They clothe themselves with all varieties of function. There is the
A.G. (Adjutant-General), who does everything, and, when he gets tired,
does something else for a change. There is the I.O. (Intelligence
Officer), who sees that every visitor is passed through an infinite
succession of sieves, lest he should prove to be a spy. There is the
Provost-Marshal, the Chairman of the Prison Commissioners of the
Battlefield. There is the Chief Engineer. There is the R.A.M.C. There
is the Casualty Clearing Station. There is the Field Cashier. There
is the R.T.O. (Railway Transportation Officer), who, if he does not
like the look of you, sets you emulating Puck in the rapidity of your
return. There is... What is there not?
G.H.Q. is an army, a government, an administration, a literature. You
see those who wield its sceptre going about a French provincial town,
yawning down deserted boulevards strewn with the debris of autumn,
smoking in bare French rooms with green jalousies, always unperturbed,
always efficient, always courteous, generally bored. You see them
walking arm-in-arm, or in the saddle, knee to knee, with French staff
officers, maintaining and deepening the Alliance. Some of them have
tunics beribboned with the record of five campaigns; some are raw boys;
but, all together, they keep the fight going. They are the Business
Organisers of the war.
Now that the news of our advance is coming hotly in, they will praise
bullets and bayonets. Mike O’Leary’s and General Fochs; but when one
comes to think of it, it is hard on G.H.Q. that the patient, continuous
infallibility which had not yet left a section, or even an individual
soldier, short of bread, beef, cartridges or medical care should be
left out of the picture.
“ZUR ERINNERUNG”
A LETTER TO AN AUSTRIAN FELLOW-STUDENT
_In Unconquered France_
MY DEAR FRANZ,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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