12: 'The Originating Hand'

Around September 1941, at the barracks of the Intelligence Corps in Winchester, having been dive-bombed at Abbeville with the Royal Army Medical Corps (i/c six 'somewhat disorderly' orderlies), evacuated from Cherbourg after Dunkirk, detained for twelve days at Ampthill Gaol for a breach of discipline and subjected to 'rigorous Guards' training', Pte. J.H. Goodland encountered Sgt. J.F. Hendry, for the first time in two years:

Met Hendry. Sgt., just off on section. Shade of my literary career! Apocalypse movement seems to be flourishing, embodied in 'The White Horseman'. Budding out into painting. Feel proud to have taken a hand in it - perhaps the originating hand./ No news of Dorian - must write to Red X for news of him./ D. died in London.// Treece joining airforce, to be disillusioned.¹

Both men recorded their first encounter since 1939. Hendry, who later recalled Goodland as a 'wonderful man', noted that he 'intended to start another magazine after the war'.² His 'literary career' may have been over, but after a military career in Intelligence, during which he landed at Gold Beach in the 'later days of our invasion', raced north on a motor-bike, 'sometimes in advance of our ground troops', celebrated in Antwerp for days, 'out of touch with any controlling authority', requisitioned a barren cow for Field Marshall Montgomery's personal milk supply at Lüneberg Heath, officiated at the Armistice, interrogated 'Automatic Arrest Category' Nazis and ...