And I, who by every precept should have put heart into them - how could I help them, who could so little help myself.? Here the colonel under whom we had formed, was promoted out of our sight and succeeded by a younger and less lovable man, cross-posted from another regiment. There were few left in the mess now of the batch of volunteers who trained together at the outbreak of war; one way and another they were nearly all gone - some had been invalided out, some promoted to other battalions, some posted to staff jobs, some had volunteered for special service, one had got himself killed on the field firing range, one had been court-martialled - and their places were taken by conscripts; the wireless played incessantly in the ante-room nowadays and much beer was drunk before dinner; it was not as it had been.
Here at the age of thirty-nine I began to be old. I felt stiff and weary in the evenings and reluctant to go out of camp; I developed proprietary claims to certain chairs and newspapers; I regularly drank three glasses of gin before dinner, never more or less, and -went to bed immediately after the nine o’clock news. I was always awake and fretful an hour before reveille.