The Amateur Army | Page 7

the man next him, and in the
space of three seconds the brisk Cockney had the forged permit of
leave to show to the inspector. The men under the seat and on the racks
were not detected.
Every station in our town and its vicinity has a cordon of pickets, the
Sunday farewell kisses of sweethearts are never witnessed by the
platform porter, as the lovers in khaki are never allowed to see their
loves off by train, and week-end adieux always take place at the station
entrance. Some time ago the pickets allowed the men to see their
sweethearts off, but as many youths abused the privilege and took train
to London when they got on the platform, these kind actions have now
become merely a pleasing memory.
Pickets seem to crop up everywhere; on one 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