Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

by Gerald Kersh

  “So then Oi fell in loov wi’ a loovly girl, and she ’ad a ’usband as ’ad deserted ’er, and Oi ’ad a woife as ’ad deserted me, so we couldn’t get married, so Oi became ’er Unmarried ’Usband. It’s all roight. The Army recognised it, and she gets moi money. It’s respectable and proper.

  “Oi gave moi married woife all moi furniture. We got another place, a cottage. But whenever moi unmarried woife went out shopping, moi married woife, as is jealous of ’er, used to wait for ’er and call ’er names in the street. And moi unmarried woife called moi married woife names back.

  “Then moi married woife’s mother, as thinks the world of ’er, used to wait outsoide where Oi was working and follow me ’ome, and call me names. Then my own mum and dad used to come and troy and make peace, but moi mum never got along wi’ moi married woife’s mum, and they used to foight in the street outsoide moi ’ouse. And moi unmarried woife’s stepmother, as ’ates the soight of ’er, started wroiting anonymous letters to everybody about me. And moi married woife set Jim on me, and Jim used to wait for me to leave the ’ouse in the morning and pick on me, and Oi ’ad to pommel ’im. And then moi unmarried woife’s ’usband turned oop, and ’e started waiting for me too, and Oi ’ad to pommel ’im, only ’e was a rough ’andful and it took me some toime. So Oi ’ad to leave ’alf an hour earlier in the morning to attend to moi foights.

  “One day moi unmarried woife made ’erself a new dress, and moi married woife waited for ’er and tore it off ’er back.

  “The neighbours complained to the police about the disturbance. All the kids in the street enjoyed themselves and played Ring-o’-Roses round me whenever Oi went out. Moi mates started giving me nicknames, like The Mormon, and Ole King Solomon. Moi unmarried woife’s stepmother scratched moi face in the street, and moi married woife came along and ’ad a foight wi’ ’er; and moi unmarried woife came out an’ joined in, an’ all the kids started singing and dancing. That was on a Saturday noight. Moi unmarried woife ast me if loov was worth whoile, and ’ad ’ysterics and soom women came in an’ soothed ’er down. Oi didn’t get a wink o’ sleep. Oi made up moi moind to join the Foreign Legion. Then, on the Sunday, war was declared. Oi was on the doorstep o’ the Recruiting Office two hours before it opened. Oi loike war. War is noice: it gives yow a chance to ’ave a little peace.”

  “And what’s all this got to do with Brummy Joe?” asked Sergeant Hands.

  “Give me a chance to get a word in,” says Bates. “Oi ’aven’t started yet.”

  But Cookhouse sounds. We snatch up our knives and forks and go to tea.

  *

  In the course of this meal—mug of tea, slice and a half of bread, two-thirds of an ounce of margarine, and a Cornish Pasty, which Barker describes as “all pasty and no Cornish”—Dale, of all men on God’s earth, does something silly.

  He is at the foot of the table. He wants to attract the attention of Hodge, who is pouring tea out of a three-gallon bucket. He shouts. Hodge doesn’t hear, for a couple of hundred men are eating at the tops of their voices. There is an odd crust of bread lying ready to hand. Dale takes careful aim and throws it at Hodge. The crust misses our gigantic friend and—it is one of those things that luck alone can achieve; a thing beyond human skill, like the falling on its edge of a tossed coin—drops very neatly into the hand of the Company Quartermaster-Sergeant, who happens to be passing at the moment.

  The Quartermaster swells. His chin comes up; his eyebrows go down. “Who done that?” he asks.

  Dale, white as paper, gulps and says: “I did, sir.”

  “Oh, you did. Do you realise that you’re a traitor to your country? Do you realise that you’re nothing better than a Nazi agent? Do you realise that if you took and blew up a power station, that wouldn’t be no worse than what you just now done? Do you realise that this is Bread? Do you realise that Bread is the Staff of Life? Do you realise that thousands and thousands of sailors and marines drown every second for this here piece of bread? Do you realise that this is sabotage? Do you realise that in wartime, there’s a death penalty for sabotage? DO YOU REALISE THAT THERE IS A WAR ON, YOU HORRIBLE MAN, YOU?”

  “No sir,” says Dale, losing his head. “Yes sir.”

  “What d’you mean, No sir, Yes sir? Are you a Hitlerite?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then what do you commit offences like this for?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then why do you do things and not know you’re doing them, or why you’re doing ’em? Do sane men do that?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then you’re crazy, aren’t you?”

  Dale twists his face into a sickly grin and shrugs his shoulders.

  “Oh,” says the C.Q.M.S. “Laughing. You think it’s a joke, do you?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then what are you laughing at?”

  “Nothing sir.”

  “Laughing at nothing. Raving mad. You must be, or you wouldn’t chuck lumps of nourishing food about in times like these. Don’t let me catch you at it again. Carry on.”

  Dale moodily eats his Cornish pasty.

  “You should have nudged him,” says the Schoolmaster. “In a case like that, the shock weapon is to be preferred to the missile weapon.”

  “What’s a shock weapon?” asks Dale.

  As we walk back to the hut, the Schoolmaster explains. “A shock weapon is something with which you strike your enemy directly.”

  “Like a cosh,” says Barker.

  “Exactly. Or a bayonet. A missile weapon is something that throws things and strikes your enemy from a distance, like a rifle, or a crust of bread, or a bow-and-arrow. The development of armies depends upon the development of missile weapons. Now we are highly advanced. An aeroplane armed with bombs and machine guns may be described as a missile weapon. So may a tank. The missile weapon is reaching its maximum efficiency. The rifle is being supplanted.”

  “Rifles have their uses,” says Corporal Bearsbreath. “They’re easy to clean, easy to use, and easy to carry. And when all’s said ’n’ done, a ·303 bullet in your tripes is just as good as anything else. I bet old Wellington would have been glad of a few short Lee-Enfield magazine-rifles, Mark Three.”

  “I bet he would,” says the Schoolmaster. “After all, any man trained to use a Lee-Enfield can be pretty certain of hitting his enemy, at three, four, or five hundred yards. In Wellington’s day, when we carried the old smooth-bore musket known as Brown Bess, the Guards’ musketry would have made you laugh. We practised at a hundred yards, with six-foot targets shaped like French Grenadiers. In the best possible conditions, the old brown musket misfired four times out of ten. You had to ram a handful of gunpowder down the spout, and put in a wad, and a ball, and then pour powder on the place where the flint struck a spark, and then pull your trigger and hope for the best. Training was at a high pitch at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when a Guardsman could load and fire about eight times in a minute. A musket, then, was like a cheap cigarette lighter—a matter of flint and steel. The chief concern of the soldier, then, was to see that his musket misfired as seldom as possible. So the first shot, loaded into the musket at leisure, was the most valuable. You had to make the most of your first volley.

  “Thus, at the battle of Fontenoy, the Coldstream Guards in the front line advanced for half a mile up a slope under a crossfire of artillery against the French who were in trenches at the top. They received the French musket-fire without replying. Then, when they were right on top of the enemy, and one Coldstreamer in three had fallen, we let fly and swept them off the earth in an absolute hailstorm of bullets. If they had fired at longer range with their first careful loads, and then hastily reloaded, about 50 per cent of the muskets would have misfired, and the attack would have lost half its effect.

  “Now do you know what I think? Our Guards discipline, which is the best in the world, has its roots in the old-time need t
o conserve fire; to keep a line, stay unbroken, hold the trigger finger back until the word of command, and then let loose one shattering volley. You see, the Coldstream Guards are the only survivors of the first highly-trained British Army. We have background. We have a start.”

  John Johnson says: “Oi wouldn’t moind foighting in the Battle o’ Waterloo. It was ea-sy. They didn’t ’ave no shells and no bombs.”

  “They did. Major Shrapnel had already invented his shell.”

  “Ah, but nothing loike now. Them old cannon balls just bounced.”

  “If you saw an eighteen-pound ball of iron ricocheting and flying over the ground towards you, what would you do?”

  “Duck.”

  “Do you realise that discipline was such that the British infantry were forbidden to step out of line, even in the face of round shot: and didn’t?”

  The boy from Widnes says: “I wouldn’t like a bang on the head with an eighteen-pound ball of iron. As far as I’m concerned, it’d be just the same as a tank.”

  Hacket, whose rifle sights, having a film of dust on them, were described as “being lousy with spiders and cobwebs and dirty filthy rust and verdigris,” says: “For my part, you can keep the Short Lee-Enfield.”

  “You ought to have a matchlock,” says the Schoolmaster. “The first Coldstreamers lugged a thing about four feet long, firing a bullet weighing an ounce and a quarter. He had to pour a charge of coarse powder down the muzzle, spit in a bullet which he carried in his mouth, pour some finer powder on the priming pan, and set it all off with a match.”

  “Did they ’ave matches?” asks Barker.

  “A kind of smouldering rope about three feet long. He took one end of the match between the thumb and second finger of his right hand, and then—bang! A fire order wasn’t just ‘Fire!’ It was something like this: ‘Take up your musket and staff. Join your musket and staff. Blow your pan. Prime your pan. Shut your pan. Cast off your loose powder. Cast about your musket and staff. Charge your musket. Recover your musket in your right hand. Shoulder your musket and carry the staff with it. Take our your match. Blow your match. Cock your match. Try your match. Guard your pan. Present blow your match upon your pan and give fire.’ All that to get a bullet out.”

  “And now,” says the boy from Widnes, “a Bren gun, weighing, I bet, less than one o’ them thur things, can fire a hundred and twenty bullets a minute. I bet it took them about five minutes to fire. In five minutes, you or I could kill six ’undred men with a Bren gun.”

  “Now that’s what I call civilisation,” says Hacket.

  *

  Alison, the glum blond man, suddenly says: “My old woman talks tripe. She says, why don’t Hitler and Churchill ’ave a set-to all by themselves and settle the war that way?”

  “That wouldn’t be fur,” says Widnes. “’Itler’s the younger man. Old Winnie’s getting on in years.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” says the lad from the Elephant and Castle. “Old Winnie’s got plenty of go in ’im. It’s the fighting spirit, see?”

  “Winnie breathes ’eavy,” says the glum blond man.

  “Don’t you believe it,” says Widnes. “’Itler breathes worse.”

  “You know what?” says Bates. “If it come to that we could make Brummy Joe Prime Minister just for the toime being. Brummy Joe’s a terror—”

  “Tommy Farr’d be better,” says Alison.

  “’E could go over wiv ’is Foreign Minister,” says the Lad. “We could make Len ’Arvey Foreign Minister.”

  “War Minister,” says Widnes.

  “Nah, it couldn’t be done,” says Alison.

  “Why not?” asks Widnes.

  “Who’d do politics?”

  “They could make an arrangement,” says Bates.

  “’Itler wouldn’t fight,” says the Lad.

  “’E’d ’ave to,” says the boy from Widnes. “It’d be a diplomatic arrangement.”

  “’Itler’d fight dirty,” says the Lad.

  “So would Brummy Joe,” insists Bates. “’E carries a foot o’ lead pipe covered wi’ rubber bands orf beer bottles. Brummy’d feel naked without it.”

  “Would they charge an entrance fee?” asks Widnes.

  “Bob a ’ead,” says the Lad. “Make a packet.”

  “Oi bet yow there wouldn’t half be some excitement,” says Bates. “Wi’ us and the Jerries in the audience.”

  “Proper rough’ouse,” says the Lad.

  “We’d all ’ave to go,” says Widnes.

  “It’d be just like a war,” says Alison.

  “But we’re ’aving a war now,” says the Lad.

  “Blimey, so we are,” says Widnes.

  “It wouldn’t prove anything,” says Sergeant Hands. “Besides, all that kind o’ thing is out of date. It’d make you laugh, Crowney, the way they used to fight in the olden times. You’d meet your enemies, and you’d bow, and you’d scrape, and you’d say: ‘You fire first,’ and they’d say: ‘No, after you,’ and then you’d fire at each other a bit, and so on.”

  “Don’t be silly,” says Sergeant Crowne. “War always was war, and when it come down to brass tacks, it was the same as it is now. You try and kill the other feller, and the other feller tries to kill you.”

  “It’s true,” says the Schoolmaster. “What Sergeant Hands says is true. Look at what happened when the Coldstream Guards fought the French at Fontenoy. They came face to face with the French Guards. They halted fifty yards away. Lord Charles Hay of the 1st Guards took off his hat, and drank the enemy’s health. The Coldstream officers did likewise. The French Guards returned the salute. Then Lord Hay said: ‘I hope, gentlemen, that you are going to wait for us today, and not swim the Scheldt as you swam the Main at Dettingen.’

  “So Lord Hay turned to his own men, and said: ‘Men of the King’s Company, these are the French Guards, and I hope you are going to beat them today. Gentlemen of the French Guards, fire!’

  “The French Commander answered: ‘We never fire first; fire yourselves.’

  “The English Guards then cheered the French, and the French Guards cheered back. They were thirty yards away from each other. The French Guards raised their muskets. A Coldstreamer said: ‘For what we are about to receive, Lord make us truly thankful.’ Then the French Guards fired. About nineteen Guards’ officers went down, and a large number of men. Then it was our turn. We opened fire. Our musketry was known and feared all over the world. The British officers were walking up and down, tapping down the musket barrels of the men to make sure that they aimed low. We kept up a running fire, wiped out the whole of the French front rank. And so we cut through to the French camp.”

  “Well,” says Crowne, “I’d see myself damned before I’d invite any Jerry to fire at me first. ‘’It first. ’It ’ard. Keep on ’itting.’ That’s my motto.”

  “It depends, though,” says Dale.

  “Depends on what?”

  “Who you’re fighting, Sergeant.”

  “No it don’t. If you fight, fight to win, and get it over. If you got to fight, fight for keeps. If I like somebody, I don’t fight ’im, and so I don’t take my ’at off to ’im or ask ’im to ’it me first…. It makes a nice story, Schoolmaster, and if it’s in ’istory, then it must be true. But that sort o’ thing is a thing o’ the past. If I ’ad to pick ten men to lead in a bayonet charge, I’d pick men that ’ated Jerry’s guts and wanted to see the colour of ’em. I daresay there’s two sides to any argument, but for my part I don’t care a twopenny damn. My side’s the right side, or I wouldn’t be fighting on it.”

  “I agree with you,” says Hands, “but you can’t get away from being English.”

  “Who says you can?”

  “Nobody says you can. You can’t get away from your breeding, that’s what I say. I’ve seen you myself, Crowne, with my own two eyes, during that bit of a riot. You were using your hands. In the heat of that fight, when there was a Wog coming at you with a knife, you boxed, Crowney, you boxed. If there’d been
a referee watching you you couldn’t have kept more above that Wog’s belt-line. It’s an instinct. It would have been all right for you to have used your feet. I used mine, I know. But it just didn’t occur to you not to fight Queensberry. My brother talked just like you. But once, when he found himself wounded, in the same shell hole with a wounded Jerry, last war, he shared his iodine and dressings with him. Though he would have killed him in a fight, any day, mind you. It’s drummed into your head as a kid. You can’t get away from it. But I don’t mind admitting that what the Schoolmaster told us about letting the Frenchman fire first is a bit too much of a good thing. Why, it’s a wonder they didn’t just come over and shake hands and call the war off, after that. I would of.”

  “It’s good publicity,” says Hacket. “I bet those Frenchmen said to themselves: ‘What decent fellows these Englishmen are.’ And it helped to undermine ’em.”

  Hands says: “English soldiers behave decent, instinctively; put Englishmen down anywhere and they’ll be decent. Just as Guardsmen automatically form a straight line and keep their heads up. It’s in them to do so. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be fighting for?”

  The Schoolmaster says: “A war can be an affair of honour just as a duel can be.”

  “You don’t fight no duels with murderers,” says Crowne.

  “Hear, hear,” says Dale.

  Hands looks at him. “What are you fighting for, Dale?”

  “Well,” says Dale. “The Nazis have got to be stopped or they’ll be everywhere.”

  “You, Widnes?”

  “Because there’s a war on, Sarnt.”

  “Hodge?”

  “Hitler is bad. If you give in to un, you give in to wickedness. If you don’t fight wickedness, you encourage wickedness. It’d be wicked not to fight Hitler, don’t ee see?”

  “Alison?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care, Sarnt. If the whole bloody country’s fighting, what d’you expect me to do? Read a book or somethink?”