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or, at very least, one who had
experienced enough active service to make that term almost beside the point.
Widmerpool acknowledged these earlier qualities.
    “Hogbourne-Johnson’s
had a disappointing career up to date,” he said. “Unrealised early hopes. At
least that’s his own opinion. Sword of Honour at Sandhurst, all that sort of
thing. Then he made a balls-up somewhere – in Palestine, I think – just before
the war. However, he hasn’t by any means given up. Still thinks he’ll get a
Division. If he asked me, I could tell him he’s bound for some administrative
backwater, and lucky if he isn’t bowler-hatted before the cessation of
hostilities. The General’s going to get rid of him as soon as he can lay hands
on the particular man he wants.”
    “But the
General could sack him to-morrow.”
    “For some
reason it doesn’t suit him to do that. Hogbourne-Johnson is also given to
putting on a lot of swank about being a Light Infantryman. To tell the truth, I’m
surprised any decent Line regiment could put up with him. They might at least
have taught him not to announce himself to another officer on the telephone as ‘
Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson.’ I know Cocksidge says, ‘This
is
Captain
Cocksidge speaking,’ if he’s talking to a subaltern. You expect that from
Cocksidge. Hogbourne-Johnson is supposed to know better. The C.R.A. doesn’t
say, ‘This is
Brigadier
Hawkins,’ he says ‘Hawkins here.’ However, I suppose I shouldn’t grumble. I can
manage the man. That’s the chief thing. If he hasn’t learnt how to behave by
now, he never will.”
    All this
turned out to be a pretty just description of Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and his
demeanour, from which in due course I saw no reason to dissent. The army is a
place where simple characterisation flourishes. An officer or man is able,
keen, well turned out; or awkward, idle, dirty. He is popular or detested. In
principle, at any rate, few intermediate shades of colour are allowed to the
military spectrum. To some extent individuals, by the very force of such
traditional methods of classification, fall into these hard and fast categories.
Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson was one of the accepted army types, disappointed,
sour, on the look-out for trouble; except by his chief clerk, Diplock, not much
loved. On the other hand, although he may have had his foolish moments as well
as his disagreeable ones, Hogbourne-Johnson was not a fool. Where Widmerpool,
as it turned out, made a mistake, was in supposing he had Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson eating out of his hand. The Colonel’s failings, such as they
were, did not include total lack of grasp of what Widmerpool himself was like
in his dealings. Indeed, Hogbourne-Johnson showed comparatively deep
understanding of Widmerpool eventually, when the titanic row took place about
Diplock, merging – so far as Widmerpool and Hogbourne-Johnson were concerned – into
the question of who was to command the Divisional Reconnaissance Regiment.
    The
Reconnaissance Unit, then in process of generation, was one in which Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson took a special interest from the start, though not an
entirely friendly interest.
    “These Recce
fellows are doing no more than we Light Bobs used to bring off on our flat
feet,” he would remark. “Nowadays they want a fleet of armoured vehicles for
their blasted operations and no expense spared. There’s a lot of damned
nonsense talked about this so-called Recce Battalion.”
    The
Reconnaissance Corps – as in due course it emerged – was indeed, on first
coming into being, a bone of considerable contention among the higher
authorities. Some pundits thought like Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson; others, just
the opposite. One aspect of the question turned on whether the Recce Corps – to
some extent deriving in origin from the Anti-tank Companies of an earlier phase
of the war – should be used as a convenient limbo for officers, competent, but judged,
for one reason or another,