You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
A less easily assimilated experience of a Guard's battalion was my visit to co-ordinate operations with them in case of attack either by us or the enemy.
I was shown into the dug-out which was their headquarters in the part of the line they held. The Colonel, Adjutant and various orderlies were present and busy. A junior officer asked me my business and I told him briefly, but from Colonel and Adjutant I could get no attention though I had come at the time appointed for my appearance. As time passed I began to feel neglected, then nettled. I whispered to the junior officer who broke into the conversation between Colonel and Adjutant to say I was going. Both bade me good-morning in the politest possible indication of utter indifference. I was alarmed, thinking they did not know why I was there.
I expostulated, 'But sir, I haven't co-ordinated tank plans with yours.“
“My good man”, said the Colonel with astringent kindliness, “We shall take and hold any position, tanks or no tanks. Good morning.”
‘Good morning’, I had to understand, was an order. Exasperated, intimidated and humiliated all at once, I cleared out. As I proceeded back up a dried mud track I became aware that howitzer shells, five-nines, were bursting along the track; then that they were suspiciously close. I was still annoyed with the Guards. What made it more annoying was that the Colonel's remark was almost certainly a statement of the obvious. I had seen them sweep up at Cambrai, like a very efficient housemaid tidying up warring children and putting them back, like their toys, into their proper boxes. I knew, and had even seen a little on our way up to Messines, what happened when they, with both flanks exposed, stood for three
days before Hazebrouck and resisted any attempt by the enemy to tidy them up. It was no good being indignant; they were magnificent, blast them!
In the meantime it looked as if I would soon be tidied up. If I had not had any attention at the Guards Battalion HQ I was having it