Private's Progress (7 page)

He looked gloomily out of the window.

“When I was a nipper I was misunderstood,” he said.

The train pulled in at Gravestone.

“All change,” said the corporal. “We won’t put the cuffs on. Generally we don’t, ordinarily. Usually, that is, unless you get awkward. Best go through the back streets; save your feelings.”

At the Guard-Room the corporal knocked on the door.

The voice of the R.P. Fred came in a bellow from within:

“Wassup?”

There was a rattle of the large stagey keys.

“Bloke ’ere, Fred,” shouted the corporal.

The door opened.

“Ah, more customers,” said the policeman Fred, brightening up.

“Sign here, please,” said the corporal, producing the documents.

“Picked up, eh?” observed Fred, laboriously
scratching
his name.

“Give ’imself up,” said the corporal.

“You what?” asked Fred, astonished.

The other regimental policemen gathered briskly round.

“Bloke ’ere turned ’imself in,” said Fred.

“Must be bleedin’ barmy,” said the policeman Alf, aghast.

“Wants ’is ’ead seen to,” said the policeman Fred.

“Don’t know when ’e’s well off,” said the policeman Cyril. “Gittin there.”

The deserter was led away.

The regimental policemen cadged some more cigarettes before they let Stanley and the corporal out.

A large poster had been pinned up on the Depot Company notice-board. A three-coloured motif of clothes-pegs and square holes ran through the
formalised
head of a private soldier. All-pervading was the wording:
“If you possess qualifications which cannot be utilised in the Army you are doing the right thing by remaining in your present job.”

“My trade’s really linoleum-laying,” said Cox to Stanley as they read it. “You’d be surprised what there is in it. I daresay your dad tries doin’ ’is own.”

“Well, not actually,” said Stanley.

“And what ’appens?” cried Cox. “Bits sliced orf ’ere and there, or it comes ’alf-way up the wall, so you call us in the end. You want to
tell
your dad.”

“You two men,” said a voice behind them.

It was the orderly sergeant with a notebook.

“You any trades?” he asked, pencil hovering.

“Electrical fitter, me,” said Cox promptly.

“I was at a university,” said Stanley.

“Names?” said the orderly sergeant. “Double away, then, to Company stores for buckets and brushes and get all that old distemper off the A.T.S. Rest Room. Come on! Should be there by now!”

Standing on chairs with their buckets of hot water, Stanley and Cox rubbed away at the coffee-coloured walls. Underneath the brown distemper they discovered other colours. First green, then pale blue, then white. They thought at first that the white was the basic colour, but a foolish experiment in one place revealed more green and then red beneath. Gradually their arms became coated to the elbows with a milky green deposit.

“It’s all go, this,” said Cox. “Too much ’eavy liftin’. A mate of mine in Camberwell once, he got this
distemper
to do one bedroom out and gets a sort of craving to keep at it. ’E spends a whole ’Oliday Monday at it—gets ’is missus to shift all the stuff gradually out of all the bedrooms, then the parlour. ’E’s just startin’ on the kitchen when ’e suddenly ups an falls down dead. Only thirty-five.”

Another member of Depot Company looked in at the window.

“Wotcher, Greensleeves,” he remarked cheerfully.

Cox heaved a bucket of the pea soup at the window.

At half-past three in the afternoon they began
mopping
the horrible liquid from the floor, the pavement outside, and the buckets. The walls were a patchy pale green.

“I ’ope the A.T.S. enjoy it,” said Cox. “They reckon green’s the most restful colour, only I knew a bloke in Wembley heard about it and got all ’is ’ouse done out pale green. ’E convinced ’imself it was doin’ ’im good and ’e got that way ’e fell asleep after ’is tea and in the morning ’e couldn’t ’ardly seem to get up ’alf the time, so in the end the warehouse ’e works for gives ’im the last-card-in-the-pack. Then ’is missus gets dead lazy, too, and can’t seem to get the nippers off to school in time or anything and they ’ave the attendance officer round creatin’. Then it turns out it’s not the green paint at all, but they got a bit of a gas leak they’ve not noticed for the smell of this paint.”

“C
OX
,”
SAID
S
TANLEY,
“I think the best thing would be to get employed. I used to hear about Dicky’s Gardening Squad. Shall we try to get into it, if it doesn’t entail too much work? Anyway, it’s up at the camp, isn’t it, so one could lose a good deal of time getting there.”

“Well,” said Cox admiringly, “you’re learning, my old china. Best way is, work it so you get on it one day, then next day tell the orderly sergeant Dicky wants you again, then just keep on going up. Trouble is, you really got to wait for one of ’is regulars goin’ sick. Funny, I never did go much on gardening, only it’s dead steady with old Dicky.”

“Who is this Dicky?” asked Stanley.

“Sarnt-Major Sparrow. ’Ad ’im left over from the Bo’er Wo’er most probably. Failin’ that, we might get took on at the Company stores, do a bit of a fiddle.”

They were, in fact, queueing outside the Company Office for pay parade.

Suddenly a window just ahead of them was flung up and a pair of well-tailored arms shot out. They held a small ruler and proceeded without ado to measure the shoulder flashes of an astonished queuer.

“Half-an-inch out. Report with it properly stitched tomorrow,” shouted Major Hitchcock, withdrawing his
arms and substituting his head. “Well, damn it! Salute me, can’t you? I’m a major; you’re only a private!”

The queue shuffled forward and Stanley and Cox were now in line with the window.

“Good morning!” hailed the major. “This is where we get ’em,” he added confidentially, leaning on the sill. “All the dodgy characters on the periphery of this company. They nearly all turn up for their pay. All, that is,” he went on, “except the people who do so well on the side that they don’t bother. Some of you OCTU boys must come to tea. Remind me some time next week.”

He departed with a wave of the hand.

“You’d be all right there, cock,” said Cox. “If I was you I wouldn’t ’esitate. Why, we ’ad a colonel once was so pleased with the mortar platoon ’e ’as the whole lot in for cocktails two nights running, only ’e was that tight ’e couldn’t think who they were. ’E seemed to think they was the General Staff and kept askin’ ’ow things was going in North Africa, except ’e wouldn’t wait for them to tell ’im, as it ’appened, and tells them for about an hour the sorta strategy ’e ’ad in mind. Only you could never tell with him. ’E invites them all next night and about ’alf turn up and ’e’s dead sober again and says: ‘Oo are you lot? Officers’ lines is out of bounds’, and ’e rings up for the provost sarnt and ’as ’em all run in the nick. Sometimes ’e used to be in ’is car in the town and see some geezer ’angin’ about and ’e’d tell ’is driver to stop, and say, ‘You want a lift back to the camp, lad?’ and the bloke ’ops in by the driver, and then, soon as they get back there, ’e’d say, ‘Stop at
the Guard-Room,’ and ’e’d tell the guard commander, ‘Run this man in for failin’ to salute the Commandin’ Officer.’”

“It doesn’t sound any too safe, from what you say,” said Stanley.

“Ah, no,” said Cox, “I said, this colonel, you couldn’t never tell with ’im, but old Hitchcock’s nutty all the time. You want to ’ear ’is batman sometimes on about ’im.”

He was interrupted by the window’s being flung open again. Major Hitchcock reappeared.

“One thing you must be very careful of,” he
remarked
to Stanley, “is my sergeant-major. He’ll have you by the short hairs if you don’t watch out. You can’t blame him, of course: some of my company are
first-class
shits.”

He fell silent and surveyed the queue.

“You’d be surprised at the Barrack Damages we have to knock off,” he resumed. “Last week one chap in one of the huts turned the water off and whipped all the taps from the basins. I’m having a parade after this to have a check-up.”

The parade turned out to be a remarkable affair.

The four “platoons” of Depot Company were lined up in threes on the square. At a time when the
establishment
for an infantry platoon was thirty-two, none of these consisted of less than seventy. Ninety-three others lined up with Stanley for No. 3 Platoon, muttering and cursing in low tones.

Major Hitchcock called the parade to attention.

A parade state was taken, revealing forty-seven absentees.

“All right!” called Major Hitchcock in a menacing tone, “I know all about it! Forty-seven bloody
absentees
! I’ve got their names here; they’ll suffer for it, all right. Now, does anyone here know about the taps in Khartoum? I thought not. Let me warn you. I’m Company Commander here, and let none of you forget it. You can’t fool me, let me tell you. Now I’ve got you! Get ’em out! You know what I mean!”

“Identity discs,” muttered Cox. “Every other week ’e’s on about them.”

They all began rummaging inside their shirts and stood with the red and green discs exposed on strings like so many charms.

“Properly to attention, now,” shouted Major
Hitchcock
, and began to sprint down the ranks.

He stopped suddenly at a man near Stanley and asked:

“Where are yours?”

“Left them atome, sir, last weekend, only I ’ad a forty-eight.”

“Very naughty!”
shouted Major Hitchcock for the benefit of the whole parade.

“And your other one?” he asked a man with only the green one.

“Come off in me ’and only this mornin’,” said the man glibly.

“——liar,” said Major Hitchcock.

The man hung his head in shame.

Eventually the major came back into position in front of the parade.

“I’ve never been on a parade like this,” whispered Stanley.

“You wait, mate,” whispered Cox. “Wait till ’e’s on about pinchin’ the nominal roll some time.”

“Platoon sergeants!” bawled Major Hitchcock.

The four sergeants marched out to him, saluted, were given orders, saluted again and marched back.

The four great platoons were marched away, off the square to positions round an emergency
water-supply
tank outside the Company Office.

Major Hitchcock clambered onto the wooden covering of the tank and surveyed them.

“Come closer!” he shouted.

“’Ere we go,” murmured Cox.

“Right, pay attention,” said Major Hitchcock. “I hope this parade has woken you all up a bit because you’re most of you in need of it. I’m going to keep on with these weekly parades and get you lot organised. Some of you,” he continued, raising his voice, “think I’m the biggest shit on the face of God’s earth. Well, I am. I’ve got to be a shit when I’m dealing with shits, and, by God, some of you are an absolute shower. This business of the taps is typical. Sheer outrageous bloody dishonesty. I stopped a man this morning and asked him: ‘Who are you?’ He gave me a name and number and I knew damn well it was somebody else’s. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Where are your identity discs?’ Not got them on, of course. Pay book? In the office for a check-up. Oh yes, I know all the old yarns. What did I do? I sent for the orderly corporal and said: ‘Who is this man?’ and he knew who he was all right. Very well, I had him put under close arrest. Damned
impertinence
. Anyone playing silly-buggers round here is liable to be shoved in too, mark my words. Now, what
next? Oh yes. Eighteen men were checked for not shaving on pay parade just now and they’re coming up on orders tomorrow. I’ll tell you now, they’ll get seven penn’orth.
That man at the back! Are you the Company Commander or am I? I am? Well, keep your mouth shut, d’you hear me?
Next week’s parade will be in battle order, with rifles. Right, get away smartly. Dismiss.”

He climbed down from the tank and went into his office.

“Better than a play,” said Cox. “’Ear that about shaving? Some days you could go in there trippin’ over a beard down to your ankles and ’e wouldn’t bother. Same with this colonel I was telling you about in some ways. Sometimes a bloke would go for a ball of chalk—a walk—go absent; come back next day and ’e’d give ’im twenty-eight days straight off, no bother. Other times a bloke would buzz off for, say, a fortnight, come back pissed as a newt and use obscene language to the guard commander, and all ’e’d say would be: ‘Don’t let it occur again or you’ll be shat on from a great height.’”

“What’s seven penn’orth?” asked Stanley.

“Seven days C.B.,” said Cox. “Cushy here, but no lark in some places. Lot depends on the provost sarnt. We ’ad one in my old battalion was ’ot on knife, fork and spoon. Every jankers parade ’e’d ’ave you doublin’ up, and what ever else you ’ad to show clean, it was knife, fork and spoon too. They ’ad to be bright, and no metal polish either, being it wasn’t allowed in Standing Orders as insanitary, and ’e used to smell ’em to see. One day some bloke sharpens ’is knife up like a razor and this provost sarnt is smelling it and
it cuts ’is lip so’s ’e ’as to ’ave three stitches in it. Laugh!”

Stanley received a letter from his father:

In the course of the next few weeks Stanley and Cox were put on a variety of jobs. For two days they laid a cinder track to the Officers’ Mess at the camp, they helped to scrub out the Naafi, and spent a restful day in the weapon stores, in a pleasant smell of oil, cleaning Bren guns.

Eventually they were put on sweeping leaves from the concrete roads up at the camp.

“There’s one thing,” said Stanley. “You do get some vocational training. I think I’ve perfected a new method of leaf-sweeping.”

Instead of sweeping the leaves forward, causing them to disperse ahead, he was pulling them towards himself into cohesive piles, working backwards.

“It’s possible to do it this way with only one hand,” said Stanley. “Look.”

“You want to watch it, mate,” said Cox dubiously, continuing to follow standard practice. “Trouble is, you don’t make it look as if it’s any bother.”

“Oh, absurd,” said Stanley. “It’s perfectly effective.”

A passing lorry stopped just beyond them and a sergeant-major jumped out.

“Cor Christ, the R.Q.M.S.,” moaned Cox, busily increasing his strokes per minute.

The R.Q.M.S. came vigorously towards them.

“You lot,” he called loudly. “What d’you think you’re on?
Push
them! And use both hands!” he roared.

“Sir,” said Stanley reasonably, “I think I’ve found a better way. If you’ll——”

“Arguing?”
asked the R.Q.M.S., with quiet menace.
“Stand
to
attention!”

Stanley with a broom in one hand, decided that it would be better to come to attention without the broom. He dropped it.

The R.Q.M.S. turned another colour.

“Names?” he asked. “I’ll remember you two!
Corporal!
” He shouted across the square.

The corporal, notebook in hand, was doubling over the square. He called out: “Sah?”

“Put these men on coal! They’re not to leave the camp till I’ve seen them! I know their faces all right!”

“Right, sir,” said the corporal, at attention. “I’ll put them on, sir.”

The R.Q.M.S. stormed away in the lorry.

“Come with me,” said the corporal abruptly. “Now you’re for it. You made
me
drop a bollock with him catching you.”

They were introduced to a grim, leathery
lance-corporal
at the coal-yard.

“Shovels,” said the lance-corporal economically, pointing.

For a full two hours they were kept hard at it,
shovelling
the heavy, intractable lumps into sacks, heaving the sacks onto a pneumatic tyred cart, and following the ambling horse from hut to hut, to unload the coal into bins.

“Woo,” groaned Cox, gripping the small of his back. “Be better off as janker-wallahs.”

“Coke now,” ordered the lance-corporal.

“Cor crummy, no Naafi break?” expostulated Cox.

“Sacks over there,” said the lance-corporal.

The coke was lighter, but had nobbly projections which made it almost impossible to shovel.

At one o’clock a minion came from the R.Q.M.S., delivering a message.

“The R.Q.M.S. says you can go now,” he announced. “Only if he ever catches you slacking again he’ll have you on coal from eight in the morning to eight at night. He says he’ll break your backs.”

“I’d like to break
his
bastard,” said Cox,
straightening
with difficulty. “Sauce.”

“Well,” said Stanley, “the sooner we get in the gardening squad the better. I’m terribly sorry about all this, Cox.”

“Can’t be helped,” said Cox. “Only for Gawd’s sake remember, you’ve got to use your loaf.”

They trailed painfully back to the barracks.

After their lunch Stanley said:

“It’s just occurred to me, Cox. We were dismissed. We could easily finish for the day.”

“You’re right there,” said Cox approvingly. “Now, let’s see. There’s a dodgy way out down by the river, and we could nip off to the Regal.”