In the orderly room his presence keeps you at arm's length and makes you feel that you want to keep clicking your heels and coming to the salute. You are conscious of the terrible crime you would commit if you permitted your body to relax from the position of attention; your conversational powers are restricted; you fancy you have a voice at the back of your head, saying:
"Don't argue, listen; digest, and get out."
It's a feeling which does not make the orderly room a very pleasant place to go to; yet you have an instinctive feeling of confidence.
The same C.O. in the mess, however, is a different man and creates quite a different atmosphere. In the orderly room he holds you from him; in the mess he pulls you to him. You have the feeling that you can sit in an armchair, with your feet on the coal-box, and talk to him round the corner of your newspaper, like the very ordinary human being he really is.
"Well, good-bye, and good luck." We shook hands, I came to the salute, and the next moment I found myself once more outside the orderly room door.
Have you ever experienced the feeling? Yes, thousands have, for the despatch of reinforcing officers to the front in this abrupt manner was taking place daily throughout the empire. You remember the feeling quite well; amazement at its suddenness; eagerness for the adventure; the prospect of the home parting; the sudden change in the daily routine; the mystery of the future—all swirling through your brain in a jumble of thoughts.
Then the hasty despatch of telegrams, the examination of time-tables, and the feverish packing of a kit which has grown to enormous proportions and hopelessly defies the regulations for weight.
An hour later and I had made a quick sale of my bicycle, distributed odds and ends of hut furniture which I should no longer need, and was sitting in a motor-car, outside the mess, grabbing at hands which were outstretched in farewell.
Those who lived in camp at Fovant can remember what an uninteresting, dreary place it seemed at the time, and how we cursed its monotony. Rows upon rows of uninteresting and uninviting looking huts; the large, barren square; the heart-breaking trudge to the station; the little village with the military policeman, who stood at the fork of the roads, and whose job seemed so easy, while ours seemed so hard; and who always seemed so clean and cool, while we seemed so hot and dusty.
The city of Salisbury, our one ray of hope, but which was too far to walk to, and too expensive to ride to—all these things we used to look upon as sufferings which had to be put up with. But we can look upon the picture now, and there are few of us who can do so without a feeling of affection, for there was a spirit of comradeship there which links up the dreariness into pleasant recollections.