The younger officer stared at me under the tilt forward of
his steel hat and said, "Hullo, Gibbs!" I had played chess with him at
Groom's Cafe in Fleet Street in days before the war. I went back to
his hut and had tea with him, close to that bath, hoping that we
should not be cut up with the cake. There were noises "off," as they
say in stage directions, which were enormously disconcerting to one's
peace of mind, and not very far off. I had heard before some hard
words about our generalship and staff-work, but never anything so
passionate, so violent, as from that gunner officer. His view of the
business was summed up in the word "murder." He raged against the
impossible orders sent down from headquarters, against the brutality
with which men were left in the line week after week, and against the
monstrous, abominable futility of all our so-called strategy. His
nerves were in rags, as I could see by the way in which his hand shook
when he lighted one cigarette after another.
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