The Soldier's Art Read Online Free PDF Page A

even when in warm conflict
as to how some order should be interpreted. That quiet demeanour was an
outstanding feature of Sunny Farebrother’s tactic. On the whole, honours
appeared fairly evenly divided between the two of them where practical results
were concerned.
    “Right, Sunny,
right,” Widmerpool would mutter, gritting his teeth when he had sustained a
defeat.
    “It’s gone the
way Kenneth wants,” was Farebrother’s formula for accepting the reverse
situation.
    Then there were
my own hopes and fears. Though by now reduced to the simplest terms, these were
not without complication. In the first place, I desired to separate myself from
Widmerpool; at the same time, if possible, achieve material improvement in my
own military condition. However, as the months went by, no prospect appeared of
liberation from Widmerpool’s bottle-washing, still less of promotion. After
all, I used to reflect, the army was what you wanted, the army
is what you’ve got – in terms of Molière,
le sous-lieutenant Georges Dandin
. No use to
grumble, not to mention the fact that a great many people, far worse off, would
have been glad of the job. This was a change, of course, from taking pride in
the thought that only luck and good management had brought a commission at all
at a moment when so many of my contemporaries were
still failing to achieve that. However, to think one thing at one moment,
another at the next, is the prescriptive
right of every human being. Besides, I
recognised the fact that those who desire to share the faint but perceptible
inner satisfaction of being included, however obscurely, within the armed
forces in time of war, must, if in their middle thirties and without any
particular qualifications for practising its arts, pay for that luxury,
so far as employment is concerned, by taking what comes. Consolation was to
be
found, if at all, in Vigny’s views (quoted that time in the train by David
Pennistone) on the theme of the soldier’s “abnegation of thought and action.”
    All the same,
although the soldier might abnegate thought and action, it has never been
suggested that he should abnegate grumbling. There seemed no reason why I
alone, throughout the armies of the world, should not be allowed to feel that
military life owed me more stimulating duties, higher rank, increased pay,
simply because the path to such ends was by no means clear. Even if Widmerpool
left Divisional Headquarters for what he himself used to call “better things,”
my own state, so far from improving, would almost certainly be worsened. The
Battalion, made up to strength with a flow of young officers increasingly
available, would no longer require my services as platoon commander, still less
be likely to offer a company. Indeed, those services, taking them all in all,
were not to be exaggerated in value to a unit set on streamlining its
efficiency. I was prepared to admit that myself. On the other hand, without
ordination by way of the War Intelligence Course, or some similar apostleship,
there was little or no likelihood of capturing an appointment here or on any
other staff. For a course of that sort I should decidedly not be recommended so
long as Widmerpool found me useful When, for one reason or another, that
subjective qualification ceased to be valid – when, for example, Widmerpool
went to “better things” – it looked like pretty certain relegation to the
Regiment’s Infantry Training Centre, a fate little to be desired, and one
unlikely to lead to name and fame. Widmerpool himself was naturally aware of
these facts. Once, in an expansive mood, he had promised to arrange a future
preferable to assignment – as an object to be won, rather than as a competitor
– to the lucky-dip provided by an I.T.C.
    “I look after
people who’ve been under me,” Widmerpool said, in the course of cataloguing
some of his own good qualities. “I’ll see you get fixed up in a suitable job
when I move up the ladder myself. That