Remembrance

An officer on leave is staying with his sister:

"They dined at a restaurant, and went on to a music hall. That night he took
longer to fall asleep. She had allowed herself a thread of hope,
when he began to talk again. Three Justins competed, thrusting each other
aside : a cold, attentive observer, a debased child, a devil bragging in hell. At
intervals they were banished by a recognisable Justin interminably muttering to
himself, ‘Here’s a sword for Toad, here’s a sword for Rat, here’s a sword for
Mole, here’s a sword for Badger.’ The reiteration from that bible of their
childhood would stick on the word, ‘Rat’. ‘Got you !’ And he was off again.

[...]

"She felt herself growing icy cold, couldn’t remember if
she had wound her watch, couldn’t remember what diversion she had planned
for the morrow, was walking over Richmond Bridge in a snowstorm, when she
noticed he had begun again. She noticed. It had come to that. Two nights of a
vicarious endurance of what was being endured, had been endured, would
continue to be endured by a cancelled generation, had so exhausted her that
now she felt neither horror nor despair, merely a bitter acquiescence. Justin
went on with his Hail Devil Rosary, and in France the guns went on and on,
and the mud dried into dust and slumped back into mud again. People went
down to Kent to listen to the noise of the guns: the people in Kent said that
they had grown used to it, didn’t hear it any longer."

Listen for the echoes.  Witness.  Remember.

Nine