The Amateur Army | Page 7

bus ride to London, a journey of twenty miles, I have been asked to show my pass three times, and on a return journey by train I have had to produce the written permit on five occasions. But some units of our divisions soar above these petty inconveniences, as do two brothers who motor home every Sunday when church parade comes to an end.
When these two leave church after divine service, a car waits them at the nearest street corner, and they slip into it, don trilby hats and civilian overcoats, and sweep outside the restricted area at a haste that causes the slow-witted country policeman to puzzle over the speed of the car and forget its number while groping for his pocket-book.
It has always been a pleasure to me to follow for hours the winding country roads looking out for fresh scenes and new adventures. The life of the roadside dwellers, the folk who live in little stone houses and show two flower-pots and a birdcage in their windows, has a strange fascination for me. When I took up my abode here and got my first free Sunday afternoon, I shook military discipline aside for a moment and set out on one of my rambles.
There comes a moment on a journey when something sweet, something irresistible and charming as wine raised to thirsty lips, wells up in the traveller's being. I have never striven to analyse this feeling or study the moment when it comes, and that feeling has been often mine. Now I know the moment it floods the soul of the traveller. It is at the end of the second mile, when the limbs warm to their work and the lungs fill with the fresh country air. At such a moment, when a man naturally forgets restraint to which he has only been accustomed for a short while, I met the picket for the first time. He told me to turn--and I went back. But it was not in my heart to like that picket, and I shall never like him while he stands there, sentry of the two-mile limit; an ogre denying me entrance into the wide world that lies beyond.
There is one thing, however, before which the picket is impotent--a pass. It is like a free pardon to a convict; it opens to him the whole world--that is for the period it covers. The two most difficult things in military life are to obtain permit of absence from billets, and the struggle against the natural impulse to overstay the limit of leave. There are times when soldiers experience an intense longing to see their own homes, firesides, and friends, and in moments like these it takes a stiff fight to overcome the desire to go away, if only for a little while, to their native haunts. Only once in five weeks may a man obtain a week-end pass--if he is lucky. To the soldier, luck is merely another word for skill.
With us, the rifleman who scores six successive "bulls" at six hundred yards on the open range has been lucky; if he speaks nicely to the quartermaster and obtains the best pair of boots in the stores, he has been lucky; if by mistake he is given double rations by the fatigue party he is lucky; but if the same man, sweating over his rifle in a carnival of "wash-outs," or, weary of blistered feet and empty stomach, asks for sympathy because his rifle was sighted too low or because he lost his dinner while waiting on boot-parade, we explain that his woes are due to a caper of chance--that he has been unlucky. To obtain a pass at any time a man must be lucky; obtaining one when he desires it most is a thing heard of now and again, and getting a pass and not being able to use it is of common occurrence. Now, when I applied for special leave I was more than a little lucky.
It was necessary that I should attend to business in London, and I set about making application for a permit of leave. I intended to apply for a pass dating from 6 p.m. of a Friday evening to 10 p.m. of the following Sunday. On Wednesday morning I spoke to a corporal of my company.
"If you want leave, see the platoon sergeant," he told me. The platoon sergeant, who was in a bad temper, spoke harshly when I approached him. "No business of mine!" he said; "the company clerk will look into the matter."
But I had no success with the company clerk; the leave which I desired was a special one, and that did not come under his jurisdiction. "The orderly sergeant knows more about this business than I do. Go to him about it," he