“The traffic man at Vlamertinghe. ‘It’s the same way to Hell,’ he said, meaning Hooge. It was the other way, really. All the same, I’ve had some good hours. And now it’s Armistice night.... Those fellows are getting rather blue, aren’t they? It’s the blinking cavalry who used to get in the way of the infantry, blocking up the roads with their ridiculous horses and their preposterous lances. Look here, old man; there’s one thing I want to know. Tell me, as a wise owl.”
“What is that?” I asked, laughing at his deference to my wisdom.
“How are we going to get clean enough for Peace?”
“Clean enough?”
I could not follow the drift of his question, and he tried to explain himself.
“Oh, I don’t mean the soap-and-water business. But morally, spiritually, intellectually, and all that? Some of us will want a lot of scrubbing before we sit down in our nice little Christian families, somewhere at Wimbledon or Ealing. Somehow, I funk Peace. It means getting back again to where one started, and I don’t see how it’s possible.... Good Lord, what tripe I’ve been talking!”
He pulled the bow of one of the “Waacs” and undid her apron.
“Encore une bouteille de champagne, mademoiselle!” he said in his best French, and started singing “La Marseillaise.” Some of the officers were dancing the Fox Trot and the Bunny Hug.
Brand rose with a smile and a sigh.
“Armistice night!” he said. “Thank God, there’s a crowd of fellows left to do the dancing.... I can’t help thinking of the others.”