No, no. There was no sodomy about it. It was just a human relation, a comradeship, an undemonstrative exchange of sympathies between ordinary men racked to extremity under a great common strain in a great common danger. There was nothing dramatic about it. Bill and Tom would be in the same section, or Jones and Smith subalterns in the same company. They’d go on fatigues and patrols together, march behind each other on trench reliefs, booze at the same estaminet, and show each other the “photos” of “Ma” and “my tart,” if Tommies. Or they’d meet on trench duty and volunteer for the same trench raid and back up each other’s lies to the inspecting Brigadier and share a servant and stick together in a battle and ride together when on rest and talk shyly about their “fiancées” or wives in England, if officers. When they separated, they would be glum for a bit, and then, in the course of a month or two or three, strike up another friendship. Only, the companionship was generally a real one, pretty unselfish. Of course, this sort of friendship was stronger in France than in England, more vivid in the line than out of it. Probably a man must have something to love—quite apart from the “love” of sexual desire. (Prisoners are supposed to love rats and spiders.) Soldiers, especially soldiers overseas in the last war, entirely cut off from women and friends, had perforce to love another soldier, there being no dogs available. Very few of these friendships survived the Peace. * * * * * After seven months in France and a month’s leave, I felt pretty glum when I was sent to an Officers’ Training Camp in a beautiful but very remote part of Dorset. I was mooning about in a gloomy way before my first dinner as a potential though temporary gentleman, when I ran into another fellow similarly mooning. He was George, who had been seen off that day from Paddington by Elizabeth and Fanny (although I did not then know it) and who was also feeling very glum about it. We exchanged a few words, found we were both B. E. F. (most of the others were not) and that we were allotted to the same barrack room. We found we had certain tastes in common, and we became friends.