I am on my way home at last. I am waiting here for my sailing. This time I am really going all the way through. Now that I am on the brink of the retour au civil, as the French say, it seems very odd. For eighteen months I haven’t worn white gloves, or silk stockings, or a veil, no, nor even powdered my nose. And the worst of it is, these things don’t seem to matter any more. Even a uniform, and a homely uniform at that, has tremendous advantages as part of a working scheme of life. As one girl remarked;
“You don’t have to spend any time thinking: Shall I put on the pink or the blue tonight? The only question is, Do I or do I not need a clean collar?”
Somehow I feel a little unfitted to go back to a civilian existence once more. The same feeling one finds expressed continually among the boys.
“When I get back home, if I see a line anywhere I’ll go and stand in it just from force of habit,” remarked one boy, grinning ruefully.
But most often this feeling takes the form of a pathetic and wistful fear.
“I’m afraid I’ll shock Mother when I get home.”
“They won’t know what to make of us, back home, the way we’ll behave.”
“I reckon I’ve forgotten how to act civilized.”
And over and again they confess to a shame-faced apprehension lest they should unguardedly relapse into the language of the army and so frighten their women folk!
A famous French surgeon confided to my friend, the English Lady: