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Show NO HERO-THIS By WARWICK DEEPING I SYNOPSIS An Eniliik eorter nsmea Brent, s lover of peace who aks nothlnf belief than to his life quietly, enlists tor foreign service in the Worlt war Isrcelr beeause M friends and aetchbort shun him for shirking snllllarT duty. Even his wile, Mry, seems relieved when he tells her ot his decision t eo. We are told to wait In the corridor. corri-dor. A clerk goes off to announce us and returns with a very large and impressive looking man wear-ting wear-ting much ribbon, and in my innocence inno-cence I salute him. He looks amused in a sneering and superior sort of way. We say that we have been ordered or-dered to report for duty. Apparently Appar-ently the hospital has not been notified. noti-fied. Nothing is known about us. The large man. who makes me think of a big white enigmatic tomcat, tom-cat, takes our names. "Better go down to the local pub. gentlemen, and report again tomorrow. tomor-row. Try the Crown." I elude Bunce next morning by breakfasting early, and set out to report again at the hospital. It spreads itself amorphously on the plateau above. Orderlies are parading parad-ing on the road leading to the administrative ad-ministrative offices. I am shy and feeling very raw and apologetic. I manage to sneak past the back of the parade and so to the main door. The large person happena to be in the corridor with a sheaf of papers pa-pers In hia hand. He deigns to smile at me. I realize that he is some sort of autoorat and that he may be my friend. "You can report to the coldnel, sir. in five minutes." He opens a door and ushers me into a common room that ia full of strange officers who stare at me casually. I feel like a new boy at school. All the chairs are occupied and 1 go and stand self-consciously by a window. An elderly officer with a great grizzled mustache and a kind weather-worn face gets up and comes across to talk with me. I am grateful to him. He is a paternal pa-ternal person. He asks me whether I have found a billet, and when I tell him I am at the Crown he suggests sug-gests that I should join him and two other officers at No. T Trafalgar terrace. I thank him and welcome the offer. The White Cat reappears and calls me by name. "Mr. Brent, please." I find myself in the presence of a lContlnad on Folkwine Pae of the hall cupboard, and when Mary posted them on lo me at Southcliffe I took them out into the garden of my billet and poked them into a big euonymus bush. Reporting For Duty I receive my instructions to report re-port to the O. C. Military hospital, Southcliffe. on April 1. The nearness near-ness and the finality of the event seem to fall like a atone into the life that Mary and I have ahared. A peculiar aadness possesses me. The morning of my going Randall is coming to drive me to the station sta-tion in his car. We are wilfully and insincerely cheerful at breakfast. break-fast. I tell Mary that if I am quartered quar-tered at Southcliffe for any length of time she will be able to come and stay. I suspect that ahe believes that I shall be rushed over to France tomorrow. The bell! Randall at last. I kiss my wife with a kind of passionate casualness. "Goodbye, my dear, don't worry." I make for the door. I - leave the door open and in the hall I turn and look back. I see Mary against the window. Her ahouldera are giving giv-ing little jerks and her face is the face of a woman trying not to cry-One's cry-One's vanity has a very naive quality. My volunteering for service ser-vice had been such a shock in my quiet country life that I suppose I assumed my reporting at Southcliffe South-cliffe would be a serious and official offi-cial affair. I traveled down to Southcliffe with a fat and vulgar little man also very newly uniformed uni-formed and wearing the sign of Aesculapius. He started talking to me almost at once with complete candor. I had his life history in five minutes. Apparently, for him thia war business was to be no end of a binge. He was the third partner part-ner in a colliery practice somewhere in the north and in joining up he admitted that he was getting out of a groove, the daily round domesticity domes-ticity and all that. "Besides, I wasn't such a fool as to sign on for foreign service." It had not occurred to me to do anything else. Bunce. that was his name, must have reacted to my questioning. "Oh!" he stretched out his fat legs in their very new yellow gaiters. "Any place where there are plenty of wenches will do me all right. Nurses are better than nothing. noth-ing. Wine and women, my lad, and not too much war." I am acutely disliking Bunce. I want to get rid of him, but at Southcliffe there is only one taxi and we share It. We are driven up to an ugly red building 'on a hil! We and our baggage are deposited st the main entrance. We find an office full of khaki clad clerks. Bunce swaggers in. The clerks do not appear inclined to take much notice of us. but Bunce is not a negligible person. KQHERO--JHIS-; various functions of the corps. We remain just doctors and supremely ignorant of everything save the routine rou-tine of ward work. There are times when I suffer from intense nostalgia and a sense of impending doom. 1 wonder about the othes men. None of us ever discusses these secret and intimate qualms. We carry about with us a shell of brittle cheerfulness. Some of us even pretend that we are anxious anx-ious to be at the front whither all the blood and the guts of the country coun-try are tending. I look at the sea and wonder whether I shall cross jit and. if so. whether I shall return. (Continued Wednesday.) (Copyright. 1937, for The Telegram.) (Continued from Prrwdlni Part) crumpled old gentleman with a pale and puckered face. The White Cat purrs at the old gentleman behind the desk and suddenly the great man screams at him. "Don't fuss, Bisgood, don't interfere." inter-fere." Colonel Barter screws up his little lit-tle currant-bun eyes at me. "Any experience, what?" "No, sir." "None of you have, none of you have. What do they expect me to do with a pack of raw civilians? Bisgood." "Yes. sir." "Detail Mr." "Mr. Brent, sir." "Be quiet, man. Detail Mr. Brent for hospital duties. Wait a moment. mo-ment. Isn't the A. D. M. S. of the Nineteenth division asking for an M. O.?" "Yes. sir, but there Is another officer due to report, sir, who" "Damn it, man. am I in charge here, or are you?" "I was only trying to save you trouble, sir. Major Keyes is so busy boarding men that he wants to hand over some of his wards." "All right, all right, all right. You will take over those wards, Mr. Brent" Major Keyes. who is a regular soldier with good looks and an assured as-sured manner, rushes me Into the wards I am to take over, gives me a curt three minutes' introduction and leaves me to my own devices. I My new friend. Captain Macartney, Macart-ney, waits for me In the staff room and takes me down to see No. 7 Trafalgar terrace. Macartney is the quartermaster and a regular, a man who has risen from the ranks. As we go down the hill toward the sea I am moved to ask him why he should trouble to be kind to a raw recruit. The skin crinkles up round his kind Scots eyes as he answers we with equal' candor. "You looked Just like a homesick bairn." ' No. 7 Trafalgar terrace is a Jane Austen of a house kept by two old maids known as Bicky and Bertha. I gather that Macartney exercises a kind of censorship over the officers offi-cers who are promoted to a billet in No. 7. Bicky and Bertha are good old things, shrewd and kind, and the commissariat is excellent. I am introduced to Bicky, who shows me a top floor room overlooking over-looking the sea. I decide at once to take it if she will accept me. She says. "If you are a friend of. Captain Macartney's, sir, that is good enough for me." Macartney arranges to have my i baggage transferred from the Crown to No. 7. At dinner I meet my fellow lodgers Malim. a physician and bacteriologist, and Dartnell. who is acting as assistant to the surgical specialist. Malim is a rather rath-er colorless, grave, self-absorbed person. Dartnell one of those very dark men with a radiant skin, chock full of vitality. I lie in bed and listen to the sea. The night is supremely peaceful, and I ask myself whether it is cowardice cow-ardice that makes me yearn so passionately pas-sionately for peace. I have been fortunate, and I am tempted to wonder whether I may not be able to hide myself from the official world in Southcliffe and remain actively ac-tively and contentedly forgotten. I am not an adventurous spirit After all, I have volunteered for foreign service and If the powers that be do not send me abroad, need I agitate agi-tate for the ordeal that I dread? My thoughts are with Mary before I fall asleep. I am beginning to make discoveries. discover-ies. Southcliffe is not only the receiving re-ceiving hospital for all the troops in the district, but it is also the headquarters of No. 12 Co. R. A. M. C. The company numbers about 1000 men. Some 300 are quartered at Southcliffe and the rest are scattered scat-tered in detachments all over the country. Most of the men are recruits re-cruits from the St. John ambulance land are partially trained, which is la good thing, for there Is no one here to train them. I I realize that none of us knows anything, save as doctors. Marart-iney Marart-iney is too busy with his quarter-mastering quarter-mastering to be able to help. Be- Hidrs. officially it ia not his duty. Major Keyei is an elusive and charming person who eerru to I spend his life in boarding the scores ,of men who are sent up as unfit. I Colonel Barter, who is a dugout, has forgotten everything he knew. He never leaves his office, but sits and fumes and fusses. . S -M. Bisgood is the only man whose large and patient hands seem :to grasp reality. I come to understand under-stand that Bisgood is the autocrat I and the king behind the king. He i manages Barter as a large and capa-! capa-! ble nurse controls a f reward and peevish child.' But no one Is given the opportunity opportu-nity to learn anything about the |