Читать книгу Stalky's Reminiscences - Lionel Charles Dunsterville - Страница 14

My success at my first try at the Army Entrance examination startled every one, myself no less than the others. I had fairly good brains, but I was an unwilling worker and entirely lacked application. I went up as a sort of forlorn hope and passed, with rather intense competition, half-way up the list. This success was entirely due to the methods of the Headmaster, Cormell Price. You could not fail. I think I can say that without exaggeration, because, although I did not actually go as far as wishing to fail, I certainly had no desire at all to pass.

I had a sort of romantic idea of enlisting as a private soldier and working my way up to Field Marshal. I have to thank Price for saving me from that. I am not suggesting that going through the ranks is a bad way of beginning soldiering. I have several friends who have won their commissions in that way, and, on the whole, they seem to have enjoyed their experiences in the ranks; but it is a big handicap in later life when age and commissioned service are balanced against each other. Then you regret the four years’ seniority you lost by going through the ranks.

At the time I am speaking of, competition for Sandhurst was very severe, and the normal procedure was for a boy to finish his time at a public school and then go for six months, or a year, to a crammer, and then take the exam. Price passed us all into Woolwich or Sandhurst direct from the school and without the delay and expense of cramming.

My year at Sandhurst passed uneventfully. Five or six of us had passed in together from Westward Ho and it was nice to be able to start a new life with a nucleus of old schoolfellows. I am afraid I had not even begun to ‘settle down’ at the age of eighteen, and there were times when it looked as if the authorities might ask me to select some other career than the army. But all’s well that ends well, and I emerged triumphantly in August 1884 with my commission and appointment to the second battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment, stationed at Malta.