They had expected of course to be off to France in the morning to aid the Contemptibles, as the first British Expeditionary Force now began proudly to call themselves; they expected, they were ready and eager, to perform prodigies of valour and endurance in the terrible battle round Mons. Instead, they were packed off to train at Hudley, ten miles away, and learned to number by the left, salute smartly and wind their puttees tight, while the Contemptibles were in spite of stubborn and prolonged resistance driven back, inexorably back, into France. Paris was in danger, and saved by the battle of the Marne, and Shaw and Morcar were still in England, chafing. To get to France became the greatest ambition of their lives.
Morcar took Army life easily. He had a strong physique, a cheerful disposition and a good deal of patience, and these were the three main requisites. Charlie at first found it a good deal harder. It was symbolic that while Morcar’s big burly body looked well in soldier’s khaki, the neck of Charlie’s jacket always appeared too large. Less strong physically, less placid and more acute than Morcar, Charlie fretted against the maddening delays, the everlasting orders and counter-orders, the route marches to nowhere, the muddles over rations and billeting, the endless drill by old-fashioned sergeants, the tent-pegs without notches, which were often the lot of the British Army recruit in 1914. He continually began his remarks with: “Why don’t they …” and Morcar had to admit that his suggestions, never of course adopted, seemed more sensible than the official scheme. It was probably owing to Morcar’s placid good-humour that Charlie’s tendency to fret critically over Army regulations never went so far as to mar his good conduct record, while Charlie’s quick grasp of unfamiliar terms, the meaning of which he communicated rapidly to Morcar, enabled them both to be and to appear “keen”—a magic word in the vocabulary of officers at that time. Sergeants and officers early recognised that Shaw and Morcar were inseparable, and more use together than apart. They kept each other out of scrapes in their spare time, too. In the Army Morcar discovered the soothing power of beer and when overpoweringly bored was inclined to drink it to excess. But Charlie detested clouded wits and had no patience with his friend in his sodden, slow, post-beer condition, and his sharp raillery diminished the number of Morcar’s pints. On the other hand, on Morcar’s side of the balance came an incident when the pair once stood together in front of a house in a sordid street in a seaside town.
“Are you going in?” said Charlie.
“No!” said Morcar emphatically.
Charlie took a step or two towards the door and stood, considering. Morcar turned and walked along the street. In a moment Army boots clattered on the pavement, and Charlie stood beside him.
All these discontents, however, existed only while they were in England. Charlie was splendid once they were in the front line. Lively, resourceful, cheerful, tireless, in two weeks he was a first-class soldier, the pillar and support of all company commanders, liked and respected and listened to by the men. Morcar too was not without his value. Trenches where Morcar dwelt always emerged from his stay improved—sides revetted, duckboards laid, firing-steps in good condition, dug-outs made comfortable by many ingenious devices. Charlie had a thoroughly “offensive” spirit and was always thinking up new ways of annoying and outwitting the Boche; Morcar was best when the enemy after heavy shelling came over on a raid, or made a flanking attack, or blew up an uncomfortably close mine. Charlie joked and jested, always knew numbers and times and mileages and names, wrote long amusing letters home and once had a piece printed in the Wipers Times. He was always the first to volunteer for dangerous duty, always the first—that is, until he got a stripe—to discover the inconvenience in a new order and grumble at it. Morcar smiled at his jokes, pondered them during the night and on sentry duty, sometimes added a footnote or an illustration. He understood distances and the directions from which sounds came and had a better eye for a sniper than Charlie, but could not make deductions from observed facts as quickly as he. They both loathed mud, rats and lice, but Charlie felt them more acutely than Morcar, who on his side felt so cramped in the narrow trench that the order to go over the top was almost a pleasure to him.
In a word, they were two typical specimens of the men who from 1915 onwards held the British line—the new armies.