Sergeant Gregson's War

by Jim Gregson

  I had discovered a part of me which I had not known was there and I detested it.

  My stance as a civilised, educated man had been no more than a pose. I was a barbarian. I had learned how thin the layer was between informed and rational human behaviour and the darker forces that lay beneath it. I had behaved today like Harry Hart, whose attitude I had so despised.

  I tried to write to Joy. Usually I found it easy to pour out my thoughts to her. She was a link with the life I had known before all this and would soon rejoin. Tonight I couldn’t find the words for her, and when they came I couldn’t put them down on paper. My fingers shook and refused to write, as they had never in my life done before.

  I didn’t want Joy to know the man I had been today.

  I remembered that comical day so long ago in Oswestry, when I’d only been in the army for a fortnight and had dropped my first ‘fuck’, which had so shocked Joy. I had thought her priggish then, when she had said that the army was having a coarsening effect upon me. Well, it had coarsened me now all right. Coarsened me good and proper. Part of me still wanted to be back in Famagusta, spraying Sten gun bursts at the enemy, showing them who was boss, showing them that they could not do these things to men like us.

  Percy came and sat with me at breakfast. I suspected that he had been waiting for me to arrive. I said, ‘I’m not good company this morning, Percy. I’m better left alone.’

  ‘You’ve had a shock, that’s all, Jim. You need time. You’ll be all right in a couple of days.’

  I looked past Percy to the experienced faces at the other tables and felt a boy among men. I’d intended to eat breakfast alone and speak to no one. Now I abruptly poured out everything that had happened yesterday and reviled myself for my part of it. I felt a need to humiliate myself. I wanted to make my part in this as bad as I could. Much later, I realised that my actions had a connection with the Catholic confessional which had been with me since childhood. I wanted to rid myself of my sin by confessing it and by abasing myself as much as possible.

  With his grey receding hair and his round and cheerful face, Percy Bishop didn’t look stern enough to be a priest. But for me he acted as one. He didn’t pronounce the familiar Latin words of absolution, but he said, ‘You’re in shock, that’s all. You knew the soldier who was shot behind you. You knew he wouldn’t have been there but for you. You thought he’d been killed and you reacted, that’s all. Now you’re in shock.’

  ‘I reacted badly.’

  ‘You reacted naturally.’

  I didn’t look at him, but I said after a long pause, ‘I expect you saw a lot of men killed, during the war.’

  ‘A few, A good few. But we were firing at an enemy we couldn’t see. We were just as mad as you were yesterday, but we were blazing away at people we couldn’t see.’

  ‘I was a fool.’

  ‘Aye. We’re all fools, Jim. The luck comes in whether or not you get away with being a fool. If you’d done anything really daft, you’d have been in trouble. You didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d have done. I was lucky that officer arrived when he did.’ I looked up at Percy and repeated dully, ‘I don’t know what I’d have done.’

  ‘You’d have come to your senses, that’s what you’d have done! You’d have backed off and played by the rules, even though your comrade had been shot down in cold blood by a bloody coward!’

  I don’t think Percy was sure of that. But he thought I was ‘a good lad’, that most understated of Lancashire praises. I was still far too young for this and was still learning about life. I’d grown up a little yesterday, without it costing me as much as it might have done. He tried to lighten things up. ‘You can’t be that bad. You even called a foul on yourself at snooker last night, when no other bugger realised that you’d touched the ball!’

  I grinned weakly, knowing he was trying to help. I hated the streak of me I’d discovered yesterday. But I supposed it was better for me that I now knew it was there.

  Once you knew that something was in you, you could deal with it. Dad had told me that when I was twelve. I couldn’t remember what that had been about.

  Twenty

  There were no repercussions for me from the incident in Famagusta. Peter lived and I visited him in the military hospital. There was no sign of Sister Ellen and as I’d never known her surname I couldn’t ask after her.

  Peter was quite cheerful. ‘Wounded on active service, sarge. Might get me a stripe next year, that. The CSM thought so. He came in to see me yesterday. First time he’s spoken to me, really. It’s always been a shout before.’

  ‘Sorry it happened, Pete. You wouldn’t have been there but for me.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Forget it, sarge! Not your fault. And the grub’s good in hospital. I’ll be here for another fortnight, they reckon. Quite a good skive, really.’ He grinned at me contentedly. And this was the man who had almost died, accompanying a teacher who was visiting his students!

  A mad world, my masters’.

  I had a letter from Dad giving a detailed account of Blackburn Rovers’ latest victory. He was quite excited about the youngsters coming through and the forward line they could now field. But he struck a melancholy note in his conclusion to this section of his letter. ‘They’re talking about abolishing the maximum wage for footballers. Some of the papers are saying that footballers will be on forty or fifty pounds a week. It’s quite ridiculous!’

  Ridiculous maybe, but in less than five years Johnny Haynes of Fulham would become the first hundred pound a week footballer and the small-town teams of Lancashire where the professional game had begun would be in dire trouble. But in 1957 in Cyprus, I smiled fondly. I could see Dad’s face and hear Dad’s indignation all those thousands of miles away, voicing his thoughts about his beloved Rovers.

  It was the last paragraph of his letter which banished my smiles. Mum was in hospital. She’d been taken in for checks, Dad said. There was nothing for me to worry about, but it was best to be on the safe side, wasn’t it? This new National Health Service was a wonderful thing. Your mum wouldn’t have been looked after like this, in the old days.

  I knew my dad, just as I knew my mum and her quiet, uncomplaining fortitude. Dad was worried. He wouldn’t have left it until the end of his letter if he’d known how to deal with it. It was the one real bit of news he’d had, and he’d have opened the letter with it if he’d known what to write. Dad would be lost without Mum. They argued all the time, but each was incomplete without the other. And I knew Dad well enough to know that he’d be worrying at this moment about being without Mum forever.

  And Mum would be lying mute in hospital, staring at the ceiling and wondering what came next. I thought of how she’d nursed me through childish illnesses, how she’d used our meagre supplies of coal to make a fire in the bedroom grate when I’d had measles or chicken pox. Of how she’d taught me to read and encouraged me through my schoolboy traumas and been insistent that I should go to university and make the best of myself. And I read the end of Dad’s letter over and over, until I knew it by heart. But it told me no more and no less than when I’d read it the first time. Dad was worried.

  I told myself it was probably a false alarm. These things usually were, weren’t they? The medics told you nothing, and that made you more anxious than you needed to be. When I was home in a few months and out of the army, Mum would still be there. She’d be dishing up my favourite meals and telling me she didn’t know what all the fuss had been about.

  Two days later, I knew exactly what the fuss was about. In matters of this sort, the army was as swift and efficient as it was slow and fumbling in others. The action was as prompt as the news was stark. Sergeant Gregson’s mother was in Salford Royal Infirmary, suffering from suspected cancer of the bladder. This was a life-threatening condition. In these circumstances, Sergeant Gregson would be given compassionate leave and flown home on the first flight available.

  My Cyprus adventure was ending. Fru
strating, farcical and frightening by turns, it was coming to a premature and unexpected end. I didn’t yet know it, but the craziest and oddest final scene of the farce lay still ahead of me.

  I was delighted to be going home, but heavy hearted at the reason for it and fearful of what I would find in Salford. I snatched goodbyes from Percy Bishop and my other friends in the sergeants’ mess. I was surprised how many there were. I had eleven pounds in my snooker winnings fund, stored against the possibility of the heavy losses that had never occurred. I raised a grin for Percy and gave him two crisp pound notes. ‘I only need nine to make up the two hundred for my house deposit. Get the lads a drink and tell them I’m sorry I hadn’t time for proper goodbyes.’ Two pounds would buy at least forty handsome drinks at mess prices.

  There wasn’t much time for anything else. Not even for many thoughts, which was a mercy in the circumstances. I raced north to Nicosia with Bill at the wheel, then spent a troubled night in the transit camp, where little seemed to have changed. I was at the airport with the first grey streaks of dawn, then spent hours waiting for my plane. There was great pressure on air transport because of the Cyprus emergency; troop travel was still by ship, save in the gravest of emergencies. But this was one of those: compassionate leave gave you VIP status. Complex adjustments had been made to get me on this plane.

  I only discovered how complex as I was about to board the twin-propellered aircraft. I had been substituted for a staff sergeant in the military police, who had been looking forward when his mission was accomplished to a few days’ leave in London. He waved away my apologies and snarled, ‘Right! It’s your responsibility now. I just hope you can bloody handle it!’

  Because this was high security, I hadn’t been briefed until now. ‘Very hush-hush,’ as the stewardess on the civilian aircraft told me. Twenty-nine men, many of them middle-aged and in civilian suits, were led out to the plane in handcuffs and installed in their allotted seats. After some discussion among their guards, the handcuffs were removed. I wondered what on earth was going on.

  The major who had supervised the arrival and installation of these captives now took me forty yards away from the aeroplane to explain. Although no one could possibly have overheard him at this distance, he spoke in hushed terms. These men were mostly businessmen and mostly prosperous. All of them were declared supporters of ENOSIS and Cypriot union with Greece. Many of them had declared support for the activities of Colonel Grivas and EOKA. The major, who hadn’t set eyes upon them until today, was anxious to convey the message of their vicious intent. ‘They may look innocent, but they’re dangerous buggers! Watch them like hell and don’t give them an inch!’

  ‘Right, sir. Thank you for putting me in the picture, sir,’ I said. I couldn’t see how I’d need to watch them like that on an aeroplane. (This was long before the days of hi-jacks. They were a hazard reserved for the jet age ahead of us.) But I knew better than to offer anything other than an affirmative to an officer and I would accept anything that would get me back to Blighty. I solemnly signed a chit accepting the delivery of ‘Prisoners, civilian, twenty-nine,’ for delivery to Wormwood Scrubs in London.

  That destination cheered me after my sleepless night. It reminded me that planes moved swiftly and that I would soon be with my stricken mother. The major must have been told of the reason for my substitution for the original military police escort as the guardian of these desperate men. He depressed me again with the well-meant wish that I would ‘get there in time’.

  I walked up and down the aisle behind the stewardess and surreptitiously observed our cargo. My prisoners seemed to range in age from around twenty-five to fifty. To my inexperienced eye, they looked like prosperous businessmen. They could be prosperous but not innocent, I supposed, as far as British interests were concerned. Most of them were accused of supplying funds to EOKA rather than of any active role in the hostilities.

  They were nothing like the cut-throats we’d searched for in the Troodos. Some of them spoke English and seemed anxious to be friendly as I passed among them. Devious bastards, I told myself: that was the official line. But my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was with my mum, suffering God knew what in Salford Royal Infirmary. ‘Please God, be kind to her!’ I prayed. I’d experienced all sorts of difficulty with God lately. I was beginning to wonder whether he was really there at all, or whether everything they’d told me at school was a massive con. But it was curious how you prayed automatically, whenever it was a crisis.

  I was glad when we were in the air, circling over the island which had been my base for so many months. But Cyprus had never felt like home. It was home to my prisoners, craning now to look through the small oval windows at the ground dropping rapidly away beneath us. They looked harmless, to me. Harmless and bewildered. But they were leaving the island which was their home for the unknown privations of imprisonment in a foreign land, whilst I was returning to the homeland I longed to see again.

  The plane banked away from the land and set a steady course over the Mediterranean. The sea looked blue, attractive and timeless beneath us. I settled into my seat at the back, counted the bald heads among my prisoners, and tried to make up for the sleep I had missed overnight. But I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t concentrate on my book. I moved occasionally up and down the aisle, trying to look stern and fulfil my function as jailer. After all, this was what had got me on to this plane and I was grateful to the army for its actions.

  But these dangerous men wished only to be friendly and to engage me in conversation. They wanted to know about life in England and how cold it would be at this time of year. It increased my sense of unreality, though I knew that many of these issues were going to be real and painful for them. I felt for them as they sat in their comfortable seats, listening to the throb of the engines carrying them steadily further from the land they loved with each passing minute.

  It was when we descended to refuel at Malta that I experienced the final, grandest and most ridiculous scene of the high farce which had been my national service. In the absence of any specific instructions, the staff on this civilian airline had treated everyone during the flight as if they were normal civilian passengers. They had been given food and drink, though this had been universally non-alcoholic. My prisoners and I were even given barley sugar sweets to suck as we descended to the airport at Valetta. This didn’t protect me from temporary deafness and a feeling that my eardrums were bursting as the wheels came to rest on the runway.

  A sergeant with the immaculate white belt of the military police climbed aboard and looked at me with distaste. ‘These are your prisoners, sergeant. I can take no responsibility for them. You must accompany them at all times, especially if they leave the aeroplane.’

  I smiled a smile I did not feel and attempted to keep things affable. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem. We’ve all been fed and watered. These men need only to go for a pee, stretch their legs and resume their seats for the flight to London. We’re only stopping here long enough to refuel.’ I nodded towards the tanker which was even now making its cautious way towards our plane.

  The MP sergeant surveyed prisoners and guard with equal disfavour. ‘These are dangerous men. They must not leave this aeroplane without proper security.’

  ‘And what does that involve?’ An unwelcome image of handcuffs and urinals swam threateningly across my imagination.

  ‘These men must be roped together, with the man in charge at the end of the rope. That is what regulations dictate. These are dangerous prisoners. Valetta and Malta must not be put at risk.’

  ‘You have done this before?’

  The MP clicked his heels and looked past me at the men in suits. ‘We have not had this situation before. Prisoners have not been transferred to London in such numbers.’

  This was beginning to feel like one of those situations which are hilarious if you are not the central figure in them. ‘Do you have such a rope? I cannot think they are standard issue on civilian aircraft.’

  I
rony was wasted upon this unyielding man, who obviously took his pleasures seriously. ‘I have ropes. No single one is long enough for twenty-nine men, but we can link them. These are dangerous prisoners.’ He insisted on this phrase as if it were the chorus in his melancholy song, which needed to be repeated at the end of each verse.

  ‘It isn’t April the first in Malta, is it?’

  He scowled at me without comprehension. Promotion in the military police did not depend upon a sense of humour. ‘These men are your responsibility. They can’t leave the plane unless they’re roped and you’re in control. I have the necessary equipment at hand.’ He nodded towards the van in which he’d driven out to meet us.

  ‘Then you’d better attach it to the prisoners. I’ll try to convey to them what is required of them.’ I climbed up the steps and back into the cabin and explained to one of the best speakers of English what was now to happen. I had expected vigorous objections as he conveyed this to his companions, but they shrugged their shoulders resignedly. They plainly had much previous experience of the eccentricities of the British military.

  They stood meekly whilst the MP sergeant manacled each man’s left wrist to the rope, leaving them about a yard apart. He managed to attach eight men to each length of rope, which he then linked to the next one with an expert knot. He studied his handiwork with some satisfaction after he had linked all twenty-nine men, with my solitary uniformed figure at the end behind the five portliest captives in the last section.

  ‘You may proceed to the urinals now. Remember, sergeant, that these men are your responsibility. These prisoners are dangerous men.’

  I needed to issue no orders. Most of the men understood English well enough, and all this had taken some time. At least half of them were by now in urgent need of a pee. My huge human caterpillar set off with alacrity towards the toilet block, which was perhaps two hundred yards away. I maintained what little dignity I could as the rope tautened and I was eventually forced to trot smartly at the tail of it.