How I Won the War Read Online Free PDF

period at his depot. The mess corporal also spoke to me at lunch in glowing terms about your work with him…. What about you? Do you think you could make an officer?
    “I am prepared to do my best, sir, in any station to which my King and Country may see fit to call me.”
    “Are you a horseman?”
    “Yes, sir.” I had frequently ridden the puller of Cawberry and Company’s delivery dray.
    “Good show, I see you were a chief clerk and accountant. Who with?”
    “Cawberry and Company, sir…. Corn-chandlers, sir.”
    “Know a bit about victualling horses, then, eh?”
    We spent a jolly half hour discussing fodder in all its forms and the intricacies of the equine digestion. The colonel shook me by the hand at the end, wished me the best of luck at 212 O. C. T. U. and expressed his assurance that I would not let down the Old Depot.
    As I packed my kit next day and drew my warrant I reflected how unfortunate had been my start in the Armyand how unwise I would have been to have let it discourage me. If you persevere in the face of adversity and do your best at all times, your true worth will eventually be recognized by your superiors. It was undoubtedly the hard work which I had done for Sergeant Major Grope and the R. Q. M. S. which had earned me such approbation. And if I had not tried to explain Dale Carnegie to Private Calendar I would never have got the chance to work in either the orderly room or the stores. Everything happens for the best in the end, of course, but I did not appreciate at the moment of Calendar’s impact that my first impetus towards becoming an officer and a gentleman had arrived in the form of a jab up the crutch with the sharp end of a broom.

Chapter Four
    Generals have often been reproached with preparing for the last war instead of the next—an easy gibe when their fellow-countrymen and their political leaders, too frequently, have prepared for no war at all.
    F.-M. S IR W ILLIAM S LIM Defeat Into Victory
     
    Gort spoke much of the war in 1914–18 in which he was very well read. He criticized the handling of the British troops in 1914 at Le Cateau, on the Marne, and at the crossing of the Aisne…. On our way we crossed the Vimy Ridge. Gort got us out of our cars when we reached it. He made Hore-Belisha climb a very muddy bank and kept him shivering in the howling gale, while he explained the battle fought there in the 1914–18 war…. We. stopped again, a few miles further on, to hear Pownall describe an attack on Auber’s Ridge … twenty-odd years before …
    M AJ . G EN . S IR J OHN K ENNEDY The Business of War
    T HE ACCENT AROUND ME changed from Enoch and Eli to best “cut glass.” My new comrades seemed all aristocrats, juvenile stockbrokers, dons, undergraduates, and sons of tycoons. Plums grew in every throat and I took particular care to talk as far back in the mouth as possible and with every aspirate at my command.
    “Welcome to 212 O. C. T. U.,” barked Colonel Grapple, the C. O., baring his teeth and thrashing his leg with a riding whip. “Straight from the shoulder. That’s m’way. Simple soldier-man. Cavalry fashion. All over the world. M’job now to make officers. Make ’em or break ’em, by gad! Silkpurses out of sow’s ears. Some of you’ll make silk purses. Some’ll never be anything but sow’s ears. Get rid of them. R. T. U.—Returned to Unit. Never mind. This is war. Damned hard times. Got to be ruthless. Only way to beat the Hun …”
    I was most impressed by the staff of instructors. All were seasoned warriors who had spent a lifetime in the Army. Many were such valuable instructors that they could never be spared for actual righting and had devoted the whole of their careers to lecturing about it.
    Our days and nights were loaded with work and we learnt how to inspect feet, salute when riding a bicycle, break step on bridges, build a World War I trench system, and outwit the wily Pathan. Major Hopfire, who wore spurs on his boots and