EVE OF RELEASE
By CAPTAIN, B.A.O.R.
IAM drawing very close to the date of my release from the Army after six years' service, which has taken me to thirteen countries in M.E.F., C.M.F., B.L.A. It is impossible, yet, to get the six years in perspective. I doubt whether it will ever be possible. Two unattractive years in the Western Desert are rapidly becoming romanticised in my mind. I find myself sometimes starting a sen- tence with " Do you remember . . . " and thinking of a particular episode with pleasure, when my reason reminds me it was other- wise that I viewed the experience at the time. Similarly, the last two years are so close that I look back on them, possibly unreason- ably, with the boredom and frustration of the last six months a screen across my mild, diluting all colours to a monochromatic grey. These last six months with war's beastliness and recompense removed and only war's insidious attack on the spirit remaining! None beyond a prison-wall can understand the feelings of a soldier, long exiled, his duty almost done, the reason for his present employ- ment virtually extinct, who watches the laggard departure of the early groups and waits and listens for the casual announcement of his deferment. There have been many unrewarding moments in the past six years, but none so spiritually devastating as the existence led by B.A.O.R. since May 8th.
I am winding up a private enterprise, then, which has been endeavouring to meet the requirements of a specialist market for the past six years. I draw up my balance-sheet and I assess my capital, my stock and my goodwill. Shall I be able to sell it for a sufficient price to enable me to buy another business in a very different market? On the right-hand side of the page—if my memory of the financial world still serves me—I write down the assets. Thus . . . I have learnt much—priceless knowledge some of it. I have learnt to value my own country beyond any other, my own countrymen beyond those of any other. I have learned that what England stands for is worth an Englishman's fighting for. I have made many friends ; I have mixed with many types of people. My understand- ing and appreciation and liking for mankind have been deepened. These are real rewards of service. I am tougher, more spiritually hardened, a great deal thicker-skinned. Possibly this latter should not be considered the most desirable of assets, but it is not to be altogether despised in this atomic age of ours. I have developed my own sense of values and Lave learnt, perhaps, to recognise the real ones in other people. I care less for their reactions ; I depend more on my own. I no longer measure happiness in terms of material success. I no longer lose sleep over lack of worldly pos- sessions—though I value them. I no longer measure another man's success by the softness of his cushions. These are my assets, earned over six years, and possibly they are not entirely negligible.
But on the debit side, printed in large red capitals, I see written: "The irreplaceable loss of six years in trade or profession." No bromide ladled out to the troops will convince them that the loss of those six years can ever be replaced, enabling them to draw level with their contemporaries who, for various reasons—generally dis- creditable ones—avoided Service and kept on with their trade at home. Those six years have vanished, and the experience has vanished with them. Some of us will be given back our jobs at 1939 salaries (which, of course, do not take into account the rise in the cost of living nor the increases that would normally have been earned in that period). Others will be found jobs by their friends. In either case we are conscious that we are dependent on the charity of the civilian towards the returning Service man. The remainder will have to take what they can get in a market which is generally reputed to be starved of labour. And what they will get, so the early groups have discovered, will rarely accord with the dreams they have been dreaming in Libya, Burma or Belgium. Some of them have found it hard to swallow their humiliation on discover- ing that they are worth to the civilian rather less than half what they were to the Army. But do not imagine they are bitter about this. Commerce is not run as a philanthropic institution that can afford to pay a man more than he is worth. I am merely stating the fact that most of us are beginning to realise we are not worth very much.
Another probable debit is my health. The health of the average soldier has improved enormously during his service. Will this still be true when he is forty-five, or will nights in wet bedding or slit trench cause rheumatics, bolted canned food bring stomach disorders, the glare of sun on sand cause disabilities to the eyes? It seems probable. But more serious than my body is my mind. There is no doubt that my mental alertness is, at any rate temporarily, im- paired. Reading a difficult book takes me four times as long as before. Concentration is almost a lost art. My once relative elasticity of mind is now remarkable by its lack of resilience. And hardest to bear of all is my almost complete lack of knowledge as to what has been happening during the past six years. No man lives a more parochial existence than the soldier.
So much for my balance-sheet. Let me try to sell the business by means of an advertisement in The Spectator: "Demobbed officer, with many friends and a love of his country, a tough, thick-skinned character with a scorn of worldly possessions, who has had no experience for six years of earning his living on the open market, whose physique is impaired and mental alertness dulled, wishes employment at a salary equal to his Army pay and allowances." Any offers?
I wash my hands of the past ; those years are mercifully nearly over. What are the prospects in front of me? First, I must find a job. If possible, at the pay I have been getting in the Army. For my future wife and I each smoke twenty cigarettes a day, and a rapid calculation tells me that this is £84 per annum. (Cigarettes are 41c1. for twenty in B.A.O.R.) This is a lot of money to be found for cigarettes on any salary I can expect to be paid. Next, I must find a house. My chief clerk, who was married in 1943, is thirty- three thousandth on the list for a house in his town. All things considered, I had better keep my sleeping-bag. At least sleeping in the open has lost its terrors for me. Let's pretend I get a house. How shall I furnish it? I am told that the coupons issued to newly married couples enable just about one room to be furnished adequately. And we are allowed two blankets. Definitely I shall keep my sleeping-bag.
There is, therefore, nothing very complicated about my problem on returning to civil life. I need a job. If I am lucky enough to get one, I shall have to slash my standard of living by half. I need a house and I need furniture. But as I shan't get a house I don't need to worry about furniture.
At which stage some wiseacre will say, " Why in the name of good- ness .doesn't he stay in the Army?" To which I can only reply that after six years in the Army I'd rather be unemployed, unable to afford cigarettes, and living with relations. Which is, possibly, not only a fair comment on my military balance-sheet, but also a sum- mary of my thoughts as I look back on six years with my release date approaching.
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