Читать книгу Unconditional Surrender онлайн

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"I thought of my sword," said Ludovic stubbornly. "Technically, I suppose, it was a sabre. We called them 'swords'--'state swords'. Never saw it again after I left the regiment. They weren't reissued when we were recalled. Took a lot of looking after, a sword. Every now and then the armourer had them in and buffed them; ordinary days it was Bluebell and the chain-burnisher. Mustn't leave a spot on it. You could always tell a good officer. On a wet day he didn't give the order 'Return swords' but 'With drawn swords, prepare to dismount.' You took it half way up the blade in your left hand and transferred to the near side of the withers. That way you didn't get water into the scabbard. Some officers didn't think of that; the good ones did."

"Yes, yes, most picturesque," said Sir Ralph. "Not much bearing on the conditions at Stalingrad."

Then Ludovic suddenly assumed his officer's voice and said: "After all, it was the uniform first attracted you, don't you remember?"

* * * * *

Only a preternaturally astute reader of Ludovic's aphorisms could discern that their author had once been at heart--or rather in some vestigial repository of his mind--a romantic. Most of those who volunteered for Commandos in the spring of 1940 had other motives besides the desire to serve their country. A few merely sought release from regimental routine; more wished to cut a gallant figure before women; others had led lives of particular softness and were moved to re-establish their honour in the eyes of the heroes of their youth--legendary, historical, fictitious--that still haunted their manhood. Nothing in Ludovic's shortly to be published work made clear how he had seen himself. His early schooling had furnished few models of chivalry. His enlistment in the Blues, so near the body of the King, so flamboyantly accoutred, had certainly not been prompted by any familiarity or affection for the horse. Ludovic was a townsman. The smell of stables brought no memories of farm or hunt. In his years with Sir Ralph Brompton he had lived soft; any instinct for expiation of which he was conscious, was unexpressed. Yet he had volunteered for special service at the first opportunity. His fellow volunteers now had ample leisure in their various prison camps to examine their motives and strip themselves of illusion. As also had Ludovic, at liberty; but his disillusionment (if he ever suffered from illusion) had preceded the debacle at Crete. There was a week in the mountains, two days in a cave, a particular night in an open boat during the exploit that had earned him his M.M. and his commission, of which he never spoke. When questioned, as he had been on his return to Africa, he confessed that his memory of those events was almost blank; a very common condition, sympathetic doctors assured him, after a feat of extreme endurance.