Sergeant Gregson's War

by Jim Gregson

  By this time I believed Barker capable of most sins. But the claim he was now making seemed preposterous, even for him. I said acidly, ‘I seem to remember collecting a severe bollocking from you for my presumption in mounting those classes, sir.’

  ‘A bollocking, Sergeant Gregson?’ Barker was transformed into a pink-faced Lady Bracknell. ‘I hope I have never visited anything so crude upon the many sergeants who have operated under my direction. Any rebuke I have had cause to administer has been couched in terms appropriate to the RAEC and its proud traditions.’

  ‘It sounded very like a bollocking to me, sir. I remember you berating me severely. “You take too much upon yourself” is one of the milder phrases I recall. That was in relation to my initiative in organising these classes for my fellow senior NCOs. I distinctly remember you castigating me for running these classes without your approval. It seems extraordinarily generous of the authorities to promote you on the basis of an initiative which you heartily condemned at the time.’

  I stared resolutely at a point above Barker’s head and produced these thoughts in as flat a tone as possible. The new lieutenant colonel spluttered. I had never seen an officer splutter before and I found it most appealing. ‘This is impertinence, Sergeant Gregson. Insolence of the worst kind. It will go very badly for you if you continue to voice such opinions.’

  He was right, of course. I was inviting severe retaliation by voicing such opinions. Had I not been so young and so green, I would have realised that senior men often claim credit for the good ideas and good work of their juniors. That wasn’t confined to the army. I saw it often through the rest of my working life. But they didn’t normally tell those juniors all about it. Barker was such a strutting turkey cock that he proclaimed his success to the very man he had used and abused.

  And I was very lucky in the circumstances of my challenge to him. I sensed immediately that I had the whip hand. In the rigid army system, rank was honoured even when it had transgressed: a lieutenant colonel was so exalted compared with a humble sergeant that he could do as he pleased. And it would have pleased him at that moment to reduce me to the ranks. But if he went public on this, the full extent of his laziness and his failure to use this excellent education centre would be exposed. He couldn’t afford that.

  I said exultantly, ‘Our recollections of these classes seem to be quite different, sir. Perhaps we should consult the men involved and ascertain what they remember about them.’

  ‘We will do no such thing, Sergeant Gregson. You should thank your lucky stars that I am shortly to leave Cyprus and the army. It is only because of that that I am not inclined to take this further.’

  ‘I should quite like us to take this further, sir. Perhaps you could give me some guidance on procedures. I suppose that challenging the word of an officer is not done very often, so I would certainly need guidance from someone.’

  I was trembling with rage. I could hardly believe that I was saying these things. I’d never challenged anyone so much older and senior than me in civilian life, let alone in the army. Anger had given me this dangerous thrust. Not since I’d been a boy had I been as wild and careless of my safety as this pompous ass had made me today. In this unlikely setting, I heard Joy’s voice, telling me a year and more ago that I should get angry more often, because I allowed myself to be too easily exploited. I couldn’t recall what had prompted that thought from her. All I knew was that I felt an exultation now which I’d never experienced before.

  Perhaps such open defiance was new also to Barker. It was plain that he was shaken as he gathered his thoughts and glared at me from behind the big desk. ‘You had better go away and consider the danger to your army career, Sergeant Gregson. I am nearing the end of my own army career and I do not wish my last action to be the reduction to the ranks of one of my sergeants. That would not only damage the individual involved but would be a slur on the proud traditions of the RAEC. That is the only consideration which prevents me from taking serious action at this moment.’

  But the conviction in his voice failed to match the severity of his words. Perhaps he, like me, could scarcely believe the words he was hearing from a national service sergeant. It was the kind of exchange I had fondly imagined when I was lying in my bed at night. These were phrases I had longed to hear myself flinging into Barker’s smug face, but never for a moment thought that I would.

  With adrenalin pulsing through my system, I said truculently, ‘I think you are right, sir. I think both of us should go away from here and consider our options. I am prepared to argue my case and I can produce men to support my arguments. If you are able to do the same, it would form the basis of an interesting exchange.’

  I sat in my room in the sergeants’ mess for an hour with pulses racing, trying ineffectively to wind down. Later in the evening, I wrote a long, elated letter to Joy. I later heard that, when she received it a few days later, she was struck by the change in tone from my previous missives. I didn’t mention Barker by name and she knew nothing of the army, but her Jim had plainly enjoyed himself at someone’s expense, and she was glad of that. Her Jim didn’t seem to have had much happiness lately.

  In my room at Dhekelia, I sealed the letter and lay back contentedly on my bed. I must surely be a petty individual, because only two things had made me really happy in the army. The first was the ‘Permanently excused boots’ chitty, which I had acquired what now seemed like years ago. The second was my attack upon Lieutenant Colonel bloody Barker.

  Nineteen

  Barker and I hardly spoke again. The lieutenant colonel departed for England and his return to civilian life within a month. I wished him everything he deserved in life and he thanked me solemnly for my good wishes.

  We were told a new officer would arrive in due course. The army authorities plainly saw no great need for urgency. Because of the exceptional circumstances of the Cyprus emergency, very little education had recently been possible in the fine new centre at Dhekelia. Barker’s propaganda was in danger of becoming a self-perpetuating reality.

  Sergeant Jack Parkinson, my RAEC colleague whom I had scarcely spoken with in several months, resurfaced with Barker’s departure. We planned several educational initiatives together. We would offer the use of the education centre for a series of basic courses for junior army personnel with time on their hands and a lack of basic English and numeracy skills. I would repeat my ACE Class One classes for a new batch of senior NCOs – news of previous successes had passed around and there was a ready demand.

  A lieutenant in the Surreys told me that he’d heard I was the country’s leading expert on Dylan Thomas. He took my rejection of the tag as no more than the becoming modesty of a scholar. Scholars were not only rare but highly suspect in the army, but it all added a little to my mystique. In the sergeants’ mess, I was now doughty snooker player, expert marksman, and scholar.

  There were large numbers of troops in our area who were either recovering from military action or waiting to undertake it. As Parkinson and I had known but Barker had denied, there was a strong demand for anything which would occupy them. Bored troops welcomed any diversion and their officers were keen to keep them occupied. There was still no leave allowed, since holiday centres such as the one at Akrotiri had suffered fatalities from terrorist attacks and were considered difficult to defend.

  So I was driven forth under armed guard to bring enlightenment to the khaki hordes. I was amazed to find how many men had missed out on the school system. I fought the usual initial battle to convince them that they were not irretrievable thickos. Most of them were in truth not very bright, and much more difficult to teach than the senior NCOs I’d so enjoyed. But the majority welcomed the chance to learn. I taught large classes for the Army Certificate of Education, Class Three, which involved little more than competence in literacy and numeracy. It was the first educational qualification the vast majority of these men had ever achieved.

  I was driven out to these assignments by an RASC driver in an armoure
d vehicle. A soldier stood upright and vigilant behind us, with his torso above the vehicle and a loaded Sten gun at the ready to defend us against any possible attack. The two men with me had driven thus before without incident on around a hundred occasions. We felt in no great danger, though we did not delay in the outskirts of Famagusta, through which we had to pass to reach the troops. It was expensive on manpower, but army manpower was one thing in plentiful supply in Cyprus.

  The days passed more quickly, now that Barker was gone, and there was serious educational work to do. And in the evenings I was in demand, not only from Percy on the snooker table but from the cook-sergeant’s trio, who involved me in staccato games of crib, where the scores rapped out like machine-gun fire as these elder statesmen of the game moved their markers up and down the board.

  I was busy, but I still had time in the privacy of my room to dwell at disturbing length on my faraway Joy. I pictured her alone in her bed in England, stretching her fair, smooth, and sadly unemployed limbs. I had not realised that the glorious curves of the female form could so dominate a man’s thoughts, at the expense of higher and more spiritual things. The Irish Christian Brothers had got a hell of a lot of things wrong, I reckoned. Some of them had been much too fond of boys, and they’d never mentioned the multiple delights of the female posterior.

  I calculated how the forty-nine shillings a week of marriage allowance was building steadily towards a house deposit for us during this strangely enlarging experience of mine in Cyprus. But I longed more than ever to be reunited with Joy – though of course my love of her beautiful and sinuous mind was greater than that of her beautiful and sinuous curves. I was almost certain it was.

  I studied what little I could see of the island as we drove out to reach the squaddies. It was winter still, and the people were wrapped against the cold. They seemed in the towns to be going about their business much as people in Britain would be doing, though I had reports from there of snow and ice. Such conditions would never threaten here, except on the higher slopes of the Troodos.

  As we passed through a village, children played football with a balding tennis ball in the street, much as they might have done in the quieter areas of Manchester or Glasgow. The kids stood back and waved excitedly as the dark green armoured truck with its single armed soldier on watch moved past them. Pete, standing erect and watchful with his Sten gun, was not allowed to react. But the driver and I waved back. The youngsters’ voices as they resumed their extravagant kicks at the tennis ball carried exactly the same inflexions as we would have heard from their counterparts in Britain.

  I watched with interest as Bill, my RASC driver, changed gears and threw the vehicle expertly round tight village corners. No one in my family had a car and I’d never even thought about driving. It looked an incredibly complicated process to me. Bill noticed my interest and said, ‘You should learn to drive, sarge. Everyone back in Blighty’s going to have a car in ten years’ time.’

  ‘Not in ten years. And not people like me. Doctors and commercial travellers have cars. Not people like me.’

  ‘Wotyer going to do, sarge? When you’ve finished with this lot, I mean?’

  ‘Dunno, yet. Well, not for certain. Teaching, probably. Teachers don’t have cars.’

  ‘They will do, ten years from now. You mark my words, sarge. Not all of them, maybe. But more and more of them. Everyone’s going to want a car – for pleasure, not just for work.’

  Another army visionary who was hopelessly off the mark, I thought. But he made me think for the first time of what it would be like to have a car. Mum and Dad would like it. They’d really think I’d made it, if I ever got a motor car. I pictured Mum sitting behind me as I drove through the Ribble Valley. I could even drive up to the Lake District, perhaps. Another of my fantasies that was never going to happen, but a pleasant one. I’d like to do that for Mum, if I ever had the chance.

  I enjoyed these chats with Bill, and I think he enjoyed the easy assignment. It was a good skive for him, because he could sit around and smoke whilst I was instilling knowledge. This particular group of light infantrymen had been sullenly obedient at first, knuckling down to learning as just one more boring army assignment. But we’d gradually built up a bond between teacher and taught, so that they now seemed actually to welcome my visits.

  My main problem was to introduce some sort of variety and interest into what was essentially basic learning. I was thinking hard about this on the way back to Dhekelia after one afternoon session, when the grey day had seemed to emphasise the dull repetitiveness of our activities. There had been no sun throughout the day, so it was almost dark when we passed through the edge of Famagusta. The street was narrow and twisting here: it had been designed for horse and donkey traffic rather than vehicles.

  With my mind on other things, I did not at first recognise the shot for what it was.

  Bill slammed the armoured vehicle into reverse, twisting the wheel hard as the car shot backwards. Then he gunned the engine to a scream as he shot us a hundred yards away from the scene of the ambush. I was out of the truck before it stopped, yelling at Bill to inform the medics, seizing the Sten gun from the limp hands of Pete. The man who had stood so straight above us as our guardian had been shot in the back. He had been nothing more than an easy target for this atrocity.

  I was back at the corner where it had happened in a moment, gun wedged against my hip in the approved position, threatening instant death to anyone who opposed me, wishing for the first time in my life that someone would give me the excuse to fire. Two young men turned to flee as I turned the corner, terrified at the sight of this frantic avenger. ‘Don’t bloody move, either of you!’ I yelled.

  Whether or not they understood English, they froze as if in a cinema still. I motioned with the Sten gun and they moved against the wall as I bid them, grinding their bodies against its stones. Even an inch further away from this lunatic with a gun would have been welcome.

  ‘You killed my friend!’ I screamed. I meant it as the prelude to another death, as the explanation of the killing I was intent upon.

  The youths poured out a frenzy of phrases, none of which I understood or wished to understand. I wanted only to kill someone, to release the stream of Sten bullets which would provide me with relief. I wanted to proclaim to the world that people like Pete could not be shot down in cold blood.

  I’d no idea whether these men had been involved. Perhaps the man who had fired into Pete’s back was now long gone. But in my fear and frustration, that did not seem important. If I killed someone from the village, guilty or not, that would roar out my message. That would tell them they simply couldn’t do things like this to my friends.

  ‘Who did this? Take me to him!’ I yelled into their faces. My voice rose higher as my demands grew more futile. One of the men lowered his hands in slow motion. Then he opened them wide in a gesture of his ignorance.

  I wanted to hit him across the face, to rejoice in the pain it would give him. I shouted, ‘You’re going to pay for this! You and the whole bloody lot of you!’ I had both hands on the Sten gun now, thrusting it into his chest, exulting in the power it gave me and the fear I saw in the wide dark eyes a yard from mine. ‘This is your last fucking chance, you bastard! You give me who did this or I’ll kill you. It doesn’t matter which to me.’

  ‘Easy, sergeant! You’re questioning civilians. I know how you feel, but there are codes to be observed.’

  I scarcely registered the words. It was the calm, authoritative tone that tugged me back towards reality. I kept the Sten gun trained on the heaving chest as I half turned towards the voice. It was a major. He was much older than me: thirty-five perhaps. Old enough to have been my age and fighting when the real war against Hitler was being waged.

  I felt a huge relief. I stepped aside from the man I had been for the last two minutes and lowered the Sten gun until it pointed at the ground. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘The ambulance is on its way. You should now go back and check
on the condition of your wounded colleague. As soon as he is in the hands of the medics, you get out of here with your driver. You have no further function here.’

  The major was as calm as I was uncontrolled. He studied the men who cowered fearfully against the wall and repeated without looking at me again, ‘You have no further function here.’

  I turned and slouched away, throwing my saviour a ragged, clownish salute as I went.

  Pete wasn’t dead, as I’d thought he must be. He had a single bullet beneath his shoulder blade and he was scarcely conscious. The medics were guarded in their comments as they slid the stretcher into the ambulance, but they thought he would live. I climbed back into the armoured truck alongside Bill and told him to follow the ambulance. We felt exposed as we had never been before, without the man who had stood above us as our silent sentinel.

  Bill drove carefully and scarcely a word passed between us. Children were playing football still by lamplight in the village, but this time they received no answering wave from us.

  Back in the sergeants’ mess, I tried hard to drop back into a routine. That was what everyone said you should do when you were in shock. I ate a meal, without being very conscious of what I was putting in my mouth. I partnered Percy Bishop in two frames of snooker. We lost the first one. Then we lost the double or quits second which Percy had cheerfully volunteered. Two quid off my fund to supplement the marriage allowance. It didn’t matter.

  I retired to my room to contemplate myself. I didn’t like what I saw. Even now, hours after the event, I wanted to kill someone. If I couldn’t do that, I wanted to feel the clash of bone upon bone and flesh upon flesh as I hit someone. I wanted the release of action and violence. And for all these crazy months of national service, I had thought that I wasn’t a violent man.