Private's Progress (10 page)

“No,” said Cox, “you never want to do that. At my last battalion they all used to do that on week-end pass, and one week-end they was jumped on. The
railway
brought in the red-caps and they inspected all tickets at an intermediate station. There was
eighty-four
on orders on the Monday. The railway said there was a hundred and nine tickets issued on the Saturday to this first station up the line, and only five blokes got out there. No, best to keep ’em in the dark. What the eye don’t see the ’eart don’t grieve over.”

“Yer,” said Sergeant Leggett. “Yer, I catch your meanin’ all right. Don’t any of you blokes do it any
more after this, or
I
’ll
make it hot for you, never mind the railways.”

“What you
can
do, Len,” said Cox, “one very safe way, is go up with some bloke who’s barmy enough to ’ave a ticket, and get ’is missus to meet you at Victoria on the platform with two platform tickets. Then when you go off the platform it looks as though you and ’er ’ave come to meet the bloke with the ticket. Anyway, ’e needn’t buy a ticket if ’e’s on a proper seven-day leave because ’e’ll ’ave ’is free railway warrant, won’t ’e?”

“Oh yer, of course,” said Sergeant Leggett
thoughtfully
.

“Half a jiff, Coxy,” interposed one of the platoon. “Spose it’s one of these long-distance rattlers where they collect the old tickets when you’re on the train? Owjoo go on then?”

“My friend ’ere wants to know,” said Cox to the company, “Spose it’s a train to say Manchester and the jumper comes round on it, so’s you get off at the other end with no barrier. Okeydoke. What you do is all club together, buy two blokes tickets. You can do this with up to ten or eleven blokes. Right, you buy these two blokes tickets, and all the rest get platform tickets to see ’em off. Right. Then, very important, you must make sure you borrow an A.T.S. cap before you start off. Okay? You get on the platform and of course you all get in the rattler and off you go. You keep in the corridor, and you ’ave one bloke each end sentry, on the lookout for the jumper comin’ along. When ’e’s comin’, they all get in the lavatory a bit sharpish and keep dead quiet, except one bloke. He stands outside the old door ’olding this A.T.S. cap and the two
tickets. Now the old jumpers usually knock on the doors and wait till you come out, so you can’t get away with it that way. But what this bloke does, ’e gives up ’is ticket and stands there twiddlin’ this A.T.S. cap, and ’e says to the jumper, ‘Oh,’ ’e says, ‘my wife’s in there,’ ’e says, and ’ands over the other ticket, too. That’s psychology. Then, of course, they all come out after, and nip off quite natural at the other end. ’Course, if one of you’s got a free warrant, so much the better. You only got to buy the one ticket to go with the A.T.S. cap.”

“Stone the crows,” said Sergeant Leggett, overcome by the possibilities.

“Proper cure, old Coxy is,” remarked the questioner.

“Pulverised old Len, that did,” said Fred.

“That’s enough,” said Sergeant Leggett. “Outside in F.S.M.O. for an endurance test.”

“It’s all bloody go, this training,” said Cox.

T
HE ENDURANCE TESTS
alternated weekly with route marches, each increasing in length and severity as the weeks went on. As Mr. Bootle came on them all, no modifications were possible. In the ordinary course the training was frequently interrupted by cries from Sergeant Leggett of: “Right! Five-minute smoke for ten minutes.”

Stanley liked the weapon training and fieldcraft. The technique perfected by the sergeant and corporals was to parade the platoon ten minutes early in the morning and double them keenly out of the back gate of the camp before Mr. Bootle came on the scene. Rapid progress would be made through the wooded country under the escarpment, and after a brief exercise in camouflaged movement the platoon would retire to one of the several overgrown chalk pits which showed up as glaring white wedges in the escarpment skyline. The small quarries, long disused, had been annexed by the forest and overgrown by shrubs, springing from a thick bed of leaf-mould. They lay up steep, winding, rocky paths, and Sergeant Leggett stood no nonsense about getting there. The platoon toiled up the paths in battle formation, a scout-group ahead, preserving strict march discipline. Once at the objective, however, they would set about the leisurely ritual of lunch.

The lunch break lasted anything from three to four hours, spent round an enormous fire into which the N.C.O.s would throw experimentally the thunderflashes and blank rounds drawn for the day’s exercise. Every sort of moral pressure was brought to bear by the platoon to extend the lunch break even further. Members would surreptitiously bank up the fire so that it would seem ludicrous to leave it for the chill of the winter countryside. Others would start long sly arguments about the superiority of regiments they had formerly been in, so that Sergeant Leggett was in honour bound to make reply. When all else looked like failing, it would fall to Cox to recall some absorbing incident at great length.

The map-reading schemes were even more pleasant. On these, it did not matter whether Mr. Bootle joined the platoon in time or not, for they were all split up into syndicates of three or four men, to make their way invisibly, as though in enemy country, to distant
map-references
. As the object of the exercises was always to stay unobserved (Mr. Bootle and two lance-corporals toured the area on bicycles and penalised anybody they spotted), concealment had the blessing of the authorities.

After opening time in the mornings few syndicates were observed at all, unless Mr. Bootle happened to fling open the tap-room door of some likely country pub. The final reference point for the rendezvous of all the syndicates was chosen carefully by Sergeant
Leggett
, and transpired every time to be a public-house or a village tea-shop, in which platoon headquarters, consisting of the sergeant and Corporal O’Connor, awaited the arrival of the syndicates.

As the training gathered momentum Stanley felt more and more inclined to go sick, for a bit of peace. The endurance tests became more intense, and the route marches longer and more frequent, and in the last three weeks the cushier schemes tailed off altogether.

The physical activity was continuous. Map-reading and lectures gave place to daily P.T. Cox and one or two more of the old hands managed to develop
foot-complaints
with comparative ease, were excused parades, and left behind as hut orderlies while the rest slogged off for the day with haversack rations and filled water bottles. When the platoon came back at five the cheerful and relaxed hut orderlies provided them with hot water to boil out their rifle-barrels, made filthy by the firing of blanks.

“All go, innit, mate?” Cox would say
sympathetically
, pouring the water down a funnel in his best market manner. “Next gent, please. Oo, you dunnarf look rough. Nice drop of fisherman’s daughter? Don’t be shy, girls. What don’t speak don’t lie, and what don’t corst much
can
’t
be very-very dear.”

Stanley, however, seemed incapable of developing anything convincing except a constant tendency to fall into a weary sleep.

Such short route marches as Cox did in fact join were enlivened by his stirring marching songs. Stanley sent the words home to his father.

Their usual P.T. corporal was on seven days’ leave, and for a week they had a new one. On the Monday
afternoon
he came skipping lightly out of the gymnasium, a lithe little figure in his horizontally striped jumper, and addressed them, running on the spot the while.

The platoon looked dubiously at him.

“Where’s he expect to get doin’ that silly caper?” muttered Cox.

“Right, lads,” chirped the P.T. corporal in the odd high-pitched voice of his calling. “Running-on-
the-spot
-with-me, begin! Knees-up-up-up-up-up! Into-
the-changing
-room, GO!”

While they were changing he came in, rubbing his hands briskly, saying cheerfully: “I’ve gotchu a run today, lads!”

“Makes a change,” said the old-stager Fred.

The corporal led them rapidly out of the camp and ran them four miles in half an hour, in boots.

“Cor stone me,” groaned Cox at the end of it. The whole platoon was nearly speechless from the exertion.

On the following day he came into the
changing-room
again and announced: “I’ve done you a favour, lads. I’ve gotchu another run. Now, don’t let me down.”

Nothing would convince him that they really
preferred
the comparative leisure of intermittent leaping
over horses in the gymnasium. Off they went again, and returned collapsing.

On the Wednesday he announced yet another favour, to be met with groans. Nothing loath, he trotted them cheerfully out again, convinced that they really liked it.

And on the Thursday, after an even longer run in boots, he exhorted them at the end of it: “Now, don’t let me down, lads. When we get in the gate, bags of puffin’ and blowin’. Make outchu bin runnin’ a long way.”

The platoon were on their last legs and could do little else. This so pleased the corporal that he revealed his intention of getting them another run for the Friday.

Half the platoon spontaneously announced their determination to go sick rather than run another step.

“Oh!” said the corporal, offended. “
Oh!
All right. All
right
! From now on we stick to the pukka
programme
. Right!”

He went wrathfully away, and on the Friday kept them at it in the gym. The whole platoon was cheerful about it, but the corporal considered this a mere
pretence
and was baffled. He therefore went round the final parade, saying: “Haircut. Getcher haircut,” to several of the men, and dismissed them.

As it was pay night, Stanley went quietly to a cinema. When he came out he bumped into Cox and several others from the platoon who were just changing pubs and who urged him to join them. They would not take no for an answer and dragged him along.

“Now, my old mate Stan,” said Cox. “Name yer poison.”

So it happened that an hilarious group sailed up to the camp just before eleven. Everyone but Stanley sobered up enough to book in at the gate. Stanley, however, was singing loudly:

“Gorblimey-innit-all-right, eh?” and would not be hushed.

“Turn it up,” advised the old-stager Fred and a man called Chum ’Arrison. “You’ll ’ave us run in.”

Stanley stood apart and bellowed: “I’ve gotchu another run today, lads!”

The guard commander came down the steps with a hurricane lantern.

“Wassup?” he said. “Who’s that man?”

“Shan’t be round termorrer!” shouted Stanley musically. “Donkey’s pissed on the strawberries!”

“Oh blimey,” said Cox. “’E’s well away.”

The others hastily booked in and left Stanley
running
-on-the-spot in front of the sentry.

“Pack that row in!” said the guard sergeant.

“——off!” said Stanley cheerily, swaying helplessly and clinging to the sentry. “We’re just off on another run.”

He slumped down into a sprinter’s starting position.

“Two men!” shouted the sergeant. “Run this bloke in!”

Stanley was bundled into the Guard-Room, roaring from the doorway: “Cox! Cox! I’ve gotchu another run!” and bursting into hilarious laughter.

In the morning he woke early. He realised where he must be, and gloomily fell to inspecting the cell. The walls were ornamented with inscriptions, expressing for
the most part a bitter regimental rivalry. “Royal Artillery. We blast the way for you,” one read, and a reply: “The only language they know, the stupid——s.” Another asserted: “You’ve got to admit it, boys; you all depend on us. Meaning the R.A.M.C.”, to be met with the scathing rebuke in another hand, which quavered, perhaps with rage: “Poultice bashers.” Above the bed someone had aired the grievance: “England blancos while Russia bleeds.”

There was an ear-splitting bugle call immediately outside, as the regimental bugler sounded reveille.

A regimental policeman opened the door of the cell.