Two
'SAH,' snarled R.S.M. Backhouse, with a terrifying jaw-twist. '7388026 Sergeant Foxe T. Sah.' Tristram marched in in a sort of lope and saluted without grace. Lieutenant-Colonel Williams looked up sadly from his desk; his swarthy adjutant, standing behind, gave a grin of pain.
'Sergeant Foxe, eh?' said Lieutenant-Colonel Williams. He was a handsome tired greying man wearing, at the moment, clumsy reading-spectacles. The aura of long service which beat from him was, of course, illusory: all the soldiers of all the new armies were rookies. But Lieutenant-Colonel Williams, like all the senior officers, came out of that old liberal police force almost entirely superseded by the greyboys; he had been a scholarly superintendent of the Special Branch. 'Foxe with an "e", I see,' he said now, 'like the Book of Martyrs man.'
'Sir,' said Tristram.
'Well,' said Lieutenant-Colonel Williams, 'there's this question of your terms of reference as a sergeant-instructor.'
'Sir.'
'Your duties are, I think, straightforward enough. You have, according to Q.M.S.I. Bartlett, fulfilled them adequately. You have done good work in the class for illiterates, for example. You have, in addition, taught elementary arithmetic, report-writing, use of the telephone, military geography and current affairs.'
'Sir.'
'And it's these current affairs that have been causing the trouble. That right, Willoughby?' He peered up at his adjutant who, picking his nose, stopped picking his nose and nodded eagerly. 'Now, let me see. You seem to have been holding certain discussions with the men. Something about Who Is The Enemy? and What's All The Fighting About? You admit that, I take it.'
'Yes, sir. In my opinion, the men have a perfect right to discuss why they're in the army and what -'
'A soldier,' said Lieutenant-Colonel Williams wearily, 'has no right to opinions. That is laid down, rightly or wrongly. Rightly, I suppose, as it's laid down.'
'But, sir,' said Tristram, 'surely we have to know what we're involved in. We're told that there's a war on. Some of the men, sir, refuse to believe it. I'm inclined to agree with them, sir.'
'Indeed?' said Lieutenant-Colonel Williams coldly. 'Well, be enlightened, Foxe. There is fighting, so there must be war. There is not perhaps a war in the ancient sense, but war and fighting are, I should have supposed, in the organized sense, in the sense of armies being involved, as good as synonymous.'
'But, sir-'
'I hadn't finished, Foxe, had I? As far as these two questions of who and why are concerned, those are - and you must take it from me apodictically - no business of soldiers. The enemy is the enemy. The enemy is the people we're fighting. We must leave it to our rulers to decide which particular body of people that shall be. It's nothing to do with you or with me or with Private Snooks or Lancejack Dogsbody. Is that quite clear?'
'But, sir-'
'Why are we fighting? We're fighting because we're soldiers. That's simple enough, isn't it? For what cause are we fighting? Simple again. We're fighting to protect our country and, in a wider sense, the whole of the English-Speaking Union. From whom? No concern of ours. Where? Wherever we're sent. Now, Foxe, I trust all this is perfectly clear.'
'Well, sir, what I-'
'It's very wrong of you, Foxe, to disturb the men by starting them thinking and making them ask questions.' He examined the sheet in front of him, droning. 'Very interested, Foxe, I take it you are, in the enemy and fighting and so forth?'
'Well, sir, in my view -'
'We're going to give you an opportunity for closer contact. Good idea, Willoughby? You approve, Sergeant-major? I'm taking you, Foxe, off instructional duties w.e.f. today, 1200 hours. You'll be posted from HQ Company to one of the rifle companies. It's B Company, I believe, Willoughby, that's short of a platoon sergeant. Right, Foxe. It will do you a lot of good, lad.'
'But, sir -'
'Salute !' cried R.S.M. Backhouse, formerly a sergeant of police. 'About turn! Quick march!' Tristram leftright-left-right-lefted out, furious and apprehensive. 'Better report now,' said the R.S.M., in the more brotherly tones of the mess.
'What did he mean,' asked Tristram, 'when he talked about closer contact? What was he getting at?'
'I reckon he meant what he said,' said the R.S.M. 'I reckon some will be on the move before long. Won't be no time for teaching them their ABC and their once times table then, there won't. Right, Sarnt, off you go.'
Tristram, no very soldierly figure, tramped to B Company Office, his boots ringing and sparking on the metal deck. This - Annexe Island B6 - was an artifact of limited area anchored in the East Atlantic, intended originally to accommodate population overflow, now compactly holding a brigade. All that could be seen of the natural world was a bitter winter sky and, railed off all round, the grey acid sea. This endless dual ambient made one glad to turn inward, to the empty discipline, the childish training, the warm fug of barrack-room and company office. Tristram entered B Company lines, reported to the C.S.M. - a slack-mouthed stupid Nordic giant - and then was admitted to the presence of Captain Behrens, O.C. B Company. 'Good,' said Captain Behrens, a fat white man with very black hair and moustache. 'That makes the company about up to strength. You'd better cut along and report to Mr Dollimore - he's your platoon commander.' Tristram saluted, nearly fell over executing his about-turn, and cut along. He found Lieutenant Dollimore, an amiable young man with idiot spectacles and mild acne rosacea, giving his platoon a lesson in the naming of parts of the rifle. Rifles - there had been, Tristram knew, rifles in those ancient preatomic wars; the organization, nomenclature, procedure, armament of this new British Army all seemed to have come out of old books, old films. Rifles, indeed. 'Cocking piece,' pointed Mr Dollimore. 'No, sorry, that's the firing pin. Bolt, striker - What's this one called, Corporal?'
'Sear spring, sir.' A squat middle-aged two-striper looked on, standing to attention, prompting, helping, as now.
'Sergeant Foxe reporting, sir.'
Mr Dollimore gazed with mild interest at Tristram's idiosyncratic salute and snapped it with a bizarre allomorph of his own - a briefly fluttering coxcomb of fingers at his brow. 'Good,' he said, 'good, good.' A wash of vapid relief animated his face. 'Naming of parts,' he said. 'You can take over.'
Tristram looked at the platoon in bewilderment. Thirty men were squatting in the lee of a sleeping-hut, grinning or gawping up. He knew most of them; most of them had had to come to him for rudimentary educational instruction; most of them were still analphabetic. The other ranks of this entire brigade (East Atlantic) were pressed thugs, corner-boys, sexual perverts, gibberers, morons. Still, as far as the naming of the rifle's parts was concerned, he and they were much on a level of ability. 'Very good, sir,' said Tristram and, cunning, 'Corporal.'
'Sarnt?'
'You can take over.' Tristram shuffled into step with Mr Dollimore, who was walking in the direction of his mess. 'What do you actually do with them, sir?'
'Do with them? Well, there's not very much one can do, is there?' Mr Dollimore opened his mouth suspiciously at Tristram. 'I mean, all that's laid down is that they learn how to fire that gun of theirs, isn't that it? Oh, and to keep themselves clean, of course, as far as they can.'
'What's going on, sir?' said Tristram somewhat sharply.
'What do you mean - what's going on? That's all that's going on, that that I told you.' They marched metallically, sparkily, across the open winter Atlantic deck of the barren man-made island.
'What I meant was,' said Tristram, with more patience, 'have you heard anything about our going into action?'
'Action? Action against whom?' Mr Dollimore paused in his march the better to stare at Tristram.
'Against the enemy.'
'Oh, I see.' Mr Dollimore used a tone implying that there were hosts other than the enemy that one could go into action against. Tristram crawled all over with a ghastly intimation that Mr Dollimore must be regarded as expendable; if he was expendable, then so was his platoon sergeant. And then, it being just noon, a scratchy
record hissed from the loudspeakers, a synthetic bugle blared its angelus, and Mr Dollimore said, 'I just hadn't thought of that. I thought this was meant to be a sort of action, really. I thought we were son of doing a sort of protection job.'
'We'd better go and look at Battalion Orders,' said Tristram. An orderly-room orderly was pinning them up - flapping desolate surrender flags in the Atlantic wind - as they approached the prefabricated huts (ringing with typewriter-bells) of Battalion Headquarters. Tristram nodded, grim, reading faster than his officer. 'That's it, then,' he said. Mr Dollimore, mouth open at it, said, 'Oh, oh, I see. What's that word? Oh, oh, I see.' It was all there, crisp and cold as a lettuce though less digestible. A movement order from Brigade: a draft of six hundred officers and men - two hundred from each battalion - to parade for embarkation at 0630 hours the following day. 'Yes, yes,' said Mr Dollimore eagerly, 'we're in it, you see.' He pointed with joy as though he had his name in the papers. 'There - 2nd Battalion: B Company.' And then, surprisingly, he stood to awkward attention and said, 'Now God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour.'
'I beg your pardon?' said Tristram.
'If I should die, think only this of me,' said Mr Dollimore. It was as if part of his school reading had been an index of first lines. ' "Ye have robbed, said he," ' said he, ' "ye have slaughtered and made an end." '
'That's more like it,' said Tristram, though his head reeled. 'That's a good deal more like it.'
Three
THEY could hear sea transport hooting in at midnight. The men had been sent to bed at ten, stuffed with cocoa and bully, having suffered an inspection of rifles and feet, had deficiencies of clothing and equipment made up, and been issued with many rounds of live ammunition. After three other ranks had been shot accidentally dead and the C.S.M. of HQ Company sustained a flesh wound in the buttock, this issue was withdrawn as premature: the troops would be given their bullets - strictly for the enemy - at the base camp at the port of disembarkation.
'But who is this damned enemy?' asked Sergeant Lightbody for the thousandth time. He lay in the bunk above Tristram, on his back, head resting on folded hands, a handsome sardonic young man with a Dracula jaw. Tristram was writing a letter to his wife, sitting up with blankets round his knees. He was sure she would not receive it, as he was sure she had not received the thirty-odd others he had written, but writing to her was like launching a prayer, a prayer for better times, normality, the decent ordinary comforts of home and love. '- Moving off into action tomorrow. Where, God knows. Be assured that you will be in my thoughts as always. We shall be together again soon, perhaps sooner than we think. Your loving Tristram.' He wrote her name on a cheap canteen envelope and sealed the letter in; he then scribbled his invariable covering note: 'Swine who call yourself my brother, give this to my wife, you unloving hypocritical bastard. All everlasting hate from T.F.' He addressed his outer envelope to D. Foxe, Government Building, Brighton, Greater London, being quite sure that Derek was of that type who would have power, in his trimmer's Vicar-of-Bray way, whatever party reigned. Derek was quite probably behind this war, if there was a war. The C.O.'s definition of 'enemy' was wrong. 'You know what I think?' said Sergeant Lightbody, when Tristram had answered that first question to himself and his own satisfaction but not aloud at all. 'I think there is no enemy. I think that as soon as we get aboard that trooper they'll just sink it. I think they'll drop a few bombs on it and smash us all to smithereens. That's what I think.'
'There aren't any bombing planes,' said Tristram. 'Bombing planes don't exist any more. They went out a long time ago.'
'I've seen them on the films,' said Sergeant Lightbody.
'Very ancient films. Films of the twentieth-century wars. Those ancient wars were very complex and elaborate.'
'They'll split us with torpedoes.'
'Another obsolete technique,' said Tristram. 'No warships, remember.'
'All right,' said Sergeant Lightbody. 'Poison gas, then. They'll get us somehow. We won't have a chance to fire a single shot.'
'Possible,' conceded Tristram. 'They wouldn't want to damage our uniforms or equipment or the ship itself.' He shook himself, asking, 'Who the hell do we mean when we talk about "they"?'
'Obvious, I should have thought,' said Sergeant Lightbody. 'By "they" we mean the people who get fat through making ships and uniforms and rifles. Make them and destroy them and make them again. Go on doing it for ever and ever. They're the people who make the wars. Patriotism, honour, glory, defence of freedom - a load of balls, that's what it is. The end of war is the means of war. And we are the enemy.'
'Whose enemy?'
'Our own. You mark my words. We shan't be alive to see it, but we're in now for an era of endless war - endless because the civilian population won't be involved, because the war will be conveniently far away from civilization. Civilians love war.'
'Only,' said Tristram, 'presumably, so long as they can go on being civilians.'
'Some of them will be able to - those who govern and those who make the money. And their women, of course. Not like the poor bitches we'll be fighting side by side with - if they kindly allow us to live, that is, till we get to the other shore.'
'I've not,' said Tristram, 'clapped eyes on one single auxiliary since I joined.'
'Auxiliaries? That's a load of balls, too. Battalions of women, that's what they've got, whole damned regiments of them. I ought to know - my sister got conscripted into one. She writes now and again.'
'I didn't know that,' said Tristram.
'According to her, they seem to do pretty well what we do. Damn all, in other words, except practising how to shoot. Marking time till they drop a bomb on the poor bitches.'
'Do you,' asked Tristram, 'very much mind the prospect of being killed?'
'Not all that much. It's best to be caught by surprise. I shouldn't like to lie in bed, waiting for it. When you come to think of it,' said Sergeant Lightbody, settling himself snug as in his coffin, 'that business about "Let me like a soldier fall" has a lot in its favour. Life's only choosing when to die. Life's a big postponement because the choice is so difficult. It's a tremendous relief not to have to choose.' In the distance the sea transport bellowed, as in derision of these trite aphorisms.
'I intend to live,' said Tristram. 'I have so much to live for.' The sea transport bellowed again. It did not waken the four other sergeants in the billet; they were rough men, inclined to jeer at Tristram because of his accent and pretensions to polite learning, now snoring after a heavy mess-night on ale. Sergeant Lightbody said nothing more and was soon lightly asleep himself, neatly asleep, as if he had carved himself a dainty helping of oblivion. But Tristram was in a strange bed in a strange barrack-room, the bed of Sergeant Day (discharged dead of a botulism) whom he was now replacing. All night long the sea transport roared as if hungry for its freight of expendables, unwilling to wait till breakfast-time, and Tristram, tossing in dirty blankets, listened to it. Endless war. He wondered. He did not think that possible, not if the law of the historical cycle was a valid law. Perhaps, all these years, the historiographers had been unwilling to recognize history as a spiral, perhaps because a spiral was so difficult to describe. Easier to photograph the spiral from the top, easier to flatten the spring into a coil. Was war, then, the big solution after all? Were those crude early theorists right? War the great aphrodisiac, the great source of world adrenalin, the solvent of ennui, Angst, melancholia, accidia, spleen? War itself a massive sexual act. culminating in a detumescence which was not mere metaphorical dying? War, finally, the controller, the trimmer and excisor, the justifier of fertility?
'War,' bawled the trooper in the metal bay. And, turning over in his heavy sleep, 'War,' imploded snoring Sergeant Bellamy. All over the world, at this very moment, infants by the million were fighting into the outer air bellowing 'War'. Tristram yawned, and his yawn was 'War'. He was desperately weary but could not sleep, despite the lullaby ('War' on so many instruments) around him. The night, however, was no
t very long; it became arbitrary morning at 0400 hours, and Tristram was thankful not to have to undergo the agony of his fellow-sergeants, groaning back to the world, cursing to be dead again as the synthetic bugle bounced reveille all over the camp.
Four
SPARKS on the morning-night road outside its barrack-room as No. 1 Platoon fell in, coughs, hawks, curses five feet above the sparks. Corporal Haskell syringed light from a thin torch on to the nominal roll held by his sergeant. Tristram, in steel helmet and a raglan greatcoat of ancient design, called the names into the wind: 'Christie.'
'Sarnt.'
'Crump.'
'Boogger off.'
'Gashen. Howell. Mackay. Muir. Talbot.' Several men answered, some obscenely. 'Better count them,' said Tristram. Corporal Haskell took his thin-rayed torch to each trio of faces, disclosing serially decollated masks, horrible apparitions in the Atlantic blackness. 'Twentynine, Sarnt,' said Corporal Haskell. 'O'Shaughnessy got hisself shot last night.'
'Platoon shun,' suggested Tristram. 'Move to the right in threes. By the left quick march.' This total order was roughly obeyed. The platoon sparked off, left-wheeling, right-wheeling, halting on the wrong foot at the company lines. The other platoons came shambling up severally, fire at their heels, barked at, and the platoon commanders came out to take posts. Captain Behrens eventually appeared, a milk-white ghost in an officer's raincoat, to march the company off to the battalion parade-ground. Here, arc-lamped like a tattoo, mass was said by the Battalion chaplain, yawning and shivering as he made his obeisances at the canopied altar. There was bread to be transubstantiated (a bumper harvest last year) but still no wine: blackcurrant-flavoured alc went into the chalice. The chaplain, a long unhappy-looking man, blessed the troops and their cause; some of the troops ironically blessed him back.
The Wanting Seed Page 18