Private's Progress (11 page)

“Ten minutes washed-shaved-and-dressed,” he
announced
brusquely.

“What with?” asked Stanley.

“Stand - to - attention - and - answer - up - ‘Staff’,” said the R.P. “Draw your razor and cetera.”

The prisoners’ razors were lined neatly on a
cupboard
shelf, locked up; issued daily for their cold-water shave and locked up again afterwards.

Stanley’s company orderly corporal had brought his small kit and put the rest in the stores.

“You’re for Company Orders at nine,” said the R.P. after Stanley had shaved.

“Staff,” said Stanley, thinking what a curious form of address it was.

He was marched up at nine with another man from his company, and stood on the verandah outside the office. The other man was a short burly fellow with wiry hair, whose feet stuck outwards each step of the fast march under escort from the Guard-Room.

The sergeant-major came out, looked coldly at them and checked their names and numbers.

To Stanley he merely said: “You’re a dope.” But to the other man he said: “Blake again, I see. Been absent. If you paid more attention to soldiering instead of running away——”

“I never run away!” loudly objected Blake.

The sergeant-major froze.

“Oh yes you did——” he began.

“Oh no I never,” countered Blake rudely and emphatically.

At this point the company commander came up the steps and the sergeant-major broke off to bring the lot to attention with an “Orders, SHAH!” and to bustle into the office to say that Orders were ready.

He came out again to bark at Blake and his two escorting R.P.s: “’Cused-nescort, SHAH! Byderfront, QUIMARCH”, and hustled them in in double-quick time.

Through the window Stanley could hear the
proceedings
. After the formal evidence:

“Absent again, Blake,” the major was saying
sorrowfully
. “Why must you keep running away?”

“I never run away!” said Blake hotly.

“But you were picked up in Blackpool,” said the major in a surprised tone. “You live in London. What were you doing in Blackpool?”

“I was only comin’ back, sir.”

“Back from where?” asked the major suspiciously.

“From Glasgow.”

“Glasgow?”

“Yer, Glasgow,” explained Blake. “Near Edinburgh, sir.”

“I know where Glasgow is,” said the major. “What I want to know is,
why
did you go to Glasgow?”

“To join the Navy, sir.”

“To join the
WHAT
?” The major seemed stunned.

“The Navy, sir.”

“But,” said the major, “but you’re in the
Army
——”

“
And
I don’t like it,” put in the accused.

“Yes, well, a lot of people are in the Army,” said the major. “
I
’m
in the Army and I don’t much care for it. But
I
don’t run away.”

This started it again.

“I never run away,” said Blake loudly. “I went to join the Navy.”

“That’s enough,” said the major. “Remanded for C.O.’s Orders.”

“Mind you, sir, I never run away, sir,” said Blake.

“Sharrap!” barked the C.S.M. “Right TAH! Byderfront, QUIMARCH. Eft-ite-eft-ite-eft,” and the Blake group shot out onto the verandah again.

“I’m warnin’ you, Blake,” breathed the C.S.M.

“Weeerl,”
said Blake, exasperated, “you all got it I run away——”

“Sharrap!” said the C.S.M. “Right. Windrush? SHAH!”

Stanley came rocketing between his escorts into the office in double-quick time.

“… Charged with, whilst on Active Service, at Gravestone on 17th of December 1943, at 2300 hours, being drunk and incapable. Also, whilst on Active Service, at Gravestone on 17th December 1943 at 2300
hours, using obscene language to an N.C.O., namely 999
⁶⁶⁶
333 Sergeant Crosby, H. P.”

The major looked reprovingly at Stanley.

“Sergeant Crosby, please,” he said.

Sergeant Crosby came in, saluted and, standing stiffly, announced in precise, hoarse tones:

“Sir. At 2300 hours at Gravestone on 17th December, accused came to the Guard-Room acting in a peculiar manner, namely, shoutin’ out. I came to investigate, and accused was standin’ there, without ’eaddress and swayin’. I warned him to keep quiet and ’e then said: ‘——off; we’re just going on another run.’ I called two men and conducted him to the provost sergeant, to whom he said: ‘You remind me of my old auntie, but she doesn’t have her buttons shone up as nice as yours.’ Sir.”

The major looked at Stanley narrowly.

“Improperly dressed, too,” he said. “Anything to say?”

“No, sir,” said Stanley. Headdress? he thought,
Headdress?
A sudden vision of Red Indians came briefly to him.

“No previous entries?” asked the major.

“No, sir,” said the C.S.M.

“Are you willing to accept my award?” asked the major.

“Sir,” said Stanley.

“You realise the gravity of all this?” said the major, shifting radically in his chair and fixing Stanley with a sudden glare. “The charge of being improperly dressed, by an oversight, was not included. That by itself is liable to earn you seven days in my company. The
obscene language, in my opinion, might conceivably arise from the drunkenness. The whole thing is a bloody disgrace, but in view of your having a clean sheet so far, I shall keep it in the company and not remand you for the C.O.”

“Sir,” said Stanley.

“Seven days C.B.” said the major.

“Cap on, s’lute,” growled the C.S.M. “Orders, RIGHT TAH! Byderfront, QUIMARCH! Eft-ite-eft-ite-eft …”

“F
ANCY OLD
S
TAN
on jankers, eh?” said Cox to several of the platoon who were sitting round the stove as Stanley came in from an intensive sweeping-up parade with the other defaulters. “Never mind, my old Stan, one time they’d ’ve tied you up to the old gun wheels. You’re an educated bloke, you should know.”

“They keep you at it so much,” complained Stanley. “I bet I’ll be on cook house again tonight, six to nine peeling potatoes. You people eat too many bloody potatoes, that’s half the trouble.”

On the evening parade, however, he was put on scrubbing tables in the police-room. His supervising R.P., once having put Stanley firmly in his place, was inclined to be talkative.

“Partly why you’re on this tonight instead of us having the detention wallahs on it is because we got no one in,” he said genially, puffing closely at the end of a cigarette.

“You had eight in yesterday,” said Stanley, scouring busily.

“Ah well, you see ’ow it was,” explained the Staff. “First of all, last week it all starts with the geezers in the nick tappin’ the windows when the R.S.M. went by.
Then they got to making rude signs and bellowin’ out: ‘Oo-oo! Marmaduke!’ Course, old Marmaduke knows everyone calls ’im that, only ’e raises all buggery if ’e ’ears it. Well, when ’e comes rushin’ in they’re all sittin’ round readin’ their Bibles. See, what brassed them off was, he used to come round the cells inspecting and sayin’: ‘’Ave you read your Bible today, lad?’ ’E thought it’d help ’em a bit. Any old way, ’e done ’is nut at them and ’ad all the winders bricked up facin’ the road, so’s they couldn’t look out, and ’ad the skylights enlarged so’s they’d ’ave some light.

“All right. Well,
course
! These dodgy buggers wait till the last bit of mortar’s in and they’re all finished off nice and pukka, then they complain to the M.O. when ’e comes round that the place is medically un’ealthy. ’E ’as no option, of course: down they all ’ave to come in the next couple days. Then, of course, soon as all the bricks are taken out, there they are again, singin’ out. ‘Oo-oo! Marmaduke! Old Short-arse!’

“‘Righto!’ says the R.S.M. ‘Righto!’ (Real niggly he was this time.) ‘We’ll ’ave covered bays stuck on the winders, open top and bottom, so’s you’ll get your fresh air.’

“So ’e had these frames stuck on, done all over with hessian except top and bottom for a current of air. Well, all this week they were up, as you know. Now they’ll all ’ave to come down. Last night when that air-raid was on and there was a bit of noise I took these geezers their supper, ten-past eight, came back for the tins at ’alf-past and—
Ullo!
There’s only one bloke there!

“Shook me rigid, it did. Well I was at a loss for
words. All I could say to this one bloke was: ‘Cor stone me hooray. This is the bleedin’ latest! When did this ’appen?’ This bloke says: ‘I dunno, Staff, I bin readin’ me Bible.’ Naturally, of course, ’e’d scoffed most of their suppers while they was busy getting out through these enlarged skylights. This bloke was due for release this morning, so ’e didn’t bother buggering off with them.

“Cor crummy, innit all right?”

“Did that chap Blake go?” asked Stanley.

“Blake? Oh yer,” said the R.P. “’E’s got some NAAFI tart in Blackpool. Dead keen to get in the Navy ’e told the C.O. on orders. And good luck to ’im. Anyway, I don’t reckon this lot’ll be back this side of Christmas now.”

The whole episode had devitalised the regimental police a little, and on the ten-o’clock defaulters’ parade Stanley got away with his greatcoat back buttons unshone. Luckily, his jankers finished the next day, before the full impact of the
revanche
broke upon the Guard-Room.

This was Christmas Eve, and on the Christmas
morning
Sergeant Leggett roused the platoon with tea and biscuits. When they were marched to breakfast a
determinedly
decorated cookhouse met their gaze. Holly hung everywhere. (Sergeant Leggett had forbidden it in the hut. “You’re not hanging any holly in here,” he warned them. “Last year they couldn’t get it down for weeks; some bloke fell off a girder and broke his wrist, and I got a good shellacking from the company
commander
.”) Legends in cottonwool which had been gradually put up over the previous few days (“D. COY
WISH YOU ALL A HAP”, and “A MERR”) were now completed, and War Office posters had been removed. One of these had shown a large coloured picture of discarded food, left with a cigarette butt and dead match-stalks on a plate, with the caption: “IF YOU DIDN’T WANT IT, WHY DID YOU TAKE IT?” On this someone had pencilled an answer to the unanswerable with: “I DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS
GOING
TO BE LIKE THIS.”

They breakfasted on ham and eggs and did nothing till lunch.

The Christmas dinner was excellent. Each man had a paper napkin, and the officers served out beer from the teabuckets. Corporal O’Connor, who supervised the queue of mugs, passed his own up four times in the confusion, and by the the time the C.O. came in to make a Christmas speech he was ready for anything. The R.S.M. stood by during the speech with a whistle, to check the cheering which greeted each phrase. Every time the R.S.M. blew his whistle Corporal O’Connor fancied himself on a route march and shouted: “Fall out by the side of the road!” or: “Get dressed!” Others cried: “Good boy Marmaduke!” or: “Good ’ealth, mate!”

The dining hall became more chaotic and was still densely populated at four o’clock. Two men were fighting silently and savagely in one corner; sing-songs were going on in some areas; one man was quietly drinking beer directly from a teabucket, continuously and without pausing for breath.

In the evening there was a free dance in the
gymnasium
. The regimental dance-band retired to the bar for
an interval of an hour and three-quarters, to be rooted out again by the R.S.M. at twenty to twelve. They played three ineffective quicksteps (the floor was so packed that dancing was impracticable, and people had taken to conversation and drinking instead), and at midnight “God Save the King”, and the regimental police cleared the hall.

Everyone recovered over the Boxing Day, which was a Sunday, and on the Monday the platoon was launched on its final scheme, a fifty-mile march and field exercise. Several had made attempts to go sick, entirely without result. They were fortified with medicine, and returned grumbling, with rather less time than the others to get ready for the march.

“Here was me, Chum ’Arrison and old ‘Router’ Perry,” Cox told Stanley as they moved off. “I said to the M.O.: ‘Feet, sir. I can ’ardly walk with those blisters, both ’eels—look.’ ’E says to me, ‘Off on a march today, I’ll be bound.’ ‘What I say, sir,’ I told him. ‘AH the more reason. I could never do it justice.’ But ’e gets the poultice-basher to paint some stuff on and knock on a plaster and off we go.”

“They seem to be all right now,” said Stanley.

“Well, I ask you, china,” said Cox. “If it was
one
foot it’d look ’orrible, but ’ow can you limp when you got
both
crocked?”

Sergeant Leggett came back down the files.

“Pack that talking in,” he said. “You’ve twenty-four more miles to go before dark and Mr. Bootle’s given no permission to talk yet.”

“All bloody go, innit?” said Cox. “Doesn’t Mr.
Tootle look nice in that helmet that’s a bit too big he’s got on?”

By the evening they were standing-to wearily in a copse lying off an ankle-breaking cart track.

After stand-to Mr. Bootle gathered them round, spread a map out in the fading light and said:

“What have you to fear now?”

“Another scheme before we get our tea,” said Cox promptly.

“No, no,” said Mr. Bootle.
“What about armoured thrusts by the paratroops?”

“Oh corblimey yerss,” said Cox with a show of interest.

The whole exercise was devised to meet a fictional paratroop landing, the whole unit except this platoon being on leave or absent without leave, and there being no petrol for transport, so that they had had to get into contact on foot. But everyone except Mr. Bootle had forgotten all about the paratroops. However, the defence posts were set out and the three sections allocated a tent each, dumped earlier by a truck from the camp.

Stanley’s section began to put it up, but only he had put one up before, at his Selection Board. Stanley began by showing them the right way, and ended by knocking in all the pegs himself, while one man held the pole and the others sat looking on, smoking.

A truck brought out a hot meal in containers and took Mr. Bootle back to the camp for an interview the next morning. This was a piece of good fortune for the platoon, in that Sergeant Leggett was able to run the map-reading scheme, scheduled for the next morning,
as a morning spent round a fire, pointing the way back on the map.

“Fancy you on this march, George,” remarked Cox at a halt on the homeward journey. “You’ll be for the banana boat like the rest of us if you don’t watch it.”

“That’s all right,” said George, a wizened little man from the Elephant and Castle. “I ’ad this bust up atome, all over meetin’ this tart in a boozer. My old woman created. I was only a day overdue when I got picked up.

“I met her in this boozer and I said, ‘Ay-ay, Mabel,’ and she says, ‘Ay-ay, George; workin’?’ So I ’ave a couple pints on her and then—’ullo! Nigh on nearly arpass ten. Last train’s the 9.22 and I was goin’ to come back that night. Anyhow, about twelve I’m takin’ ’er back ’ome and she says suddenly: ‘’Ere, George,’ she says, ‘where’s yer cap?’ ‘Cap?’ I said. ‘Under me eplit of course.’ She says, ‘No it ain’t.’ I said, ‘No gorblimey so it ain’t. Then all of a sudden these coupla redcaps come up and say: ‘Putcher cap on.’ I said, ‘I left it in the boozer.’ ‘Improperly dressed,’ they said. ‘Gotcher pass?’ I show it and they said, ‘Outa date, right!’ They run me straight in, bash! I was three days in the cells ’fore they sent me back. When I get back the C.O. says, ‘Blow that for a lark,’ he says. ‘You was buggerin’ off as per usual.’”

George had only been posted three weeks to the platoon, in order to complete his corps training. His system hitherto for avoiding the banana boat had been simple, designed to ensure that he never in fact finished his training.

“I do a fortnight-three weeks,” he explained. “Then I go orf ’ome for a week, then give meself up to the coppers. Get sent back, go on C.O.’s Orders, get seven days in the cells. Come out, do a fortnight more’s training, slope arms agin for seven days—seven days in the nick. Then it’s about time I’m nearly due for me seven days’ leave. O.K. Come back a week late orf’f that, get another seven pennorth, and so on. Get a good bit of time atome that way.”

A side effect of this system was that he was posted from one platoon to another as he fell behind with his training, and became a figure universally known and respected throughout the camp, of which he had already been on the strength for eleven months. His wife, however, had not fully understood the Mabel episode, and it was this which had determined him to finish his training at last.

He showed Cox and Stanley a portion of her letter to him.

That
Mabel
Ballard
is
no
better
than
a
hore
(it said).
All
painted
and
dolled
up
like
Laugh
Clown
Laugh.
I’ve
had
about
enough
of
you
running
around
like
a
ponce.

“Good job I don’t insult easy,” said George. “See, what it was, I never ’ad time to explain properly.”

A whistle blew.

“Get dressed!” shouted Sergeant Leggett.

“All go,” said Cox. “Still, mussengrumble. Seven days’ leave tomorrow.”