My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyAs usual in French cities, a salle d'armes was available with some good performers tocomplete my happiness. In the thirties one of the most redoubtable members of theirOlympic team came from another provincial city, Le Havre. Here too I wasintroduced to the quick-action sport of pistol duelling with wax bullets fired from asmooth bore, which catch you a hard crack but do not penetrate special protectiveclothing and a fencing-mask fitted with thick non-splinter glass over the eyes. Yearslater I revived this sport at my house near Denham at a time when my return tofencing was the subject of some comment. The Daily Herald one day contained ashort leading article addressed to my 'childish delight in weapons'. One of my closepolitical associates during that period, John Strachey, was rather inclined to agreewith the Daily Herald.The age of sixteen saw some revival of my mental faculties, which did not reach fulldevelopment for another two or three years, but enabled me to pass the army examswith reasonable credit, and to enter the Royal Military College at Sandhurst when Iwas just seventeen, an earlier age than was usual. If my memory serves me, I was fifthon the cavalry list, and would by the calculation of my teachers have been top exceptfor my execrable handwriting which lost me what they maintained was the recordfigure of 800 marks.Some pundit may be able to confound my memory by looking up this record, which Ihave not bothered to check—irrelevant detail without permanent importance can beleft to the scavengers of youth—but these are the figures which remained in myrecollections after many wise admonitions to learn to write; an accomplishment Inever achieved. I always claim my bad writing is due to my mind moving too fast formy hand; Diana ascribes it to my carelessness, impoliteness and indifference to theconvenience of others. I retort that she could read my writing very well in the firstfine flush of romance, but the habit of marriage has dulled her acute sensibilities;there the matter rests, as is the way with marital arguments.I arrived at Sandhurst at the beginning of 1914 and found an atmosphere remote fromany premonition of war. It was immensely gay, and there I spent some of the mostvividly happy days of my life. We broke every rule, and off parade had not the leastregard for discipline. Few changes could have been more dramatic than the completereversal in our attitude at the outbreak of war, when the playboys of the summerbecame overnight completely serious and dedicated young soldiers. The convivialgroup was a fairly large minority in the R.M.C., where the orthodox majority pursueda more sedate way of life. It was drawn from every company in the two largebuildings—old and new—and was recognised by a certain flamboyance of demeanour.I remember looking round the large mess hall on the first night of my arrival andpicking out some fifty to a hundred boys who seemed to me particularly objectionable;within a month they were my best friends and closest associates. It is often a malereaction in youth to resist instinctively vitality in others at first impact which later, inintimacy, attracts close friendship. These responses are almost chemical in theirselective affinity—as Goethe suggests in a very different context in his novel DieWahlverwandtschaften-—and in young men of very male characteristics leadnaturally to a form of community or gang life. It was the habit at Sandhurst to spendall leisure with the same people, whatever company they belonged to.Exuberance took the form of climbing out of the buildings at night or slipping through34 of 424