conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about Watership, Born, England with the genre: Politics & Social Sciences, Politics & Government?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'The Day Gone By'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Day Gone By
  It wasn't long before Doug. and I discovered that something we had in common was a passion for swimming. By this time the Brigade had managed to get one of the swimming pools in Singapore into working order, but it was usually as full as you'd expect and anyway what Doug. and I fancied - if we could get it - was something to extend us a little more. This was how we came to invent point-to-point swimming.
  There are two huge reservoirs - great, inland lakes, each about two miles long and half a mile broad - on the island of Singapore, known as the Peirce and the MacRitchie. At this time neither of these was under any supervision whatever. They were remote and lonely. The Peirce, actually, was too remote for our purpose, for it lay in rather dense jungle in the very centre of the Island; the access roads were in bad repair and the overgrown shore seemed a likely place for snakes. The MacRitchie, however, was exactly what we wanted. The open, sandy foreshores were accessible and there was no one about at all. The temperature of the water, of course was well up in the eighties or even a little more.
  The MacRitchie is irregular in shape, with points and inlets all round the circumference. Doug. and I - it gives me a pang now to think how very fit and energetic we were - used to take a jeep out to some convenient place and stroll down through the trees to the shore. Then we would select some bay or point to swim to on the far side of the reservoir - anything from half to three-quarters of a mile away. It was splendid to find yourself far out in open water, making leisurely for the other shore. Having got there, we would lie around in the sun, relax and talk about nothing until we felt ready to go on. Then we would select another place to make for, this time usually somewhere further along the same shore, perhaps across an inlet or round a point. In this way we might quite often I suppose, have swum two or three miles in an afternoon, before drifting lazily back to the mess for whatever there might be in the way of a drink and a meal. Looking back on it, I can't remember many things I have ever done which were more enjoyable than this.
  My own anxiety was for my batman, Tommy Hearn. Tommy couldn't swim a stroke, but he didn't want to be left out of the fun to pass the afternoon idling by the jeep. So he used to thrash across the reservoir on an inflated inner tube. The trouble was that he wouldn't keep inshore: he was determined to follow us across. We left him to his own devices, for we had come to extend ourselves and settle into the satisfying rhythm of fairly long-distance swimming. When you were at last lazing on the warm sand of the destination beach, however, it didn't exactly add to your peace of mind to see Tommy flailing along, more than four hundred yards out.
  From all this the reader will no doubt have grasped that, although I had no soldiers under my own command - apart from my administrative corporal — I was nevertheless able to find a few spare people to give Mr Kwek a hand with the refrigerators. We got the job done, every mess in the Brigade duly received its working model and I reported as much to the Brigadier. However, he was now somewhat preoccupied with other matters.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me three more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Alasdair was dead. I remembered that he had been called up, in 1940, into the Oxford and Bucks. Light Infantry, and that he had expressed his determination to transfer, when he got a commission, into one of the renowned Scottish regiments. The Bursary people were able to pass on to me a good deal about Alasdair, since his parents had sent the College a copy of his company commander's letter.
  He had got what he wanted, being commissioned into the 7th Battalion of the Black Watch - part of 51st Highland Division -and had fought as a platoon commander at Alamein. The letter went on to tell how he had received the personal thanks of the brigade commander for playing a leading part in guiding a tricky night march - whether of the battalion or of the whole brigade I am not clear — to a place in the desert called Mersa Brega. This had been Rommel's first halt after Alamein, and Montgomery had attacked him there on 13 December 1942 with the Highland and New Zealand divisions and 7th Armoured.
  The details of the Alamein to Tunis campaign are so well-known and have been written about so extensively that I need not say more about them here. The part played by the Black Watch is fully set out in the regimental history. After entering Tripoli on 23 January, the 8th Army pressed on westward, broke the Mareth Line and entered Tunisia.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Her beauty disconcerted and constrained me. I know now that this is common enough: young men thus confronted often feel this kind of self-consciousness. The poet Walter de la Mare once said to Sir Russell Braine of a lady whom he had met, 'She was so beautiful that it was embarrassing to look at her. Isn't that strange?'
  This same embarrassment was a little heightened now on account of Elizabeth's youthful inexperience. Not that she was gauche -indeed, she already possessed, as it seemed, a distinct style of her own - but she had had little practice in talking to young men and wasn't altogether sure how to deal with them. She had no need to worry. Her mere appearance set her apart from and beyond convention. She looked as though she had come to transcend the workaday world and set it right once and for all, she who knew nothing of grief, or of loss or regret.
  I drew a chair up to hers. She smelt of youth and freshness. Sitting side-by-side with her, I felt tense and excited. It is easy, with hindsight, to attribute marvels, yet in all seriousness I believe I had the inkling, even then, that a great blessing — a promise - was being extended to me; and that this was to prove no single or casual encounter.
  Popeye had another loyal follower called the Jeep, a little creature about the size of a cat, which could presage the future, if asked, by sticking up his behind to indicate 'yes' and squeaking 'Jeep, jeep'. This is why, later on in the war, when the American troops began arriving in numbers, their light, open-sided vehicles became known as 'jeeps'.
  Popeye suffered intermittently from the hostile attentions of 'goons', whom he always thrashed, of course: these were great, clumping, stupid, malicious creatures, rather like Norwegian trolls. This is why German soldiers were called 'goons'.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: This is why German soldiers were called 'goons'. I know now that this is common enough: young men thus confronted often feel this kind of self-consciousness. The poet Walter de la Mare once said to Sir Russell Braine of a lady whom he had met, 'She was so beautiful that it was embarrassing to look at her. Isn't that strange?'
  This same embarrassment was a little heightened now on account of Elizabeth's youthful inexperience. Not that she was gauche -indeed, she already possessed, as it seemed, a distinct style of her own - but she had had little practice in talking to young men and wasn't altogether sure how to deal with them. She had no need to worry. Her mere appearance set her apart from and beyond convention. She looked as though she had come to transcend the workaday world and set it right once and for all, she who knew nothing of grief, or of loss or regret.
  I drew a chair up to hers. She smelt of youth and freshness. Sitting side-by-side with her, I felt tense and excited. It is easy, with hindsight, to attribute marvels, yet in all seriousness I believe I had the inkling, even then, that a great blessing — a promise - was being extended to me; and that this was to prove no single or casual encounter.
  Popeye had another loyal follower called the Jeep, a little creature about the size of a cat, which could presage the future, if asked, by sticking up his behind to indicate 'yes' and squeaking 'Jeep, jeep'. This is why, later on in the war, when the American troops began arriving in numbers, their light, open-sided vehicles became known as 'jeeps'.
  Popeye suffered intermittently from the hostile attentions of 'goons', whom he always thrashed, of course: these were great, clumping, stupid, malicious creatures, rather like Norwegian trolls.Her beauty disconcerted and constrained me.