ABSTRACT
My O.C.T.U. was at Aldershot. I thought this a splendid idea. After all, if you had to join the Army it was surely best to go the whole hog and nothing could be more quintessentially Army than Aldershot. The actual experience was less agreeable, though not so bad as I had been given to believe. I was prepared for some very savage and uncontrollable sergeant-instructors but in fact they were a mild lot, easily placated with a few drinks for which a whole platoon would cheerfully subscribe. Most of them were reservists and I am not sure that they were really very well qualified. The officers, I found, were a superior lot. Prominent above all was the C.O., a Lieutenant Colonel Bingham of the Coldstream who presided over our fortunes with suavity and penetration. Not many months after I had passed out from under his charge to the accompaniment of some civil and well-turned remarks, he got into trouble by writing a letter to The Times. This was a technical offence. It was made much worse by what the letter said. Appearing at a moment of great national exaltation, in the crisis of the aerial attacks on Britain, when the ideal of national unity stood above every other consideration, this letter had the audacity to suggest that not every inhabitant of the country was a suitable person to be made into an officer. A properly scandalized public opinion saw that he was removed by the Secretary of State for War from the command of the 168th Officer Cadet Training Unit.
