So Harry stayed till he was 'pushed' off, as he had promised. And I was
glad he had gone like that. I had long wanted him to leave the Peninsula
somehow, for I felt he should be spared for greater things, but, knowing
something of his peculiar temperament, I did not want his career there
to end on a note of simple failure--a dull surrender to sickness in the
rest-camp. As it turned out, the accident of the digging-party, and the
way in which Harry had seized his chance, sent him off with a renewed
confidence in himself and, with regard to Burnett, even a sense of
triumph. So I was not surprised when his letters began to reveal
something of the old enthusiastic Harry, chafing at the dreary routine
of the Depot, and looking for adventure again.... But I am anticipating.
They sent him home, of course. It was no good keeping any one in his
condition at Egypt or Malta, for the prolonged dysentery had produced
the usual complications. I had a letter from Malta, and one from the
Mediterranean Club at Gibraltar, where he had a sultry week looking over
the bay, seeing the ships steam out for England, he told me, and longing
to be in one. For it took many months to wash away the taste of the
Peninsula, and much more than the austere comforts of the hospital at
Gibraltar. Even the hot August sun in the Alameda was hatefully
reminiscent. Then six weeks' milk diet at a hospital in Devonshire,
convalescence, and a month's leave.
Then Harry married a wife. I did not know the lady--a Miss
Thickness--and she does not come into the story very much, though she
probably affected it a good deal. Wives usually do affect a soldier's
story, though they are one of the many things which by the absolute
official standard of military duty are necessarily not reckoned with at
all. Not being the president of a court-martial I did reckon with it;
and when I had read Harry's letter about his wedding I said: 'We shan't
see _him_ again.' For in those early years it was generally assumed that
a man returned from service at the front need not go out again (unless
he wished) for a period almost incalculably remote. And being a newly
married man myself, I had no reason to suppose that Harry would want to
rush into the breach just yet.
But about May--that would be 1916; we had done with Gallipoli and come
to France, after four months' idling in the Aegean Islands--I had
another letter, much delayed, from which I will give you an extract:
_'I never thought I should want to go out again (you remember we all
swore we never should) but I do. I'm fed to the teeth with this place_
(the Depot, in Dorsetshire); _nothing but company drill and lectures on
march discipline, and all the old stuff. We still attack Hill 219 twice
weekly in exactly the same way, and still no one but a few of the
officers knows exactly which hill it is, since we always stop halfway
for lunch-time, or because there's hopeless confusion.... There's nobody
amusing here. Williams has got a company and swanks like blazes about
'the front,' but I think most people see through him.... My wife's got
rooms in a cottage near here, but they won't let me sleep out, and I
don't get there till pretty late most days.... Can't you get the Colonel
to apply for me? I don't believe it's allowed, but he's sure to be able
to wangle it. Otherwise I shall be here for the rest of the war, because
the more you've been out the less likely you are to get out again, if
you want to, while there are lots who don't want to go, and wouldn't be
any earthly good, and stand in hourly danger of being sent.... I want to
see France....'_