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[page 51]
99
(4).
press and elsewhere, generally in more or less harrowing style. Artists have painted it and poets have immortalized it. And yet there is nothing spectacular about it, just a little drama which is being enacted every morning month in and month out, Sundays included. Perhaps our women have grown braver or perhaps the more emotionally inclined have been presuaded to say their good byes at home, the early hour being a helpful excuse for insisting on the latter course. Be that as it may, the seeker after pathos would find no gratification in the scene as it takes place nowadays. Officers returning from leave are not a very cheery lot and what conversation they do carry on consists mainly of grunts. The man in the corner who took the tender farewell of the pretty girl in the blue hat on the platform, sits vacantly staring out of thewindow and inwardly cursing the war. Next to him is a chap who has caught this train four times during the past two years. He reads one newspaper after another and finally bundles the whole lot up and throws them out of the window through which he continues to gaze with one of Bainsfather's "fed up" expressions. In the other corner an unshaven subaltern [Note handwritten in left-hand margin: Poor old C (vide supra)] smokes cigarette after cigarette in an effort to overcome the "nasty brown taste" which his last night of leave has left him. The next compartment contains a party of nurses who are returning from their well earned leave after a strenuous five months devoted to looking after the wounded from the "1916 push". They chatter as is their way, and appear quite happy. The Tommies who fill up most of the train are like a lot of schoolboys returning after the holidays. They are not the same jovial spirits who arrived at Victoria a week or so again. Banter which then would have been met by counter banter, now threatens to lead to blows. However the feeling will work off as the day xxxx wears on.
The run to Folkestone is a very pretty one passing