Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  A pair of Colours hung cased and crossed on one wall. They were the Colours of the 1st Battalion, Fred knew, deposited here for safe keeping when the battalion moved from the Curragh to France. The adjutant said, ‘The president sits at this end, under the Colours, always. The vice-president sits at the opposite end. Normally, officers may sit anywhere they wish, including president or vice president, but for the Regimental Guest Night next Thursday, both will be appointed by the PMC. The Colonel of the Regiment will sit in this chair –’ he laid a hand on the back of one of the rows of chairs lined up on either side of the long highly polished table – ‘the CO on his right, the 2nd-in-command opposite. The quartermaster will be on the Colonel of the Regiment’s left. Toasts will be offered in the normal manner … and what is that, Stammers?’ He turned suddenly on the man from Kenya.

  ‘The president taps the table with his mallet,’ Stammers said.

  ‘Then?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Well, you’d better, if you want to go to France with the next batch. We don’t intend to let the battalions think we’re turning out a lot of yahoos … Stratton?’

  Fred said, ‘When everyone is quiet the president says, “Mr Vice, the King”. Then the vice-president says, “Gentlemen, the King”, and everyone says “The King”, and drinks.’

  ‘In what position?’

  ‘All seated, sir.’

  ‘Why is that? Do all regiments sit for the loyal toast?’

  ‘No, sir. Only a few which originally served as marines.’

  ‘What does that have to do with it, Bainbridge?’

  ‘The beams of the ships were so low overhead that the officers would bump their heads when they stood up, and actually had to stoop, until King William IV, who had been in the navy himself, ordered naval officers to remain seated while drinking his toast.’

  ‘And of course that applied to marine officers, too … Good. Now let’s get back to the toasting. Houston, does anyone say anything else, when the loyal toast is offered?’

  ‘No sir … Only exactly what the vice-president proposes … except that field officers may say “God bless him”, too, if they want to.’

  ‘Jerram, why are the water glasses taken off the table before the loyal toast is drunk?’

  Jerram looked baffled. Fred had no idea. No one had mentioned it, yet he recalled that in fact all water glasses were removed. The adjutant said, ‘Anyone?’

  Churchill-Gatty, one of the eighteen-year-old public schoolboys said, ‘So that no one can pass his wine over the glass as he drinks the toast, which would then be to “The King over the water”.’

  ‘The Stuarts,’ the adjutant said. ‘Precisely. Stammers, sit down and pretend you are eating peas. How do you pick them up with the fork? But before that, remember that we shall all be having a drink on Griffin tonight. Why?’

  He looked round, as everyone else stared at Griffin. Griffin, an assistant bank manager in peace time, flushed, surreptitiously felt his flies, and looked down at his tunic buttons to see if one was undone.

  ‘Well,’ the adjutant said impatiently, ‘are you all blind? How can you be fit to inspect your platoons if you can’t see a glaring piece of carelessness like this?’

  Churchill-Gatty said, ‘His lapel badges, sir – they’re on the wrong sides.’

  ‘Quite right,’ the adjutant said. ‘You’re blowing the bugle horns with your arse, Griffin. Drinks all round tonight. Change them now.’

  Griffin shook his head in self rebuke. The officers’ lapel badges were similar to the cap badge, each showing a stringed bugle horn surmounted by the prancing horse of Kent, over a scroll with the single word WEALD. But on one badge the horn curved from right to left, on the other from left to right; and the mouthpiece of the horn had to be nearest to the wearer’s mouth, that is, on the inside. If the badges were worn reversed, it could be said that the bugles were being blown by the rear wind – a heinous crime.

  The lesson continued. From the corner of his eye Fred watched Griffin getting his badges straight. He had a wife and child to support and another child on the way. He couldn’t afford to stand everyone a drink – he didn’t touch a drop himself, to save money … He turned his attention to the adjutant, feeling surly. He wanted to be an officer and gentleman, and this was a necessary phase, training that would be valuable after the war was over, too. But now it was a bore, and a sort of insult, too, like the way they looked at your clothes, and told you where to buy your bootlaces. He had a letter from Frank in his pocket: over there apparently, he and Charles Rowland often shared burgoo out of a mess tin, each digging in with his own spoon. Charles Rowland and Frank were closer now than he himself was to Frank, his own brother. They were at the war. Of course Charles was an officer and Frank a private, but he could see that in the trenches, suffering together what they had to, there would be a bond at least as strong as the class barriers which were at the same time holding them apart … Frank ought to come home, if only for a few days. He’d seen Anne in the town with another man – a civilian, an older fellow. It might be quite harmless – they’d been strolling in the park one Sunday, with the children, Agnes walking, Lily and the baby in a pram … but there it was. Frank had better come home. But how could he? He hadn’t been out more than four months … Getting married was a mug’s game. His mother had told him that Ethel’s dago husband was going out with other women, and apparently everyone knew about it except Ethel … Damned if he was going to get caught. Why keep a cow if you can buy milk?

  ‘That’s all,’ the adjutant said. ‘See that none of you disgrace us on Thursday. Dismiss.’

  He touched the peak of his cap in response to their salutes and stalked out, his field boots glittering like tubes of molten brown glass, the dark green double whistle cord of the Weald Light Infantry looped round his neck under the lapels of his jacket, then dividing at the top button of his tunic, one thick strand diving into each breast pocket.

  Fred headed for his quarters. It was a small room, once allotted to a single officer, now shared by three in very cramped conditions, all sleeping on camp beds, and sharing the tiny bathroom and WC. When he got there, he took off his Sam Browne and hung it on the hook allotted to him; his batman would be along in the afternoon to give it another polish, together with his chin strap, and revolver holster. On the dressing table, as he was brushing his hair, he saw an envelope. The postmark was Walstone … it must have come this morning and been brought to his room by the Post Corporal. The envelope was addressed in dark blue ink on a pale blue paper – a woman’s handwriting, but educated, the letters firm and easily put together, as from much practice. He opened it and looked at the signature – ‘Stella Cate.’ It was dated yesterday. He read it:

  Dear Mr Stratton, I do hope you will excuse me writing to you, but as it is rather a private matter I do not want to write to the Commanding Officer officially. You see, some time ago I made a bet with Captain Irwin (I think his name is Stephen), and now I have lost it and want to pay him what I owe. It is not much, but he does not answer my letters, and I am wondering whether he is all right. Could you possibly tell me? Just write to me at Walstone Manor, Kent … Yours sincerely,

  Stella Cate.

  Stella Cate, Fred repeated. He’d seen a lot of her when he was working at High Staining – a nice girl, pretty, shy-seeming, but with bedroom eyes. Betting? With Captain Irwin? On what? Irwin had thought he’d never be sent back to active service, but his legs had healed better than anyone expected, and he’d gone, at least a month ago, back to the 1st Battalion. Fred hadn’t liked him much – thought him typical of what most irked him about the upper classes, curt, nose in air, rather stupid … Him and Stella? He wondered. Poor girl.

  He set off for the anteroom and there, at one of the writing desks, wrote a short note on the regiment’s crested paper: ‘Dear Miss Cate, Captain Irwin was posted to France about a month ago. I don’t think you need worry about your bet, as I am sure he would want to forget it …’

>   He sealed it, initialled the outside so that the mess corporal could charge the stamp to his mess bill, and called for a sherry. Sherry in hand he strolled over to the green baize notice board. The surface was covered with emblazoned cards: a dance at Mrs Hackworth’s, all officers of the Weald Light Infantry cordially invited … a the dansant at Lady Mallet’s, all officers of the Weald Light Infantry cordially invited … lunch at the Town Hall in honour of Lord Derby, four officers invited to represent the Regiment; and the names of the four selected by the adjutant pencilled in: his was not one …

  He turned back, sipping his sherry. Plenty of stuff for the officers, but what was there for the men? He ought to feel strange, a 2nd lieutenant’s single star on each sleeve, sipping sherry. Sherry! He’d never touched the stuff in his life before he was commissioned. But he didn’t feel strange, and he wasn’t going to, ever again. No one was going to look down on him from now on. Whatever it took to achieve that, he’d do.

  But what was being done about the Other Ranks? And by whom? The CO perhaps, with the RSM? He ought to find out. These la-di-da snobs he now lived among looked down on the ORs, treating them as though they were somehow made of different flesh, different blood … yet, they usually knew what the men thought, and felt, better than he himself did.

  He glanced at his newly acquired wrist watch – nearly lunch time; then close order drill, followed by night manoeuvres.

  At 6 p.m., the sun setting and a damp twilight settling over Hedlington, smoke from the evening fires curling up dense in the valley between the green curves of the downs, three hundred men marched out of Minden Barracks in full field service marching order. Fred Stratton, near the end of his training, was commanding a platoon of advanced recruits, also near their time to be sent out to the active battalions. The 2nd-in-command of the depot, a major, was in charge of the exercise, and there were two officers and half a dozen NCOs, all recently recovered from wounds, acting as the director’s assistants – without them it would have been an exercise in the blind leading the blind. It was all very well to have read the accounts and training memoranda that came out of France. It was something else to have been there.

  Fred’s platoon was near the middle of the column. As it approached the gate Fred saw that something strange was going on at the front. Looking forward past the lines of marching men he saw two or three policemen, apparently holding someone – a woman – and heard a deep booing, swelling slowly back down the ranks. ‘Quiet, there!’ his sergeant yelled. ‘You’re still marching at attention!’

  The booing subsided in one place, to start again in another. Fred reached the gate and heard women’s high voices, shouting, ‘Conscription of all men, conscription of all dividends! Don’t go to fight unless everyone’s called up! Why should you risk your lives for a shilling a day while others make fortunes out of the war? Conscription of all men, all money!’ The policemen were keeping them back … three, four women in dark dresses, holding out pamphlets as they shouted, but the police were not letting them get near the marching troops. Fred stared, for behind the police he saw Naomi Rowland and with her that other girl, Rachel Cowan, who’d been staying at High Staining last summer. Rachel was tugging at a policeman’s sleeve, shouting something Fred could not make out. The policeman let go of the woman he was holding and pushed Rachel hard, so hard that she reeled back and fell in the muddy street. The soldiers booed harder – but Fred knew that they were not booing the rozzers. A year ago, it would have been different, but now there was a war on. ‘Hit her again, harder,’ a soldier shouted.

  ‘Give ’em a good spanking and send ’em back to the kitchen,’ another voice cried.

  Naomi caught Fred’s eyes as he passed. He tried to shrug and look sympathetic simultaneously; but the major was there, standing furious at the gate, calling, ‘March to attention! Take that man’s name, sar’nt!’

  ‘Got ’im, sir!’

  ‘You’re acting like a bloody rabble. Straighten your backs! Smarten the pace there! We’re Light Infantry!’

  All down the line the sergeants were calling the Light Infantry step, 140 paces a minute, even speeding it up. The soldiers straightened as best they could under the heavy packs, their right arms stretched down, the rifles sliding along parallel to the ground at the trail. Fred began to sweat under his collar. 150 a minute was all very well on a ceremonial parade, with only a sword to carry. Here, it was hard. All round he heard the men’s laboured breathing, as the sergeants bayed and snarled up and down the column. Now they were facing the hill along the side wall of the barracks, climbing steeply to the hump of Busby Down. Sweat poured down his face. Beside him a corporal marched with gritted teeth. Except the sergeants, no one said a word, there was no sound but the smack of the nailed boots on the cobbles, and the grunt and gasp of the breathing.

  At last the major in front called – ‘Route march step! March at ease!’ The step slowed, rifles were slung on shoulders, and a huge collective sigh passed down the column, like some gigantic snake expelling air.

  ‘Five minutes more of that an’ I’d ’ave been marching on my chinstrap,’ a private nearby muttered.

  The corporal at Fred’s side threw back, ‘Then don’t speak when you’re marching at attention. ’Cos you made the major angry.’

  ‘We wasn’t speaking. We was booing.’

  ‘That’s worse, you sounded like a bloody dying cow. Can we smoke, sir?’

  Fred looked round, looking for his company commander, a senior captain transferred from a Territorial battalion. He couldn’t see him, and swore silently. He was an officer and in command of the platoon; and orders had clearly said that the men could smoke until the exercise formally began, which would be an hour after they’d reached the rendezvous on Busby Down. Yet he did not like giving the permission if anyone more senior could do it for him. Power of command, that’s what they called it, and he didn’t have it yet, like these fellows who were born to it, or trained to it in places like Eton and Wellington.

  Unwillingly at last he said, ‘All right. But all pipes and cigarettes will have to be out when we start the exercise.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  It was a pitch dark night now, a new moon, a few stars drifting in and out of low thin clouds, stirred by a damp south-west wind. It was not raining, he thanked God, and it was not cold, just raw. They’d all need the greatcoats rolled on top of their packs, later in the night; but, with luck, not the groundsheet capes. He wondered what would happen to Naomi Rowland and Rachel Cowan. Pushing the police was not the way young ladies were supposed to behave. Well, the Cowan girl was no lady, that was certain – a little Jewess from the East End, more like. She’d be lucky not to find herself in a police station cell … Miss Naomi, too, perhaps. He corrected himself – Naomi, or Miss Rowland – not, for him, now that he was an officer, Miss Naomi. The last he’d been able to see what was happening, she was helping Rachel to her feet and shouting at the peeler.

  He heard a soldier in the ranks behind him say, ‘Corporal, what’s this thing sticking out of the side of the rifle, under the bolt?’

  A moment later the corporal answered, ‘That’s the cut-off, Jenkins. You’ve had that rifle two weeks now, and you don’t know that?’

  ‘I know what it does – shuts off the bullets that are still in the magazine – but I forgot what it’s called.’

  ‘You’ll be forgetting your own name next … and you a schoolmaster.’

  ‘This is all very different, corporal.’

  Fred sighed quietly. It certainly was different – sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, sometimes clever, sometimes stupid. This was the army.

  The platoon crawled forward across the grass, spread out in a line to Fred’s right and left. Another platoon was further right, and a third a hundred yards behind him. The company commander was somewhere between the two lines, with his headquarters – the CSM, his batman, and two or three runners. The ‘enemy’ trench which they were approaching was directly in front, two hundred and fi
fty yards away, according to the company commander’s orders, given out an hour ago behind a huge clump of gorse, its flowers glowing dull yellow even in the darkness, seemingly by some emanation of light from themselves. Fred had smiled to himself for a moment there, remembering the old riddle he’d first heard at school – ‘When is fucking out of season?’ Answer: ‘When the gorse is not in bloom’ … because, of course, some gorse was always in bloom.

  His hand pressed down on a sharp flint hidden in the grass and he swore aloud, stifling the sound instantly. They had been crawling five minutes already. Suppose the company commander had read his compass wrong, and led them to the wrong place for the start? Suppose he was reading his own compass wrong, this minute? It was hanging by a cord round his neck, swinging as he crawled. He stopped and peered at the luminous spots on it … he was going west … but map and compass reading had not been easy subjects for him: perhaps he was wrong, and it was east … or south-east … perhaps he should ask his sergeant, who was to his right, behind the right hand section.

  ‘Oh, my heavens!’ a muffled voice cried. ‘Help, help!’

  ‘Shhh!’ he hissed and, climbing to his feet, ran to the sound. ‘What’s the matter?’

  He was peering down into a hole, kneeling, the sergeant now beside him. Feeling down, they felt boots. They grabbed a boot each and pulled. The body came out slowly, struggling.

  ‘Wot the ’ell are you doing down that ’ole?’ the sergeant whispered fiercely, his face an inch from the other’s nose. “Oo is it?’

  ‘Jenkins,’ the man said, grievance in his voice. ‘I fell in.’

  ‘Shhh, you useless man! Where’s your rifle? Where’s your cap?’

  ‘Down the hole.’

  ‘Well, get them, man. Don’t stand there like a bloody hop pole!’

  Without waiting for Private Jenkins, ex-schoolmaster at an elementary school, to act, the sergeant himself dived to his knees and felt round in the hole. ‘ ’Ere’s your rifle … can’t find the cap.’