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The battalion was again at Blangy when I rejoined it. It had changed out of recognition. Aitches had been reported by Carter to the Brigadier for having failed to be at his correct place in our last action. Since this was indistinguishable from the arrest of a senior officer by a junior, the Brigadier had strongly advised Carter to abandon his intention and Carter had wisely but reluctantly agreed. The matter was thus forgotten and a seal set upon oblivion by the return of Aitches to England to aid in the formation of a new battalion. As few people believed he would ever be so indiscrete as to be sent to a fighting front again, it seemed to be wiser in everyone's interest if his long experience in action with tanks could be employed in high rank in a training battalion. He had engaging manners and being in this respect unhampered by the regular army polish it was felt that he would be just the man to co-operate with the new democratic people's army which was beginning to emerge.
Holden, now taking over from Aitches, was an intelligent ex-infantryman who had been heard to mutter, “Oh God our help in Aitches past” when Aitches' promotion had first been announced on parade. In fact poor Aitches died of influenza within two weeks of being posted back to England. I like to think that his war memorial would set out his military virtues in glowing terms of appropriate splendour. But I doubt it for there was something unloved and pathetic about him.
The fact that Carter, Hauser and I were the only three officers who remained of our original company served as a link, perhaps the only one, between us. Carter was set in his ways and preserved the nervous, bigoted patriotism of a colonial age; Hauser seemed to have no views but to retain a lively, irritable impatience for the incompetence
which he associated with all things British; I retained the remains of a disintegrated moral system in which I had been brought up and to which I clung because I had nothing better to put in