Slowly getting to be a proper soldier – in hot water all the time. Uniform fits where it touches. The chaps in my hut took the mickey out of my accent at first. I never knew I had one. Said I sounded a bloody snob (their words) and damned arrogant, which I didn’t like that much. They started to call me College Boy, but after I had a set-to with one of them and duffed him up, and got seven days C.B. – not College Boy, but Confined to Barracks, they have started calling me Matt and sometimes Wardy after my surname because there’s another Matthew in the platoon. So I suppose being called that must stand for something. They’re not a bad bunch once you get to know them. I still can’t get used to being bawled at … There were two pages of cheerful grousing. He seemed quite genuinely happy, a vastly different man to the one who had said goodbye to her that day. If anything, he seemed happier than he had been in his carefree days before war had broken out, despite the restrictions of army life.
