by Gerald Kersh
Both Hands and Crowne wear the Palestine ribbon. We ask them if they ever met Nelson.
“One-Eye Nelson?” asks Sergeant Crowne, reflectively. “Once upon a time we used to call him Lipstick. Why Lipstick? Well, when he was a Guardsman, he used it, once. No, I don’t mean on ’is mouf, silly. ’E got a stain on his best tunic—scarlet, you know—so ’e thought ’e’d cover it up with some lipstick. So ’e borrowed some lipstick from a nurse called Pinkie.”
“No,” says Sergeant Hands. “The nurse’s name was Jenny. We used to call her The Vest-Pocket Drill Sergeant. Pinkie was engaged to Ding-Dong Bell.”
“That’s right. Jenny. ’E borrowed a lipstick from Jenny, and smeared it over the spot. That scarlet used to stain as easy as anything: rain ’d spot it. Well, Nelson smears this ’ere stuff over this spot, and it turns out to be tangerine colour. So we called ’im Lipstick. Was old Nelson your squad-instructor? One of the best. ’E threw a plate of stew in my face once, in Egypt. Remember that, Hands? Best pal I ever ’ad. ’E didn’t like to be called Lipstick.”
Hands says: “You asked for that stew, Crowne. You would keep on calling him Gloria Swanson.”
“Clara Bow. So ’e lets fly with this plate o’ stew. ‘Now am I Clara Bow?’ ’e says.”
“And what did you say, Sergeant?” asks Bates.
“I said: ‘Of course you’re Clara Bow.’ After that we were best of pals.”
Bates, who listens to everything with open mouth, says: “Oi bet it was noice in Palestoin, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Hands replies: “A snare and a delusion. We was doing a kind o’ police job. Oranges was cheap. We got them every dinnertime.”
The giant, Hodge, with bated breath, asks if they saw Bethlehem.
“Certainly,” says Crowne.
“What is it like?” asks Hodge.
“Little,” says Crowne.
“Hot,” says Hands.
“And Jerusalem?” asks Hodge.
“Pretty much the same,” says Crowne.
“And what’s all the trouble about?” asks Barker.
“Trouble?” says Crowne. “Well. The Yids make orchards and blocks of flats. And the Wogs want to cut in. So now and again a Wog shoves a knife into a Yid. Then a Yid goes and shoves a knife into a Wog. Then the Wogs get ’old of some live rounds and shoot a couple o’ Yids. Then the Yids get ’old of some live rounds and shoot a couple o’ Wogs. Then we come in and tell ’em to turn it in.”
“And do they turn it in?”
“Yes and no,” says Crowne.
“Who wins?” asks Bates.
“Order is kept,” Crowne replies. “Order is kept.”
John Johnson grins, and says: “Oi bet you ’ave a noice old toime, with all them Arabian dancing girls.”
“No,” says Crowne, “I can’t say I ever did, not actually. They’re fat. It’s part of their religion to be fat. They ain’t sort o’ particular about soap. Their best friends are just the same, so they won’t tell ’em. They ain’t ’ygienic. Zmatter o’ fact, I never saw a Arabian dancing girl. Beer cost about a bob a boll. I don’t believe Arabian girls can dance: I never caught one of ’em at it. I ’eard one sing, once. It sounded like somebody was twistin’ ’er arm. I got a nice sun-tan, though. Yes, I did get that …”
“Ha!” says John Johnson.
“What d’you mean, Ha?” says Crowne. “You’re from Brummagem, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Sarnt.”
“I thought as much. A fly boy. Okay, fly boy. Let me tell you one thing. Don’t you get too fly with me. Got it?”
“Oi never said anythink, Sarnt!”
“You said Ha. It’s the way you said it. I can smell a chancer at five ’undred yards …” Sergeant Crowne looks around and his keen glance falls on Thurstan. “What’s your name?” he asks.
“Thurstan.”
“’Ow d’you like the Army, Thurstan?”
“I dunna lak it.”
“Oh, you don’t, eh?”
“Na.”
“Why not?”
Thurstan struggles for words, finds none, and shrugs.
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” says Sergeant Crowne. “Look, Geordie. I’ll tell you something for your own good. Don’t get tough with the Army. People ’ave tried it. You can’t do it, specially in wartime. I’m not saying you will, mind you. But fellers get browned off sometimes, and some of ’em try going absent. They always come back, most of ’em of their own accord. Make the best of it, Geordie. A man that goes absent is a mug: ’e can’t get away with it. Besides, it’s a sign of yellerness: a man that goes absent ’as no guts. Say you go absent. After three weeks you’re posted as a deserter; and then the police of the ’ole country are on your trail. You can’t get identity cards, you can’t do a thing, except perhaps lie low in somebody’s ’ouse. And if you do that you lay them open to prosecution for ’arbouring you. You live like a rat in a ’ole. In the end, you come back. Then you go to the Glass ’Ouse, and you wish you ’adn’t done it. Glass ’Ouse is tougher than a Civvy jail, Geordie.”
Thurstan finds a few words. You can see them struggling to get out. Each broken phrase comes away from his white face like a limping, bedraggled, dazed chick from an egg.
“Civvy jell … Glass Oose … Ah’m no fred o’t. Ah … Army, too. Ah’m no fred of nowt; life a deeth …”
Then Thurstan does something shocking.
He rises out of his condemned-cell crouch, crosses the room in two or three springs, and strikes the iron stove a terrible backhand blow. His bare fingers make it ring like a cracked bell. We leap up. Thurstan strikes it again. Then he comes back and sits down on his bed. A trickle of blood crawls from under one of his bitten nails.
“Ah can’t be hurt,” says Thurstan. As Sergeant Crowne lays a restraining hand on his shoulder, he shakes it oil and mutters: “Let me gang.”
I hear Sergeant Hands murmur: “There’s going to be trouble with that geezer.”
*
We are all a little nervous. If the Depot filled us with the shyness of boys at a new school, the Training Battalion finds us exhilarated but diffident, like boys in their first job of work.
Saturday morning finds us trembling on the brink of our first C.O.’s Parade. It is Sergeant Crowne who reassures us:
“It’s a bit of cush. It’s a slice of pie. The purpose of a Commanding Officer’s Parade is mainly to see that you keep yourselves up to scratch. They are raising a stink in some of the comic papers about ’ow silly it is to blanco your equipment. Well, we’re still ’ot on cleanliness and tidiness ’ere, just the same. Say you blanco every bit of web you’ve got—big pack and straps, little pack, braces, pouches, belt, sling, and gaiters—’ow long does it take you? I say half an hour. You do it once a week. Praps you go over your gaiters twice. And you’re neat and tidy. That’s better than going about like Franco’s Militia, ain’t it? You feel better if you’re neat and clean. In Civvy Street, you wouldn’t go about your business with a filthy face and a ten-day beard and fluff all over your coat, would do? No. Well, no more you do ’ere. All these grousers do is shout. ‘There’s a war on.’ Well, so there is. Certainly there’s a war on. But that’s no excuse for going about with your backside hanging out of your trousers and mud on your daisy-roots. War on! They’re telling me there’s a war on!
“Listen. War or no war, any man with dirty boots or dirty web or dirty flesh goes in the report. Now then. Grumble as much as you like, but wash! Moan your ’eads orf, but clean your boots! Grouse, but brush in that blanco! It takes a extra ’alf-hour. Alright. Let it. God strike me dead this minute—if I ’ad to walk out this very second to be shot against the wall, I’d prefer to die with clean ’ands and boots. It’s our way. It’s our style. Like it or lump it, by crackey you’ll foller it. Do you get me?
“Look at young Sergeant Butts. You’ve seen ’im. ’E looks like a kid.”
We have seen him. He does. He is very tall and lean, like the man in the O. Henry story who, if he car
ries any money with him has to carry it in one note folded lengthways … a man of six feet two, and no other dimensions worth mentioning. His face is round and innocent. He is all elbows and knees. When he walks fast he seems to have as many legs as a spider. There is such vigour in his skinny arms that he can draw a pair of new boots at five o’clock, and have a six-months’ polish on them by a quarter to seven. Though fully twenty years old, he has not yet started to shave. Though merely twenty years old, he is already a Sergeant. His nickname is “Greengage,” nobody knows why. He is purer than a girl in a convent school—he hasn’t even any theoretical naughtiness. Sergeant Butts doesn’t smoke. He says he enjoys a glass of beer, but nobody ever saw him drink one. All women, to him, are sisters. If he was born in sin, it doesn’t show; or, like an unsuccessful inoculation, it never took. On the first blast of Lights Out he is asleep. One second before Reveille he is awake, ready to levitate rather than arise. He glows with soap and inner health. Upon his round pink head, with its Demerara-sugar-coloured hair, the cocky little S.D. Cap looks too ferocious. You feel that he needs a Scout hat and a pole. If a passing A.T.S. girl happens to say “Morning, Sergeant Butts,” he blushes like a neon sign and grins like the Negro on the Euthymol poster, and says “He-he!” He finds it difficult to frown at new recruits, for he has no eyebrows. He has one accomplishment of which he is proud—stroking an imaginary dog. Sometimes, for the amusement of tired soldiers in his hut, he pretends to be coaxing a dog across the floor; fighting with it, tugging at it—he can lean back at an angle of something like forty-five degrees without falling over—and finally falling, overwhelmed by the dog’s caresses. Sergeant Butts is scrupulously neat in his dress. His S.D. tunic is tight as an umbrella cover; it makes him look eight feet tall.
Young as he is, he has already had his baptism of fire and blood. He was in France when things cracked. The corporal they call “Bearsbreath” told us the story—that sour, hard-cased, gloomy corporal who always sits, tough and self-contained as a Brazil nut.
Bearsbreath tells of the retreat. “Roads choked. Civvies running. Bundles. Furniture. Everybody scramming; women, kids, and all. Once in a while some dirty Fifth Columnist yells ‘Gas!’ and starts a stampede. Kids trampled. I wish I could have got hold of one of those Fifth Column boys. I’d of shot him in the belly and let him dig his own grave wriggling. You know that our mob was the last to go. Covering the withdrawal. Jerries dive-machine-gunning, women and all. I saw the body of a boy of about five shot through the face. His mother was still carrying him: couldn’t put him down. That’s the kind of people you’re fighting. Nazis. They’d kill anything. Kill your kids, too, as soon as look at ’em. Well, Greengage was cut off; him and about six men.
“He had about twenty-thirty miles to go to the coast. So he started out. His boots was pretty well scruppered even then. He dumped ’em, and slogged it barefoot, still carrying his equipment, till he found another pair. He polished ’em up, even then, just out of habit, whenever they stopped to rest. Two of the blokes with him, taking him for an example, shaved, honest to God, with bits of broken mirror to look in. No soap. But they had the habit of living or dying clean. Got me?
“Going was rough. Jerry came down from time to time, machine-gunning. Our blokes tried to get one or two of ’em with rifle fire. Got one. Slogged on. Jerry got four of Greengage’s men. The other two, dog-tired, had to dump their equipment. Feet conked out. Greengage hung on to his bundook and about fifty rounds. Every time a Jerry dived, Greengage had a go. Not a hope in hell. But he had a go. And every time it came to a rest, Greengage swabbed his boots and tried to clean up a bit. Another of his men copped it. Greengage went on with one bloke. Bloke’s feet conked out. So did Greengage’s. But he couldn’t give up. He was a N.C.O.: it’d look bad. Besides, it wasn’t in him to say ‘die’. He helped the other bloke along. They come to a wounded feller from Birkenhead. Greengage and the Guardsman carry him. Birkenhead feller dies on the way, so they dump him. Slog on. Get to coast. Guardsman says to Greengage: ‘Go on, Sarnt. I’m not coming. Can’t swim.’ ‘I can,’ says Greengage, and tows the feller out. Three miles. Gets him to boat. Climbs aboard. Salutes the officer and passes out. It wasn’t the tiredness. He had two ounces of shrapnel in his back, and some more in his leg. So there you are. He’s a good soldier, Greengage. All that way, under what they might call trying circumstances, he did his best to keep neat.”
When Bearsbreath told us this, Dale asked whether Sergeant Butts got a medal.
“Medal? What for?”
“Heroism.”
“Heroism? He did his duty. Jexpect him to stay and get caught? Jexpect him to leave his pal behind? Ja mean, heroism? Ja think they chuck medals away?”
*
“So there it is,” says Sergeant Crowne. “Take it or leave it. The order for C.O.s Parade is, belt and pouches and side arms, and rifle. You want to see them rifles are clean. Them barrels must gleam like Blind O’Reilly, and every nook and cranny must be dug out spotless. Mind your magazine springs: one speck o’ grit and Gord ’elp you. There’s a rifle inspection right after C.O.s Parade; and today being Saturday, the rest of the day is yours to muck about in. Got me? Geordie, be a good lad and ’elp me on with this stuff.”
Thurstan holds up Sergeant Crowne’s webbing. The Sergeant could easily manage on his own, but he is trying to win Thurstan’s confidence.
Watching, we experience something of the thrill of the circus … The Tamer, with supreme confidence, kneels … the lion opens the red cavern of his mouth…. The brilliantined head rests, for a second, between the hungry-looking white tearing-teeth…. Then the Tamer, rises, bowing, and pent-up admiration lets itself loose in applause.
“Thanks,” says Sergeant Crowne, buttoning his epaulettes.
Thurstan, feeling every glance focussed upon him, shakes himself.
That man is dangerous.
A bugle sounds. “Quarter. Get outside to the Square,” says Sergeant Crowne. Still unaccustomed to individual movement, we go down in a tight group.
*
Afternoon. It blows up cold. Yes, in from the North rides a muddy-piebald squadron of clouds, the spearhead of the advancing winter. All of a sudden the air bites. Lance-Sergeant Dagwood, a languid-seeming slow-talking, meditative, inexhaustible old soldier out of Birkenhead, breaks up some odds and ends of timber, using only his fingers and feet. He tears to pieces a piece of two-inch plank with quiet deliberation, as if it were a Japanese wooden puzzle to which he knows the key. He is a bony man with a plain, knobbly face: the best shot in the battalion, imperturbable as a carved image, with hands like wrenches, arms that have the lifting power of cranes, and only one hot passion—the game and play of football. Placidly smoking an absurd little pipe, Dagwood shatters a twenty-pound lump of coal to bits with one calm and awful kick of his iron heel. “The times I’ve done this for my old woman,” he says. A match rasps; the draught sighs, then bellows. The stove is going.
“Where’s Bullock?” somebody asks.
Barker says: “Boxing. Officer says ‘Do you box?’ Ole Bullock says ‘Yes.’ ‘Amatyer or Professional?’ ‘Pro,’ says Ole Bullock. The long and the short of it is, ’e’s gorn to the gym. Gord blimey, I’d ’ate to ’ave to take ole Bullock on. I can use me forks a bit, but nothing like ole Bullock.”
“Can he go?” asks Dagwood.
“Go? One smack from that right ’and, and yer jaw’s just the place where yer teef used to be. ’E’s a pro, I tell yer. ’E met Nippy Oliver.”
Dagwood asks: “Who’s Nippy Oliver?”
“Nippy went ten rahnds wiv Young Kilham.”
“And who’s Young Kilham?”
“No kiddin’, Sarnt? Don’t yer know? Young Kilham drew with Hymie Gold. Hymie Gold went the distance with Fred M’Aharba. Ever ’eard of M’Aharba? It’s a sort of an Irish name, but ’e’s a sheeny: M’Aharba is Abraham spelt backwards. ’E could of been ’eavyweight champion. No jokes, ole Bullock can fight.”
“Did he beat this Nippy
Oliver?”
“Certainly ’e beat Nippy Oliver. On’y ’e was robbed o’ the verdict. The referee was crooked. Everybody says ole Bullock won that fight. ’E’s a wildcat, Sarnt, honest to Gawd.”
“Well, that’s all right,” says Dagwood, easily. “He looks like a fighter.”
“See that nose, Sarnt? See them ears? Oh,” says Barker, hastily, “I know that sort o’ thing don’t count. But … well, talk o’ noses. I knoo a feller that kept a pub, and to look at this geezer you’d swear ’e’d fought bare fists with everybody from the Pedlar Palmer to Joe bloody Louis. If ever there was any trouble in ’is pub, ’e’d simply lean over the bar and say: ‘Anybody askin’ for anyfink ’ere?’ and people ’d shut up as if somebody’s shoved a sock down their froats. Well, one night ’e got a bit you-know, soppy, and ’e told me abaht ’is face. It ’appened when ’e was a younkster—’e fell aht of a pear tree, and the branches ’ad sort of bopped ’im as ’e come froo ’em. ’E’d never ’ad a scrap in ’is life. ’E couldn’t ’it ’ard enough to shake a blamange. Didn’t ’ave the nerve, any’ow.