What I said to myself was: "Henry, my lad, thirteen shillings and
elevenpence a day is thirteen shillings and elevenpence a day; now
isn't it? And war isn't war when there is a peace coming on. Why then
throw up a fat income just for the sake of getting into long trousers?
You stay where you are till they come and fetch you."

So I just stayed where I was, and I conducted the operation with such
ability and tact that Whitehall came to forget all about me. My name
went on appearing, with ever-increasing dignity and beauty, in the
Army List; but that made no difference. You see, though lots of people
write the Army List, no one ever reads it; only from time to time
a man will surreptitiously turn up his own name, just to renew his
feeling of self-importance, or in an emergency he will look up the
name of a friend in order to get the right initials after it and not
risk giving that personal offence which may prevent the loan....

But when I say that I stayed where I was I don't mean to suggest that
I didn't go on leave in the usual way. Indeed I often came home, in
full regimentals, too, partly to impress you and partly to travel
first-class at your expense. Fellow-passengers never thought of
turning on me and rending me, as being the cause of
six-shillings-in-the-pound. They would be extremely polite and make
friendly conversation with me, leading up to the point that they had
been soldiers themselves once, but had given it up, owing to having
been told that the War was finished.

I would be just as polite to them, telling them they might count on
me to return to the discomforts and risks of civil life as soon as I
could be spared from the front. They had never the intelligence, or
daring to ask, "The front of what?"