This was a change, of course, from taking pride in the thought that only luck and good management had brought a commission at all at a moment when so many of my contemporaries were still failing to achieve that. However, to think one thing at one moment, another at the next, is the prescriptive right of every human being. Besides, I recognised the fact that those who desire to share the faint but perceptible inner satisfaction of being included, however obscurely, within the armed forces in time of war, must, if in their middle thirties and without any particular qualifications for practising its arts, pay for that luxury, so far as employment is concerned, by taking what comes. Consolation was to be found, if at all, in Vigny’s views (quoted that time in the train by David Pennistone) on the theme of the soldier’s “abnegation of thought and action.”

All the same, although the soldier might abnegate thought and action, it has never been suggested that he should abnegate grumbling. There seemed no reason why I alone, throughout the armies of the world, should not be allowed to feel that military life owed me more stimulating duties, higher rank, increased pay, simply because the path to such ends was by no means clear. Even if Widmerpool left Divisional Headquarters for what he himself used to call “better things,” my own state, so far from improving, would almost certainly be worsened. The Battalion, made up to strength with a flow of young officers increasingly available, would no longer require my services as platoon commander, still less be likely to offer a company. Indeed, those services, taking them all in all, were not to be exaggerated in value to a unit set on streamlining its efficiency. I was prepared to admit that myself. On the other hand, without ordination by way of the War Intelligence Course, or some similar apostleship, there was little or no likelihood of capturing an appointment here or on any other staff. For a course of that sort I should decidedly not be recommended so long as Widmerpool found me useful When, for one reason or another, that subjective qualification ceased to be valid — when, for example, Widmerpool went to “better things” — it looked like pretty certain relegation to the Regiment’s Infantry Training Centre, a fate little to be desired, and one unlikely to lead to name and fame. Widmerpool himself was naturally aware of these facts. Once, in an expansive mood, he had promised to arrange a future preferable to assignment — as an object to be won, rather than as a competitor — to the lucky-dip provided by an I.T.C.

“I look after people who’ve been under me,” Widmerpool said, in the course of cataloguing some of his own good qualities. “I’ll see you get fixed up in a suitable job when I move up the ladder myself. That shouldn’t be long now, I opine. At very least I’ll get you sent on a course that will make you eligible for the right sort of employment. Don’t worry, my boy, I’ll keep you in the picture.”

That was a reasonable assurance in the circumstances, and, I felt, not undeserved. “Putting you in the picture,” that relentlessly iterated army phrase, was a special favourite of Widmerpool’s. He had used it when, on my first arrival at Headquarters, he had sketched in for me the characteristics of the rest of the Divisional staff. Widmerpool had begun with General Liddament himself.

“Those dogs on a lead and that hunting horn stuck in the blouse of his battle-dress are pure affectation,” he said. “Come near to being positively undignified in my opinion. Still, of the fifteen thousand men in the Division, I can think of only one other fit to command it “

“Who is?”

“Modesty forbids my naming him.”

Widmerpool allowed some measure of jocularity to invest his tone when he said that, which increased, rather than diminished, the impression that he spoke with complete conviction. The fact was he rather feared the General. That was partly on account of General Liddament’s drolleries, some of which were indeed hard to defend; partly because, when in the mood, the Divisional Commander liked to tease his officers. Widmerpool did not like being teased. The General was not, I think, unaware of Widmerpool’s qualities as an efficient, infinitely industrious D.A.A.G., while at the same time laughing at him as a man. In this Widmerpool was by no means his only victim. Generals are traditionally represented as stupid men, sometimes with good reason; though Pennistone, when he talked of such things later, used to argue that the pragmatic approach of the soldier in authority — the basis of much of this imputation — is required by the nature of military duties. It is an approach which inevitably accentuates any individual lack of mental flexibility, an ability, in itself, to be found scarcely more among those who have risen to eminence in other vocations; anyway when operating outside their own terms of reference. In General Liddament, so I was to discover, this pragmatic approach, even if paramount, was at the same time modified by notable powers of observation. A bachelor, devoted to his profession, he was thought to have a promising future ahead of him. Earlier in the war he had been wounded in action with a battalion, a temporary disability that probably accounted for his not already holding a command in the field.

When the General himself was present, Widmerpool was prepared to dissemble his feelings about the two attendant dogs (he disliked all animals), which could certainly become a nuisance when their double-leashed lead became entangled between the legs of staff officers and their clerks in the passages of Headquarters. All the same, Widmerpool was not above saying “wuff-wuff” to the pair of them, if their owner was in earshot, which he would follow up by giving individual, though unconvincing, pats of encouragement.

“Thank God, the brutes aren’t allowed out on exercise,” he said. “At least the General draws the line there. I think Hogbourne-Johnson hates them as much as I do. Now Hogbourne-Johnson is a man you must take care about. He is bad-tempered, unreliable, not more than averagely efficient and disliked by all ranks, including the General. However, I can handle him.”

Hogbourne-Johnson, a full colonel with red tabs, was in charge of operational duties, the staff officer who represented the General in all routine affairs. A Regular, decorated with an M.C. from the previous war, he was tall, getting decidedly fat, with a small beaky nose set above a pouting mouth turning down at the corners. He somewhat resembled an owl, an angry, ageing bird, recently baulked of a field-mouse and looking about for another small animal to devour. The M.C. suggested that he was presumably a brave man, or, at very least, one who had experienced enough active service to make that term almost beside the point. Widmerpool acknowledged these earlier qualities.

“Hogbourne-Johnson’s had a disappointing career up to date,” he said. “Unrealised early hopes. At least that’s his own opinion. Sword of Honour at Sandhurst, all that sort of thing. Then he made a balls-up somewhere — in Palestine, I think — just before the war. However, he hasn’t by any means given up. Still thinks he’ll get a Division. If he asked me, I could tell him he’s bound for some administrative backwater, and lucky if he isn’t bowler-hatted before the cessation of hostilities. The General’s going to get rid of him as soon as he can lay hands on the particular man he wants.”