A really great section in the war sequence in A Dance to the Music of Time

The first part of book 9, The Military Philosophers, in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time may be the best single section of this very long series, so far - in this section Powell, or Nick Jenkins, his narrator, takes us through pretty much one day at a military office in London during World War II - Jenkins is assigned to a division that works with the allies, he in particular working with Polish soldiers who've escaped their occupied country and settled in London. Exactly what he is doing is irrelevant - he uses this as an occasion to give a vivid, smart, and hilarious description of the complex military bureaucracy, all of the mind games and manipulations among the various officers, jostling for rank and privilege, and just trying to get their work done. Setting has not been tremendously important in most of the sections of this series - it's been mostly about character - but in this section Powell does all he can to describe the crowded, poorly furnished offices in wartime - we sense the deprivation (no coal to heat the building) and the bristly personalities. Particularly geat moments are the description of J's boss, Colonel Finn, and the visit to the civilian bureaucrat hidden away in the upper story, in a small office under the eaves - who seems to have the authority to approve or delay or deny all purchases. Powell has a lot of fun w/ literary and cultural allusions in this section - comparing the workers in the basement with the Niebelungs (sp?) and dthe whole gothic enterprise to a Kafkaesque nightmare. Not much actually happens to move plot along in this section, though Jenkins, in one of the many oddities in this thinly populated universe, comes across a very attractive 20ish woman, a driver assigned to his division, who is the niece of Stringham (apparently sent off w/ the mobile laundry to Shanghai, and vanished) - and it's obvious she will play a role in his life (which his wife and child never seem to do - they're just pushed off to the margins of this story).