‘No, no,’ he said, ‘I don’t mean why we are in the Company Office at this moment. I mean why we are all in the army. You must know that, Sayce. We are here for our country. We are here to repel Hitler. You know that as well as I do. You don’t want Hitler to rule over you, Sayce, do you?’
Sayce gulped again, as if he were not sure.
‘No, sir,’ he agreed, without much vigour.
‘We must all, every one of us, do our best,’ said Gwatkin, now thoroughly worked up. ‘I try to do my best as Company Commander. Mr Jenkins and the other officers of the Company do their best. The NCOs and privates do their best. Are you going to be the only one, Sayce, who is not doing his best?’
Sayce was now in almost as emotional a state as Gwatkin himself. He continued to gulp from time to time, looking wildly round the room, as if for a path of escape.
‘Will you do your best in future, Sayce?’
Sayce began sniffing frantically.
‘I will, sir.’
‘Do you promise me, Sayce.’
‘All right, sir.’
‘And we’re agreed you’re a good chap, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Indeed, Sayce seemed moved almost to tears by the thought of all his own hitherto unrevealed goodness.
‘Never had a chance since I’ve been with the unit,’ he managed to articulate.
Gwatkin rose to his feet.
‘We’re going to shake hands, Sayce,’ he said.
He came round to the front of the table and held out his palm. Sayce took it gingerly, as if he still suspected a trick, a violent electric shock, perhaps, or just a terrific blow on the ear administered by Gwatkin’s other hand. However, Gwatkin did no more than shake Sayce’s own hand heartily. It was like the termination of some sporting event. Gwatkin continued to shake hands for several seconds. Then he returned to his seat behind the table.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’m going to call in the escort again, so stand to attention, Sayce. All right? Get them in, Mr Jenkins.’
I opened the door and said the word. CSM Cadwallader and the corporal returned to their places, guarding Sayce.
‘Prisoner admonished,’ said Gwatkin, in his military voice.
The Sergeant-Major was unable to conceal a faint tightening of the lips at the news of Sayce escaping all punishment. No doubt he had supposed it would be a matter for the Commanding Officer this time.
‘Prisoner and escort – about turn – quick march – left wheel—’
They disappeared into the passage, like comedians retiring in good order from their act, only music lacking, CSM Cadwallader, with an agility perfected for such occasions, closing the door behind him without either pausing or turning.
Gwatkin sat back in his chair.
‘How was that?’ he asked.
‘All right. Jolly good.’
‘You thought so?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I think we shall see a change in Sayce,’ he said.
‘I hope so.’
This straight talk to Sayce on the part of Gwatkin had a stimulating effect, as it turned out, on Gwatkin, rather than Sayce. It cheered up Gwatkin greatly, made him easier to work with; Sayce, on the other hand, remained much what he had been before. The fact was Gwatkin needed drama in his life. For a brief moment drama had been supplied by Sayce. However, this love of the dramatic sent Gwatkin’s spirits both up and down. Not only did his own defeats upset him, but also, vicariously, what he considered defeats for the Battalion. He felt, for example, deeply dishonoured by the case of Deafy Morgan, certainly an unfortunate incident.
‘Somebody ought to have been shot for it,’ Gwatkin said at the time.
When we had arrived on this side of the water, Maelgwyn-Jones had given a talk to all ranks on the subject of internal security.
‘This Command is very different from the Division’s home ground,’ he said. ‘The whole population of this island is not waging war against Germany – only the North. A few miles away from here, over the Border, is a neutral state where German agents abound. There and on our side too elements exist hostile to Britain and her Allies. There have been cases of armed gangs holding up single soldiers separated from their main body, or trying to steal weapons by ruse. You may have noticed, even in this neighbourhood, that some of the corner boys look sullen when we pass and the children sing about hanging up washing on the Maginot – rather than the Siegfried – Line.’
Accordingly, rifles were checked and re-checked, and Gwatkin was given additional opportunity for indulging in those harangues to the Company which he so greatly enjoyed delivering:
‘Stand the men easy, Sergeant-Major,’ he would say. ‘No talking. Move up a little closer at the back so that you can hear me properly. Right. Now I want you all to attend very clearly to what I have to say. The Commanding Officer has ordered me to tell you once again you must all take care of your rifles, for a man’s rifle is his best friend in time of war, and a soldier is no longer a soldier when his weapon is gone from him. He is like a man who has had that removed which makes him a man, something sadder, more useless, than a miner who has lost his lamp, or a farmer his plough. As you know, we are fighting Hitler and his hordes, so this Company must show the stuff she is made of, and you must all take care of your rifles or I will put you on a serious charge which will bring you before the Colonel. There are those not far from here who would steal rifles for their own beastly purpose. That is no funny matter, losing a rifle, not like long hair nor a dirty button. There is a place at Aldershot called the Glasshouse, where men who have not taken proper care of their rifles do not like to visit a second time. Nevertheless, I would not threaten you. That is not how I wish to lead you. It is for the honour of the Regiment that you should guard your rifles, like you would guard your wife or your little sister. Moreover, it may be some of the junior NCOs have not yet a proper sense of their own responsibilities in the matter of rifles and others. You Corporals, you Lance-Corporals, consider these things in your hearts. All rifles will be checked at Pay Parade each week, so that a man will bring his rifle to the table when he receives his due, and where you must remember to come smartly to attention and look straight in front of you without moving. That is the way we shall all pull together, and, as we heard the Rev. Popkiss, our Chaplain, read out at Church Parade last Sunday, so may it be said of this Company: Arise Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam. So let your rifles be well guarded and be the smartest company of the Battalion both on parade and in the field. All right, Sergeant-Major . . .’
I was impressed by the speech, though there were moments when I thought Gwatkin’s listeners might deride the images he conjured up, such as a man losing what made him a man, or little sisters who had to be protected. On the contrary, the Company listened spellbound, giving a low grunt of emphasis when the Glasshouse was mentioned, like a cinema audience gasping aloud in pleasurable appreciation of some peculiarly agonising sequence of horror film. I remembered Bracey, my father’s soldier-servant, employing that very same phrase about his rifle being the soldier’s best friend. After twenty-five years, that sentiment had stood up well to the test of time and the development of more scientific weapons of war.
‘It does the lads good to be talked to like that,’ said CSM Cadwallader afterwards. ‘Captain does know how to speak. Very excellent would he have been to preach the Word.’
Even Gittins, whose inherent strain of scepticism was as strong as any in the Battalion, had enjoyed Gwatkin’s talk. He told me so when I came to the Store later, to check supplies of web equipment held there.
‘A fine speech that was, the Skipper’s,’ said Gittins. ‘That should make the boys take care of their rifles proper, it should. And the rest of their stuff, too, I hope, and not come round here scrounging what they’ve lost off me, like a present at Christmas, it was.’
Kedward was less impressed
‘Rowland doesn’t half love jawing,’ he said, ‘I should just say so.
But what’s he going to be like when we get into action, I wonder, he is so jumpy. Will he keep his head at that?’
The doubts Kedward felt about Gwatkin were to some extent echoed by Gwatkin himself in regard to Kedward.
‘Idwal is a good reliable officer in many ways,’ he confided his opinion to me, ‘but I’m not sure he has just the quality for leading men.’
‘The men like him.’
‘The men can like an officer without feeling he inspires them. Yanto told me the other day he thought the men liked Bithel. You wouldn’t say Bithel had the quality of leadership, would you?’
Gwatkin’s dislike of Bithel was given new impetus by the Deafy Morgan affair, which followed close on the homily about rifles. Deafy Morgan, as his cognomen – it was far more than a mere nickname – implied, was hard of hearing. In fact, he was as deaf as a post. Only in his middle to late thirties, he gave the impression – as miners of that age often do – of being much older than his years. His infirmity, in any case, set him apart from the hurly-burly of the younger soldiers’ life, giving him a mild, even beatific cast of countenance, an expression that seemed for ever untroubled by moral turmoil or disturbing thought. It was probably true to say that Deafy Morgan did not have many thoughts, disturbing or otherwise, because he was not outstandingly bright, although at the same time possessing all sorts of other good qualities. In short, Deafy Morgan was the precise antithesis of Sayce. Always spick and span, he was also prepared at all times to undertake boring or tedious duties without the least complaint – in what could only be called the most Christlike spirit. Even among good soldiers, that is a singular quality in the army. No doubt it was one of the reasons why Deafy Morgan had not been relegated to the Second Line before the Division moved. Not at all fit, he would obviously have to be transferred sooner or later to the rear echelons. However, his survival was mainly due not so much to this habit of working without complaint, rare as that might be, as to the fact that everyone liked him. Besides, he had served as a Territorial longer than any other soldier in the ranks, wanted to remain with his friends – he was alleged to possess at home a nagging wife – so that no one in authority had had the heart to put Deafy Morgan’s name on whatever Army Form was required to effect his removal. He was in Bithel’s platoon.
Bithel himself had recently been appointed Musketry Officer. This was not on account of any notable qualifications for that duty, simply because the Battalion was short of officers on the establishment, several being also absent on courses. By this time Bithel’s individual status had become more clear to me. He was a small-town misfit, supporting himself in peacetime by odd jobs, preferably those on the outskirts of the theatrical world, living a life of solitude and toping, always on the verge of trouble, always somehow managing to extricate himself from anything serious. In the Battalion, there had been no repetition of the dance of love round the dummy, not anything comparable with that in exoticism. All the same, I suspected such expressions of Bithel’s personality were dormant rather than totally suppressed. He was always humble, even subservient, in manner, but this demeanour seemed to cloak a good opinion of himself, perhaps even delusions of grandeur.
‘Have you ever been interested in the Boy Scout movement?’ he asked. ‘I was keen about it at one time. Wonderful thing for boys. Gives them a chance. I threw it up in the end. Some of them are little brutes, you know. You’d never guess the things they say. I was surprised they knew about such matters. And their language among themselves. You wouldn’t credit it. I was told I was greatly missed after my resignation. They have a great deal of difficulty in getting suitable fellows to help. There are some nasty types about.’
The army is at once the worst place for egoists, and the best. Thus it was in many ways the worst for Bithel, always being ordered about and reprimanded, the best for Gwatkin, granted – anyway up to a point – the power and rank he desired. Nevertheless, in the army, as elsewhere, nothing is for ever. Maelgwyn-Jones truly said: ‘That day will pass, like other days in the army.’ Gwatkin’s ambition – the satisfaction of his ‘personal myth’, as General Conyers would have called it – might be temporarily realized, but there was always the danger that a re-posting, promotion, minor adjustment of duties, might alter everything. Even the obstacles set in the way of Bithel indulging the pottering he loved, could, for the same reasons, be alleviated, if not removed entirely. For instance, Bithel was tremendously pleased at being appointed Musketry Officer. There were several reasons for this. The job gave him a certain status, which he reasonably felt lacking, although there was probably less to do at the range than during the day by day training of a platoon. In addition, Bithel’s soldier-servant, Daniels, was on permanent duty at the butts.
‘I call him the priceless jewel,’ Bithel used to say. ‘You know how difficult it is to get a batman in this unit. They just don’t want to do the job, in spite of its advantages. Well, Daniels is a little marvel. I don’t say he’s always on time, or never forgets things. He fails in both quite often. But what I like about him is that he’s always got a cheerful word in all weathers. Besides, he’s as clean as a whistle. A real pleasure to look at when he’s doing PT, which is more than you can say for some of them in early morning. In any case, Daniels is not like all those young miners, nice boys as they are. He is more used to the world. You’re not boots for three months at the Green Dragon in my home town without hearing some gossip.’
Others took a less favourable view of Daniels, who, although skilled in juggling with dummy grenades, was in general regarded as light-fingered and sly. There was, I found in due course, nothing unusual in an officer being preoccupied – one might almost say obsessed – by the personality of his servant, though on the whole that was apt to occur in ranks senior to subaltern. The relationship seems to develop a curious state of intimacy in an unintimate society; one, I mean, far removed from anything to be thought of as overstepping established limits of propriety or everyday discipline. Indeed, so far from even approaching the boundaries of sexual aberration or military misconduct, the most normal of men, and conscientious of officers, often provided the most striking instances. Even my father, I remembered, had possessed an almost mystic bond with Bracey, certainly a man of remarkable qualities. It was a thing not easily explicable, perhaps demanded by the emotional conditions of an all-male society. Regular officers, for example, would sometimes go to great pains to prevent their servants suffering some deserved minor punishment for an infringement of routine. Such things made Bithel’s eulogies of Daniels no cause for comment. In any case, even if Bithel enjoyed the presence of Daniels at the range, it was not Daniels, but Deafy Morgan, who was source of all the trouble.
‘Why on earth did Bith ever send Deafy back there and then?’ said Kedward afterwards. ‘That bloody rifle could perfectly well have waited an hour or two before it was mended.’
The question was never cleared up. Perhaps Bithel was thereby given opportunity for a longer hob-nob with Daniels. Even if that were the object, I am sure nothing dubious took place between them, while the ‘musketry details’ were still at the butts. Anything of the sort would have been extremely difficult, even if Bithel had been prepared to take such a risk. Much more likely – Deafy Morgan being one of his own men – Bithel had some idea of avoiding, by immediate action, lack of a rifle in his platoon. Whatever the reason, Bithel sent Deafy Morgan back to barracks by himself with a rifle that had developed some defect requiring the attention of the Sergeant-Armourer. The range, where musketry instruction took place, was situated in a deserted stretch of country, two or three miles by road from the town. This distance could be reduced by taking a short cut across the fields. In wet weather the path across the fields was apt to be muddy, making the journey heavy going. Rain was not falling that day – some thing of a rarity – and Deafy Morgan chose the path through the fields.
‘I suppose I ought to have ordered him to go by road,’ Bithel said later. ‘But it takes such a lot of shouting to explain anything to the
man.’
The incident occurred in a wood not far from the outskirts of the town. Deafy Morgan, by definition an easy victim to ambush, was surrounded by four young men, two of whom threatened him with pistols, while the other two possessed themselves of his rifle. Deafy Morgan struggled, but it was no good. The four of them made off at a run, disappearing behind a hedge, where, so the police reported later, a car had been waiting. There was nothing for Deafy Morgan to do but return to barracks and report the incident. Sergeant Pendry, as it happened, was Orderly Sergeant that day. He handled the trouble with notable competence. Contact was made with the Adjutant, who was touring the country in a truck in the course of preparing a ‘scheme’: the Constabulary, who handled such matters of civil subversion, were at once informed. Deafy Morgan was, of course, put under arrest. There was a considerable to-do. This was just such an incident as Maelgwyn-Jones outlined in his ‘internal security’ talk. The Constabulary, perfectly accustomed to ambuscades of this type, corroborated the presence of four suspects in the neighbourhood, who had later withdrawn over the Border. It was an unhappy episode, not least because Deafy Morgan was so popular a figure. Gwatkin, as I have said, was particularly disturbed by it. His mortification took the form of blaming all on Bithel.
‘The CO will have to get rid of him,’ Gwatkin said. ‘It can’t go on. He isn’t fit to hold a commission.’
‘I don’t see what old Bith could have done about it,’ said Breeze, ‘even though it was a bit irregular to send Deafy back on his own like that.’
‘It may not have been Bithel’s fault directly,’ said Gwatkin sternly, ‘but when something goes wrong under an officer’s command, the officer has to suffer. That may be unjust. He has to suffer all the same. In my opinion, there would be no injustice in this case. Why, I shouldn’t wonder if the Colonel himself was not superseded for this.’
That was true enough. Certainly the Commanding Officer was prepared for the worst, so far as his own appointment was concerned. He said so in the Mess more than once. However, in the end nothing so drastic took place. Deafy Morgan was courtmartialled, getting off with a reprimand, together with transfer to the Second Line and his nagging wife. He had put up some fight. In the circumstances, he could hardly be sent to detention for losing his weapon and failing to capture four youngish assailants for whom he had been wholly unprepared; having been certainly too deaf to hear either their approach, or, at an earlier stage, the substance of Maelgwyn-Jones’s security talk. The findings of the court-martial had just been promulgated, when the Battalion was ordered to prepare for a thirty-six-hour Divisional exercise, the first of its kind in which the unit had been concerned.
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 3 Page 7