Joe Maddison's War

[Harry led the Home Guard in singing a ribald song. Mr Simpson, now calling himself Major Simpson, was appalled and has summoned Harry to his office]

Mr. Simpson: That song. It's indecent. Women and children could have heard it.

Harry Crawford: We were in the middle of the countryside. Didn't seem to bother the cows. Songs like that kept us going on the Western Front.

[Simpson shows Harry a photograph]

Mr. Simpson: I know just as much as you about the Western Front, Private.

Harry Crawford: You're a bloody liar! I know you'd like us to think that that was taken in the thick of the action in France, but it *wasn't*, was it?

Mr. Simpson: It was taken at an army hospital.

Harry Crawford: Aye, at a big country house in North Yorkshire. My sister was a nurse - she worked there. And so did you.

Mr. Simpson: [defeated] All right. In 1914 I was too old for active service. But I volunteered for the Medical Corps, trying to heal the sick, taking away their pain. Is that such a crime.

Harry Crawford: No it isn't. But don't *ever* pretend you were one of us. John, I know what it's like. But no-one will ever understand what it was like on the Western Front unless they were there. I've still got the shrapnel in my back to prove it.

Mr. Simpson: That must still be painful.

Harry Crawford: Of course it's bloody painful. But do you know what makes it worse? I thought there'd be some sort of reward at the end of it. Instead of which, I've spent the whole of my life being ordered about by cocky little sods who have got no idea what they are talking about. You are just the latest, but easily the worst.