A Companion to Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour

Chapter Six

Happy Warriors

1

280 Happy Warriors
This title comes from William Wordsworth’s poem Character of the Happy Warrior, published in 1806, which begins :

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?

EW actually dedicated OG to his friend and commander in Crete, Major-General Sir Robert Laycock, with the words That every man in arms should wish to be. In the light of EW’s experience in Crete, the dedication may have an ironical quality.
Wordsworth’s poem gives in 85 lines an account of the character he would expect of a good, selfless soldier. It ends with these lines :

’Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a Nation’s eye,
Or left unthought-of in obscurity,--
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not--
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won:
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name--
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is He
That every Man in arms should wish to be.

280 ville lumière
a city of light (French)

280 ‘Have ye no a wee room for a Scottish laddie?’
This is stage Scottish dialect; but you may hear something like it on the streets of Glasgow.

280 major’s crowns
Trimmer has replaced the two pips on each shoulder with a crown on each. Such deception would be severely punished were it discovered.

281 CHATEAU de MADRID. Restaurant de premier ordre
Rather unusually titled, the Château de Madrid is proclaimed a restaurant of the first class.

281 The Mile End Road or the Gorbals?
The Mile End Road is one of the chief thoroughfares of east London and the Gorbals the very centre of Glasgow. Both places are working-class areas.

281 Tout suite, monsieur
At once, sir, though not (and obviously not said in) authentic French

282 sporran
the leather pouch that hangs from a belt in front of the kilt and serves as a pocket or handbag

282 grand couturier
a first-class fashion house

282 gin of a previously unknown brand
This sentence indicates that scarcity is beginning to bite and that some products are in short supply. There may also be some doubt about what this spirit actually is.

283 un peu fatigué, n’est-ce pas?
a little tired, isn’t it? (French). Fatigué could stand here for dry, limp or unmanageable.

285 Et pour commencer … saumon fumé
And to begin with … smoked salmon

285 Always read the menu from right to left.
i.e. check the price first before ordering

285 the Rift Valley
the district in Kenya where she and Guy had lived

285 Indian cantonment
The word cantonment was used in British India for a military station. Virginia was so determined not to go to India that she divorced her second husband rather than travel out with him.

286 What we need now is to connect Cardiff University with Santa Dulcina
Why, one has no idea, unless Welsh Nationalism is also suspected of treating with the enemy. Academics in EW novels are capable of any lunacy.

286 curlicues
A curlicue is an ornamental twirl in calligraphy, a craft in which EW had received expert tuition. Here it is used just to describe the hidden recesses of Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole’s mind.

287 Full, Dickensian fog
Dickens was famous for his description of foul weather, as in the opening chapter of Book 3 of Our Mutual Friend :

It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither. Gaslights flared in the shops with a haggard and unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night-creatures that had no business abroad under the sun; while the sun itself when it was for a few moments dimly indicated through circling eddies of fog, showed as if it had gone out and were collapsing flat and cold. Even in the surrounding country it was a foggy day, but there the fog was grey, whereas in London it was, at about the boundary line, dark yellow, and a little within it brown, and then browner, and then browner, until at the heart of the City -- which call Saint Mary Axe -- it was rusty-black. From any point of the high ridge of land northward, it might have been discerned that the loftiest buildings made an occasional struggle to get their heads above the foggy sea, and especially that the great dome of Saint Paul’s seemed to die hard; but this was not perceivable in the streets at their feet, where the whole metropolis was a heap of vapour charged with muffled sound of wheels, and enfolding a gigantic catarrh.

289 No Orchids for Miss Blandish
A thriller by James Hadley Chase published in 1939 and with a great contemporary reputation for violence and sex : it seems relatively mild today. When I was a teenager other boys informed me of its merits in hushed tones. Guy later says it is unreadable.

289 Don’t, Mr Disraeli
a historical spoof by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon, also recently published. There are admirers of the works of these collaborative writers today.

289 Chartreuse de Parme
In contrast to the other two, this book (published a hundred years earlier) is a masterpiece. It was written by the great French novelist Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle, 1783-1842). The qualities of this novel are manifold : it combines romance, history, fantasy and psychological perceptiveness with great mastery.
EW however found it disappointing when he read it in 1957. He couldn’t understand why it had the reputation of being the first ‘psychological novel’. It seems to me that nothing any character thinks or says or does has any relation to human nature as I know it, he wrote in a letter to Ann Fleming (Letters, p. 492).

290 “O.C. X Commando”
i.e. Officer Commanding X Commando

290 they’ve issued N.C.O.s with binoculars
Some officers thought this action, which was carried out early in the war, was detrimental to the authority of the commissioned officers, since it gave the N.C.O.s (sergeants and corporals) the power of equal appreciation of the military situation and therefore the possibility of reducing their respect for their superiors.

290 Claire’s C.S.M.
i.e. his Company Sergeant Major. Jumbo uses the nomenclature he is familiar with, and goes on to give this N.C.O.’s real rank, Corporal-Major. Some regiments did have a distinctive terminology for their officers, though army reforms reduced this practice in the late twentieth century.
In this manner we are introduced to one of the major characters of the second half of the novel, Corporal-Major Ludovic.

291 O.C.s don’t seem as ready to play now
i.e. Commanding Officers do not wish to see their better officers seconded to the Commandos. The reason for this was that the Commandos appeared to be doing very little with them, and senior officers felt their own regiments were suffering from a poorer quality of officer. In fact, in their early months the Commandos were little utilised and frequently inadequate when employed in the roles they were intended to take up, which were sabotage and surprise actions behind enemy lines. General criticism meant that they were diverted to less rewarding tasks to give them something to do, e.g. 7 and 8 Commandos were sent to Crete in May 1941 to provide cover for the evacuation of British forces, a role they were not trained for and which meant several hundred of their men were captured. This is how EW himself came to be in Crete.

291 another island with two hills, steep shingle beaches and cliffs
This island is certainly Pantelleria. EW in his Memorandum on Layforce (Diaries, page 490) describes it as being the target of Operation Workshop, which involved the brigade of which 8 Commando was part. In fact Pantelleria was not assaulted at this time, and it took a massive attack by bombers two years later to force its surrender.
The Isle of Arran where EW’s Commando trained was supposed to bear some resemblance to Pantelleria.

291 Northland against Southland
These two names were often (and still are) given to the two opposing forces in a battle exercise. (Or Redland and Blueland, etc.)

2

292 nights lengthened until they seemed continuous
The Isle of Mugg must be at a latitude of around 57 degrees north. At this latitude the winter sun would be in the sky for only a few hours, three or four at most in December, though there would be an extended twilight and dawn period.

292 A.D.C.
aide-de-camp, i.e. Guy became Blackhouse’s administrative assistant.

293 a regular five or six pounds a week
perhaps the amount a skilful manual worker might earn in the same period

293 R.S.M.
Regimental Sergeant Major

293 Verey light
a coloured flare fired from a pistol into the sky to act as a signal. It was invented by the American naval officer Edward W. Very (1847–1910). For some unknown reason his invention is often misspelt in Britain, as by EW.

294 on the road from Moscow
This is a reference to the retreat from Moscow undertaken by Emperor Napoleon I and his troops in late 1812. Only about 10,000 of his Grande Armée of 453,000 men arrived home in France fit and healthy. The return journey was a nightmare of hunger, fatigue and danger, undertaken in the increasingly bitter eastern European winter, with stragglers certain to be picked off by the Russian horsemen who shadowed their march.

295 sub specie aeternitatis
‘from the viewpoint of eternity’ (Latin)

296 Household Brigade
The brigade charged with the guarding of the monarch. It consisted then of three cavalry regiments (the Horse Guards, the Royal Dragoons and the Life Guards) and the five Guards regiments later in the page called the Foot Guards (Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh).

297 gaffe
a social mistake

297 He’s H.L.I.
Highland Light Infantry, a distinguished regiment of the line. For the difference between line and guards regiments see page 69. As Colonel Blackhouse finds, this regiment too has its traditional pride and will not accept a slight, however little intended.

297 playing Achilles
This is a reference to an incident in the Trojan War when Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces, quarrelled with Achilles, their most successful field commander. Rather than serve under Agamemnon Achilles refused to fight and stayed in his tent. Like Achilles, Major Graves broods and sulks.
The story of Achilles is resolved when he allows his best friend Patroclus to wear his armour in order to frighten the Trojans in battle. This ruse fails and Patroclus is killed by Hector, the son of King Priam of Troy. Achilles, finally aroused by the death of his friend, returns to the fray and kills Hector. He himself is later killed, in some legends by an arrow piercing his heel, his one vulnerable spot.

300 oenophilist
a lover of wine

303 Gallipoli
See my note to page 78.

3

305 Cleopatra … Julia Stitch
Mrs Julia Stitch, who has already made an appearance in EW’s novel Scoop, is a figure of mysterious power and energy. EW based her character, with some trepidation, on his friend Lady Diana Cooper (1892-1986), the actress and society hostess, wife of the cabinet minister Alfred Duff Cooper. In 1937 and 1938 Duff Cooper was First Lord of the Admiralty, a position that does not require minute knowledge of matters nautical or naval but is merely an appointment for a politician. As First Lord he was entitled to use the Admiralty yacht Enchantress, a fact of which he and his wife took advantage by doing a Mediterranean trip and another, interestingly, to the Hebrides. The Enchantress was quite as bad a ship for rough seas as the Cleopatra obviously is. In the novel the Stitches clearly own the Cleopatra; in real life the Enchantress was the property of the Admiralty, a government department.
The next time we see Mrs Stitch, she will be in Alexandria and the link to Cleopatra, queen and enchantress, will be still more evident.

305 vino scelto
a sweet wine made from specially chosen grapes in the manner of a German Auslese

305 ‘C’è scappata la mucca’
‘The cow has got out!’ (Italian)

305 ‘Accidente!’ ‘Porca miseria …’
‘Emergency!’ ‘Bloody hell! ...’ (or something similar)

306 ‘Hookforce’
The force actually raised for North African service at this time was known as Layforce, after its commander, EW’s friend Robert Laycock.

307 like Pharoah and Moses
Kilbannock is referring to the means by which the Pharoah was constrained to let the Israelite people depart from Egypt in order to find their promised land (Exodus chapters 5 - 12). The Lord sent seven plagues culminating in the death of the first-born before the Pharoah permitted the Israelites to go.

307 Hostile Offensive Operations
Though he is later to be employed at H.O.O., he has misnamed the organisation, which elsewhere in SH is called Hazardous Offensive Operations. Kilbannock is clearly drunk.

307 I rather think I equal a major.
So Kilbannock is a Squadron Leader in the Royal Air Force, though with no experience of flying at all.

308 the democratic side of my character - not what Air Marshal Beech saw.
In OG Kilbannock expands on his democratic attachments :

‘I should awfully like to see it too.’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’ He paused, drank deeply and then added: ‘I’ve been pretty red ever since the Spanish war.’

309 the Mystery of Information
i.e. the Ministry of Information, the Orwellesque title given to the ministry responsible for producing propaganda and maintaining morale at home. Kilbannock has had too much to drink to be able to say the word.

309 your racket, Guy
i.e. Guy’s own X Commando, which has too many men from upper and upper-middle class backgrounds to fit the bill as people’s heroes. Kilbannock’s slang is itself highly reminiscent of that used by private school pupils from ‘good’ families.

309 Rupert Brooke
the poet (1887-1915) whose beauty, charm and talent captivated a whole generation. His early death (of septicaemia in the Mediterranean while on his way to the Gallipoli campaign) merely added to his attraction. His best known poems are The Soldier (‘If I should die, think only this of me:/That there’s some corner of a foreign field/That is for ever England’) and The Old Vicarage, Grantchester (‘Stands the Church clock at ten to three?/And is there honey still for tea?’).
Brooke’s poetry encapsulates the heroic, resolute, dutiful approach to soldiering that did not easily survive World War I. He himself experienced enough of the horror of that war to have become a stern critic of its nature and conduct, but did not live to write poetry with this theme.

309 You’re the ‘Fine Flower of the Nation’.
The irony is exquisite. Guy and his friends can never be candidates for official praise in the newspapers because they are not now the right class of people to praise. The public want proletarian heroes. But we know that the qualities shown by this Fine Flower of the Nation are already very suspect, that they are not heroic material at all. In this manner they are quite as unqualified and quite as fit to be heroes as Trimmer is.

309 a People’s War
The concept of a People’s War arose early in World War II. It served as a means of energising the whole people into a great effort to support the armed forces, encouraged from May 1940 by the adherence to the government of the Labour Party. It quickly took on a political tinge, encouraged by those that wished to see great social and political change after the war. The people would win the war; the people would then take power to themselves. This left-wing stance was communist in thrust after the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 freed the adherents of communism to work for influence and victory, but the Labour Party was not so easily to be replaced in the affections of the British working class.

309 When wilt thou save the People? … but men!
These words are from the first verse of The People’s Anthem, a poem published in 1831 by Ebenezer Elliott, the ‘Corn-Law Rhymer’ (1781-1849). It was soon set to music. Elliott was a political reformer and a leader of the Anti-Corn Law League, which aimed to abolish the laws that kept the price of bread artificially high, a campaign which he lived to see successful when the Laws were repealed in 1845. The words of his poem are :

When wilt thou save the people?
Oh, God of mercy! when?
Not kings and lords, but nations!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
Flowers of thy heart, of God they are.
Let them not pass like weeds away,
Their heritage a sunless day!
God save the people!

When wilt thou save the people?
Oh, God of mercy! when?
The people, Lord of the people!
Not thrones and crowns, but men.
God save the people! thine they are,
Thy children, as thy angels fair,
save them from bondage and despair.
God save the people!

The quotation reveals Kilbannock’s ‘democratic’ convictions, to which he has already referred on page 308.

310 We aren’t quite a normal battalion.
Since a normal infantry battalion had 807 men of all ranks and a commando, if fully manned, had 791 at most (later only 461), the fact that X Commando cannot fit into the ship is puzzling. The explanation is probably that EW is remembering the experience in late January or early February 1941 of trying to embark ‘Z’ Force, which was much larger than a single commando and was later known as Layforce. ‘Z’ Force had to be split between two ships, with a few going into a third.

313 The great explosion …enemy action.
This sentence is missing from OG.

4

This section is a shortened version of a chapter in OG called Interlude. There are considerable cuts, for EW felt on creating the recension that this Interlude held up the action. It certainly acts as an interval of calm before the storm of Crete.

313 Hookforce sailed … with honours.
This sentence, making it clear where the force has got to, was added to SH.

314 the Dutch
i.e. the descendants of the original settlers of the Cape Colony, who were mainly Netherlanders. Though never as strongly anti-British as the Boers of Transvaal and the Orange Free State, they still resented being forced into the British Empire in 1814. It is just possible that the settlers of British origin did arrange a warm welcome for the British troops with the desire of cocking a snook at their fellow South Africans.

314 Oh, yes, partly that, I’ve no doubt.
EW cut out a large section of OG after this sentence. The relevant passage tells of the polite helpfulness and genuine welcome given to the troops, and so contradicts Ivor Claire’s cynical estimate about the motives of the locals. It reads :

‘It didn’t do B Commando much good. They’ve been taken on a route march, poor devils.’
‘Probably the best thing for them.’
An upright elderly man came across the room. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Forgive my butting in. I’m secretary of the club here. I don’t know whether you’ve been there yet.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Guy, ‘thank you very much. I was taken to luncheon there today.’
‘Ah, good. Do use it as your own if you want a game of billiards or bridge or anything. Remember the way? Next door to the post office.’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘There’s usually a small gathering about this time. I’ll look out for you if you drop in, and introduce you to some fellows.’
‘Thanks awfully.’
‘You’ve set us wondering, you know - the different regimental badges. Are you all replacements?’
‘We’re a mixed lot,’ said Claire.
‘Well, I know we mustn’t ask questions. Are you both fixed up for dinner?’
‘Yes, thank you very much.’
‘Uncommonly civil fellows,’ said Claire when they were again alone.
‘Anyway, I’ve had the most satisfactory day.’
‘I too.’

314 Bertie said one kick of an ostrich can kill three horses.
A small bit of the dialogue present in OG at this point is missing in SH. This may be because the meaning may have changed so much to the pejorative that EW was reluctant to include it :

Guy continues :
Then we got picked up by a sugar-daddy who took us to the club. Excellent food and you know there’s nothing really much the matter with South African wine.’
‘I know nothing of wine.’
‘The sugar-daddy explained they only send their bad vintages abroad and keep all the good to drink themselves. Bertie and Eddie went off with him afterwards to see vineyards. Then I went to the Art Gallery …

A sugar-daddy had a very explicit sexual meaning by the 1960’s which was not necessarily the case in the 1940’s.

314 two Noel Patons
Sir Joseph Noel Paton (1821-1901) was a traditional realistic painter of historical and mythological scenes, very popular in his own day. He was distinctly Pre-Raphaelite in his themes and techniques, especially early on. Perhaps his two most famous pictures are The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania (1847) and The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania (1849); they are in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Guy’s comment that the beauty of Paton was that he knew nothing of art is intended by EW to indicate that Guy had no sympathy with modern doctrines. EW himself was in the same position, and indeed preferred the narrative paintings characteristic of Victorian art to any art of his own time.

315 the Southern Cross
It is not easy for those unfamiliar with the southern sky to pick out the Southern Cross with confidence.

315 the warm and brilliant night.
After this sentence a continuation of this conversation is missing in SH. I include it entire though one paragraph of it (printed in red) is retained in SH :

‘It’s the kind of thing one ought to know, I suppose, for finding one’s way in the dark.’
‘The dark,’ said Claire, ’the black-out. That’s the worst thing about the ship. It’s the worst thing about the whole war.’
Here everything was ablaze. Merchandise quite devoid of use or beauty shone alluringly in the shop windows. The streets were full of Hookforce. Car-loads of soldiers drove slowly past laden with the spoils of farms and gardens, baskets of oranges and biblical bunches of grapes.
‘Fair-day,’ said Guy.
Then there was a sterner sound. The soldiers on the pavement, reluctant to lose their holiday mood, edged into doorways and slipped down side turnings. A column of threes in full marching order, arms swinging high, eyes grimly fixed to the front, tramped down the main street towards the docks. Guy and Claire saluted the leading officer, a glaring, fleshless figure.
‘B Commando,’ said Guy.
‘Colonel Prentice.’
‘Awfully mad.’
‘I was told that he always wears the stockings his great-great-grandfather had at Inkermann. Can that be true?’
‘I heard it. I think so.’
‘Enclosing every thin man, there’s a fat man demanding elbow-room.’
‘No doubt he’s enjoying himself in his own fashion. One way and another, Guy …

(Colonel Prentice was almost but not quite eliminated from the text of SH, so a few other changes in the book are necessary. Prentice was in fact based on Colonel Pedder, the commanding officer of No. 11 Commando, who was famous for his ferocious demands on his men. He was killed in the invasion of Vichy Syria in June 1941; according to some accounts, for example by Martin Stannard in No Abiding City, he was shot in the back by his own soldiers.)

315 ‘Ali Baba’s lamp.’
Ali Baba is the hero in the British pantomime Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, which is loosely based on a story in the Arabian Nights. At one point Ali, surrounded by wondrous treasure, is trapped in the Thieves’ cave. In the original story he rescues himself by saying the words ‘Open sesame!’ EW, however, implies that Ali Baba is rescued by rubbing a magic lamp and producing a genie who must obey him. Aladdin does the same thing in his pantomime; theatre producers simply extracted a good scene from one pantomime and put it in another.

315 How one longed for a torpedo at times.
Ivor Claire’s fantasy about being left stranded and happy on a desert island after a fortunate torpedoing is remarkably similar to Trimmer’s (on page 295). In this way EW links two men, one of whom Guy detests and the other he admires, both of whom are to prove untrustworthy. Moreover, Guy himself, on escaping from Crete, is to have the experience nearest to this fantasy, and it is to prove as unpleasant as here he anticipates it would be.

316 we shall find the war’s over.
This period, the turn of 1940-1, was the first period of British success in the land war. It was not against Germany but against her ally Italy. The British had driven the Italians out of Cyrenaica (Libya) by February, and only the diversion of troops to Greece after an appeal by the Greek government prevented the capture of Tunisia. This halt was near-fatal because it allowed the Germans to send Field Marshal Rommel and two divisions who quickly reversed the position, driving out the British from Libya by the end of March 1941 and afterwards threatening Egypt.
Claire’s forecast therefore proves to be wrong. When X Commando finally arrives in Egypt, the situation is getting very bad.

316 A.M.G.O.T.
Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories. These bankers would have been on the job only in February and March 1941 had they existed then, but in fact they were actually named E.O.T.A. (Enemy Occupied Territory Administration).

316 Rommel
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) was the Commander of the German Afrika Korps in the war against the British in North Africa. His tactical and strategic skills helped him to maintain superiority for a remarkable time over forces with greater numbers and resources, and only the later presence of an equally incisive mind among his enemy, that of General Montgomery, prevented him from achieving greater success. Overwhelming numbers and superior intelligence secured British victory at the second battle of El Alamein (October-November 1942) and the gradual elimination of the German presence in North Africa followed.
Rommel was recalled to Europe to direct the defence against invasion, but once there became convinced of the need to remove Adolf Hitler from power. He had doubted the Führer’s state of mind in late 1942, when Hitler had insisted on disaster as well as defeat in North Africa, and now Hitler seemed to him to be rejecting the obvious course of action, which for Rommel was to seek peace with the western powers (leaving Germany free to deal with the Soviet Union).
Rommel therefore did not betray conspirators who suggested to him that he should become head of state once Hitler was overthrown. Nothing was mentioned about assassination. When the plot failed, Rommel’s contacts became known to Hitler, and he was offered suicide as an alternative to a court case that would result in manufactured ill-fortune and humiliation for his family. He took poison on 14th October 1944.

316 headquarters in Africa.
A considerable section of OG, nearly two pages long, is missing from the text of SH here. It is as follows :

Of the nine weeks which had passed since X Commando sailed from Mugg, five only had been spent on the high seas. In the war of attrition which raged ceaselessly against the human spirit, anti-climax was a heavy weapon. The Commando, for all the rude haste and trickery of departure, sailed exultingly. By noon on the second day rumour had it that the rendezvous with the navy was off. Rumour was right. At the second dawn they sailed into Scapa Flow and lay-to beside the sister ships which carried their fellow Commandos. There had been sinkings and diversions and counter-orders; a German capital ship was haunting the Western Approaches. Brigadier Ritchie-Hook appeared and for a month his force relentlessly ‘biffed’ the encircling hills, night after long night. He brought with him a Halberdier Brigade Major who instructed Guy in the otiose duties of Intelligence Officer. Guy chalked the nightly wanderings of the Commandos on the talc face of his map and recorded them next day in the War Diary. On these exercises the Brigadier seldom spent long at his ‘battle headquarters’. Guy and the Brigade Major shivered alone on the beaches, while Ritchie-Hook roamed the moors alone with a haversack full of ‘thunder-flashes’.
Guy was sorrowfully conscious that his old hero cut a slightly absurd figure in the eyes of X Commando. They were quick with injurious nicknames in that group. Someone dubbed Ritchie-Hook ‘the Widow Twankey’ and the preposterous name stuck.
Trimmer and his section were absent. They had momentarily slipped through one of the cracks in the military floor.
Hookforce remained at twelve hours’ notice for service overseas. There was no leave; no private communication with the shore. Christmas and New Year passed in dire gloom. The RN officers stood aloof from the RNVR, touchy young men in beards. The bar, which might have been a place of sympathy, proved the centre of contention, for the navy were limited by rank in their wine bills, while the army were not. Below decks there was no wet canteen and gross rumours circulated there of orgies among the officers. It was not a happy ship. At length they sailed on their huge detour. Brigadier and Brigade Major returned for further conferences in London, to join them by air in the Middle East. Trimmer and his sappers arrived at Hoy two days later.
‘I wonder,’ said Guy, ‘were we rather bloody to the navy?’
‘They are such awful pip-squeaks,’ said Claire without animosity. ‘The little ones with beards particularly.’
‘It didn’t help when Bertie referred to the Captain as “that booby on the roof”.’
‘The name stuck. It didn’t help, of course, when the Pay-Master took Eddie’s place in the wardroom and Eddie told him he didn’t expect to find a ticket collector in a restaurant car.’
‘Eddie was tight that evening.’
‘Colonel Tommy messing with the Booby-on-the-Roof had no idea what we had to suffer.’
‘He always took our side when there were complaints.’
‘Well, naturally. We are his chaps. The pip-squeaks complained altogether too much.’

Several touches are missing from SH because this passage was not included. The tiring journey of Hookforce, probably an unnecessary addition, is reduced to insignificance; the gradual diminution of Ritchie-Hook in Guy’s eyes from a heroic figure to a sad buffoon is delayed; the insufferable condescension of the commando elite towards the navy is softened (though it is not entirely absent); and one or two missing clues retard the emergence of our understanding of Ivor Claire as a patronising egotist.
The naming of the captain as the Booby on the Roof did actually happen with EW’s 8 Commando on their way to the Middle East, except that the noun beginning with B was a more indelicate alternative.

316 Knightsbridge Barracks
the barracks in London that houses the cavalry regiments. Ivor Claire is in the Blues though attached for the time being to the Commandos, and so is his chief N.C.O., Corporal-Major Ludovic.
The present Knightsbridge Barracks, designed by Sir Basil Spence (1907-1976) and 94 metres and 29 storeys high, were completed in 1970.

316 éminence grise
a phrase signifying a person who exercises influence behind the scenes. The original éminence grise was Father Joseph le Clerc du Tremblay (1577-1638), secretary to Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), who employed him on many secret assignments and negotiations. As a Capuchin monk he wore a grey habit. Aldous Huxley wrote a book about him called Grey Eminence (1941).
Ludovic had obviously inspired the complaints against the sergeants’ mess being inspected by the Captain of the ship. This was indeed one of the bones of contention between the Royal Navy and the Army when naval ships carried soldiers.

317 They made their officers keep to the same drink ration as the navy.
In OG it is only the now-missing Colonel Prentice who does this.

317 King’s Regulations
See my note on page 41.

317 ‘Not that, but about our Brigadier.’
In OG, there is the response ‘La veuve?’ from one of Blackhouse’s listeners. Veuve means widow in French. This is obviously a reference to Ritchie-Hook’s nickname, Widow Twankey, which has not survived EW’s cuts.

317 Simonstown
the British naval base in South Africa, near Cape Town. It is now South Africa’s principal base.

317 Brazzaville
Then the capital of French Equatorial Africa, this city is now the capital of the Republic of the Congo. It lies on the north bank of the Congo River opposite Kinshasa (then called Leopoldville), which is in a different country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (or Zaire as it is periodically known). Brazzaville has an international airport.

317 It seems Hookforce may have to change its name.
After this sentence in OG occurs a telling exchange which EW cuts :

‘Your friend, Guy,’ said Eddie.
‘I love him. He’ll turn up.’

EW probably thought that he was making Guy’s hero-worship too boyish and unreal at this stage of his career. But then he is still immature, as the final paragraph of the chapter indicates.

317 “Kommando”
a crude white rum distilled in the province of Natal

318 Borghese Gardens
This is the park located near the Villa Borghese where Claire had his show-jumping success in Rome.

318 Later, in the tiny cabin … the man Hitler had not taken into account.
Guy still has an immature attitude and a faulty understanding. In particular he has a romantic image of Ivor Claire that EW’s readers certainly do not share by now.