XXIX. Bombing: Night.
CHAPTER X
LONDON (MARCH-JUNE 1918)
I was now ordered back to London—I forget what for, something about expenses, I think. Lord Beaverbrook had become my boss, and they were going to pay all my expenses. It was a nice thought, but they never did.
I went with my brother up to G.H.Q. on March 20th to get warrants from Major A. N. Lee, D.S.O., and went on to Boulogne, and there met Ian Strang, who dined with us at the "Morny." There was a raid on when we came out from dinner, and people wished us to take shelter; but we had dined very well. The next morning there was a thick mist low down, with a clear sky above. When I got on the boat I met General Seely, who introduced me to General Sir Arthur Currie, who said: "You used to billet at St. Pol, usedn't you?" "Yes, sir," said I. "Well," said he, "I have just come through it. They got seven fourteen-inch shells into it this morning." "Has the offensive started?" said I. "That's about it," said he.
London seemed very strange to me at first. I felt very out of things.
Nobody I met, except the soldiers, or those who had been to France like myself, seemed to have any thoughts in common with mine: they did not appear to want to think about the fighting man or of the colossal deeds that were being done daily and nightly on the several fronts. No, they all talked of their own war-work. Overworked they were, breaking up—some at munitions; some at shoemaking classes; others darning socks—and they were all suffering terribly from air raids. In fact, to put it in a few words, they were well in the middle of the world war; they were just the same as the fighting man in France or on some other front.
Then it was that the definite thought came to me: the fighting man, the Hero, will be forgotten; that the people of England who have not been "overseas" and seen them at work, would never realise what these men have been through—win or lose, they would never know.
Their constant talk was of the terrible things they at home were going through on air-raid nights. It hurt me—their complaining about their little chances of damage, when I knew that millions of men were running a big risk of being blown into eternity at any moment, day or night. It is true, my first visit home made me realise that the fighting man after the war would be ignored, and I knew the reason—"Jealousy." I had been given the chance of looking on, and I had seen and worshipped. But if I had not seen, I might have felt just the same as those who stayed at home. Jealousy is one of the strongest things the human mind has to struggle against. Even now, after joint victory, it is one of the things the Allied nations have to guard against, for it exists between them, but surely the bond of the dead, that great community:—