Excerpt: Flashman in the House Divided

So it’s to be war.

Well, that’s the way the world wags, I reckon, even now, in my declining years. I shouldn’t be surprised. It always wagged that way before, and caught me up in it as often as not.

The news travels pretty fast these days, and it reached Gandamack by the wireless this morning. We are at war – again. There’s been hub-bub and h--l to pay all through the house ever since, what with Elspeth worrying that our grandsons Tom and Archie might get into it, and Cook blubbering about her son who’s already in the Army, and my son the Bishop and everyone else we know ringing us up on the blasted ‘phone to ask if we’ve heard about it. The great-grandchildren were in a state, and their governess, Miss Prentice, not much better. They’ve all gone off to their respective rooms, now, but the household is still far out of kilter. It’s been everything I could manage just to get a decent bit of lunch and an afternoon brandy, and now it looks as though dinner has been completely forgotten – and poor Sir Harry, lord and master, as well. Ah, me.

I suppose it was inevitable, though. The talk has been all of war and little else all summer, especially since the Russians and the Balkans and the Turks have been treading on each other’s toes all over the “Powder Keg of Europe” the past few years, and even exchanging gunfire twice last year over one disagreement or another. And then some b----y Serb went and shot that great Austrian toady, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his poor little twit of a wife down in Bosnia. The Austro-Hungarians made a ruckus about it, as you might well imagine, and tried to force a packet of indigestible demands down Serbian throats last month, and when the Serbs choked on it, they all declared war. So the poxy Russians had to back up their little Slavic protégés (treaties, don’t you know), then the Krauts and the Frogs had to jump in, too. And now, the Boches have gone and trampled over helpless little Belgium, since it’s the only practical way to get to France (and small loss, in my opinion), so our dear old Asquith was left no choice (because of our treaties and alliances, secret and otherwise), and formally declared war on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire today, and they too willingly returned the favor. So we’re all for it, now.

Mind you, in all the calling and commotion no one’s thought to ask me what I think of the whole mess. I’d be willing to tell them, never fear. They say it will be the first so-called “modern” war. B-----ks. I’ve seen modern wars – two of ‘em, in fact – and I’m sure this one will be much the same as those, just bigger and likely bloodier. In fact, those were the last two I served in that actually rated the name of “Wars.” My final two outings as a soldier and a gentleman (well, that’s what they called me, anyway), in China and the Philippines, only seem to have managed to get themselves called “rebellions” or “uprisings” in the books. Of course, the poor b----rs who died in those more “minor” events are just as dead, aren’t they?

By any count, tho, the Franco-Prussian unpleasantness of some thrity-odd years ago was as modern a bit of warfare as anyone could ask for, especially when it came to mowing down windrows of simple honest soldiers on both sides. But my thoughts today keep going back to some fifty years ago, to the first of those “modern” conflicts that engaged me most reluctantly. And lest you think old Flashy’s grown callous at ninety-two, you should know that I’m just as worried as my darling spouse is about Archie and Tom, and about some of the more memorable boys who passed my way back when I was Governor at Rugby; and a lot of other boys, too, for that matter. I remember it all too well, you see.