Sword of Honour, Part 1
By Evelyn Waugh.
Sword of Honour is the combination of Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender incorporated by Waugh in a single volume. Rather than write a single review of a 900-page book, half-remembering about half of a half of it, I thought I’d review it in instalments. I’m relatively confident that I’m now at the start of Officers and Gentlemen.
Guy Crouchback lives in a castle in Italy. With war imminent, he returns home. He tries to join a regiment, but has little luck until he’s introduced to the right people, which sees him become a probationary officer in the Halberdiers, an outfit with a proud history.
As older officers, Crouchback and Apthorpe are usually addressed as “uncle” as they undergo training. The arrival of Brigadier Ritchie-Hook shakes the Halberdiers up, with Crouchback and Apthorpe surviving the cull.
Apthorpe ends up waging a battle against the brigadier who has found and been using the former’s thunder-box (a portable loo). There are various manoeuvres until Ritchie-Hook has it blown up.
Meanwhile, things have not been going well in France, but even in Britain, things are chaotic. Some of the Halberdiers are dispatched to France, but are turned back. Courchback and his fellow probationary officers embark, disembark and embark again, heading for Dakar to liberate the place for the Free French. The whole show’s called off, but Ritchie-Hook thinks one beach is accessible and sends Crouchback to check it out. There is wire, and there’s a firefight. A man is wounded - it’s the brigadier, who’s also chopped the head off one of the locals as a souvenir.
There ought to be major problems, but it’s felt better if the only thing is largely swept under the rug. The convoy puts into a friendly port. Apthorpe, who’s an old Africa man, comes down with Bechuana tummy and is hospitalised. Crouchback goes to see him with a bottle of whisky. The doctor says that that’s the worst thing Apthorpe could have. The next news is that the man’s in a coma and then dead. Crouchback is in further trouble and returned to Blighty along with Ritchie-Hook.
For a time, Crouchback is neither here nor there (he’s trying to find an officer called Chatty Corner who’s Apthorpe’s heir), and due to some confusion, some people think he’s involved in some cloak-and-dagger stuff. Eventually the cloak-and-dagger people catch up with him and send him off to join X Commando, which is commanded by his ex-wife’s ex-husband. It doesn’t last (partly because he’s not Commando material), and Crouchback is informed that he remains one of Ritchie-Hook’s minions.
Eventually after more messing around, X Commando is off on some campaign with Crouchback along as the Brigade Intelligence Officer. They arrive in Cape Town where they learn that Ritchie-Hook’s plane has disappeared.
I felt Crouchback was a bit of a bland, inoffensive character. He’s (mostly) on good terms with his ex-wife, Virginia, and her ex-husband. He agrees to help Apthorpe with his campaign against the brigadier, and then embarks on a mission for the brigadier that has no official sanction. He drifts through his military career without knowing that he was a captain and not being especially bothered that he’s a lieutenant again or that he didn’t get a command.
Apthorpe has more personality, but the relationship between him and Crouchback is a little odd. One moment they’re great mates, and the next Apthorpe is getting all shirty, while Crouchback suspects there’s something a bit off about the man.
The only other character who’s actually memorable…
and here I have to interject to note that Waugh chucks names round every few hundred pages in a manner that suggests the reader should recall who this chap or that chap is in spite of such chaps merely being minor characters who largely have no memorable impact on the narrative.
…is the roguish Trimmer McTavish, who gets caught pretending to be a major and has to run with it.
Most of all, though, this is a story of the chaos and muddle of war, not on the front line, but in the rear echelons. The Halberdiers go this way and that way, and achieve nothing in the process. Crouchback arrives back from West Africa to find no one’s expecting him, and is then casually dispatched to join X Commando. People get into trouble, but it’s all swept under the rug.
I’m not sure how Crouchback’s military career will progress. There could be some trouble for him from his time on the Island of Mugg, but if that unexpected episode in the narrative reappears, nothing will probably come of it.