Private's Progress (4 page)

“Hoo,” said the orderly corporal mincingly. “Ho, Reallah? Name?
What
-rush? Windrush? Right. Go sick. Report Comp’ny Office 0700 hours sharp. See the ord’ly sarnt. Right? Right.”

He rushed immediately out of the door to the hut Arras, adjoining, with cries of “Wakey-wakey!
Out-abed
!”

With some difficulty Stanley got up to the Company
Office by seven. The orderly sergeant, early-pale and impatient, smoked within.

“You Windrush? O.K. Going sick. Well. Report here 0800 hours with your small kit in kitbag, overcoat worn, put your kit in Comp’ny Stores, come straight the way back here, see me. Clear?”

He rattled it off in a wearied monotone.

“But I only wanted some Alka-Seltzer,” protested Stanley. “I was just feeling a little fragile and——”

“You what?” said the orderly sergeant. “Double away, lad, smart. You’re on sick report now, and no change can be made. Stone the crows. Get out of it! And ’ave them overcoat buttons clean.”

Stanley left.

The orderly sergeant took up the absentee report and signed it palely.

“Excuse me.”

Stanley had returned.

“Well, what now?”

“What does small kit consist of?”

The orderly sergeant exhaled at length.

“Knife-fork-spoon-razor-shaving-brush-toothbrush-spare-shirts-spare-socks-drawers-cellular,” he said tonelessly. “In addition, P.T. vests and shorts, gym shoes, housewife and contents thereof. Right?”

“Thank you,” said Stanley.

“
Never
go sick,” said Stanley to Egan.

“S
ARMAJOR
,”
SAID
Major Harkness.

“Sir?”

“Do I gather from this A.C.I. that now all candidates for commissions must go to a War Office Selection Board before being admitted to an OCTU?”

“Yessir.”

“And Area Orders say these potential-officer people we’ve got
are
to go to an OCTU?”

“Pre-OCTU, sir.”

“Yes, but that’s where everyone is supposed to go now
after
they’ve passed their Selection Board.”

“Yessir.”

“Then these chaps are to go to a Selection Board
f
rom
the Pre-OCTU? Extraordinary.”

“Yessir.”

“And supposing they don’t pass? They come back here, I suppose.”

“Yessir.”

“To Depot Company, I take it?”

“Yessir. Until such time as they’re otherwise posted.”

“Just like the bloody Army.”

“Yessir.”

“Now I hear we’re to go to a WOSB?” said Stanley. “What do they do?”

“Psychiatrists,” said Egan. “They tell me they ask you all sorts of questions.”

“Oh dear,” said Stanley.

“Then they have all sorts of tests.”

“Tests?”

“Yes, intelligence tests and a lot of climbing ropes and solving tricky situations.”

“Yes, I expect they would.”

“I suppose it’ll be terribly interesting, really.”

“I suppose it will,” said Stanley forlornly.

They were in the last week of their Primary Training. The threat of their coming Selection Boards was another weapon for the N.C.O.s.

“Five weeks and you can’t do the Leopard Crawl proper!” stormed Sergeant Morris. “Gorblimey, I dunno. Remember, if you don’t pass your WOSB you’ll be back ’ere up Depot Company in Dicky’s Gardenin’ Squad. Next! Windrush! Down! Crawl! Oh, you ’orrible bloody
terrible
man. Keep your arse-end down, lad!” 

A week later. Stanley and the rest of the university intake were being delivered by an officer, two sergeants and five corporals to 652 Brigade Pre-OCTU at
Rootbridge
. Four three-ton lorries borrowed from the R.A.S.C. bore them and their kit, buffeting through the autumn-lit Kent countryside to their new home. Their kitbags bulged. Steel helmets, cunningly designed to be slightly too large for the mouth of a kitbag, occasionally spilled out with a clatter at bends in the road. Stanley, left with an armful of small kit impossible to cram into his bag, had had to buy a small fibre attaché-case for ten shillings from a lance-corporal.

The lorries ran through the village of Rootbridge and beyond. The village itself nestled under the escarpment of the North Downs, away from the main London road but with two unspoilt coaching inns to point to its
former
importance as a halting-place. It was, however, a quiet place now, and genteel, and the lorries whipped straight through it with little more than a shattering scream of a gearbox, and on to the Pre-OCTU, a mile and a half beyond in a large damp wood. They passed through the entrance gates and along narrow concrete roads through the trees, in which innumerable Nissen huts lurked. The place was liberally sprinkled with slit trenches, dug for protection against air attack, making it dangerous to walk between the huts after dark. Everywhere walked cadets, in the idiosyncratic
variations
of uniform of many different regiments, but all wearing the white shoulder-flashes of their status. Those in denim overalls wore a little white rectangle (known locally as the Rootbridge Medal) announcing their surnames over the left breast pocket.

The intake dismounted at the Reception Centre and tottered with their kitbags along endless woodland paths to their Nissen huts. Stanley had hardly time to take in the wire-netted windows, cheerless concrete floor and creaking wooden beds before the hut sergeant appeared.

“Gather round. This is the Holding-in Company. You must make yourself familiar with Company Standing Orders, posted on the tree opposite Company Office. Company detail is posted up on the next-door tree. Any questions?”

He looked round aggressively and began to read out a series of anxious “Hut Standing Orders” of his own confection. They mainly concerned the table.

“Boots will not be cleaned on the table.”

“Rifles will not be cleaned on the table.”

“Cigarette ash and ink will not be spilt on the table.”

“The table will not be damaged in any way.”

By his side stood the vulnerable table, its edges
chipped
and cigarette-burned, the surface scored and stained with dark patches of oil.

“First parade tomorrow, rouse p’rade 0715 hours. Bed spaces will be swep’ out before rouse p’rade.”

Seven-fourteen and a misty morning. Stanley
wandered
through the woodland paths, mug in hand, on the way back from breakfast. Feverish cadets flitted past him towards the Company Office. A sergeant of the staff leaned on the wooden railings at the crossroads, calling in a mild tone: “Come along now, you idle gentlemen.”

The morning was devoted to lectures. The
Commanding
Officer, brisk and sunburnt, reviewed their coming training and warned them against tipping the
permanent
staff. A brigadier from the Indian Army, touting for volunteers, showed lantern slides of the Martial Races: Punjabis, Rajputs, Sikhs, Madrassis, Gurkhas. He cleared his throat at frequent intervals so that it sounded as if he didn’t believe a word of it.

“They need you young British officers because they trust you. Hrm. They regard you as—hrm—cleanliving. Hrm. Honest, trustworthy and competent. Hrm.”

He would like to relate a typical incident.

“… and the Havildar whispered: ‘Sahib, we are surrounded.’”

After a heavy lunch a strange officer took them out on a forced march. In three hours, running down hills, they covered fourteen miles. The officer was alone in being cheerful at the end of it.

“Foot inspection in ten minutes,” he cried merrily, pulling at an enormous moustache. “Feet will be clean, bright and slightly oily.”

And at six-thirty the hut sergeant read out a list of names.

“Aforementioned cadets parade tomorrow morning 0700 hours for proceeding off to War Office Selection Board at Redgate.”

Stanley and his companions got down from the truck at Redgate and formed up automatically in threes.

A long-haired and rather decadent sergeant-major watched them in some pain, hands in pockets.

Egan, who had been put in charge, brought them to attention.

“Oh dear,” said the sergeant-major. “There’s no need to do that here.”

He leaned back against a tree.

“Now take your caps off,” he said. “That’s a lot better. I have to tell everybody. You can do just as you please here. Change into civvie shoes after I’ve finished talking to you. Now, are you all here?”

He removed one hand from a pocket and read out names.

“Right. Well, now go and get those armbands over there and put them on. Lovely. Well, civvie shoes, and then come up to the house.”

They were led to a large Edwardian dwelling, porticoed and ornate, set in a maze of rhododendrons. Inside, every ground-floor-room door gave a glimpse of crowded oil paintings.

“Take a seat,” suggested the sergeant-major, leading them into a deep-carpeted lounge. It was hung with impressionists; a log fire hissed in the grate. Near the french windows a Steinway grand gleamed back at the fire. Stanley sank into a deep armchair.

The sergeant-major leaned on the bust of one of the gilt angels supporting the mantelpiece.

“Well, well,” he said, “I suppose you’ve heard a lot of horrible tales about these Selection Boards, eh? Really speaking, you’ll find it not hard at all. I don’t know. I always have to tell everybody: smoke if you want to. Don’t you want to be comfortable? Mind you, you won’t be able to play a part and keep it up. That’s why we’re here three days. You couldn’t do it. But there’s
no concealed microphones and no cameras in none of the pictures. These pictures are all quite harmless. I thought some of the nudes were—what shall I say?—interesting. That’s at first, but you get quite used to them. There’s no lights-out and no reveille, but breakfast is at eight and we like you better washed.”

Cream double doors opened at this point, and a full colonel and six majors came diffidently in.

“This is the Board,” said the sergeant-major casually, with a wave of the hand. “Colonel Argent, the
president
, probably wants to say something.”

“Good morning,” said the president. “I’ll introduce the Board, if I may.”

At two they began on the intelligence tests. There were twenty minutes of superimposed circles and dots, followed by a series of ninety-eight questions with answers to be underlined.

“Which is inappropriate here?”
asked the first one.
“PLAICE, CAMEL, RHINOSCEROS, YAK, GRAVY. The answer is, of course, GRAVY. Now go straight on.”

By No. 34 Stanley’s head began to swim.

After this a number of cards were held up for ten seconds at a time. The candidates were told to write down the first thoughts that came into their heads. The first card read:
“
BEER.
”

Stanley thought it would be best to write something like “Ah”. There was, in fact, no time to write anything else. Next card:
“HAPPY”
.

Cautious, even in exhaustion, Stanley fell back on punctuation.

“CAREFUL. MOTHER. WOUNDED. GIRL”.
The thirty cards came and went. Stanley wrote: “??”, or “!!?”, and occasionally “!?!?!?!”.

Then a questionnaire:
“From which of the following ailments do you suffer?”

Stanley tried to strike a nice balance between
hypochondria
and sheer muscularity. He admitted to migraine and intermittent night-blindness.

More forms.

“Write an appreciation of yourself by a good friend.”

“Write another appreciation as though by a sworn enemy.”

Breakfast at eight. Stanley changed his place to the other side of the table and to the far end. He was now faced by skeletal fishing boats beached against a purple sunset. The group testing officer also changed his place and was again opposite. Several times Stanley was on the verge of engaging him in conversation. Each time, however, the officer looked up impassively from his toast to see a contorted open-mouthed face across the table.

Each time the face abruptly deflated.

They went through a further series of tests.

In the first, a playing child was to be rescued from an escaped lion. Stanley was detailed to be the child, and a large man from Cambridge the lion.

Stanley played round a tree, whistling unconvincingly
and whacking at tufts of grass with a stick. The lion, approaching unnoticed at a gallop, fell on him.
Stanley
, under the nervous compulsion of putting up a good show, wrenched frantically free, and hung from a low branch, kicking. The rescuers appeared, and under the same compulsion belaboured the lion savagely with dead branches.

“For Christ’s sake,” roared the lion, in some pain.

“Thank you,” said the testing officer, making notes.

A Home Guard ran amok and was recaptured, stunned by a half-brick which hit him in the middle of the back.

The candidates were warming up.

Scheme “A”. Assault course. The two groups paraded in P.T. kit.

“The obstacles are all numbered,” said the
sergeant
-major. “You have to find them. Being as you’ve no equipment or rifles, you have to take a twig round with you. Behind you.”

The candidates looked round. Two sawn-off
telegraph
poles lay on the ground.

“We don’t want to be late for lunch. You can start any time, really,” said the sergeant-major casually.

It dawned on them. No leaders were appointed.

“Come on!” somebody shouted.

Stanley’s group got there first, commandeered the shorter and lighter log, and trotted awkwardly away with it.

They got it and themselves over a stream, across a ten-foot wall, through a series of suspended motor tyres, and under a tightly pegged tarpaulin, under which Stanley temporarily left his shorts. Then they
came to the Bottomless Chasm. Here they wished they had brought the longer log. Their twig was only three inches longer than the chasm was wide.

The candidates, on their mettle, fell to quarrelling and bickering. In the confusion Stanley actually managed to get a scheme of his adopted and the twig fell into the abyss.

Recrimination.

The officer, as a concession, let them retrieve it. At a second attempt, in which half the group, on the far side, tried to catch the log as it was toppled carefully over, two of the candidates as well as the log disappeared into the eight-foot ditch which served as a chasm. A conceded third attempt found them tottering on the brink of success, when a local subsidence on the edge of the chasm caused Stanley to leap away startled. This immediately disturbed the network of forces acting on the log, so that the whole group of candidates, clinging desperately onto it, plunged suddenly in. From the pit they glared up at the chubby little figure looking apologetically down at them. Soil trickled down.