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[Page 89]
toge& let the bed free to hospital for the night & incidentally get more leave as I should have an extra night in London. However at 6 I find that this train does not run & ring up station to verify same & am told that staff is gone to dinner but if I ring at 7.20 or 7.30 I might get some one. I am about 2 miles from station as I am compelled I decide to stay here for night.
30-10-18
Ask orderly to call me at 6 but as his clock is 1½ hours slow it is lucky I can wake myself. I bathe shave & get a snack of food & arrive at station about 20 minutes too early. However leave does start & I get as far as Andover where I change. I chum up with an officer from Wiltshire who like every true Britisher never knows anything about his own country. I decide to see the relief of Home guards at Whitehall. This officer tells me to go down into the underground railway system with him. Normally I never go underground as I invariably get lost. I should have changed at Charing Cross but this intelligent scion of the noble English race did not know this & I was landed very far away from where I wanted to go. When I arrived at Whitehall the guards had been changed. Two mounted men motionless on motionless horses in a little box are on duty. Their dress is the armour plated style of ancient knights through which scarlets & blues flash & dazzle ones eyes. Inside dismounted men with clanking swords & dazzle of brass etc stride with clumsy steps in & out of the arches. I pass thro to St James Park, a park composed of winter grass covered with the fallen autumn leaves which no one has had time to gather up for the park in front is a Royal palace it certainly needs some supervision. Across park are low trip wire supposed to be a fence. The Palace Buckingham is a big solid looking structure imposing but not beautiful. The guards were changing the Welsh were relieving the Scots Guard.