Quartered Safe Out Here (3 page)

“Nivver,” said he. “Ah hit him, though. Naw, he would have it wired. Suicide squad, waitin' to blaw oop anyone that cam' near ’im.” He grinned at me. “Might ha' bin thee, Jock boy. Ye shoulda give us a shout, man.”

I explained why I hadn't, and he shook his head. “Nivver ga in on yer own, son. That's ’ow ye finish up dyin' Tojo's way. Ye wanna die yer own fookin' way.”

“Git fell in, you two!” It was Hutton again. “Standin' aboot natterin' wid yer thumbs in yer bums an' yer minds in neutral! Awreet, Duke? Advance! Coom on, it'll be bloody dark in a minute!”

That evening, when we had dug in and were sitting round the fire eating our Maconochie's,
^*
Hutton, who had been talking apart with the Duke, called me over. He was jotting in his notebook.

“Three boonkers, reet?” he said. “What was in the two ye looked in?”

“Nothing, sarn't. Well, there was a
punji
in one,
and a couple of Jap mess tins. Nothing at all in t'other.”

“Nowt at a'?”

“No…well, nothing but a Kooa packet over in a corner. Empty.”

He didn't glance up from his notes, but his glance flicked sideways for a second, and out of the tail of my eye I caught the Duke's almost imperceptible nod. Hutton finished writing, and when he looked up I'll swear there was relief in the battered face. It took me a moment to understand why.

“Awreet, Jock.” Then suddenly he was angry again. “Nivver—nivver go in a boonker by yersel!” He stabbed me in the chest. “
Mallum
?
^*
Git yer mucker to cover you, or git me! Ye're not fookin' Gary Cooper!” Irrelevantly, it seemed to me, he added: “Fookin' Scotsmen!” He feinted a jab at my chin. “Reet, son, fall oot.”

By this time the gastronomes round the fire were clamouring for their dessert. Grandarse produced a can of condensed milk which he punctured with a pig-sticker bayonet, while Corporal Little set to work on my gallon tin with his jack-knife.

Grandarse, mess-tin in hand, smacked his lips. “By Christ, eh! Peaches an' Nessles, w'at? Aye, that'll joost aboot do!”

“Might be pears,” suggested the Duke.

“Or pineapple,” I said.

“Ah don't give a fook w'at it is,” said Grandarse,
Penrith's answer to Lucullus. “Eh, tho', mebbe it's fruit salad!”

It wasn't. It was carrots, in brine. Inevitably, since I'd been carrying the tin, they blamed me.

Back in Blighty, or even out of the line, a soldier's first loyalty was to his regiment, and even the most cynical reluctant conscript was conscious of belonging to something special. If he came from the regimental area, the tie was all the stronger; he could call himself a Devon, an Argyll, a Gloucester, or a Middlesex, and take some pride in belonging to the Bloody Eleventh, the Thin Red Line, the Back-to-Backs, or the Diehards, as those regiments were nicknamed; he would probably know how they got them. And regimental pride would stay with him, as I'm sure it does still, even after amalgamation has played havoc with the old territorial system.

On active service, in my experience, the loyalty, or perhaps I should call it dependence, narrowed down to the infantry section of ten. Each battalion normally had four rifle companies (apart from headquarter and perhaps support companies for transport and 3-inch mortars); each company was split into three platoons, each commanded by a lieutenant and sergeant; and each platoon into three sections. In parade-ground theory, a section consisted of ten men (corporal, lance-corporal, Bren gunner, and seven riflemen, one of
whom was the Bren gunner's “number two”), but in practice the strength was more likely to be about eight; six was the operational minimum.
^*
But whatever its strength, the section was the essential unit, operating as a team; of course on platoon operations it acted in concert with the two other sections; and half-company, company, and battalion actions were common also; but whatever the size of the action it was the section that mattered to the private soldier. It was his military family; those seven or eight other men were his constant companions, waking, sleeping, standing guard, eating, digging, patrolling, marching, and fighting, and he got to know them better, perhaps, than anyone in his whole life except his wife, parents, and children. He counted on them, and they on him.

Within the section he would have his own immediate comrade, his “mucker”, known in some units as oppos or mates. Our own battalion was predominantly Cumbrian, and the men from the west coast called each other “marrow”,
†
pronounced
marra
. I had three muckers in the course of the campaign, as a result of death and promotion. There was nothing official about the mucker arrangement, it just happened of necessity and mutual consent, and is certainly as old as war itself.

My first mucker was the section leader, Corporal Little—no doubt because at nineteen I was the youngest and least experienced man in the section. He was a Cumbrian by birth and race, which is to say he was the descendant of one of the hardest breeds of men in Britain, with warfare (if not soldiering) bred into him from the distant past. Like their enemies on the Scottish side of the frontier, the Cumbrians of old lived by raid, cattle theft, extortion, and murder; in war they were England's vanguard, and in peace her most unruly and bloody nuisance. They hadn't changed much in four centuries, either; the expertise in irregular warfare, to say nothing of the old reiver spirit of “nothing too hot or too heavy”, was strong in the battalion; their names (and nicknames) are to be found in the bills of warden courts four centuries ago, opposite charges of slaughter, spoil, ambush, and arson, and if you could have seen Nine Section, honestly, you wouldn't have been a bit surprised. To all of which must be added the virtues of endurance, courage, and deep tribal loyalty; they were, as the chronicler said of their forefathers, “a martial kind of men”.

Little, known inevitably as “Tich” (just as I, the only Scot, was “Jock”), was typical—lean, dark, wiry, speaking seldom and then usually in the harsh derisive fashion of the Border. An outsider would have found him wary and decidedly bleak, and marked him as a dangerous customer, which he was; he was also remarkably kind and, when least expected, as gentle as a nurse.

Nixon was small, sprightly, and wicked, with a
drooping gunfighter moustache and his own line of cheerful pessimism. His parrot-cry of “You'll all get killed” was rendered in the wail of a mueddin at prayer, and one thing no one doubted: whoever got killed, it wouldn't be Nick. That is not a criticism: no one took a greater share of rough work and risk; it was just that he had survivor written all over him. There are such men; they seem to have an Achilles-immunity. In Nick's case it probably came of long and very active service, for he had been continuously at war for six years; he was cool and wise and never ruffled.

Grandarse, as his name implies, was on Falstaffian lines; I had slept on the lower bunk of a double-decked cot at Ranchi with his ponderous bulk creaking the lashings just overhead, and prayed nightly that they didn't break. He was red and hearty and given to rich oaths; as a wrestler—and the wrestlers of Cumberland have no peers anywhere—he could hold his own against Sergeant Bellas of Gilsland, who had won Grasmere before the war.
^*
In civilian life Grandarse was a forester, and had spent
his spare time rescuing climbers in the Lake mountains, “an' nivver got a bloody penny for it, the boogers!”

Forster was a fly man who never had a cigarette to his name. “W'ee's smeukin'?”,
^*
in an aggressive wheedle, was his watch-word, generally responded to with “Iveryone but thee”. He was crafty, foul-mouthed, ignorant, and dishonest; sufficient to say that in a battalion of expert scroungers, Forster was gifted beyond the ordinary; there are Burmese villages which must be wondering still where their pigs and chickens went to in ’45.

Steele was a Carlisle boy, tough and combative and noisy, but something of a mate of mine, even if he did use the word “Scotch” to me with occasional undue emphasis; once he added “bastard” to it (there was no race relations legislation in those happy days), and I responded with a fist; we battered each other furiously until Corporal Little, who was half our size, flew at us with a savagery that took us aback; he knocked me down and half-strangled Steele before dragging us face to face. “Noo shek ’ands! Shek ’ands! By Christ, ye will! Barmy boogers, ye'll ’ev enoof fightin' wid Jap, nivver mind each other! Ga on—shek ’ands!” Confronted by that raging lightweight, we shook hands, with a fairly ill grace, which was not lost on him. Then, being a skilled man manager, he put us on guard, together.

Stanley was large and fair and quiet, and had the unusual ability of sleeping on his feet, which was a
genuine torment to him when he had to stand
stag
.
^*
He had been a cinema projectionist, and for sheer cold courage I never saw his like, as I shall tell later. He might have had a decoration, but his heroism manifested itself in a lonely place, by night, and no one in authority ever knew about it.

Wedge was a Midlander, and said “Ace, king, quine,” among other vocal peculiarities, like “waiter” for “water”. Being used to carry saggars
†
in the Potteries, he would bear his big pack and other impedimenta on his head when necessary, leaving his hands free for other burdens. When we were cut off in Meiktila he developed an obsession about the 5th Division, who were to be the “hammer” to our “anvil”. “Wheer's 5th Div, then?” was his stock question at the section O-group (the little conference which took place each evening, when the corporal passed on news and orders from the platoon commander). No one could tell him, and he would lapse into gloomy silence. He was deeply religious, and eager for education because, he told me, “Ah want to improve meself. Ah want a trade efter t'war, not carryin' bloody saggars. A reet trade, Jock—Ah dunno what, though; Ah'll ’ave to see.” Once, I remember, when we were on stag together, he told me how much he had enjoyed the pirate movie,
The Black Swan
, and I told him something of Morgan's buccaneers and their exploits; from that moment he
seemed to regard me as a latter-day Macaulay and pestered me for historical information, and since I am God's own history bore, he got plenty, and his gratitude was touching. I doubt if it helped him to get a trade, but you never know.

The Duke, whose surname I have forgotten, if I ever knew it, was so called from his refined public school accent. He was tall and lethargic and swarthy as a gypsy, with a slow smile and a manner which grew more supercilious in proportion to the rank of whomever he was addressing; he was almost humble to Corporal Little, but I have heard him talk—with studied courtesy, mind you—to a brigadier as though the man were the veriest trash. He got away with it, too. The rumour ran that he was related to the royal family, but informed opinion was against this: Grandarse had seen him in the shower at Ranchi and had detected no sign of a birthmark.

Parker I have left to the last because he was easily the most interesting, a dapper, barrel-chested Cockney who was that rare bird, a professional soldier of fortune. He was in his forties, and had been in one uniform or another since boyhood, having just got into the tail of the First World War before serving as a mercenary in China in the ’twenties, in what capacity I never discovered, and thereafter in South America, the Spanish Civil War (from a pungent comment on the International Brigade I deduced that he had been with the Nationalists), and China again in the late ’thirties. He re-enlisted in 1939, came out at Dunkirk, and had been with Eighth Army before being posted east. He
was a brisk and leathery old soldier, as brash and opinionated as only a Londoner can be, but only rarely did you see the unusual man behind the Cockney banter.

I first noticed him on the dusty long haul by trooptrain across India, when the rest of us slept on the floor or the cramped wooden seats, while Parker improvised himself a hammock with his groundsheet and lengths of signal cable. But I didn't speak to him until the end of a marathon game of nine-card brag in which I had amassed the astonishing sum of 800 rupees (about £60, which was money then). I'm no card-player, let alone a gambler, but the priles
^*
kept coming for once, and I was just wondering how to quit in the face of the chagrined opposition, which included various blue chins and hairy chests of Australian, American, and mixed origin, when Parker, who had been watching but not playing, leaned over, picked up my winnings, and stuck them inside his shirt.

“That's yer lot, gents,” he said cheerfully. “E's out.”

There were menacing growls, and a large individual with a face like Ayers Rock rose and demanded who said so.

“I bleedin' do,” said Parker. “I'm ’is uncle, an' you've ’ad a fair shot, so you can brag yer bollocks off all the way to Cal
†
—by yerselves. E's out, see?” To me he simply said: “Better let me look arter it.” Which he did, all the way to Ranchi, where he escorted me to
the paymaster to see it deposited. I won't say I didn't watch him with some anxiety during the last days of the journey, but I never even thought of asking for my money: some people are fit to look after a small fortune east of Suez, and some aren't.

One result of his mother hen behaviour was that I learned something of his background. He was an orphan, and the proceeds of twenty years' free lancing had put his younger brother through medicine; this emerged when I offered him a cut of my winnings for his good offices as banker; he didn't need it, he said, and out came the photographs of his kid brother in his M.B. gown, and in hospital groups; Parker's pride was something to see. “E'll go in the R.A.M.C. shortly, I ’spect; ’e'll be an officer then. An' arterwards, ’e can put up his brass plate an' settle dahn, get married ’an ’ave kids, make me a real uncle. ’E's done bloody well for a Millwall sparrow, ’as Arthur. Mind you, he allus was bright, top o' the class, not like me; I lef' school when I was nine an' never looked back. Yerss, I'm prahd of ’im, orlright.” He must have realised that he was running on, for he grinned sheepishly and put the photos away, remarking jauntily that a medico in the family allus came ’andy, didn't it, case you got a dose o' clap.

I said my parents had wanted me to be a doctor, and he gave me a hard stare.

“You didn't make it? Why not?”

“Not clever enough, I suppose. Didn't get into university.”

“Too bloody lazy, more like. Idle little sod.”

“Well, I didn't want to be a doctor! I wanted to get into the Army, try for a commission.”

“Did you, now? Stupid git. Well, ’ave you applied?”

“Yep. Selection board turned me down. I've been busted from lance-jack a couple of times, too.”

“Christ, some mothers don't ’alf ’ave ’em! An educated sod like you—I seen you doin' bleedin' crosswords.” He cackled and shook his head. “Well, I shall just ’ave to kick you up the arse, young Jock, I can see that. Ne' mind—with my permish you'll get a commish!” He liked the sound of that, and it became a private slogan whenever the going got uncomfortable: if I was sodden through, or was marching on my chinstrap, as the saying was, or bone-tired after digging or standing to all night, and even when we went in under the guns at Pyawbwe, Parker's raucous cry would be heard: “Bash on, Jock—wiv my permish you'll get a commish!” It was as regular as Nick's “You'll all get killed!” and just about as encouraging.

That was the section, and if they sound like a typical cast for a Gainsborough war movie, and I am suspected of having used clichés of character, I cannot help it. Every word about them is as true as I can make it. War is like that, full of clichés, and of many incidents and speeches that you couldn't get away with in fiction. Later I shall describe how a comrade of mine, on being shot in the leg, rolled on the ground shouting: “They got me! The dirty rats, they got me!” I would not use it in a screenplay—and I know what the director and actor
would say if I did. But it happened, word for word, nature imitating art.

I have said that was the section, but obviously it changed. We took casualties, and new men came in, and some of them became casualties, and reorganisations took place, often in haste during an action—I suppose as many as twenty men, perhaps even more, served in the section in six months, but the nine I have described are the ones I remember best. Eventually I left the section, and found myself in the last stages of the war among unfamiliar faces. But up to Meiktila we were all together, and whatever I learned I learned from them.