Private's Progress (9 page)

T
HE DRILL HALL
was a depressing place, large and ill-proportioned, with girders and whitewashed walls. The draft laid out their kit, repacked it after inspection, walked about and slept, all on the concrete floor. There was not much to do, and it was impossible to sit on beds: their blankets were spread on groundsheets on the concrete.

Kit inspections were frequent, and were the main device employed by Sergeant Piper to keep things moving. When he had carried out one inspection to check on deficiencies, he would carry out another later the same day to see whether the deficiencies had been remedied, stand the draft easy for ten minutes, and get the officer who spent most of his waking hours
inspecting
the kit of the constant stream of in-comers and out-goers to Depot Company. This man, a tense little fellow with a twitching eye, would hurry in, and with no ceremony would shriek: “Hold-’em-up-when-I-
call-’em
-out! Shirts - three - drawers - cellular - pairs - two - drawers - woollen - pairs - two - socks - woollen - pairs - four …” at a breakneck pace.

He was universally known in the barracks as “Kit Check Charlie”.

A number of those on the draft were men with three
or four years’ service, like Cox, who had somehow drifted to the Depot and were at last being ferreted out and sent on their ways. Most of the items of kit issued to them which had some extra-military value, such as P.T. vests, grey socks and gym shoes, were by now partially or wholly deficient, and a good deal of frantic subterfuge went on in the drill hall as kit was rapidly transferred from one to the other during
inspections
. The practised eye of Kit Check Charlie fastened quickly on the lacunae, however, and thirteen of the draft were haled before the C.Q.M.S. and had pay stopped.

“It’s an impo-bloody-sition,” complained Cox, outraged, to Stanley. “Fourteen and fivepence. I’ve got along all this time without them vests and shoes and they make me buy a new lot.
I
don’t bloody want them. A bloody waste, that’s what it is.”

Sergeant Piper was a tremendous man, at once paternal and fussy, given to constant explanation and repetition.

“Listen carefully,” he would boom down the drill hall. “I’m going to inspect trousers, battledress. That’s serge, not denims. When I say an article like ‘Trousers, battledress’ I want you to hold them up. Got it? Right,
trousers, battledress.
”

Close control was the keynote of his organisation. At every opportunity he would pin up carefully worded notices. One such read: “THESE LAVARATORY’S IS
NOT
TO
BE
USED
BETWEEN
HOOR’S OF RE-VIELLE AND LIGHTS-OUT.”

Where verbal instructions seemed more appropriate his cry was ever: “Got it?”

On the day before the draft marched off he
announced
: “Now listen. You’re being marched to have a lecture by the M.O. on V.D. Got it?”

On the fourth day the draft was cancelled and the draftees dispersed to their huts. By the next evening three had gone absent, two never to be seen again. Within a couple of days, however, the initial draft order was again in force and the major part of the body reassembled itself painfully in the drill hall.

There were two further kit inspections by Sergeant Piper, and then they were paraded for a final inspection by Major Hitchcock.

“Now you’re off to do ten weeks in George’s
company
, but remember, after that you’ll be coming back to me for posting. So God help you if I have any complaints from George. You mind you bloody well behave yourselves. I’ve been waiting for a long time to catch up with some of you people, I can tell you. You think I’m a shit, don’t you? Eh? You at the back, for instance. Yes, well, I am. If I weren’t I wouldn’t be the Company Commander.”

Major Hitchcock fell silent and ran round them cursorily, telling one man to take a pace to the rear and blow his nose. Then he came back to his station in front of them.

“All right,” he said cheerfully. “I wish you the best of luck. Carry on please, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Piper’s drill commands lacked the clarity of his more normal orders. They were strangled and unintelligible.

“WEET
AR
!” he ordered. Some of the draft
construed
this as a command to slope arms. Others,
however
,
turned left, some turned right, others still executed perfect about-turns. A few right-dressed.

“SHWAR!” called Sergeant Piper, but Major Hitchcock was immediately disheartened at the spectacle and retired to his office, one hand clasped to his brow and shouting in his refined voice: “What a bunch! What a bloody shower!”

Sergeant Piper marched them rapidly away before he reappeared.

The draft arrived at the camp within ten minutes of leaving the barracks.

“It’s all go, innit?” said Cox. “Marchin’ with all this kit.”

On arrival they were shown to their hut in “M” Company lines.

“Looks too bloody clean for me,” said one of the old-stagers gloomily.

Stanley was one of the first inside, and took the opportunity of putting his kit on one of the few single beds in the hut. The others were all double-tiered bunks.

The old-stager who had commented on the
cleanliness
of the place warned him off.

“Prob’ly one of the platoon corp’rals sleeps there, mate,” he advised.

This sounded so convincing and reasonable that Stanley removed his kit and searched for one of the bunks. By this time, however, there were only lower bunks left, and Stanley, cursing his impatience,
commandeered
one of these. When he looked round he saw the old-stager in possession of the single bed, drawing a friend’s attention to it with great enthusiasm.

The arrival of the platoon sergeant cut matters short.

He was a dapper little man with, they were gratified to note, a good crop of wavy hair. Clearly he would not be too insistent on regular visits to the ferocious
regimenta
l barbers.

“Here’s the dope,” he said. “Following things to be cleaned and shone up bright.”

They listened, depressed, to the recital.

“’Ere, sarge,” interposed the old-stager Fred, who had acquired Stanley’s bed. “Is that right, what I ’ear, we got to blanco our water-bottle strings?”

“Thassright,” said the platoon sergeant.

“Cor,” said Fred faintly. “And I thought that was only a load of old knackers.”

“Now get a look at a specimen kit lay-out,” said the sergeant.

In the little green lockers, screwed to the walls above the beds, there were two shelves. A lance-corporal had laid out a specimen kit on a shelf. Shirts, P.T. vests and cellular drawers were folded into a square column on one side, with tightly folded battledress making a symmetrical column at the other end. In between were socks, made into little grey logs.

“Where does your personal kit go, sarge?” asked Cox dubiously.

“It doesn’t,” said the sergeant. “What d’you think you’re on, anyway—a garden-party? … You’ll have to put it behind the rest,” he added, after
reconsideration
.

“I don’t like it, personally, meself,” said Cox simply.

“It’s not my idea,” said the sergeant defensively. “It’s a new one of the C.O.’s.”

“Bloody terrible, ain’t it?” commented Cox.

“Yer, well …” said the sergeant.

As they were unpacking, a sunburnt lieutenant came in and said he wanted to address them. They all sat on their beds while the lieutenant read out a confused list of crimes from the Army Act. He kept forgetting the amendments and harking back to fit them in. When he had finished there was an awkward pause and he left.

“That was Mr. Bootle, the platoon officer,” said the sergeant. “I’m Sergeant Leggett, by the way.”

“Christian name?” asked Cox imperturbably.

“Eh?” said Sergeant Leggett. “Well, Len.”

“Ta very much,” said Cox. “Only I like to know. Is that Mr. Bootle the one they call Tootle?”

“Why?” said Sergeant Leggett.

“We’re supposed to know the names of all the officers and N.C.O.s, aren’t we?” said Cox.

There was a slight pause.

“Yes, he is,” admitted Sergeant Leggett.

“It’s always best to know,” said Cox.

The first day of training was, as Cox commented, dead cushy. They were first of all marched to the Medical Inspection Room for an F.F.I.

Here the same medical officer who had pronounced them free from infection the day before, on their leaving the barracks, pronounced them to be still free from infection on their arrival at the camp. He cycled
between
the two establishments daily and held sick parades at both.

In the afternoon there was the weekly period of recreational training. The majority of the platoon
went on a swimming parade at the Gravestone Baths, but no sooner had they arrived than the P.T. corporal who had marched them down began urging them to hurry up and get out.

“Come on, you geezers,” he called through the steamy, echoing hall. “Mixed bathin’s due in five minutes.”

“That’s all right, Corp,” said the old-stager Fred, floating voluptuously without his false teeth. “Don’t you trust us?”

“It’s against A.C.I.’s,” said the corporal. “
Everybody
out!”

As they dressed, the word was passed round that the corporal had already gone and that they could make their own way back.

Within three days, however, the training proper had started. Of all the training periods the most popular were the A.B.C.A. and Citizenship hours.

“What a waste of a lovely day, eh?” Cox would say, above the hammering of rain on the tin roof. “Just suppose it was route-march day over the blinkin’ downs. Instead of that, we got the birth-rate man with ’is wallpaper samples.”

This analysis of the A.B.C.A. periods had indeed some justification. They were taken largely by an Education Corps sergeant, whose arrival was preceded by that of a minion carrying home-made charts and graphs on population trends. The British Constitution was quickly dealt with, but questions of economics and war aims were always considered in a setting of
population
trends. The discussions were invariably cynical and furious and the birth-rate man was hotly accused of being responsible for ten million unemploved.

Sometimes the period was commandeered by Mr. Boo tie for the imparting of information, with diagrams, on the strength of a German battalion or the
composition
of the ideal raiding party.

One week he gave a lecture on Navigation by the Stars.

“A very good guide, you’ll find, is the Plough,” he was saying. “And then there’s Cassiopeia, too.”

“What about Erculs, sir?” asked the old-stager Fred.

“About who?” asked Mr. Bootle faintly.

“’Ercules, ’e means, I reckon,” put in Cox.

“Oh well, we’ll—er, come to Hercules in a minute,” temporised Mr. Bootle. “Anyway, you should be able to find the Plough quite easily by its distinctive shape. Or perhaps you call it the Big Dipper——”

“Excuse me again, sir,” broke in Cox. “Just to interrupt you a minute. I was comin’ out of the
cookhouse
the other mornin’ after breakfast and you could see the stars quite plain.”

“Half a sec——” began Mr. Bootle.

“Yer,” said Cox. “I was lookin’ up to find the North Star just like I always do: I always like practisin’ findin’ the North by the stars …”

“Just a min——” began Mr. Bootle.

“Well,” Cox went on relentlessly. “I was walkin’ along, lookin’ up, when some bloke come the other way in the dark and run right slap into me,
bash
!
Nearly took me photo. Hit me right in the bugle, he did.” He paused to clasp his injured nose.

“Yes, all right, some other time,” put in Mr. Bootle hastily. “Now. to get the North Star …”

“Sir,” said the old-stager Fred. “Owjoo get the Africa Star? Only I ’aven’t got a medal yet.”

Sometimes when the birth-rate man did not turn up Sergeant Leggett would ask for volunteers to give impromptu lectures.

“The object of this,” he explained, “is to give you geezers practise in public speakin’. Anyone got any subject?”

“I don’t see it ever done me any good,” Cox said. “We ’ad this sort of caper in my battalion and these blokes were always tellin’ you ’ow to keep pet rabbits, or you’d get some college bloke on about the Old Egyptians. Why, we ’ad some bloke once give a talk for a full ’alf-hour on some Eye-tie poet in the Middle Ages, and we ’ad to ’ave ’im because no one else couldn’t think of no subject. What I mean is, where’s it get you? You want sunnink useful.”

“Well,” said Sergeant Leggett, “you give one, then.”

“All right,” said Cox. “The English railway system. My system with the railways is dead simple. What you mustn’t ever do is get rattled and do sunnink barmy. Take it here, for instance. You never want to go from Gravestone East. Always go from Gravestone High Level on the 2.5. They’ve only one bloke on collectin’ and ’e ’as to do both sides. Wait till ’e’s over doin’ the down platform for the train that gets in at 1.58 and walk straight on as though you ’ad your ticket. When it comes in, never travel in a corridor coach and get in the first because the jumpers don’t bother so much with them. Then, never go straight up to Victoria, or Charing Cross, but change at somewhere like Bromley
and get off at Camberwell Road. Wait five minutes, then go out up the steps where the ticket office is, in that entrance hall. There’s a hell of a bloody draught blows through there, so the bloke who issues and collects tickets there only keeps the pigeon-hole at one side open at a time.

“Soon as a train’s unloaded, ’e shuts up the ’ole on that side and opens the other one for issuin’ tickets again. So then you just walk past casual. If there’s anyone around, you make as if you was goin’ to leave your ticket on the ledge, like they do when the
window’s
shut, only you want to take one instead, if there’s any there, and most likely it’ll be still valid next time you come up.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to ’ave a ticket to start with?” asked Sergeant Leggett, absorbed in the subject, as was everyone else. “What I do, I buy a return ticket for the first station up the line, and up the terminus I pay from the first one down the line. Comin’ back, you ’and in the return half.”