Three Cheers for Me
by Donald Jack
(PaperJacks, 1974)
Beamington, Ontario … was a good town: there was no place where you could get a drink but there were nine churches.
Page 1.
I was faintly surprised to see that Father had once been young.
Page 3.
My long face, which I knew to be smooth, bland, and maddening.
Page 3.
I had had cause of late to reproach myself severely for slight waverings of devotion. These waverings, for some reason, almost invariably occurred in church.
Page 4.
Her clothes rustled like stealthy movements in the undergrowth.
Page 6.
My father always chose a rousing hymn during collection in the hope that the congregation might be spurred to recklessness with their dimes and quarters.
Page 6.
I put my arm gently a round her waist and was thrilled when she did not draw away.
Page 8.
Nobody had ever clung to me before. I decided I liked being clung to.
Page 13.
I have always been tolerant about stiff manners, upper lips, tasks, and necks, but stiff waists I detest. They’re so - stiff.
Page 14.
I had finally revealed myself in my true colors: gray and - and dark gray.
Page 17.
It almost seemed as if the army considered real soldierly qualities to be slightly dishonorable.
Page 28.
The army, I had discovered, distrusted sleep and was always doing its best to discourage it.
Page 32.
I became an expert Lewis gunner.
Page 37.
Instead of a nice comfortable bed in a private house surrounded by happy French peasants, we were faced with a route march into the dead of night.
Page 41.
The air bursts seemed to be right over the trenches, and within two minutes a corporal in another platoon was struck in the back and his tunic turned dark with blood. He looked very surprised as he sat at the bottom of the trench. When they lifted him on to a stretcher, I saw tears in his eyes. I really think it was at that moment that my disillusionment with the infantry began.
Page 48.
There was nothing we could do about the shrapnel, and after a couple of hours of it I began to have a feeling of helplessness that increased alarmingly when my helmet was struck a glancing blow.
Page 48.
I stopped, turned to wave on my men, but found them passing me on either side, not paying the slightest attention.
Page 51.
Is this what the war is like? I thought to myself. Going forward into a solid wall of lead, men dying for a few yards of shattered trench, fighting an enemy one never saw except by accident? The whole thing was so - so inglorious, so -
An airplane like a dragonfly flew overhead, and even though it was about a mile up I could see the occupant, or one of the occupants, looking over the side. He must have felt contemptuous.
It made me think.
Page 56.
“I don’t think this is my kind of war after all,” I said “I’ve always been a bit squeamish about filth and squalor.”
Page 58.
One never knew what was happening elsewhere. The company was our entire horizon. Similarly, we never knew what the division as a whole was dong, what the corps was up to, what the army was achieving, the Allies accomplishing, or how the war was going. All we knew was that the colonel’s adjutant had been informed by the brigade major who had heard it form a GSO2 who had it on good authority from a reparations officer that the war was going splendidly.
Page 61.
I became quite fluent during these lecture sessions, although I rarely knew what I was talking about.
Page 66.
My new sergeant, called Bunser, was a strange character. He was small and had a dark, blue face, and went around with his shoulders hunched under a cape so that he looked like a bundle of old rags wrapped in waterproofing.
Pages 66-67.
Everyone in the army seemed to play cards, devoutedly, fanatically.
Page 67.
I almost did write to Mabel; but when I posed the pen over paper I found that I could not remember her face, so I made a paper dart instead
Page 67.
“If I started on rum I’d graduate to whisky. Before I knew where I was, I’d be reading novels.”
Page 69.
“I suspect anyone who goes around parading his piety and moral superiority. It’s not superiority at all; it’s lack of experience.”
Page 70.
If there was anything I detested it was sweat under one’s eyes. It gave one such an unwashed feeling. And if there was anything I detested it was an unwashed feeling.
Page 84.
I spent so much time convincing myself that all was well with the world that the world became distinctly more dangerous.
Page 85.
Three things helped me make the decision. First, I had been deciding for four months that trench warfare did not really suit me. Second, I met a pilot who suggested I should join the Royal Flying Corps. Third, the colonel told me to. I must admit it was this third argument that carried the most weight.
Page 87.
When the patrol was finished the pilots could come home to comfortable billets, hot meals, hot showers, and clean socks. This was a consideration that could not easily be dismissed after the trenches, where one was never warm, never clean, and never entirely out of danger, and where even in reserve one was rarely comfortable.
Page 87.
It appeared that although I might not always get on so well on terra firma, in the air I was in my element: a born flyer.
Page 90.
Lately I’d been finding myself speaking with an English accent whenever I was nervous.
Page 93.
My normal volume can be heard the length and breadth of a battleship.
Page 93.
I’d been surrounded by adults inflated with various ponderous varieties of self-importance, and to come across someone like Mr. Lewis, so lacking in hot air as to be almost deflated, and, in the best sense, so simple as to take it for granted that my knowledge must be as profound as his - it was refreshing, if somewhat incomprehensible.
Page 96.
There’d been some kind of revolution in Petrograd, but this was a Good Thing as it meant that Democracy was at last coming to Mother Russia and President Wilson of the United States was said to be delighted with the turn of events and was urging a loan to the new leaders of Russia as soon as it was known who the new leaders were.
Page 99.
“I hope you didn’t pay any attention to Mother, especially as she means everything she says.”
Page 111.
It was surprising how different the French countryside looked from the air when it was compared with England. England was marzipan green and milk chocolate; France, yellow and mud.
Page 124.
There was … the inevitable reserve of the veterans toward newcomers such as us. It was not a snobbish reserve, but rather a wait-and-see attitude. So many new pilots came, flew for a few days or weeks, then went west, that it was hardly worth while getting to know them.
Page 124.
All in all, the squadron was so full of peculiar people I felt quite comfortable - for a time.
Page 125.
The Camel was a death trap in inexperienced hands; it was rigged tail heavy, and the torque was tremendous and constantly twisted the nose of the aircraft to the right so you were never quite going in the direction in which you were pointing. (This must have driven the enemy plots crazy.) But it could reverse direction fast enough to get buffeted in its own slip-stream and it could out-turn any other aircraft flying: the visibility was superior and the armament deadly: two fixed Vickers machine guns firing forward. … I preferred the more concentrated fire of the Camel’s Vickers.
Page 126.
“Flying a plane is only a small part of the job, old boy. You have to learn to see what’s going on everywhere.”
Page 128.
It was a pity there was no objective chemical test for the condition known as being in love. Love was annoyingly subjective. Its symptoms - sleeplessness, lack of appetite, heavy sighs, filmy eyes, and loose bowels - could easily be the signs of a nervous breakdown or an overdoes of cascara.
Page 131.
After about fifteen trips over the line I was beginning to settle down, to fly with minimum reference to the map, to observe more accurately what was going on on the ground, and to see more clearly what the air had in store. During my first two or three trips I saw little except what was under my nose. Now I was starting to distinguish planes form miles away, and sometimes even to sense by their attitude what type they were.
Page 137.
The rear man nearly always went first, there being nobody to protect him from behind.
Page 137.
Huns were funny birds. Sometimes they were eager to attack; at other times they looked the other way like little old ladies trying not to notice a drunk peeing against their picket fence.
Page 147.
It was obvious that I was becoming more than competent in air fighting - clearheaded, alert, daring, dashing, and deadly. It was only when I had my feet planted firmly on the ground that I tended to fall to pieces.
Page 155.
Fokkers had been highly respected craft since 1915 (it was a Fokker that first appeared with thew modern synchronized machine gun).
Page 162.
It was maddening the way the Hun maintained superior altitude.
Page 163.
These new Tripes seemed to fall to pieces very easily.
Page 164.
Nearly two miles a minute of drab carpet unrolling under you, the slightest nudge of rudder or twitch of joystick carrying you round the gentle curve of a railway track or over the faintest contour of a ridge. This was the most enjoyable part of flying: you really felt you were going somewhere.
Page 165.
It was often a great nuisance having a face and voice like mine.
Page 171.
It was no good being irritable in aerial warfare; it just soiled one’s aim.
Page 172.
It took two or three minutes of travel through half a dozen beautiful icy rooms covered in Dutch-style pictures before I found the bathroom. There was a bearded admiral there, washing his hands.
Page 182.
As one inevitably begins to feel somewhat foolish, nodding and smiling without knowing what one is nodding and smiling about.
Page 188.
She was silent the rest of the way hone; or perhaps speechless would be a better word.
Page 192.
I was touched on my return to the squadron by the warmth of my reception. It seemed I wasn’t so bad when they got to know me.
Page 193.
I envied the Huns their freedom to paint their buses any color they liked. We had to be content with dun colors by official order.
Page 195.
I found out later that he had taken off with me. Taking off in formation! Nobody had ever thought of that before.
Page 196.
It seemed to me that I’d had a miraculous escape and that God was saving me for something much worse, such as the guillotine, delirium tremens, or marriage.
Page 202.
The trenches were so deep one cold see only narrow stirps and tatters of wet sky overhead.
Page 202.
My mother and I had been about as far apart as it was possible for kin to be, not out of animosity or conflict; it was just the way we were. She had raised me out of a sense of duty but not, so far as I’d ever been able to tell, out of anything else. I had long faced this fact with my usual phlegmaticism, just as I now faced the fact that I could bring no sympathy to her now, even if I’d felt any. It was heartless of me; but there it was.
I had no home now. Oh, well.
Then I though about Burma Park, and realized at last what it meant to me. It was the only house in which I’d ever felt at ease.
At home, in fact.
Pages 212-213.
Everyone should have at lest one revelation to break the monotony of his life.
Page 213.
My feeling for Burma Park was really rooted in a warmth and affection for its inhabitants, that reserved, civilized, slightly dotty family, the first people I’d ever met who had discerned the hunger for something or other behind the curious façade of my face and personality.
Page 213.
The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service were in process of combining to form the Royal Air Fore, and Rackingham had recently been appointed Air Minister.
Page 220.
One of my most determined New Year resolutions had been to curb my disorderly proclivities. I had resolved that form now on I would treat my superior officers with the respect they deserved.
Page 226.
I’d never met a major who wasn’t thoroughly thick and awkward. Captains were all right - after all, I was one - and lieutenant colonels could sometimes be relied upon, but majors were invariably pesky, insecure creatures, occupying as they did the no man’s land between the settled brass hat and the jolly decent junior officer.
Page 229.
I had the good sense to take no part in this discussion, even though I had nothing to say.
Page 234.
Under his shy and hesitant exterior, Mr. Lewis could be pretty malicious sometimes.
Page 239.
“Good morning,” Robert said to her. He always said good morning, regardless of the time of day. This had confused the infantry no end when he was in the trenches. Once he’d wished some sentries good morning when it was ten at night, and they had gone back to their dugout for a game of ludo, thinking it was after midnight and they were off duty. As a result we’d lost the battle of Arras.
Page 240.
People tended to recoil even form my normal expression.
Page 241.
Who would have thought two years ago that the Reverend Mr. Bandy’s underestimated son would soon be hobnobbing with aristocrats, lordships, high Army officers, and the real rulers of the nation, the administrative civil servants?
Page 242.
“Auchinflint is our local M.F.H.”
“M.F.H.? Manager of - Feminine Hygiene?”
“No!” Katherine said, looking revolted. “Master of Fox Hounds!”
Page 244.
“I don’t know anything about fox hunting,” I mumbled.
“It’s quite simple. You just gallop around, usually in the pouring rain, until it’s time, to go into hospital with pneumonia.”
“Sounds like Army maneuvers.”
Page 244.
Poor ignorant devil, I continued to chug blissfully into the future.
Page 248.