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When it was time to go back to camp my mother was pre-occupied; she stroked my cheek; she said it was soft. I was furious and about to remind her that I was not a baby now – I had begun to feel smart, like a kind of soldier, by this time – when I noticed she was crying. I kept my mouth shut but fumed inwardly.
Waterloo was horrible. Khaki everywhere, blanked out and anonymous. Brookwood. The London Crematorium. “Nearly there boys – any more for the London Crematorium?” As we neared Bisley the whole train became active. I thought it was because they were all on leave and we were approaching camp. But they were not all on leave – I doubt if there were more than a handful like me who were. Someone pulled the communication cord, the train came to a halt and the passengers, all in uniform, swarmed out of the carriages and onto the fields to make their way back to camp without running into the Military Police. I stayed where I was, feeling foolish for all my military grandeur and wishing I did not always feel a milksop. At Bisley the few of us who had stayed because we had leave passes started to slush back to camp. Why was it always dark? Why was it always raining?
Mutt and Jeff were there; they at least were always cheerful and had earned their nicknames because of their resemblance to two comic characters in one of the daily papers. They made life bearable in camp – not beyond. There was no anaesthetic for those suffering home leave, the worst being before embarkation.
After what seemed an eternity of anxiety about the chance of being commissioned I was eventually posted to the 5th Tank Battalion. I had applied to go to Tanks as it was the only way to penetrate the secrecy surrounding them. I was ordered to report to Bovington
Camp at Wool where I saw my first tank – it blocked the road to camp. The day was hot, sunny, still. The queer mechanical shape, immobilized and immobilizing, was frightening in the same way as the primitive tiger trap near Gwalior; I wanted to g