Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

by Gerald Kersh

  “I don’t like ’em,” says Crowne. “They sort you out. The littler they are and the bigger you are, the more they sort you out, and whatever ’appens you’re in the crap. ’It ’em and you’re a bully. Ignore ’em and you’re yeller.”

  “Psychology,” says Hands. He rolls this word on his tongue. “Psychology. Psychology means that a man’s got to be handled with kid gloves in case he goes off the deep end. Recruits suffer with Psychology. So do little men. A recruit one week squadded ’ll work himself skinny to show he’s willing and ready to do his stuff. You’d die of strain if you kept on as you go on at the Depot. After you’re trained, of course, you lose a good deal of your Psychology and start hanging round the Naffy like a good soldier. Well, with some little men it’s the same. They want to show they’re not afraid of anybody. They hit you back before you hit them first. It’s exactly the same as a rookie moving before he’s given an order. Some of ’em get so keyed up they have to go to the sick-bunk for Bromide. It’s the best thing in the world for a touch of Psychology, a nice spot of Bromide.”

  “Nerves are ruination to a soldier,” says Crowne.

  “That’s what training is for,” says Hands. “To get rid of nerves. Look at me. I’ve got no nerves in all my body. Yet once I was a bundle of ’em. That’s how I came to join this mob. You would have died laughing, Butch. I was standing looking at one of them posters. Join the Army and See the World. And as I’m looking there comes up a Recruiting Sarnt. They were on a nice racket in peacetime, them pigs. They got a commission, or something, on approved recruits. I’m talking of a few years back. I was so nervous—this is a fact, Crowney—I used to get bound up and have to take medicine: I was shy about making a noise. Honest to God. Well, this feller comes up to me, and says ‘Hello.’ I blushed like a pansy, from head to foot. I’d never seen such a man in my life. He was about the same build as Butcher, here, but he carried himself better and had a tash exactly like the horns on a sacred cow in India or somewhere. Chest like the Albert Hall. It went bloobety-boom like a drum whenever he talked.

  “He said: ‘Well, son? Thinking of joining the Army? See the world? Travel a bit? Put on a bit of bone and muscle and a punch like the kick of a grey-bellied mule in a thunderstorm?’ He was using Psychology, there, you see, because I was as weedy as a clurk and doughy-faced. ‘Be a man,’ he says. ‘Be a soldier. Come and have a drink and we’ll talk about it.’ I didn’t like to, but I was too shy to say no. We had a mild ale. He started reeling off the old bull-and-boloney about the Army. ‘The Guards! Think of standing over there spick and span and trained to a hairbreadth guarding the body of your King and your Queen. Do you want to go East? Think of Egypt. I’ve been there many a time. Peaches and oranges growing on every street corner and plump little brides with eyes as black as charcoal ready to fall down and worship you like a god. China! Lovely sunshine, live like a Mandarin in silks and satins, cushy little drill parades for gentle exercise in the morning and romance! Talk about your picture palaces! Talk about your story-books! Little princesses with almond eyes and tiny little dolls’ feet ready to cover you with silks and jewels. Palestine, the Holy Land! Are you serious-minded? Read your Bible? I’m a reading man myself, son. You get leisure and time to do whatever you like in the Guards, and get paid well for doing it; paid like a gentleman, and fed like a Prince, and treated like a Lord. You say you’re a Bible-reading man?’ (I’d never said any such thing.) ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘many and many’s the time I’ve read my Bible—Old Testament, New Testament, and all the other Testaments from cover to cover and back. Well, you’ll be taken to see the Tomb of Jesus Christ Himself. You don’t find a thing like that on every street corner, I don’t mind telling you…. Or maybe you’re an Atheist? So am I. An Atheist to the backbone. You’re free to believe anything you like in the Guards. Are you a Roman Candle? I’m a bit of a Roman Candle myself. Or if you’re a Jew, we’ll send you to Synagogues: some of my best friends are Jews.

  “‘But,’ he says, ‘don’t think I’m trying to talk you into anything. It don’t rest with me. I can show you the ropes. But you’ve got to be fit, because in the Guards, for instance, they take only the cream of the population and the salt of the earth. You look to me just the sort of man they’re crying out for. And if you’re not, you will be. Look at me. I go eighteen stone, all bone and muscle, and yet when I joined I was six-foot-five and weighed nine-stone-two. But now … I’m an old man now. But the other day some kids were trying to put the weight, and I just showed ’em how to do it. I didn’t think I still could. I picked up that ball of iron and tossed it through the Orderly Room roof, two hundred yards away. Yet once … why, when I was issued my first pair of ammunition boots, I fell down when I tried to pick ’em up, and when I put ’em on I couldn’t move my legs.

  “‘Now look. What’s your job? Nothing much, I’ll be bound. Then why not just look in and have the doctor—a Harley Street Specialist: you’d pay him a hundred pounds’ fee for the sort of examination we’ll ask him to give you free—have him just look at you? It’s my business to offer advice and help those that need help—not to try and talk you into anything or persuade you to do anything you didn’t mean to do in the first place. Son, sonny boy, can’t you see I’m trying to help you? Can’t you see I’d give my right hand to do you a good turn, because I liked your face the minute I saw it? Can’t you see that, kid? I’m only a weak old man, but I want to help the youngsters before I die … and I haven’t got much longer to live. Humanity is my country. To do good is my religion. Come and serve your King and your Country. As the poet says:

  What is your boasting worth

  If ye grudge one year of service to the

  lordliest life on earth?

  The poet that wrote the little red book of poetry said that, son, and it’s true. The lordliest life on earth! Shall we just take a tiny little look in?’

  “And before I knew what was happening,” says Hands, “I’d joined the Coldstream Guards. As a matter of fact, I was on my way to have tea with my sister when I ran into that Recruiting Sergeant. But I was too shy to say I wouldn’t join the Army after all he’d said. And then when I realized I was about an hour late for my tea, I was so frightened of what my sister would say that I’d probably have run away from home, anyway. I had some idea of signing on for about three years. Then some bloke says to me: ‘Do you want to sign for twenty-one years?’ I says: ‘Yes, sir, no, sir.’ ‘What am I supposed to say to that?’ he says. ‘Yes, sir, no, sir…. Three bags full?’ I says: ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Make your mind up,’ he says, ‘is it twenty-one?’ To save further argument I says: ‘Yes, sir.’ And bang went the best years of my life. My feelings were such that I wetted myself.”

  “Any regrets?” asks Dagwood.

  “What’d be the use of regrets?” asks Hands. “I look at it like this: Say I hadn’t signed. What ’d have happened? I was a squirt, no good for anything much. I’d have gone stuttering and blushing on and on in some twopenny-half-penny job, without the nerve to ask for a five-bob rise or talk back to a kid of ten. But now? I’m under orders, yes. I’m not my own boss, no. But no more is Churchill, no more is the King, no more is the Pope, no more is anybody his own boss. Whole point is, I’m not afraid of any man or anything; with the possible exception of wasps.”

  “Funny thing—I’m afraid of caterpillars,” says The Budgerigar.

  “You’re afraid they’ll run after you and catch you and eat you, you big-booted lettuce-leaf,” says Hands.

  At this moment something happens. For the first and last time in recorded history, The Budgerigar has a flash of inspiration. He replies to Hands. He drops a pearl of repartee:

  “And you? You scared a wasp might take your nose for a pot o’ raspberry jam?”

  But Butcher, picking on the word jam, stamps down The Budgerigar’s one and only witticism by saying:

  “Jam! Remember Blinding Oliver? I took him to a friend’s for tea, once. He behaves himself all hunky-dory till he wants some jam. Then
/>
  Olly shouts out, at the top of his voice: ‘Pass the——ing Pozzy!’ So

  I pulled him up. ‘Now then, Olly,’ I said. And he said: ‘Sorry, miss. I meant to say: “Pass the——ing jam”.’”

  “Look who’s here,” says Dagwood.

  “Joe Purcell,” says Crowne.

  Hands, of course, says: “She thought her little girl’s nightie was white, till she met old Persil. Ha-ha-ha!”

  Corporal Purcell comes in and says: “What’s this about Bill Nelson?”

  “Snuffed it,” says Crowne. “Ask Butch.”

  Butcher the Butcher tells him.

  “Pity,” says Purcell.

  Another corporal comes in. “Who said Bill Nelson was dead?” he asks.

  This is Corporal Bittern, sometimes known as “Twice Shy.” It would be a waste of time to ask him how he heard about Nelson. News spreads in camps. There is something telepathic about it: it is as strange and disquieting as signal-drums in a dark jungle. Who told who what? When? How? What little bird carried the whisper? Find the breeding-place of the herring—witness the mating rites of the eel—then try and trace the source of an Army news-flash or the place where a rumour gestates.

  Butcher the Butcher explains again.

  “Ha,” says Bittern, and he draws a very deep breath….

  XV

  The Retreat of Bill Nelson

  THEN Bittern says: “It’s a bit of a joke, when you come to think of it.”

  Bearsbreath shrugs. Crowne says: “Why, what’s so screaming bloody funny?”

  “I saved his life in France,” says Bittern.

  “It makes a bit of a change,” says Hands. “Now somebody saved Bill’s life. I suppose Nelson said: ‘I’m dying for a smoke,’ and you gave him a fag. That’s how you saved his life.”

  “Oh,” says Bittern, with unshakable calm, “I didn’t earn any medals. I didn’t mean to save Bill’s life. It wasn’t deliberate. It was partly an accident. Seen my shoulder?”

  “All my life I been dying to see your lovely shoulder,” says Hands. “Why don’t you wear ev’ning dress? Gorgeous!”

  “If my shoulder hadn’t been in the way,” says Bittern, “the bullet that hit Bill in the eye would have scored a direct hit and come out the back of his skull. That’s all. I didn’t mean to do it. Only that shoulder gave me trouble. I didn’t begrudge it. Bill wasn’t so bad, a pukka Guardsman, and we got on pretty fair. Taken all-in-all, now that I come to think of it, I liked Bill. Well, that’s nothing; everybody liked Bill and Bill liked everybody. I wasn’t sorry to have him with me that time. I’ve seen worse soldiers than Nelson. I’ve seen one or two worse than him in my time. So, Bill’s dead. Well, we all got to die some time. The meanest louse bags hang on to their old age till it burns their fingers and goes out with a stink. Fairly decent chaps like Bill die first, always. What d’you expect?”

  “Ah, I wish I’d been there,” says Butcher the Butcher. “But I’m Employed. I’m supposed to have blood pressure.”

  “You should worry,” says Bittern. “You didn’t miss much. I could have got on all right without being there. Still, it gives you something to talk about. What else is a war for? You were there, Bearsbreath—you have a nice time?”

  Bearsbreath shrugs again. He has nothing to say to Bittern. He dislikes that strange man, and his too-calm philosophic face. There is something about Bittern that reminds you of Cattle: only Cattle is at rest, and Bittern is not. You feel that Corporal Bittern’s brain is like a mouse in a panel: behind his blank face it scratches and nibbles, disturbing his rest … alive, elusive, insistent, secretly procreative, hungry, watchful, always out of reach. You hear it; you smell it; it irritates you. But it won’t let much of itself be seen. Cattle’s calm comes from within. The calm of Bittern has been put on, fitted, and screwed down over something that is far from calm and nobody’s business. Cattle accumulates experiences as an old maid collects string; ties up the odd ends and lets them accumulate without purpose, neatly arranged in a cupboard. But Bittern knots and unknots, ravels, unravels, splices, stretches, and restlessly tangles things into patterns. But he is calm and cool—that expression, under his raised eyebrows, is what reminds you of Cattle. He used to be some kind of clerk to some kind of merchant, in some small city somewhere. Then he joined the Guards, three years before the war. There is a bile-green tinge of misanthropy in his talk … a twang of sarcasm, a curl of the lip, a grittiness that gets men’s tempers like the east wind.

  The sound of Bittern’s voice makes Bearsbreath savage. He gives Bittern a look that seems to bite like a splash of acid, and goes out.

  Bittern grins. “I get that man down,” he says. “I’m just like sand in his teeth. I wonder why?”

  Lazily, Cattle says: “Nelson was everybody’s pal round here, you see. And it’s just a way you have of talking …”

  Bittern says: “Don’t get me wrong.”

  “Bitt talks bolo,” says Purcell. “But Bitt ain’t so bad. We met on that bloody road, didn’t we, Bitt?” He lights the butt of a cigarette, “They was bleeding like pigs. YeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaoooOOOOOO—bobobobobobobobobop!—remember that noise, Bitt?”

  “And—KARUP!” says Bittern, knocking over four clanging iron basins.

  As these roll, reverberating, Purcell screams again: “MmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaooooOOOO!”

  “KARUP!”

  “Turn it in,” says Sergeant Crowne, with menace.

  Silence.

  Then Bittern begins to talk.

  *

  It was rough, in a way. I can’t remember being in many rougher places, in my time. As far as I could gather, it was a crack-up. We didn’t know at that time what was happening. I never did believe much in anything or anybody. But Bill did, and Bill took it harder than me, in a way. I always expect the worst. But Bill was the sort of mug that couldn’t see the worst ever happening. He wasn’t made that way. The rumour got around that the French had broken. They said the Jerries were through, and coming in strength. Well, latrine rumours—you’ve heard them a million times and so have I. They’d been coming over. Then they started to come good and proper. To me it looked like one of those pictures you see of one of those whirlwinds that go round and round like corkscrews, picking up dust and stuff. They seemed to be coming out of the sky just like that. Purcell saw it too. So did plenty others. It looked like all the planes in the world peeling off and coming down, like twirling water out of a wet sock. Bombing and dive-machine-gunning is all right within limits. There comes a time when it annoys you. If it doesn’t kill you it shakes you. Well, you don’t want to let it shake you, because that’s what it’s for. When you hear a plane coming down on you, it sounds as if it’s only a foot above your head. You duck down. Then they start dropping it on you.

  Your eardrums aren’t built to stand up to that sort of row. Nor are your nerves made to stand up to that much shaking and blast. It seems to get in your eyes and nose and guts. It’s just then that you’ve got to hold on to yourself, if you see what I mean. If you break, you’re done. When it began to get really bad we had to lie down and wait a bit. I don’t know about others. I’m talking about Nelson, me, and some others out of our Company. I’ll tell you a peculiar thing. One man, Gabb, started to get out and run. The mug wanted to do something about it, I suppose. I caught him by the wrist. Then I found myself holding Gabb’s hand, as if he’d been a girl next to me in the pictures. Just Gabb’s hand. No Gabb. They’ll have a job to find that mug when they blow the Last Trump, I think….

  In a bit of a lull, I said to Nelson: “What’s happening, I wonder?”

  He said: “Didn’t anybody tell you there’s a war on?”

  Mulkin, Perch, Ted Dinning, and Clarkie went down before he got the words out. We didn’t have very good cover. Then somehow the word came that we were retreating. I don’t know how. But it got about before we had any official word about it. Bill said: “It’s a dirty, filthy lie.” I never saw anybody so mad with rage; only he kept fairly quiet. �
�A dirty filthy lie! I’ll nail the next bastard that repeats it to the next bastard that listens to it! So help me God! Go on—somebody say it!” Nobody did.

  We stood that attack for about seventy-two hours longer. Imagine you’re in a concrete mixer. It was like that. Then we knew that the French were done. We saw some of ’em. There was something crazy about it. Fifth Column stuff. Somebody had opened the door. What did we know about it, anyway? The foreigners seemed to be in a panic. They felt they’d been sold out. They felt it was every man for himself. We stuck on. There wasn’t much of a chance for us to go and mix it with the Germans, in any proper way. As far as we could judge afterwards, they were coming from the sides, as it were.

  Then it seemed pretty certain that we were cut off. Nelson said to me: “One thing’s certain. If our mugs are getting back out of it for the time being, this mob’ll be the last to go. If there is going to be any kind of stepping back a bit”—the proper word stuck in his gizzard—“we’ll have to cover ’em.”

  I said: “Why?”

  He said: “Why? Why? I’ll tell you why. In a hundred years’ time they’ll write books about it, and for the sake of regimental records and what not we can’t very well not be the last out.”

  I said: “You’re talking bullsh, Bill.”

  He said: “Shut up, Bittern.”

  Then the attack started again. God only knows what they were chucking at us. They were hammering us with everything they could find to throw. Most of all, there were planes. It was all very well for Bill to talk. It was as if we were out in a real blinding thunderstorm and a blizzard combined, in the middle of the moors on a pitch-dark night. It was like that. It was impossible to go and impossible to stay. It was madness either way.

  Bill kept shouting and keeping everybody alive. “Coconuts!” he said. “Sing it, you horrible men! Sing it, you jelly-bellies! Hi-de-Hi!”