H.A.C.: "Oh well, in a way I suppose--"

T.A.: "'Ow many are there of yer?"

H.A.C.: "About eight hundred."

T.A.: "An' they say yer volunteered!"

H.A.C.: "Yes, we did."

T.A.: (With conviction as he gathers together his kit). "Blimey, yer
must be mad!"

For curiosity's sake I asked some of my mates to give me their reasons
for enlisting. One particular friend of mine, a good-humoured Cockney,
grinned sheepishly as he replied confidentially, "Well, matey, I done
it to get away from my old gal's jore--now you've got it!" Another
recruit, a pale, intelligent youth, who knew Nietzsche by heart,
glanced at me coldly as he answered, "I enlisted because I am an
Englishman." Other replies were equally unilluminating and I desisted,
remembering that the Germans despise us because we are devoid of
military enthusiasm.

The step once taken, however, we all set to work to discover how we
might become soldiers with a minimum of exertion and inconvenience to
ourselves. During the process I learned many things, among others
that I was a unit in the most democratic army in history; where Oxford
undergraduate and farm labourer, Cockney and peer's son lost their
identity and their caste in a vast war machine. I learned that Tommy