My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyThe habit of discipline in those circumstances became more than ever valuable. Thevarying performances of regiments in the supreme test of war could always be tracedto their discipline and leadership. Regiments would acquire through this means acollective character so individual that you could almost calculate with precision whatin given circumstances they would do. To take an example almost unbelievably crudeand simple: it was possible in support trenches in dry conditions to allow everyone totake off their boots if certain regiments were in the front line, because you knew theywould hold long enough if attacked to give those in support plenty of time to move up.But this was not advisable in all cases.This collective character of regiments, this intimate relationship between ranks andthese practical working methods, can only be created over a long period of time. Itcan be found in varying degrees in all the great institutions of this world, where menhave slowly evolved a pride in their ways and traditions in the manner of a natural andtrue aristocracy, the sense of belonging to an elite of service and achievement. Thespirit of a regiment or an army always depends greatly on its leadership, and it can bedestroyed very quickly - it has sometimes been done in the modern world - but itrequires generations, even centuries to create it. And when you have lived with it yourealise it is something unique, one of the wonders of human nature.Those days at the Curragh in the autumn of 1914 confirmed the impression of theregular army which I had originally derived from Sergeant-Major Adam and SergeantRyan at school, and I became deeply attached to that way of life. Some years later, inthe light duties of convalescence, I was to know very happy and relatively relaxeddays at the Curragh. But in those early days of the war all was serious and arduoustraining. To 'pass out' and become a fully fledged officer did not take long. We newarrivals since the war began were then fully trained and prepared to go to the front.But the war of mobility for the time being was over, and the cavalry in Flanders wereheld back from the front in reserve. Trench war had begun and there appeared noimmediate prospect of the cavalry being used. The casualties were not then occurringwhich we sadly realised would alone call us to the front as replacements, yet still theidea prevailed that the war would not last long. Impatience grew with theapprehension that we should miss the adventure of a lifetime. Men but a little olderthan ourselves would be able for ever to address us in some more prosaic Englishequivalent of Henri IV's gay and gallant words to one of his favourite friends: ‘Pendstoi,brave Crillon, nous avons combattu a Arques et tu n'y etais pas'. Yet our Englishversion was not always quite so prosaic after all:'And gentlemen in England, now abed,shall think themselves accursed, they were not here'.A condition approaching despair began to grip ardent young hearts; never had menappeared more eager to be killed. It was in retrospect perhaps a strange attitude, but itstill seems to me healthier than the mood of a few clever young men who on theoutbreak of the Second World War reached for the telephone to enquire what wasgoing in Whitehall. Our generation was mad, perhaps, but it was the right kind ofmadness; some shade of the old George might have wished again these madmenmight bite some of their successors.How to get to the front was the burning question of that hour. One service alone43 of 424