The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [11]
“Thank God, the brutes aren’t allowed out on exercise,” he said. “At least the General draws the line there. I think Hogbourne-Johnson hates them as much as I do. Now Hogbourne-Johnson is a man you must take care about. He is bad-tempered, unreliable, not more than averagely efficient and disliked by all ranks, including the General. However, I can handle him.”
Hogbourne-Johnson, a full colonel with red tabs, was in charge of operational duties, the staff officer who represented the General in all routine affairs. A Regular, decorated with an M.C. from the previous war, he was tall, getting decidedly fat, with a small beaky nose set above a pouting mouth turning down at the corners. He somewhat resembled an owl, an angry, ageing bird, recently baulked of a field-mouse and looking about for another small animal to devour. The M.C. suggested that he was presumably a brave man, or, at very least, one who had experienced enough active service to make that term almost beside the point. Widmerpool acknowledged these earlier qualities.
“Hogbourne-Johnson’s had a disappointing career up to date,” he said. “Unrealised early hopes. At least that’s his own opinion. Sword of Honour at Sandhurst, all that sort of thing. Then he made a balls-up somewhere – in Palestine, I think – just before the war. However, he hasn’t by any means given up. Still thinks he’ll get a Division. If he asked me, I could tell him he’s bound for some administrative backwater, and lucky if he isn’t bowler-hatted before the cessation of hostilities. The General’s going to get rid of him as soon as he can lay hands on the particular man he wants.”
“But the General could sack him to-morrow.”
“For some reason it doesn’t suit him to do that. Hogbourne-Johnson is also given to putting on a lot of swank about being a Light Infantryman. To tell the truth, I’m surprised any decent Line regiment could put up with him. They might at least have taught him not to announce himself to another officer on the telephone as ‘Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson.’ I know Cocksidge says, ‘This is Captain Cocksidge speaking,’ if he’s talking to a subaltern. You expect that from Cocksidge. Hogbourne-Johnson is supposed to know better. The C.R.A. doesn’t say, ‘This is Brigadier Hawkins,’ he says ‘Hawkins here.’ However, I suppose I shouldn’t grumble. I can manage the man. That’s the chief thing. If he hasn’t learnt how to behave by now, he never will.”
All this turned out to be a pretty just description of Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and his demeanour, from which in due course I saw no reason to dissent. The army is a place where simple characterisation flourishes. An officer or man is able, keen, well turned out; or awkward, idle, dirty. He is popular or detested. In principle, at any rate, few intermediate shades of colour are allowed to the military spectrum. To some extent individuals, by the very force of such traditional methods of classification, fall into these hard and fast categories. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson was one of the accepted army types, disappointed, sour, on the look-out for trouble; except by his chief clerk, Diplock, not much loved. On the other hand, although he may have had his foolish moments as well as his disagreeable ones, Hogbourne-Johnson was not a fool. Where Widmerpool, as it turned out, made a mistake, was in supposing he had Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson eating out of his hand. The Colonel’s failings, such as they were, did not include total lack of grasp of what Widmerpool himself was like in his dealings. Indeed, Hogbourne-Johnson showed comparatively deep understanding of Widmerpool eventually, when the titanic row took place about Diplock, merging – so far as Widmerpool and Hogbourne-Johnson were concerned – into the question of who was to command the Divisional Reconnaissance Regiment.
The Reconnaissance Unit, then in process of generation, was one in which Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson took a special interest from the start, though not an entirely friendly interest.