Dad II

Here's my Dad back off leave in January 1947

'None of my companions seem to have changed in the slightest as a result of their leave. They are as loud and foul-mouthed as ever - all voice and nothing to back it - and damned unpleasant to live with. It is absolute hell by comparison with the pleasant devil-may-care atmosphere radiated by Lymington's jeunesse doree. They are the two extremes, quite unconscious of one another - happily so really, for they would never get on....
I sometimes become very angry with Fate for playing this dirty trick on me. Fate, incarnated in the military authorities, seems to treat me as a football to be kicked hither and thither at will, an inanimate, inconsiderable thing.
I must get really wrapped up in something that will keep my mind far away from its physical environment. I think I will have a shot at writing a novel. At least it will keep me from suicide!'

In March, fairly certain of his demob number coming up in the next few months, he writes

'Honestly, I grow fonder of my coarse, foul-mouthed companions every day, because I realize that in six months' time I shall be saying goodbye, not only to them, but to the spirit which has resulted from our friendship. I don't think anyone who has not experienced it, can know just how strongly bound we soldiers are to one another. There are, I suppose, fifty chaps here who would do anything for me, and for whom I would do anything - we would die for each other if it came to the push, I think. It is not that we know each other very well - most of us - but that there is a team spirit abroad amongst us (just because life is pleasanter that way) which doesn't allow us to let each other down. I think most of us would do a favour for a perfect stranger, if he was in khaki. And why are people so much nicer in the Army than out of it? Simply because they feel secure. They do not have to win the bread - it is given to them. In "Civvy Street" there is always a fear that the bread may run out. This fear drives people to get all they can for themselves - and to HELL with everyone else: an ugly fact, but true. And they just go on and on money-grabbing, thinking that when they have x thousand pounds they will feel secure. But before they have x thousand pounds the thing has become an obsession. What a miserable existence! ..... We must get a team-spirit in the World. To read the papers one would suppose that it existed now - "United Nations" etc - but can you show me anything that it has done, achieved? "Freedom from Fear of Insecurity at some Future Date" is the first stage to be reached, then, it would seem. But why worry about our individual security when the security of the world is at stake. We are fighting a battle - no, that's not true, we're not, but we should be. As long as there is selfishness and patriotism - which is mob selfishness - there is no hope at all for the WORLD, which is what matters to me; not just me, or just Britain, but the WORLD.'