Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 59

Usually is rumour a lying jade, but for this once she has told the truth. We do leave here, and tomorrow morning we go to Le Quesnoy[-sur-Airaines], another training billet and not to the trenches. Not yet anyway. Perhaps the next move we will. At any rate we can but live in hopes.

I have just been reading some extracts from letters found on German prisoners. They are authentic, and, from them, one can only conclude that life in Germany is not easy to sustain just now. Some of the people seem in parlous state. So much so that until one remembers the excesses committed in the first days, when Prussia’s star was in the ascendant, one can almost find it in one to pity the poor devils.

A blow has fallen on me tonight, a very heavy blow, yet one, I am glad to say, which I could, had I would, have avoided. I mean that they have asked for Garside^ix for a commission in one of the new units at home, and I have recommended him. He will, I feel sure, get the job, and his going will be the blow. As yet I do not know what I will do without him. He has been invaluable to me and to the company and I cannot imagine B without him. However, I suppose it must be. One has to look on these things from the larger rather than the personal standpoint. Nevertheless I feel very sad. One cannot have a good servant for long without getting a sincere attachment for him, and such an attachment I most certainly have for my keen, hard-working QMS.

He told the CO he wouldn’t take the commission if I didn’t want him to go. And, later, he said to me that he hoped he would not get the job, that he wanted to stay with me, that I was a leader of men and he would never feel the same under any other captain. Which was all rather foolish, I suppose, but which I hadn’t the heart to stop him saying. Damn it, he meant it so! Please God I may always justify half such faith. It is marvellous. I cannot understand it. As you so well know, I am such a truly ordinary sort of clout-head. Poor Garside.