What O'Bean himself thought of this nobody knows, but it was likely that he did feel enormously guilty. One story has it that on the inevitable day when the Great Powers went to war he quietly committed suicide.
The war was at first contained only in Europe, and in the first weeks most of the major cities of the Continent and Britain were reduced to ash and rubble. A short-lived Central American Alliance lasted long enough to go to war with the United States and quickly achieved a similar end. Huge mobile war machines rolled across the wasted land; sinister aerial battleships cruised smoke-filled skies; while under the water lurked squadrons of subaquatic men-of-war, often destroying one another without ever once rising to the surface where more conventional ironclads blasted rivals to bits with the horrifically powerful guns invented by a boy of thirteen years old.
'But most of the real fighting's over now,' said the sergeant, with a tinge of contempt. 'The fuel ran out for the generators and the engines. The war machines that were left just - well -stopped. It all went back to cavalry and infantry and that sort of stuff for a while, but there was hardly anyone knew how to fight like that - and precious few people left to do it. And not much ammunition, I shouldn't wonder. We're down to about one cartridge each.' He tapped the weapon which hung at his belt. 'It'll be bayonets, if we ever do meet the enemy. The bally Indians'll be top dogs - those who've still got swords and lances and bows and arrows and that…'
'You don't think the war will stop? People must be shocked by what's happened - sickened by it all.'
The soldier shook his head, waxing philosophical. 'It's a madness, sir. We've all got it. It could go on until the last human being crawls away from the body of the chap he's just bashed to bits with a stone. That's what war is, sir - madness. You don't think about what you're doing. You know, you forget, don't you - you just go on killing and killing.' He paused, almost embarrassed. 'Leastways, that's what / think.'
I conceded that he could well be right. Filled with unutterable gloom, obsessed by the irony of my escape from a relatively peaceful world into this one, I yet felt the need somehow to get back to England, to see for myself if the sergeant had told me the truth, or whether he had exaggerated, either from a misguided sense of drama, or from despair at his own position.
I told him that I should like to try to return to my own country, but he smiled pityingly at me, telling me that there wasn't the slightest chance. If I headed, say, for Darjeeling, then I was bound to be captured by the Russians or the Arabians. Even if I managed to reach the coast, there were no ships in the harbours (if there were harbours!) or the aerodromes. My best plan, he suggested, was to fall in with them. They had done their duty and their position was hopeless. They planned to get up into the hills and make some sort of life for themselves there. The sergeant thought that, with the population killing itself off so rapidly, game would proliferate and we should be able to live by hunting - 'and live pretty well, too'. But I had had enough of the hills already. For better or worse, as soon as I had recovered my strength I would try to get to the coast.
A couple of days later I bid farewell to the sergeant and his men. They begged me not to be so foolhardy, that I was going to certain death.
'There was talk of plague, sir,' said the sergeant. 'Terrible diseases brought about by the collapse of the sanitary systems.'
I listened politely to all the warnings and then, politely, ignored them.
Perhaps I had had my share of bad luck, for good luck stayed with me for the rest of my journey across the Indian sub-continent. Darjeeling had, indeed, fallen to the Arabians, but they had evacuated the shell of that city soon after occupying it. Their forces were stretched pretty thin and had been needed on the home front. There were still one or two divisions left, but they were busy looking for Russians, and when they discovered that I was English they took this to mean that I was a friend (towards the end, I gathered, there had been some attempt to make a pact between Britain and Arabia) and these chaps were under what turned out to be the utterly false impression that we were fighting on the same side. I fell in with them. They were heading for Calcutta - or where Calcutta had once stood - where there was some hope of getting a ship back to the Middle East. There was a ship, too - a, to them, old-fashioned steamer, using coal-burning engines - and although the name on its side was in Russian, it flew the crossed-scimitar flag of the Arabian Alliance. It was in a state of terrible disrepair and one took one's life in one's hands when going aboard, but there had been a chance in a million of finding any kind of ship and I was not in a mood to miss it. She had been an old cargo ship and there was very little room, as such, for passengers. Most of the men were crowded into the holds and made as comfortable as possible. As an officer and a 'guest' I got to share a cabin with four of the Arabians, three of whom were Palestinians and one of whom was an Egyptian. They all spoke perfect English and, while somewhat reserved, were decent enough company, going so far as to lend me a captain's uniform and most of the necessities of life which I had learned, in recent months, to do without.
The ship made slow progress through the Bay of Bengal and I relieved my boredom by telling my companions that I had been the prisoner of a Himalayan tribe for several years and thus getting them to fill in certain details of their world's history which the sergeant had been unable to give me.
There was some talk of a man whom they called the 'Black Attila', a leader who had emerged of late in Africa and whom they saw as a threat to themselves. Africa had not suffered as badly from the effects of the war as Europe and most of her nations - many only a few years old - had done their best to remain neutral. As a result they had flourishing crops, functioning harvesting machines and a reserve of military power with which to protect their wealth. The Black Attila had growing support in the Negro nations for a. jehad against the whites (the Arabians were included in this category, as were Asiatics), but, at the last my informants had heard, was still consolidating local gains and had shown no sign of moving against what remained of the countries of the West. There were
other rumours which said that he had already been killed, while some said he had invaded anJ conquered most of Europe.
The ship had no radio apparatus (another example of my good fortune, it emerged, for the Arabians had never reached the point of signing a pact with Britain!), and thus there was no means of confirming or denying these reports. We sailed down the coast of India, through the Gulf of Mannar, managed to take on coal at Agatti in the Laccadives, got into heavy weather in the Arabian Sea, lost three hands and most of our rigging, entered the Red Sea and were a few days away from the approach to the Suez Canal when, without any warning at. all, the ship was struck by several powerful torpedoes and began to sink almost immediately.