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Clifford Scott and Rickman both suggested that I should be posted to Northfield Military Hospital to take charge of the Military Training Wing. Lt. Colonel Pearce had agreed to put up with the consequences. He, like Rickman, Scott and myself, was an amateur medical soldier; he knew nothing about it but his badges of rank gave the impression that he did. I was still suffering from the DSO that had been inflicted, with my collusion, on me: the Senior Psychiatrist was suffering from having to appoint officers to the Shell-shock (as it was called) Hospital. None of us knew what shell-shock was or even if it existed outside the imagination of soldiers like me and Sergeant O'Toole who had to cope with the ‘dumb insolence’ of the little board-school slum-dweller, Allen, who had been considered to be just the stuff that heroes are made of, coming from a land fit to be loved by slum-dwellers who would want to die for it. Many thousands did not sing, ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, but ‘Oh my, I don't want to die, I want to go home.’
Well, there it was: Military Training Wing, Northfield Military Hospital. All yours, Major Bion, DSO, Legion of Honour. Just the thing you would like to do, you Vim-wasting, bath-scrubbing, bloody little Oxford University Darling. If only I had a nice disposition like the little dog at Windsor Castle who had learnt that he would get a sweet biscuit if he lay on his side, I too would wag my tail and there would be no trouble.
I went to the programme room. Betty had gone back to London as the cast was touring with The Corn is Green; London hardly seemed the place for theatrical entertainment while the bombs were dropping. The chart showed all the possible activities available for soldiers who were being ‘rehabilitated’, that is to say, those who were on the
journey to return to their units, cured – of what? Their love of fighting for their country? Love of the privileged darlings of Oxford? Or love of the Military Training Wing? Perhaps I should find out