In the Ranks of the C.I.V.
1900
In the Ranks of the C.I.V.
1900
Before he wrote the masterpiece that would define the spy novel, Erskine Childers was simply a young man marching toward war. This is his unpolished, unblinkered account of the Second Boer War, composed as a private diary and never meant for publication. The future author of The Riddle of the Sands emerges here in his earliest incarnation: Driver Erskine Childers of the C.I.V. Battery, departing a wintry St. John's Wood Barracks for the mud and danger of South Africa. We watch the transformation unfold in real time: the harrowing voyage with horses stacked in cramped holds, the grinding monotony of soldiering, the forging of bonds between men stripped of civilian comforts. What distinguishes this memoir from countless others is its unpretentious candor. There is no heroics, only the cold, the exhaustion, the strange pride of learning to be useful. It is a window into the making of a man who would later sail an armed yacht to Ireland and help spark the Easter Rising, all rendered here in the plain, honest prose of someone who had not yet learned to dramatize his own myth.
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“A keen wind from the west struck our faces, and as swiftly as it had come the fog rolled away from us, in one mighty mass, stripping clean and pure the starry dome of heaven...””
— Erskine Childers
“- vague, very vague.””
— Erskine Childers
“Germany's a thundering great nation . . . I wonder if we shall ever fight her.””
— Erskine Childers
“The Dulcibella faced the storm as doggedly as ever, plunging her bowsprit into the sea and flinging green water over her bows. A wave of confidence and affection for her welled through me. I had been used to resent the weight and bulk of her unwieldy anchor and cable, but I saw their use now; varnish, paint, spotless decks, and snowy sails were foppish absurdities of a hateful past.””
— Erskine Childers
“As a soldier learns more in a week of war than in years of parades and pipeclay, so, cut off from all distractions, moving from bivouac to precarious bivouac, and depending, to some extent, for my life on my muscles and wits, I rapidly learnt my work and gained a certain dexterity.””
— Erskine Childers
“We’ve been safe so long, and grown so rich, that we’ve forgotten what we owe it to. But there’s no excuse for those blockheads of statesmen, as they call themselves, who are paid to see things as they are.””
— Erskine Childers
“at the town””
— Erskine Childers
“By Jove! we want a man like this Kaiser, who doesn't wait to be kicked, but works like a nigger for his country, and sees ahead.””
— Erskine Childers
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Childers, Erskine. In the Ranks of the C.I.V.. Lex, lex-books.com/book/in-the-ranks-of-the-c-i-v-0874d53f-e09a-4b55-ac98-12f537977492.Childers, E. (1900). In the Ranks of the C.I.V.. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/in-the-ranks-of-the-c-i-v-0874d53f-e09a-4b55-ac98-12f537977492Childers, Erskine. In the Ranks of the C.I.V.. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/in-the-ranks-of-the-c-i-v-0874d53f-e09a-4b55-ac98-12f537977492.
