A Companion to Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour

Chapter Three

Apthorpe Furibundus

1

119 Apthorpe Furibundus
Furibundus (Latin) means maddened, out of one’s wits, raving, and even inspired. In some myths of the ancient world and stories of the Renaissance a character might attain a noble frenzy through adversities piled one on top of another until a truly stupendous climax is provoked.

120 The brigade had already taken embryonic form.
EW explains in this paragraph something of the brigade’s organisation. In fact as time goes by the brigade evolves and it is not always clear to the reader what exactly is the shape of the organisation. It is perhaps sufficient to know that the formation of a brigade was an exacting business and often involved several regiments suspicious of each other and vying for perceived advantages. The fact that the Halberdiers are given a brigade to themselves is a great compliment; but it is not an easy thing to achieve, as becomes obvious.

120 Bde. H.Q. ... brigade major
Brigade Headquarters, where Ritchie-Hook and his administrative officers did their paperwork and planning. One of these administrative officers was the brigade major, who unlike the other majors was not attached to any battalion but had a position with the brigade’s general staff. He would be in the line of command of the brigade as a whole.

120 Battalion Orderly Rooms
An orderly room was where the soldiers attached to the administrative staff did their secretarial and communication duties.

121 a Humber Snipe
a comfortable and reliable British car of the period that was favoured for staff cars in the Army. Its uprated model, the Super Snipe, was well-liked by royalty, the aristocracy and the rich, and vied with Rolls-Royce and Daimler for high-end popularity.

121 Q.M.
Quartermaster, the officer responsible for providing the food, clothing, equipment, and living quarters for the officers and soldiers

121 one of those box-wallahs
a contemptuous term for an officer whose duties lie behind a desk, and therefore in a little office or ‘box’. The use of the word wallah came from India, where it meant someone who had a defined duty.

121 Everyone dined in the mess that first evening.
EW here leaves out two pages of description contained in MA which tell of Guy’s first encounter with the game of Bingo, or Housey-Housey as the brigadier calls it. EW may easily have thought of these pages as redundant, but they do have the advantage of giving more of Ritchie-Hook’s character. They read as follows :

Everyone dined in the mess that first evening. There were three tables now, one for each battalion. The Brigadier, who from now on sat wherever his fancy took him, said Grace, banging the table with the handle of his fork and saying simply and loudly: ‘Thank God.’
He was in high good humour and gave evidence of it first by providing a collapsible spoon for the brigade major which spilt soup over his chest, and secondly by announcing after dinner: ‘When the tables have been cleared there will be a game of Housey-housey, here. For the benefit of the young officers I should explain that it is what civilians, I believe, call Bingo. As you are no doubt aware, it is the only game which may be played for money by His Majesty’s Forces. Ten per cent of each bank goes to the Regimental Comforts Fund and Old Comrades’ Association. The price of each card will be three pence.’
‘Housey-housey?’
‘Bingo?’
The junior officers looked at one another in wild surmise. ‘Tubby’ Blake alone, the veteran of the Depot Batch, claimed he had played the game on board ship crossing the Atlantic to Canada.
‘It’s quite simple. You just cross out the numbers as they’re called.’
‘What numbers?’
‘The ones they call.’
Mystified, Guy returned to the mess. The brigade major sat at the corner of a table with a tin cash box and a heap of cards printed with squares and numbers. Each bought a card as he came in. The Brigadier, smiling ferociously, stood at the brigade major’s side with a pillow-case in his hand. When they were all seated the Brigadier said. ‘One object of this exercise is to see how many of you carry pencils.’
About half did. Sarum-Smith, surprisingly, had three or four, including a metal one with different coloured leads.
Someone asked: ‘Will a fountain-pen do, sir?’
‘Every officer should always carry a pencil.’
It was back to prep. school again, but a better school than McKinney’s.
At last after much borrowing and searching of pockets the game began suddenly with the command: ‘Eyes down for a house.’
Guy stared blankly at the Brigadier, who now plunged his hand in the pillow-case and produced a little square card.
‘Clickety-click,’ said the Brigadier disconcertingly. Then: ‘Sixty-six.’ Then in rapid succession, in a loud sing-song tone: ‘Marine’s breakfast number ten add two twelve all the fives fifty-five never been kissed sweet sixteen key of the door twenty-one add six twenty-seven legs eleven Kelly’s eye number one and we’ll …’
He paused. The regular officers and ‘Tubby’ Blake gave tongue: ‘Shake the bag.’
Slowly the terms of this noisy sport became clearer to Guy and he began making crosses on his card until there was a cry of ‘House’ from Captain Sanders, who then read his numbers aloud.
‘House correct,’ said the brigade major, and Sanders collected about nine shillings, and the other players crowded round the brigade major to buy new cards.
They played for two hours. The Brigadier’s eye teeth flashed like a questing tiger’s. As the players began to grasp what was going on, an element of enjoyment just perceptible warmed them here and there. The Brigadier became more jolly. ‘Who wants one number?’
‘Sir.’
‘Sir.’
‘Sir.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Eight.’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Seventy-one.’
‘Well it’s …’ Pause. The Brigadier made a pantomime of being unable to read it; fixed the card with his monocle. ‘Did someone say they wanted seventy-one. Well it is seventy …’ pause ‘seven. All the sevens and we’ll - …’
‘Shake the bag.’

121 Bedfordshire for you
i.e. ‘time for bed’. An unexpectedly childish term which must date from the Brigadier’s own childhood. Beds is a common abbreviation for the English county of Bedfordshire.

122 ‘dead ground’
Dead ground was land such as a hollow where you (or conversely the enemy troops) could shelter or snipers hide.

122 ‘covered lines of approach’
These were lines of attack where soldiers would receive covering fire from their artillery and/or other colleagues. Generally there would also be (or you would hope there to be) natural protection of some kind from enemy gunfire.

122 ‘Battle Schools’
Modern military historians have criticised the performance of the British Army in the early years of World War II and sometimes even in later periods of the war. They have given many, sometimes conflicting reasons, for its inadequacy, but the flaws were recognised early in the war by British commanders themselves. Among the ways of combating the lack of battle expertise was the development of Battle Schools, first promulgated in 1941 by Major Lionel Wigram (1907-1944). As he was not a regular soldier he found it difficult to promote his ideas at first but by late 1942 all divisions in the army were required to organise battle schools. Their essence lay in intensive work in fieldcraft, observation, and practical exercises in battle drill, including the use of live fire.
It must be said that Ritchie-Hook seems to be developing some of the ideas that lie behind Wigram’s conception.

122 snap-shooting
Unlike regular shooting practice, this form of training involved sudden and unexpected firing, relying on speed of action. The soldier fired while the pistol was sweeping up through the target, and so the result was virtually an instinctive shot. This technique required a surprising amount of training.

122 Bren fire
The Bren gun was well known to British soldiers at this period and for many years after. It was a light machine-gun which was air-cooled and gas-operated. At this period or a little later, a platoon of 36 soldiers would have three Bren guns.

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123 Finnish triumphs
After grabbing half of Poland, Soviet Russia decided that it wanted more security for the city of Leningrad (once and now again Saint Petersburg) and demanded some islands and mainland from the Finns because the border with Finland was not far from the city. The Finns not unnaturally refused. There followed the Winter War of December 1939-March 1940 during which the heroic struggle of the small Finnish army captured the minds and hearts of the British people. Despite some half-hearted preparations, British forces were never going to intervene in such a distant and difficult struggle. The Finns could not hold out long and were forced to make peace, surrendering the land in dispute.

123 Mannerheim
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867-1951) was the great hero of the struggle for Finnish independence earlier in the century, during the course of which his forces defeated and ejected the Russian Communists. In the thirties he had a great line of defences built across the Karelian isthmus near Leningrad, construction of which annoyed the Soviets and encouraged the demands which led to war in 1939. These lines were named the Mannerheim Lines in his honour and he was pleased to find that they worked well even though Finland lost the war. When in 1941 Finland joined Germany in the invasion of the Soviet Union, the country regained its lost land; but as fortunes turned Mannerheim became President charged with the task of negotiating peace. Finland was obliged to cede even more land to the Soviets. After this last duty Mannerheim retired into private life.

125 Mikkeli Marshes
an area of land in Finland, supposedly impassable to Russian troops

126 Connolly’s Chemical Closet
EW liked to tease his friends in his novels, especially as here Cyril Connolly, the belle-lettrist, editor and reviewer.

126 Karonga
a small town in Malawi on the western shore of Lake Nyasa

126 “clap”
gonorrhoea (slang). Apthorpe’s fear that he might pick the disease up from communal lavatories is misplaced.

127 two days after the fall of Finland
The Treaty of Moscow between Soviet Russia and Finland was signed on 12th March 1940.

128 the B.M.
Brigade Major

129 I shall send in my papers.
i.e. request a discharge from the army. In wartime such a request would not pass without question, but as conscription had not yet been extended to thirty-year-olds Apthorpe might conceivably have got away with it.

129 Bedouin encampment
Bedouins are, or were, animal-herding nomads who could be found over much of northern Africa, Arabia, Jordan and Syria, expecially in the desert areas. They were notoriously difficult to direct or control.

130 minestrone
an Italian soup made with many vegetables and given further character by the addition of broken-up spaghetti and a garnish of Parmesan cheese.

130 Barolo
an Italian red wine from Piedmont, strong, full-bodied and luscious

130 Army Council
Before 1904 the Commander-in-Chief and his Office had directed the administrative and executive affairs of the British Army. Experiences in the Boer War had demonstrated that a more modern organisation was needed that allowed for both direct political control and effective military responses. After this date control was put in the hands of the Army Council, a small group of generals and department heads who had the duty of advising the Secretary of State for War. They were themselves advised by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Various changes since then - especially the creation in war-time of the War Cabinet under its many guises - had deprived it of some of its responsibilities but it still retained a technically pre-eminent position. The Army Council was abolished when all defence concerns were brought under one umbrella Ministry of Defence in 1964.
Believing that the Army Council might be willing to consider his complaint about his thunder-box betrays a ludicrous lack of perspective on Apthorpe’s part.

130 it is itself at the moment out of bounds
The facts that Crouchback can make such a suggestion and that Apthorpe can be impressed by it indicate how far the two of them have fallen under the influence of the Barolo.

131 zabaglione
an Italian pick-me-up or sweet made by heating and whisking together egg yolk, caster sugar and Marsala wine.

131 with a magnet
We have read of no ferromagnetic materials being associated with the thunder-box, so Crouchback’s suggestion would not work even if they could find a powerful enough magnet to do the job.

132 cave
pronounced cavey, this is a schoolboy word (taken from Latin) meaning beware (or on the lookout).

132 Chesterton’s observation
The observation occurs in his story The Sign of the Broken Sword, in his volume The Innocence of Father Brown.

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134 solar topee
the famous type of hat worn by British administrators and soldiers in tropical countries (certainly in films) that is also known as a pith helmet. It is a lightweight hat that is large enough to protect the head, the face and the back of the neck from the scorching sun.

135 A.T.M. 24
Army Training Memorandum No. 24, issued in September 1939 and the first one to be issued during World War II. (See page 85 for A.T.M.)

136 Holy Week
the week leading up to Easter Day

136 second pips
The officers have all been promoted from Second Lieutenant to Lieutenant. It is one step closer to employment in the war and indicates a satisfactorily achieved stage in their training.

137 No more T.E.W.T.S.
i.e. tactical exercises without troops, which were designed so that command post staff and others could practice drills without endangering the other ranks by ill-considered decisions. They allowed commanders to train their staff and subordinate officers on actual terrain. For example, officers were given military tasks to supervise that might require them to inspect an area, make plans and move non-existent troops around to achieve stated objectives. The aim in organising T.E.W.T.S. was to sort out the calm and rational among the officers from those who were liable to become agitated or make wrong decisions.

137 He nothing common did or mean
EW breaks here into a line of verse, from An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return From Ireland by Andrew Marvell (1621–1678). It tells of King Charles I’s noble demeanour upon the scaffold just before his execution :

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable Scene:
But with his keener Eye
The Axe’s edge did try:
Nor call’d the Gods with vulgar spight
To vindicate his helpless Right,
But bow’d his comely Head,
Down as upon a Bed.

It is a typical piece of EW’s irony and wit to compare Charles I before his execution with Apthorpe before the explosion.

137 crowns also
Captains and lieutenants are distinguished in the British Army by the number of stars (or pips) that they wear on their shoulders, three for a captain and two for a full lieutenant. The star shape is not pronounced, so that the pips look more like diamonds at a distance. More senior officers than majors wear crowns as well (majors have just a crown), so Apthorpe is certainly equipping himself for a high position in the army in future.

137 ‘Air-raid’; ‘Take cover’; ‘Gas’
At this stage in the war (March 1940) there had been few air-raids, and this jolly response is a natural reaction to what seems an unusual and interesting incident. The reference to gas reminds us that many experts expected the Germans to use gas in bombing raids on British cities. They didn’t.

138 I don’t feel at all the thing
i.e. I don’t feel at all well

138 the mot juste
i.e. the precisely correct and appropriate word. Guy is thinking that the thunder-box disappeared in a clap of thunder, so that it had a happy nickname.

4

138 Downside
the Benedictine Abbey and school near Bath

139 badges of lieutenant-colonel
i.e. Tickeridge has been promoted to be in command of a battalion, and is wearing on his shoulder a crown above one star (or pip) to distinguish his new rank. He would be addressed simply as Colonel.

139 I may get made second-in-command
Guy does not expect to be made a captain and so command a company, but he thinks he is worthy of being a second to an experienced officer. He does not expect what actually happens to him, being given just a platoon to command, though the rank it carries - Lieutenant - would be the same as that borne by the second-in-command of a company.

139 Altar of Repose
In Catholic tradition it was customary for the church to be open for some hours after the Maundy Thursday Mass in the evening so that parishioners could pray at the Altar of Repose, which was where the Blessed Sacrament (the Body of Christ under the appearance of bread) resided while its normal resting-place, the tabernacle near or on the main altar, lay empty and open. In this way the faithful could try to do better than Christ’s own disciples, who slept while Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane on the evening of the Last Supper. The parish at Matchet appears to keep the Church open until the Good Friday service starts the following day, though this was not the Church’s recommendation even in 1940. (Modern parish churches are allowed to stay open up till midnight only.) Mr Crouchback obviously feels that it is his duty to pray in the church during the most unpopular hours so that the Altar of Repose is never left unattended.

140 ciborium
a small receptacle, often gold-plated, used to contain the consecrated wafers used in Holy Communion. It has been carried from the main altar and is now placed on the Altar of Repose.

140 Salzburg ... ostensibly for some kind of musical festival
Grace-Groundling-Marchpole obviously does not know that Salzburg is a famous centre for musical events, including a festival, and thinks of it merely as a city recently (1938) added to the German Reich, though one assumes that at least one of the festivals Box-Bender attended occurred before the union of Austria with Germany.

5

141 None knew what to expect
EW here leaves out a very funny passage from MA which compares Guy’s idle thoughts about the forming of the brigade with a Hollywood film’s rendition of the gathering of the clans in a film about Bonnie Prince Charlie. It is as follows :

Once Guy saw a film of the Rising of 45. Prince Charles and his intimates stood on a mound of heather, making a sad little group, dressed as though for the Caledonian Ball, looking, indeed, precisely as though they were a party of despairing revellers mustered in the outer suburbs to meet a friend with a motor-car who had not turned up.

An awful moment came when the sun touched the horizon behind them. The Prince bowed his head, sheathed his claymore and said in rich Milwaukee accents: ‘I guess it’s all off, Mackingtosh.’ (Mackingtosh from the first had counselled immediate withdrawal.)

At that moment, suddenly, a faint skirl of pipes rose and swelled to an unendurable volume, while from all the converging glens files of kilted extras came winding into view. ‘Tis Invercauld comes younder.’ ‘Aye and Lochiel’, ‘And stout Montrose’, ‘The Laird of Cockpen’, ‘The bonnets of bonnie Dundee’, ‘The Campbells are coming. Hurrah, Hurrah . . .’ until across the crimson panorama the little bands swept together into one mighty army. Unconquerable they seemed to anyone ignorant of history, as they marched into the setting sun; straight, as anyone knowledgeable in Highland geography could have told them, into the chilly waters of Loch Moidart.

Guy had come to expect something almost like that; something at any rate totally different from what did happen.

Critics have given learned explanations as to why EW left this passage out of SH, centring on how it makes Guy seem unreal and foolish. I do not think EW would willingly have given up this wonderful skit. I think his decision was more to do with his realisation that the film he was guying, Bonnie Prince Charlie starring David Niven, was first shown in 1948, long after the events of Men at Arms took place. The description of the meeting of the clans is accurate, though I cannot remember a character called Macintosh.

141 Penkirk
No such place or camp appears to exist, though I stand to be corrected. EW describes it as being twenty miles from Edinburgh. He did in fact train with the Royal Marines at Ardrossan but that is on quite the other side of the country, so Penkirk is probably entirely fictitious, however much incidents and descriptions which EW sets there may derive from his army experiences. He was also posted to Kilmarnock, which though it is nearer to Edinburgh (just), is still 50 miles (90 Km) away.

142 Undenominational Chaplain
Having such a clergyman would seem to be an easy and cheap way for a brigade to cater for the religious needs of all its soldiers, but he would not meet Guy’s standards at all. For a start, a man who would allow himself to be considered a chaplain for all denominations would not have the clear and intransigent views on Christian doctrine which a devout Catholic like Guy would expect in his chaplain. For another, Guy would very much doubt that the man truly had Holy Orders and was able validly to consecrate the Host at Communion. In fact Catholics would cause trouble to the authorities by insisting on having one of their own priests assigned to them.

142 Pioneers
Pioneers are soldiers whose work concentrated on construction, repair and general engineering. Their duties might include going ahead of the main company to pave the way for them by building roads, ditches and bridges. These pioneers at Penkirk had clearly been sent ahead to prepare a camp for the main body of Halberdiers - a duty that they have entirely failed to do as the brigade begins to arrive.

142 a force otherwise composed of anti-fascist ’cellists and dealers in abstract painting from the Danube basin
EW is indulging in a little chauvinism here. He is thinking of the people of foreign origin who had been interned during the war. Numbers of them were artists fleeing from persecution in central Europe. Many of them did go on, when released, to serve in units like the Pioneers or in other organisations (though generally later in the war than 1940), doing their bit to win a war against enemies who had destroyed their lives. EW obviously had less sympathy for them than others did, mainly because he doubted their efficiency for the tasks they were given.

142 If they’d given me one section of fascists ...
The belief that fascism promoted efficient national and local services was widespread in Britain at this time. Its most famous expression was that Mussolini made the trains in Italy run on time. On the other hand the Pioneer commander is unrealistic in expecting to get only really fit and soldierly men to be assigned to him.

143 A second Ruskin
John Ruskin (1819-1900), the art critic and academic, was also an early socialist thinker. He idealistically believed in a ‘gospel of labour’ where he thought that all artistic and academic men ought also to do hard labouring work so that they could understand and identify with the working class. When he was Slade Professor of Fine Art he got a group of students, including the young Oscar Wilde, to mend a road at North Hinksey near Oxford. His sheer enthusiasm saw the project off to a promising start, but incompetence and faltering resolution resulted in abject failure (according to some accounts).

143 messed
i.e. ate and drank together. The mess is where groups of soldiers of broadly similar rank had their meals.

142 a canopy of white muslin
Apthorpe has erected a mosquito net over his bed such as he might have used in Africa.

143 bassinette
or bassinet. This is a carriage for babies usually made of wood or wickerwork and having a permanent hood at one end.

143 Hera in the arms of Zeus
Zeus was the most prominent of the gods of ancient Greece, usually considered the chief of them. Hera was his wife. This image of connubial bliss might be considered puzzling, since the two of them were frequently at loggerheads owing to Zeus’s propensity for ravishing attractive goddesses and mortal women, if necessary in disguise, and to Hera’s defence of the matrimonial state in her role as goddess of marriage.
Guy is probably thinking of a rococo painting he has seen in Italy somewhere, of two gods in apparent amity nestling comfortably together on clouds; though which I cannot say.

144 rum
odd and unusual

6

145 For Guy they set swinging all the chimes of his boyhood.
EW here leaves out three paragraphs of MA in which he gives a funny parody of the style of heroic Empire-building soldiery which was popular among late Victorian and Edwardian schoolboys. Anyone who has read A.E.W. Mason’s The Four Feathers or P.C. Wren’s Beau Geste will know the type of writing. The omitted paragraphs read as follows :

‘…“I’ve chosen your squadron for the task, Truslove.” “Thank you, sir. What are our chances of getting through?” “It can be done, Truslove, or I shouldn’t be sending you. If anyone can do it, you can. And I can tell you this, my boy, I’d give all my seniority and all these bits of ribbon on my chest to be with you. But my duty lies here with the Regiment. Good luck to you, my boy. You’ll need it”...’

The words came back to him from a summer Sunday evening at his preparatory school, in the headmaster’s drawing-room, the three top forms sitting about on the floor, some in a dream of home, others - Guy among them - spell-bound.

That was during the first World War but the story came from an earlier chapter of military history. Pathans were Captain Truslove’s business. Troy, Agincourt and Zululand were more real to Guy in those days than the world of mud and wire and gas where Gervase fell. Pathans for Truslove; paynims for Sir Roger de Waybroke; for Gervase, Bernard Partridge’s flamboyant, guilty Emperor, top-booted, eagle-crowned. For Guy at the age of twelve there were few enemies. They, in their hordes, came later.

Once again the omission is intended to stop Guy from looking ridiculously out-of-touch or seeming to be an ineffectual day-dreamer. As a consequence of his decision to eliminate this passage, EW had to leave out several further references in MA to Captain Truslove.

146 ‘general dogsbody’
i.e. somebody who is given unimportant and menial work to do. The term indicates how much the other officers would consider Sarum-Smith’s appointment as contemptible. Guy certainly thinks so - see later in the page. Basically Sarum-Smith would be given whatever little task was going and could not have a way of easily showing what talents in soldiering he had. He is already a failure. He later shows that he is not really up to even this job.

146 Headquarter Company
As becomes clearer later, this company, despite its impressive title, was not considered to be a plum job; indeed it was frequently scorned. Headquarter Company would contain the officers and men of the Signals Platoon, the Carrier Platoon, the Anti-Aircraft Platoon, the Pioneer Platoon, the Mortar Platoon and the Administrative Platoon, each of which would have expert and experienced officers who would be very unwilling to allow Apthorpe to make important decisions for them. Apthorpe would be concerned more with the minutiae of battalion organisation than with combat duties. He would not have the respect which went with commanding a rifle company, for example.

146 D Company
Battalions in the British Army at this time generally had four rifle companies, each as here given a letter of the alphabet, though there were many variations. A captain would command each company and he would have a Lieutenant as second-in-command. A company had three platoons, each commanded by a Lieutenant. Generally there would be 36 enlisted men in a platoon and altogether about 120 soldiers in each company.

146 At no previous stage in his life had Guy expected success.
Two of his unexpected successes as a youth are mentioned in MA but are left out of SH. They are :

His ‘handkerchief’ at Downside took him by surprise. When a group of his College suggested he should stand as secretary of J.C.R. he had at once assumed that his leg was being inoffensively pulled. So it had been throughout his life.

(Prefects at Downside School were allowed to wear handkerchiefs in their jacket top pockets as a symbol of their authority. They could also wear spats. The J.C.R. is the Junior Common Room, the body of undergraduates in a university or college.)

147 ‘il Santo Inglese’
the English saint (Italian)

147 It’s twice the size of any other, you know.
Size is not what counts in soldiers’ minds, however. The fact that Apthorpe can say this indicates that his values are distorted, probably by lack of understanding rather than by awareness of having been docketed.

147 piping days of peace
Hayter uses this phrase as a cliché, which is what it certainly became in the nineteenth century. Interestingly it derives almost certainly from the opening speech in Shakespeare’s play Richard III (Now is the winter of our discontent ...), where Richard, then still a duke, deplores the innocent pastimes of peace, knowing himself unfitted for such delights. He is therefore mocking peace when he says :

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant upon mine own deformity.

The piping represents the place of music in the arts of peace, an importance Richard has already damned earlier in his speech in the phrase the lascivious pleasing of a lute. To reduce music to mere etiolated piping is to condemn it indeed.

148 old sweats
i.e. veteran soldiers, not the newly trained men

7

148 Army Training Memorandum No. 31 War. April 1940
See my note on these memoranda (page 85). The officers go on to have fun at its prescriptions and recommendations.

148 General Ironside
William Edmund Ironside (1880-1959) had been appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff in September 1939, replacing General Viscount Gort, who had gone to France as Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force. EW had little respect for Ironside’s abilities and was not surprised when he was replaced in May 1940 by General John Dill. In December 1941 the extremely competent General Alan Brooke replaced the ailing Dill as C.I.G.S.

148 a dekko
a look (a slang expression deriving from the Hindi word dekho)

148 General Paget was at Lillehammer and that all was going well in Norway
This delusive report refers to the disastrous attempt by British forces to save Norway from the Germans in April-May 1940. Winston Churchill had pointed out as early as autumn 1939 how it would be necessary to stop the export of Swedish iron ore to Germany through the Norwegian port of Narvik. He advocated mine-laying. Early in 1940 the British did indeed make plans for occupying strategic Norwegian ports and for laying mines. British action was however delayed until April owing to Norwegian protests, distaste in government circles for such adventures, and quarrels with the French allies, and Germany stepped in first. The Germans quickly gained control of nearly all the country. The British campaign to regain Narvik from them took seven weeks to achieve its object, but when it was finally successful defeat in France forced the British command to recall all their troops from Norway anyway.
Lillehammer might be described as being in the middle of Norway. It lies around 120 Km (80 miles) north of Oslo, and was in the way of a German thrust northwards which forced the British to retreat.

149 M.T.
motor(ised) transport

149 ‘Happy Families’
a children’s card game in which you try to achieve the full set of cards making up a complete family e.g. Mr Bun the Baker’s family.

149 Mr J.B. Priestley’s novels
As can perhaps be detected, EW had no great respect for the work of J.B. Priestley (1894-1984) or for his opinions, which tended to be left-wing. Nevertheless Priestley was a well-respected writer and it would not be odd that officers read his novels. Priestley gained further in reputation when he began his series of weekly fireside talks on radio at about this time.

150 anklets
not jewellery which the Major is wearing around his ankles, but part of the uniform of the Halberdier. They were short leggings of cotton or linen duck, secured on the outside by two leather straps with metal buckles.

150 a Sapper
a private in the Royal Engineers. Sappers in modern armies install portable bridges and build airports, roads, fuel depots and barracks, and are often assigned such unpleasant tasks as bomb disposal.

150 D.A.Q.M.G.
Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General, obviously not a position of great respect in Erskine’s eyes though actually a highly placed officer at Army Headquarters in London. (In MA this post is given as GSO2(Q), which was a mistake on EW’s part, as someone from the General Staff [G] could not be in charge of quartermastering matters [Q].)
The brigadier has noticed Apthorpe’s love and mastery of detail and put him where he can exercise that faculty. He will not make progress in the field of proper soldiering, however.

150 blot your copy-book
A schoolboy slang expression surviving into adulthood for doing something that spoils a previously good record. A copy-book was a fair book where pupils gave examples of their best handwriting, so a blot was a serious disfigurement on the page.

151 N.A.A.F.I.
Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (pronounced naffy). This was an organisation intended to supply the everyday wants of ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen in the British Forces. It was famous for being atrociously bad, but actually did fulfil a need for something resembling home comforts, however dire.

151 thirty men
As explained above, there were generally 36 men in a British army platoon, but standardisation was certainly not enforced.

151 ‘the ropes’
i.e. knowing the procedures and shortcuts necessary for functioning successfully in the army

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152 On the day that Mr Churchill became Prime Minister
10th May 1940. The previous Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was forced to resign as a result of the fiasco in Norway, which seemed to Parliament and the people to be the consequence of muddle and indecision. Churchill was soon to face worse disasters : on this very day the German offensive against the Low Countries and France began.

153 Adj
i.e. the Adjutant

153 Mr Hore-Belisha’s fall in the winter
See my note on page 31.

154 Guy had found them painfully boastful
This was not the general view, though it was EW’s own.

154 retribution from the God of Kipling’s Recessional
Kipling had the reputation for many decades of being a jingoistic supporter of the British Empire. A reading of his poem Recessional would have corrected unthinking commentators. It was written at the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and yet in essence it asks God to forgive the British for creating an empire which does not betray much evidence of respect for the Almighty Himself. The text is :

God of our fathers, known of old -
Lord of our far-flung battle line
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine -
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe -
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law -
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard -
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard -
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!

The title Recessional refers to the hymn sung while a procession of priests and ministers retires after a church service has concluded. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Kipling is foreseeing the withdrawal of the British from their Empire fifty years before it started, and that he fears that the verdict of posterity, let alone God, will be unfavourable.

154 a Zionist
a supporter of the creation of the state of Israel as a homeland for the Jews. Churchill, like many British politicians, was generally in favour of this development, but he was not the notoriously outspoken supporter Guy’s words seem to indicate.

154 an advocate of the Popular Front in Europe
Churchill certainly wanted to bring together the British opponents of Nazism and Fascism in a more powerful alliance so that their efforts could be more successful. But Guy (and EW) are wide of the mark if they thought that Churchill wished to support the political form of Popular Front that was promoted for example in France; this was a movement whose moderate elements found themselves dominated and controlled by Communist and fellow-traveller wings which had ulterior motives for encouraging their adherence, i.e. the subversion of the state and its fall into their control once Fascism had been defeated.
EW is betraying in this reference an attitude which derives from his strong opposition to both forms of totalitarian dictatorship on the continent of Europe, Nazism and Communism. As stated earlier, he would have preferred Britain to go to war with both Germany and the Soviet Union at the same time. Those politicians who welcomed any doubtful country as an ally in the struggle against Nazism (like, from June 1941, the Soviet Union) were to him suspect.

154 an associate of the press-lords and of Lloyd George
Churchill certainly was a friend of the owners of the press, and especially of Max Beaverbrook, the owner of the Express group of newspapers. His political friendship with Lloyd George went back thirty years to the time they were both members of Asquith’s great Liberal government (1908-1915) and planned together the innovations in pensions and social security which eventually gave rise to the modern Welfare State. EW thought neither of these associates of Churchill were worthy people or their achievements meritorious.

154 inferior fighting qualities of British troops
I discuss this point in my note to Battle Schools on page 122. EW’s experiences of fighting in the war, which were certainly undertaken when things were going badly, convinced him of the inferiority of British troops.

154 ‘the Staff’ and ‘the Q side’
The Staff are the administrative officers of the brigade (and not the fighting officers active in the field); the Q side is the quartermastering side (Apthorpe’s prospective domain according to Erskine), which was distinguished in its functions from the Administrative or ‘A side’.

155 idée fixe
i.e. a fixed and unchanging notion which amounts to an obsession (French)

155 whom we saluted and when
Generally, officers in the same regiment would not salute one another unless the occasion was formal. As EW’s Commandant said to the new officers when EW first turned up for training with the Royal Marines at Chatham, ‘Once you use the mess all differences of rank cease to exist. All we expect is the deference which youth naturally pays to age.’ (Letter to Laura Waugh, 10th December 1939). EW at the age of 36 was rather pleased with this remark.

157 the Germans crossed the Meuse
The date is 13th May, three days after the invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium and France started. Since the River Meuse was the major Franco-Belgian defensive site, the fact that the Germans have crossed it indicates a very serious situation for the allies. Not only have the Germans managed to travel very far in a short time but their tanks have penetrated entirely through the hilly Ardennes region, a feat the French had believed impossible and against which they had therefore not guarded sufficiently.
The German strategy was to concentrate their major divisions of Panzer tanks in a lightning strike against the weakest part of the French line, which was as usual near Sedan where the French expected few Germans to show up. The panzers were immediately followed by motorised and foot infantry who mopped up demoralised and isolated pockets of soldiers. The strategy was superbly successful and won the battle of France.

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157 except through the proper channels
i.e. through his own command structure, which would not include Apthorpe.

157 I am the headquarters commander here
Apthorpe is not the headquarters commander. He is merely the captain in charge of Headquarter Company. He does not rank above the captains in charge of the rifle companies like Erskine, let alone Colonel Tickeridge and his adjutant. He has no responsibilities in brigade decision-making beyond what the superior officers allow him. Colonel Tickeridge’s rage in the interview that follows may be due to his wish to keep relationships with Brigadier Ritchie-Hook and other Brigade officers in a stable state without loosing an apparent megalomaniac among them, but just as likely a reason is the fact that Apthorpe appears to be deposing him!

158 Royal Corps of Signals
Each battalion would maintain its own signallers to maintain communications with Headquarters and each other (Apthorpe would have such a Signals Platoon under his administration), but these signallers of the Royal Corps are generally more expert men who would be attached to brigades, etc, as occasion demanded. They would have their own command structure (which Apthorpe attempts to interfere with) and their relationship with their hosts would differ from situation to situation. In no case would they consider themselves as naturally subordinate to the commander of Headquarter Company.

158 Morse
i.e. Morse code, which could be used to convey messages by sound or electric telegraph or even, as here, by flags. To use flags there are two possible methods : in the usual method the flag is swung to the sender’s right for a dash and to the sender’s left for a dot, but a second way is to have the flag held erect for a long interval for dashes and for a short one for dots.
Semaphore is of course a better-known method of signalling with flags. One might expect Apthorpe to be conversant with both Morse code and semaphore. The professional signallers who soon arrive have radio telegraph sets, which ought to do away with flag-signalling (except when, as often happened, there was equipment failure).

159 No savvy?
The atrociously patronising language used by white men to Africans (and others) who did not speak much English was based on a debased form of Pidgin. Pidgin is derived from the several European languages which had taken root on the coasts of the continent, though that was (and is) a far more sophisticated language than the adjutant supposes Apthorpe to have used.
No savvy? means Don’t you understand? but can be used as here to mean You don’t understand.

160 The matter was moving up to an official level.
Apthorpe’s own Signals Platoon obviously did not have an officer of its own yet. Such an officer, with the rank of Lieutenant, might have been able to mediate between Apthorpe and Lieutenant Dunn. Indeed the platoon still seems to be very small in numbers, only ten or so men, when a full complement might well have had 36 men, though this large number was rare for a signals platoon.

160 Alexander’s visit to Siwa
Alexander the Great (B.C. 356-323) in the course of his conquests in the Middle East and Asia visited the oracle of Amon at Siwa in Libya. The priest saluted him as the son of the god, as was usual at such meetings. Alexander then consulted the oracle and appeared to believe in his unique destiny with greater fervency from this point on; he was persuaded to consider himself a god, the son of Zeus.

161 heliograph
an apparatus for sending messages in Morse code by means of reflected sunlight, and therefore a questionable mode of communication in not-so-sunny Britain.

161 hag-ridden by the news from France
The panzer-driven attack by the German army was astoundingly successful, and very speedy too. The date of Ritchie-Hook’s return is not entirely clear, but it is not long after 13th May. German tanks broke out of the beachhead across the Meuse on 15th May, and drove west at an astounding rate which alarmed the German High Command itself. The tanks reached Abbeville on 20th May and so cut the allied armies in two. By 22nd May the panzers were beginning to threaten the Channel ports and thus complete the encirclement of the entire British force and those French and Belgian troops who were to the north of the breakthrough. The evacuation of troops to Britain by sea from Dunkirk began on 26th May though the Germans had inexplicably refused a chance to capture the port on the 24th. The retreat so deplored by Ritchie-Hook could easily be at any time after the 15th.

163 anti-gas capes
Often known simply as gas capes, these cumbersome ankle-length oilskin-like garments were issued to all soldiers. They were rolled up tightly and knotted with a special knot, and carried on the back just above the haversack, as can be seen in many photos and illustrations of World Wars I and II. They had a moderate ability to counter some of the gases likely to be used, but for a short period only.

163 R.T.
i.e. radio telephony

163 From O.C. D. Coy. to O.C. 2 pl.
i.e. From the Officer Commanding D Company (Major Erskine) to the Officer Commanding the Second Platoon (Guy)

163 643202
This is a grid reference on the Ordnance Survey map. It indicates the place where they should meet.

163 ‘dents’ and ‘bulges’ ... ‘armour breaking through and fanning out’ ... ‘pincers’ and ‘pockets’
These are strategic terms used to describe the dismal progress of the allied armies in France in May 1940. The dents and bulges in the line would be due to German attacks; the armour breaking through are the tanks of the Panzer divisions and the fanning out their rapid advance behind allied lines; and pincers and pockets would represent the never-to-be-realised hopes entertained by allied commanders that the German advanced troops could be cut off by equally decisive counter-attacks by their own troops.

164 All specialists and all equipment is needed at once in France.
In fact the situation was already so critical that a decision was imminent that no more troops or equipment should be sent across the English Channel because the position was hopeless and the priority was to evacuate the men already there. EW himself expected that his battalion of the Royal Marines would be sent across the Channel at this moment, but they were kept back.

164 the Orkneys
It may seem difficult to understand why they should be going to the Orkneys, but these islands to the north of the Scottish mainland contained the naval base of Scapa Flow and it was considered necessary that the place should be well guarded. In fact the battleship H.M.S. Royal Oak had been sunk with the loss of over 800 men on 14th October 1939, torpedoed by a German submarine which had penetrated the defences.

164 Corporal Hill shot himself
One of EW’s men did commit suicide at the end of May. EW gave no reason for his action in any of his published letters or diaries.

165 Fully trained reinforcements are needed at once to make a decisive counter-attack.
The true nature of the situation has not yet sunk in.

165 even regimental tradition has to go by the board
One of the difficulties of studying the period of the Second World War at a biographical or personal level is the way that ambitious or driven men (such as EW himself) rapidly changed their affiliations. It is difficult sometimes to know quite what their position is in relation to the Army, which up to then had been dominated by the old regimental loyalties. This flexibility was a natural consequence of the need to develop new ways of organising the armed forces to face the new situations in which Britain found itself from 1940.
When Guy joins the Commandos in OG, he is technically still with his original regiment, the Halberdiers, and wears their uniform. EW was in the same situation concerning the Commandos and the Marines, though later he was posted to the Blues.

166 ‘We’ll hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line’
a popular song of 1939 and 1940

166 the remaining battalions were named X and Y
An unusual event, but understandable in the circumstances. Presumably the letters A, B, C and D were reserved for the battalions which were earmarked to go and fight in France.

166 ‘Retreat’
technically the lowering of the flag at the end of the day, or the bugle signal accompanying it

167 Rumours ...
The remarkable number of rumours that spread through the nation (and not just the army) during World War II (and perhaps in other emergencies too) might make a good subject for an exhaustive historical enquiry. Tracking down their origin, however, is probably impossible.

167 An enemy landing by parachute
The use by the Germans of parachute soldiers impressed everybody in Britain with its novelty and daring, and frightened them with its initial success. They were first employed in warfare to seize the airfield at Oslo early in May. Incredible rumours swept Britain as the full scale of the defeat in France emerged, including the famous one that parachutists were descending dressed as nuns!

168 the Nelson touch
The major certainly deserves his moment of fame for his defiance of these unbelievable orders. He is comparing himself with the British naval hero Admiral Viscount Nelson (1758-1805) who, at a critical moment in the Battle of Copenhagen (2nd April 1801) when his commander-in-chief Sir Hyde Parker hoisted the signal to disengage, is supposed to have put a telescope to his blind eye, ‘looked’ at his chief’s ship, and said ‘I really do not see the signal’. Within an hour he had won the battle.

168 strong Scottish accents
Certainly Englishmen without experience of the Scots tongue might find its dialects impossible to understand. EW’s own family origins were in this part of Scotland (his great-great-grandfather the Reverend Alexander Waugh left Scotland for London in 1782), but I do not know whether he had any difficulty in understanding the dialect himself.

169 Beds and Herts or the Black Watch
Two regiments in the British Army. The Black Watch is a famous Scottish regiment, the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment perhaps less illustrious in public knowledge, though it has a distinguished history going back to the seventeenth century. It is now amalgamated into the East Anglian Regiment.

169 One bad mark follows you wherever you go till you die.
The major is of course embarrassingly maudlin (and probably wrong) about this supposed flaw, but its interest lies in what it foreshadows for Guy.

170 began polishing
i.e. he is blancoing the belt, as is his duty.

170 Movement Control
The organisation responsible for co-ordinating and achieving the movement of troops around Britain. This was not always easy despite the army’s ability to requisition any rolling stock or property it thought it needed.

170 bully beef
the soldier’s famous meal. Bully beef is a form of tinned corned beef. You could eat it straight out of the tin (hungry soldiers did) but it was better fried or boiled and best in a stew. Bully is an Anglicisation of the French word bouilli and means boiled, so originally it must have been boiled beef.
Some Australians, however, think that it comes from an outstation called Booyoolee where, according to them, the stuff was first produced in about 1870 for a telegraph-laying expedition. Unfortunately for their theory, the term bully beef was common in England in the 18th century.

170 Woking ... Brookwood
Stations on the railway line to Aldershot, their destination. Brookwood is only six miles or so from Aldershot.

171 It was Ritchie-Hook.
The point of this is that, of course, his presence means that neither the Brigadier nor the Brigade were fighting in France. Nor are they going to do so.

172 the Germans took Boulogne yesterday
The Germans took Boulogne on 25th May 1940.