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I can also just imagine what’ll happen when they bury some field marshal. They’ll get the whole thing wrong, argue about dress, badges and tunes, and then the trumpeter who sounds the Last Post will have the wrong colour busby bag. It’ll make the poor old bugger turn in his grave.’
    If it was baffling to Josh it was even more so to Reeves.
    ‘Is it always like this?’ he asked, bewildered.
    ‘Most of the time.’
    ‘How the blazes do they fight? They spend all their time arguing over niceties of dress or behaviour.’
    ‘Curiously enough,’ Josh said, ‘that’s the very thing that makes them fight better.’
    ‘I’m beginning to wish I’d done what my kid brother did and opted for the RAF.’ Reeves Minor, it seemed, had been accepted for Cranwell, the new RAF college. ‘God knows how he’ll manage,’ his brother said. ‘He’s no head for heights. Ailsa had to get him down when he went climbing at Flamborough Head last summer.’
    ‘How is Ailsa?’ Josh asked.
    ‘Coming down to London next week-end with my mother for the Armistice Day service at the Cenotaph. You’ll remember I lost my Old Man in 1914 and my Cousin George on the Somme, and since the family’s sending a detachment, I’ve got the week-end off.’
    ‘So’ve I,’ Josh smiled. ‘I only just qualify, of course, because my father actually died after the Armistice.’
    ‘Better join us,’ Reeves suggested. ‘My kid brother’ll be there with his girl friend, and Caroline Brett-Johnston’s coming. She’s half-expecting to get engaged to me, I think.’
    ‘She’ll have a long wait,’ Josh warned. ‘Subalterns may not marry, captains might, majors should and colonels must. You’ve a long way to go.’
    Reeves grinned. ‘Oh, well, it’s no loss. She ain’t as good- looking as she used to be, anyway. Too much hunting. Beginning to look like a horse. If you put a saddle on her and sent her down to the starting post for the four-thirty, nobody would notice. Looks like Ailsa’s wait’s going to be a long one, too.’
    ‘Who’s Ailsa engaged to?’
    ‘Nobody. But she’s got her eye on you. Make no mistake about it, old boy. Joining the ranks put the tin lid on it. You can do no wrong.’

 
     
Six
     
    In his usual easy-going manner, Toby Reeves dawdled over breakfast and, missing the first train to London, they only just managed to clamber aboard the last coach of the second. As they pushed down the corridor towards a first-class compartment, Reeves smiled and nodded to his right and Josh found himself looking at a girl wearing a cloche hat, with good legs and neat dark hair. Reeves had quite recovered his equanimity, despite the rush, and was just working himself up to trying to make her acquaintance when his face changed.
    ‘I say, old boy,’ he murmured, ‘Isn’t that your batman, Bawtry?’
    Josh peered into the third-class compartment at the man reading a newspaper alongside the girl. ‘Yes, by God, it is,’ he said. ‘It’s also my suit, one of my shirts, my umbrella and my second-best hat.’
    Reeves grinned. ‘Tryin’ it on, old man,’ he said. ‘Old rankers stickin’ together.’
    When the train arrived in London Josh was out on the platform at once. As he saw Bawtry descend he touched Reeves’ arm. ‘See you later,’ he said.
    As Bawtry marched towards the exit, lean, upright and smart in Josh’s checked suit with a handkerchief in his breast pocket and a poppy in his buttonhole, he heard a voice behind him.
    ‘Morning, Bawtry!’
    As Bawtry stopped and turned, the smile on his face died abruptly and he stiffened to attention.
    ‘Forty-eight hour pass, Bawtry?’ Josh asked quietly.
    ‘Yes, sir.’ Bawtry’s face had gone red. ‘You was goin’ off for the week-end yourself, sir, so I thought I’d put in for one as well.’
    ‘I bet you did. And you thought it was safe to borrow my suit, too, didn’t you? Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the train you expected me to catch.’
    ‘Ah–’