Atherden | Quartered Safe Out Here....

There would be time enough for desk-work and the humdrum business of making a living in civvy street, and then this little outpost at the back of beyond would be like a dreamland, long ago and far away. How many times, in the late 'forties and 'fifties, did one see a sober citizen in his office throw aside percil and stare at the window and explain: "Oh, God, I wish the war was still on!" It is a strange echo now: who could possibly want to be at war? Nobody in his right mind, and of course the sober citizen wasn't longing for battle and sudden death, but remembering the freedom of service life, the strange sights and smells of places just like this, the uncertainty of tomorrow, and the romance of distant lands and seas. They have their hazards, but once you've trodden the wild ways you never quite get them out of your system.:





From the Calcutta chapter of George MacDonald Fraser's Quartered Safe Out Here:


There would be time enough for desk-work and the humdrum business of making a living in civvy street, and then this little outpost at the back of beyond would be like a dreamland, long ago and far away. How many times, in the late 'forties and 'fifties, did one see a sober citizen in his office throw aside percil and stare at the window and explain: "Oh, God, I wish the war was still on!" It is a strange echo now: who could possibly want to be at war? Nobody in his right mind, and of course the sober citizen wasn't longing for battle and sudden death, but remembering the freedom of service life, the strange sights and smells of places just like this, the uncertainty of tomorrow, and the romance of distant lands and seas. They have their hazards, but once you've trodden the wild ways you never quite get them out of your system.:
...r.
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...r.









Comment:

Seemingly it does not. But try recovery from a coma or head injury as a comparitive. Perhaps the first example (as in Fraser's) is helpful to the second.