MacQueen entered and waved. He joined Pineo and a few others at another table for a brief talk, then walked straight across the dance floor to join them. He made an exaggerated gesture of greeting and shaking the sergeant’s hand. It was plain for all to see, though no one was fooled. The two military policemen duly noted the performance, which was important if alibis had to be verified. Sergeant Cyples always took care of the military police as a matter of course, and they were both smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes for the first time. Tobacco was a greatly more important currency than money.
“How do you like my new broach, Pat?” asked Barbara proudly. “Bill says that I am a daughter of the regiment.” She was developing in the right places, and it looked very good indeed.
“Is that a down payment?” laughed MacQueen. He noticed the blue dress hat in the sergeant’s epaulette. “And a pansy hat, I see?”
The sergeant put the hat on his head and angled it over one eye. “How’s that?” he asked.
It is a touch of what is needed, thought MacQueen. If he could calm himself and turn off the light behind those eyes, he would cease making people so nervous. He seemed to carry a chip on his shoulder and was always daring someone to knock it off. That attitude might be great in combat, but it would never get him into the officer’s mess.
“I appreciate that, Bill,” said Patrick MacQueen seriously. “I know what you were thinking.”
“I’m just as vain as you are, MacQueen,” said the sergeant with a dry laugh. “Only you’re better looking than me.”
“I don’t know,” said Barbara, looking at one and then the other. “You’re different types. But I’m better looking than both of you!” They laughed.
MacQueen brought ginger ale and the sergeant produced a flask of rye whisky. Barbara had a taste, but didn’t like it. The orchestra played “Red Sails in the Sunset”, and they took turns dancing. The dance hall filled and grew hot and smoky. After a couple of hours, they were ready to leave, separately, of course, and made arrangements to meet.
The sergeant drove Barbara home in a taxi then picked MacQueen up under a lamp by the bridge. “I’ll let you off a hundred yards or so from the gate,” he said. “Is your pass okay?”
“Yes,” answered MacQueen. “This is a tough way to meet. It was fun and you were great, but it’s kind of complicated.”
“Something always turns up,” said the sergeant.
MacQueen got out of the car into the dark. “Thanks,” he said.
“De nada,” said the Sergeant. “I’ll make the next move.”
MacQueen marched towards the guardhouse under the stars.
17
On the tenth of May, 1940, the German army invaded the Low Countries. Neville Chamberlain resigned as prime minister and Winston Churchill was appointed in his stead. The Germans continued their steady advance to the Spanish frontier. The French army surrendered, and the British army was lifted, without its equipment, off the beaches of Dunkirk. Italy entered the war beside Germany, and Hitler called for peace. This call was ignored by Churchill, so a German army assembled at the English Channel and the air raids began in earnest. Stalin supplied Hitler with oil; Roosevelt supplied Churchill with oil. The Battle of the Atlantic intensified, bases were built in Newfoundland, and Halifax became the active operational headquarters of Canada at war.
The A Company of the West Nova Scotia Regiment were becoming hardened soldiers, tanned by the summer sun and constantly honing the edge of their effectiveness. Aldershot had blossomed into a sea of canvas, with hundreds of tents covering Strawberry and Blueberry Hills and spreading across the fields. The general officer commanding Military District Number 6 was scheduled to inspect the troops, and a massive parade was planned in his honour. This would be the apex of the colonel’s career, and rehearsals were conducted at the company and battalion levels. The parade ground was too small for such an enterprise, so it was planned for the large stretch of open ground just inside the main gate. This was tagged and ribboned, the bandsmen polished their tubas and drums, and the sergeant majors came out of the clouds and bellowed alongside everyone else who was entitled to bellow.
The A Company was drawn up expectantly. Before turning the parade over to the adjutant, the sergeant major strode towards Number One Platoon. MacQueen stood rigidly in the centre rank. “You,” said the sergeant major. “You are an old soldier. You be marker!”
MacQueen almost fainted. He stepped out of the ranks and took the place of the current marker, who stepped into MacQueen’s vacant place. Sergeant Browne watched this in disbelief. The sergeant major never interfered with the platoons except through their sergeants. The sergeant major then turned the parade over to the adjutant, and the officers took their allotted places. MacQueen was the marker of the A Company—and thus of the entire parade. The anti-tankers and medical corps—and everyone else in camp—would follow him.
They approached the general in the ceremonial close column of companies, which meant that all of A Company was extended in three lines to MacQueen’s left. Everyone except the marker turned his eyes to the right as they marched past the general. The sergeants virtually begged the men to keep the line straight as they advanced. MacQueen’s eyes were fixed on the general’s stick, which was tucked under one of his arms, protruding in front of his decorated chest. MacQueen marched on, but the company had turned into line two steps late, and it was impossible to herd them all over to the left. The band played frantically; the sergeants shouted and pleaded; the officers commanded, “Eyes right!” MacQueen dreaded that he was going to bowl the general over by marching right into that stick. It advanced on him like a horizontal telephone pole, but MacQueen stayed his course. Then, blessedly, the stick vanished to one side, and they were past. Clouds of dust settled on the troops in the rear, but the A Company had a clear field ahead. They turned into close column and marched back to the parade ground. The officers fell out in unmistakeable relief, the sergeant major congratulated the entire company, and they were dismissed to get something to eat.
In the hut, MacQueen stood his rifle beside his bunk, took off his helmet, and gradually unbuckled his respirator and web gear. The platoon was rambunctious and noisy, and they shouted to one another, but MacQueen was silent. He sat on his bunk and smiled distractedly at Tony’s joking. He was trying to read significance into what had transpired when he was called to replace the marker. Was it an instantaneous decision of the sergeant major’s, a compliment to MacQueen that had gone over the sergeant’s head, or a calculated affront to Sergeant Browne? Whatever had inspired it, MacQueen felt dismayed. It had raised his profile over that of a lance corporal, without anyone first consulting the sergeant. That may have pleased the general, but he was certain it wouldn’t please the sergeant.
Amid all of the pandemonium, Sergeant Cyples strode into the hut and directly down the line to MacQueen’s bunk. Everyone stopped his activity, and Tony jumped to attention. The sergeant smiled and pushed him onto the bunk beside MacQueen. “So, you led the whole army today?” he said. “Good work, and I congratulate you.” He then turned slowly and said, “Who was the original marker?”
The lance corporal slowly rose to his feet. “I was, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Cyples walked directly to him. “You can blame me for that,” he lied. “You’ve got your half stripe and I’m trying to get one for my friend here!” He laughed and offered the lance corporal a cigarette. This was the language they all understood; no one was humiliated, and they all started to laugh. The sergeant passed around his remaining cigarettes and walked out the door.
“Sergeant Brown ain’t going to like that,” commented the corporal to himself. “And anyway, that man’s lying through his teeth.”
It didn’t matter. Sergeant Cyples had deftly removed a burr from under Number One Platoon’s saddle and restored harmony. That was a skill that Sergeant Browne would never learn, and it angered him. The Royal Canadian Regiment Company sergeant major never accounted for his action, and he probably ne
ver gave it a second thought. He merely wanted a little swagger in his parade.
In a few weeks they would be entraining for the troopship to transport them overseas. The training sergeants had a choice. They could lose their rank and go to Britain, or keep their rank and stay in Aldershot with a chance of promotion.
MacQueen was getting worried about his application for officer’s training. There was no combat in Britain yet for the Canadians, although the bombs were falling and everyone was on a state of alert.
The following day was a fine day, and they sang as they marched through the forest to the rifle range to be tested for marksmanship. Lunch was to be sent to them. It was almost like a picnic.
18
The choice given to the training sergeants was a hard one. Combat may be the ultimate justification of the soldier’s life, but a vast apparatus must exist to recruit, train, equip, and supply the combat troops. Transport and reinforcements must be ready for the day that they become expendable, and all of this must be administered in every detail. The combat soldier, like a fighter in the ring, is backed by a comet trail of trainers, seconds-in-command, managers, boosters, suppliers, and, ultimately, profiteers that hone his skills and encourage his sacrifice. The combat soldier doesn’t even pick the enemy; that too is done for him. Warring soldiers, facing one another and being willing to die, have more in common than they have in opposition.
That truth is always the nightmare of the leaders, and history shows us many examples of the soldiery realizing their role and reversing it. Therefore, in learning to kill one’s fellow man for reasons beyond the average comprehension, one must learn to hate. Hatred of “the enemy” is instilled by propaganda and the training process. When one is unsure of who exactly the enemy will be, the hatred must be generalized. “Our way of life is being threatened!” they will say. In retrospect, if the young soldier of 1940 was going to die for a “way of life”, it would be any other way of life than the one he was experiencing.
Sergeant Browne had no problem with the decision to remain in Aldershot as a training sergeant. He was planning to marry and hoped to become an acting officer on the camp staff. He had spent years of his time acquiring his present status. He worked hard to improve his capabilities and deliberately ignored the growing resentment of the men under his command. When the war was over he might even continue into the Permanent Force—if the offer was attractive. Why should he lose his rank and travel in hardship to distant lands merely to sacrifice his life for some politician’s hare-brained schemes? He had studied Churchill’s Dardanelles experiment in the first war and was not as enamoured of Old Winnie as everyone else seemed to be. In fact, he regarded this great icon as a garrulous old fraud. He didn’t even spare contempt for Canada’s pious leader.
On the other hand, Training Sergeant Cyples faced this question from a less prosaic angle. He had seen the power structure in miniature, from top to bottom, during his exploits in Central America. Give or take a shading, the picture was identical when blown up to a continental or global scale. He had seen El Presidente appealing to the peasants to sacrifice for the father or motherland. He had seen the spurred old officers leading from the rear while the mercenaries delivered the punch, took their pay, and vanished. The bodies littering the piazza were the believers—revolutionary or counter-revolutionary—and the bodies in the bush were the innocents. The mirrors changed, new faces seemed to appear with the same old promises, but the sceneshifters remained, and profited from all sides.
The sergeant could not visualize this war as being any different, and he correctly tagged Switzerland and Sweden as the havens in Europe. He considered his father’s far-left attitude just as fraudulent as the label of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. And he was still bitter about the abdication of Edward VIII, and felt that he had been betrayed. The sergeant only felt at home among his soldiers, and had he known it, he would have subscribed to the French Foreign Legion’s motto: “The Legion is my Fatherland”. To the sergeant such matters as life and death were not important, and he nursed a constant, banked desire for destruction.
The awkward squad was being reabsorbed into the company, and he would soon be without a platoon. The need for reinforcements in the West Nova Scotia Regiment was, as yet, minimal, and he did not fancy the idea of being stuck in England any more than in Nova Scotia. His desire to be an officer was more to shake off his father’s proletarian roots than any true desire to be a gentleman, although he knew that he would have to perfect the disguise.
Trailing along behind these two more mature figures was Private Patrick MacQueen. A century and a half ago, this young man would have accompanied Napoleon’s Cavalry General Murat anywhere across the face of Europe. He would have strutted in the squares of conquered towns and never flinched when charging the enemy guns. This was the élan of the armies—the old guard plodded to victory and delivered the world on a silver platter to their emperor. Such a world of make-believe cannot be self-sustaining, however, and MacQueen was finding it tough. In Aldershot there was all grime and no glitter. Surely if one is willing to have one’s head blown off they could provide a little more style than this, he thought. The colourful tattoos of Bermuda were far away in time and place.
There is a natural genius in humanity that defeats every effort by authority to level it out. There is always the exception, and thus, there is always hope. Pat MacQueen recalled a couplet that their old Scot housekeeper’s husband had recited:
It’s Tommy this and Tommy that,
and Tommy go away;
But it’s ‘Thank you, Mister Atkins’
when the bands begin to play…
He thought that some of the sergeant’s problem lay in those lines. His father had been a “Tommy” in the British infantry, and he viewed himself as one also. Every class or group must view themselves as the salt of the earth, but the sergeant had not bought into his father’s admiration of proletarian values. He didn’t want to elevate the proletariat; he wanted to join the present ruling class. However much this existed in his imagination, or in actual reality, was a problem too deep for young MacQueen. He saw in his friend a superior soldier who allowed himself to be influenced by a deeply ingrained and highly polished mythology. It was a looking-glass enigma requiring one to rethink attitudes learned in early childhood.
Cricket isn’t the only game the sergeant doesn’t know how to play, MacQueen reflected rather sadly. But reversing his attitudes without insulting him seemed impossible. Why would a shark want to play with other fish anyway, except to devour them? Although he certainly admired their style, MacQueen knew that sharks were dangerous companions. He would think twice about inviting one to join him in the swimming pool. But even sharks have an Achilles heel, he thought with a smile, and it had brought them together. He thought of the crisp naval officers with top-drawer accents and nice white uniforms leaving Bill Cyples behind on a beach in El Salvador, and wondered why he hadn’t joined the Communists instead of aspiring to join their social ranks through the army.
The direction this war was taking would probably blow the whole ruling class to kingdom come anyway.
19
At the rifle range, one platoon was sent into the “butts”, a sandbagged, deep trench in front of the targets. From this point the targets were raised and lowered, and the shots marked for the rifleman by a disc on the end of a long pole. This allowed him to adjust his sights and aim. A perfect score would place five bullets into the bull’s-eye of the target.
Discipline on the firing line was strict, and only ten men could shoot at the same time. They each had their own .303 Lee-Enfield rifle, equipped with a sling, and operated by single-shot bolt action. If one was left-handed, the process was merely more difficult. Ammunition was issued in clips of five rounds, and every man had to return the empty brass cartridge cases. The firing was done from the prone position, or lying down. Thus, the soldier is stationary, the target is stationary, and the conditions are ideal. Although that is a rare occurr
ence in actual combat, the rifle is the soldier’s best friend and they have to become acquainted. A red flag flew from a pole, which had no political significance.
The instructor sergeants fired a few preliminary bull’s-eyes to show that it could be done, and then retired behind the firing line to relax with their platoons. The English ex-major chatted with Sergeant Cyples, and they were joined by the ex-Imperial Regimental sergeant major from the detention barracks nearby. He enjoyed dropping over to the range for a sniff of gunpowder when he wasn’t devising new torments for his prisoners. He wore a uniform of officer’s material and the full coat of arms of Great Britain embroidered on his cuffs. He also wore a sword belt and a sweeping white moustache. His status was barely short of Valhalla.
“Good to hear the old bang-bang again, what?” he asked the ex-major. “Great day for potting the Hun….” He laughed. He had been potting plants in his greenhouse in the backwoods of Nova Scotia until this war restored him from grumpy retirement to glory. He wore a spangle of ribbons on his left chest and was said to have been wounded in the Khyber Pass. He walked with a slight limp.
The ex-major of the Territorial Army envied this fellow countryman and his soft job running the detention barracks. However, he laughed dutifully and shifted rather uneasily on his feet. These two men knew one another’s exact position on the social grid of Great Britain, and those roles were inescapably fixed, despite their present positions. Neither of them knew that Sergeant Cyples was also a part of that iron tapestry; they knew only that he came from Winnipeg and was temporarily slotted in their minds without category, excepting his army rank.
The Broken Sword Page 8