Free A Test to Destruction by Henry Williamson

fellow, and thought that such were Mother’s people; that he was more Turney than Maddison, the cold-grey-eyed Viking Maddisons. Yet was he really like the Turneys? Was his nature like Father’s, or Mother’s? What was the difference between mind and nature? Did he have a mixed nature? There was something about both Mother and Father which made him feel only part of himself in their presence. Perhaps he was, as Father had often said in anger, a throw-back.
    Moggers was yawning widely, with no attempt to cover a mouth revealing stumps of teeth about as irregular and broken as the tree stumps in the Bois Carré of long ago. Poor old Moggers, a farm labourer’s son who had started life as a crowstarver for 6d. a week; dear old Moggers: but where was the original boy of clay, dragging thin young legs behind the seed-harrow strokes, or twirling his rattle to scare the rooks? Since then he had dragged his feet all over the Empire, and now wanted only to rest them before his own hearth—the bully-beef face home at last, roses round the door, and the old women along the street on sunny days working at the lace pillows. How queer—crowstarver Moggy to Lt.-Col. Moggerhanger, D.S.O.
    “What yer laughin’ like that at me for, young Lampers?”
    “I’m beginning to rumble you, mein prächtige kerl !”
    Moggerhanger obviously took this to be a compliment. His mouth became frog-like as he drew in breath, extended two arms, and started to sing Nellie Dean in a surprisingly thin little voice. Then after another drink he was bellowing

    Drunk last night,
    Drunk the night before,
    We’re goin’ to get drunk tonight
    If we never get drunk any more.
    When we’re drunk we’re as happy as can be
    For we’re all members of the Souse family!
              Glorious! Glorious!
    One cask of beer among the four of us
    Thank the Lord there aren’t any more of us
    For any of us could drink it all alone
              Pom! Pom!
    “Them’s my sentiments, Lampo! One of the Fireside Lancers, no bloody good to the army no more! That’s a bloody fact! Me, who was so’jerin’ when your mother’s milk was still in you! Khyber Pass, Omdurman, Rorke’s Drift, Blennum, Battle of Bloody Hastings, Moggers was in the thick of the bloody lot, and no jam on it like there is today! I began my so’jering with the wildest lot of sods whatever broke their mother’s ’earts, let me tell you, old cock!” His head dropped. In a little voice he murmured, “I’m popped,” and without further word staggered up on his size-thirteen issue boots and zigzagged from the hut.
    “Dear old Moggers,” said Pluggy. “Where would we be without him. Don’t take any notice of his remarks. He’s had a long war, and wants to go home. By the way, the battalion is being relieved tomorrow, I think we should all turn out to welcome them. I’m sending up the drums. Well, I’m for bed. You know your quarters, do you?”
    “I think I’ll write a letter first, major, before turning in.”
    “Righty-ho.”
    He wanted to write up his diary, an act forbidden by General Routine Orders. But there seemed nothing to say when he was alone. He began to feel depressed, his head felt to be swelled, his skin dry and tight. Was he going to spew? He hadn’t drunk very much. The yellow-hot coke in the stove was now giving out blue flames when the wind blew down the chimney pipe. He felt sleepy, with no desire to sleep: a feeling of irritability, kept down by leaden hopelessness, held him in faint complaint that the room was thick with the insidious smell of black twist tobacco. A brutal imprint of himself trying to smoke twist in a clay pipe in the Cheshire convalescent home in February 1915 pressedupon him, while his stomach hardened unbearably, so that he got up and made for the door, vainly clutching air for support while feeling himself helplessly to be the centre of a leaning gyroscope. He was scarcely aware of falling backwards, and then the sense of desperately