Private's Progress (5 page)

“I’m frightfully sorry,” said Stanley.

“Thank you,” said the testing officer. “Lunch is in twenty minutes.”

After a miserable and subdued luncheon a selection of names was read out for interviews with the
psychiatrist
.

Major Blunden, the psychiatrist, had a cheerful sunny room on the first floor, and whenever possible kept the windows wide open. This had the incidental effect of adding something sinister, seeming out of
keeping with his dark trade, as though a bright new suburban villa, in which one might feel safe, were suddenly found to have a Thing upstairs. He had imported a small bookshelf, filled with the handbooks of his craft, and a very large filing cabinet. He sat, an enormous man in major’s uniform, at his enormous desk, and contemplated Stanley, sitting opposite him, with an unblinking eye. The little figure opposite showed signs of fidgeting, but had nothing to fidget with, and seemed dying to snatch up some of the multiplicity of pencils, date-stamps, ink-bottles and note-pads on his desk for a frantic session of twiddling and doodling.

The psychiatrist leaned forward.

“Tell me about yourself,” he encouraged.

“Where shall I begin?” asked Stanley, embarrassed.

Major Blunden shifted hugely in his swivel chair.

“Where you like,” he said diffidently. “Much as you can remember.”

Stanley sketched his academic career.

Major Blunden waited tensely for some seconds when he had finished, then consulted the papers before him. Stanley caught a glimpse of his complicated
punctuation
to the BEER-HAPPY cards.

“Were you ever bullied at school?” asked Major Blunden.

“No.”

Major Blunden waited.

“Right,” he said, and looked over the papers again. “Did you play rugger?”

“Yes.”

“For your school?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t at all good enough.”

“In what way?”

“Not expert enough,” said Stanley firmly.

“Any serious illnesses?”

“No.”

Major Blunden paused, eyes fixed on him.

“H’m,” he said. “You wish to stay in the Army?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think it would suit me as a career. I want to get back to Oxford.”

“And do what, ultimately?”

“I haven’t really thought it out, I’m afraid,” said Stanley, heart sinking.

Major Blunden consulted the papers.

“Right,” he said briskly. “Thank you. That’s all. Would you tell the next chap …?”

Stanley went out and queued for an interview with the president.

“Windrush?” said Colonel Argent.

“Yes, sir.”

“Take a pew. Right. Now first, why do you want to become an officer?”

Stanley was floored. Why did he?

“Well,” he said, edging about a little, “it’s not that I want a higher standard of living or anything like that. I think it’s—well, I think I could do the job, I imagine.” His voice trailed away.

“Do you think you would make a good officer?” asked Colonel Argent.

“I hope so,” said Stanley inadequately.

“Now,” said Colonel Argent, “do you follow the war news? You do? Right, show me Guadalcanal on this map.”

Stanley went to the large wall-map beside the president’s desk, muttering, “The Pacific …”

His finger hovered round Borneo and then plunged obliquely towards the Philippines.

“Here,” he said.

“Where here?” asked the president.

“Here,” said Stanley, shifting his finger three inches to where he had suddenly seen the name.

The interview dragged on.

“Right,” said the colonel. “One last point. If you were commissioned, would you stay on after the war?”

“Yes, I’d love to,” said Stanley hastily. He was fast adopting a merely empirical approach. If there had been an interview with the sergeant-major he might easily have said, “Good God, no. Too frightful.”

The last scheme for the day was the competitive erection by the two groups of tents for an imaginary general. They were led out into a clearing in the grounds by the sergeant-major.

“The general will arrive in fifteen minutes,” he said. “He wants a tent up, but he doesn’t like being near trees. You can start any time you feel like it.”

They had been caught that way before and began immediately to look for materials. A search of the shrubbery disclosed two large shapeless tent canvases and a number of poles, all the wrong sizes. Under the bushes were several lengths of flimsy frayed rope. In
sum there were about two-thirds of the necessary
components
for one tent.

Circumstances were against them. To make matters worse, the groups sabotaged each other’s tents for components. As Stanley stood holding in position a knotted support-rope, a large fellow from the competing syndicate snatched it out of his hands and made off with it.

“I say!” said Stanley. He hurried across to the other tent and removed the loose handle of their mallet. This he threw into the bushes.

“No parts must be lost,” announced the
sergeant-major
, and Stanley had to retrieve it. When he came back the two testing officers were watching.

After twenty minutes the groups stood back and looked at their tents. It was a repulsive sight. Roofs
dipped
alarmingly and beneath the freely flapping walls could be seen the shifting feet of those left inside, panting and straining to keep the heavy poles vertical. A frayed rope parted and one end of Stanley’s group’s erection folded up. Stanley went gallantly forward and restored its shape by holding one corner, posed like a footman at an opened door.

“Tents away,” said the sergeant-major. Both dropped abruptly to the ground.

The third day was notable for a labour which took the entire morning. An enormously heavy tripod, twelve feet high, composed of thick planks and weighty iron piping lashed together, had to be lugged over a series of really formidable obstacles. A candidate was
detailed
to take charge at each of these obstacles. The
first ordered the stripping of the great encumbrance into its components, each of which was still alarmingly heavy. By the time Stanley was put in charge of the group they were all too fatigued to argue, and did his bidding fatalistically, without comment. Stanley began to enjoy a feeling of power. His job was to command. He took no part in the manual work, but stood apart, giving crisp and rarely contradictory orders. At one stage he was on the point of adopting the Napoleonic hand-on-heart stance, but checked himself just in time. The syndicate was too tired to care. Five paces away the testing officer watched the metamorphosis curiously. The obstacle was a minefield and was negotiated with the presumed loss of only one man. This man was Stanley, who stepped back to admire his handiwork onto the taped-off mined area. The officer, however, was looking the other way, and Stanley leapt instantly back again before he turned round.

In the afternoon they played a game of Travelling Companions. One man had chosen Mahatma Gandhi; and Stanley, emboldened by his morning success, volunteered for this role. It was an undistinguished performance.

This was the last of the tests. The candidates,
determinedly
keeping up their parts to the point of nervous exhaustion, were haled individually, after the next morning’s breakfast, before the whole Board, to repeat their names and the arm of the service in which they sought to be commissioned.

Then it was all over.

The Board came into the drawing-room where they were assembled, and the president genially asked for
criticisms. In their assumed cheerful stoicism the candidates offered none.

“Good,” said Colonel Argent. “Grand. Goodbye and good luck to you.”

Within an hour they were away. The sergeant-major negligently supervised them into trucks, and they surged down the avenue of Edwardian poplars and back to Rootbridge.

Next morning they were called out on parade. An officer read out two lists of names and got them into two separate groups. Both groups looked apprehensive, for any member of each, looking furtively round at his companions and then at the other group, could see no visible signs of the other lot looking better than his. Both seemed to contain peculiar persons, yet one group would obviously have passed and the other failed.

To Stanley’s dismay the officer walked to the other group and said:

“You people have been accepted for Infantry Rifle commissions.”

Then he came across to Stanley’s group and said: “You people have not been accepted and will move your kit into the Holding-out Company lines.”

He dismissed the parade, and a buzz of muttering broke out. Stanley went over to Egan, who had passed, and congratulated him.

“Thanks very much, old boy,” said Egan. “I’m sorry you didn’t pass. Still.”

He appeared at once jubilant and uneasy at being seen in Stanley’s company. As soon as he decently could he made off to his hut to shine up his cap badge.

Within twenty-four hours the returnees were paraded, handed posting instructions and told to pack. Two hours later they were back at Gravestone.

The words of the prophet came back to Stanley.

“I’ll be in Dicky’s Gardening Squad,” he thought.

T
HE FIRST PERSON
he met after reporting at the Guard-Room at Gravestone was Sergeant Morris.

“Cor crummy,” said Sergeant Morris. “Ullo-ullo! I thought you was off to OCTU.”

“I failed the Selection Board,” said Stanley.

“Funny,” said Sergeant Morris. “Now
I
reckoned you’d be
bound
to get through.”

“Well,” said Stanley, cheered by this. “Thank you.”

“Yer,” said the sergeant thoughtfully, “I reckoned you’d’ve been sure to have wangled it somehow.”

Stanley went to report to the Depot Company orderly sergeant.

“Get them white tabs off, lad,” he said. “What d’you think you’re on? Right. Time of arrival 1820 hours. Move your kit into ‘F’ Block. P’rade tomorrow 0830 sharp. Make yourself familiar with company detail. Them other returnee geezers coming along, are they?”

In the morning Stanley, knowing no better, joined the parade outside the back of Depot Company Office.

The function of Depot Company, as a permanent transit company, was to perform the fatigues for the entire barracks. The company was divided into platoons of A1 men (who were ultimately to be posted somewhere else), and medically graded men, who tended to stay and become (as was the ambition) “employed”. This
me ant being given some regular routine job of a cushy nature—sweeping out the dental centre, for example, which would take them till the Naafi opened at
half-past
ten. In practice, the exact strength of Depot Company at any given time was not usually known, for, in addition to the constantly fluctuating numbers, interested parties were given to stealing the current nominal roll. The normal incentive of a Friday pay parade often failed to bring the fringes of the company out of obscurity because of a tendency to take advantage of a wartime labour shortage by working at a
clandestine
civilian job. Two such men used to walk daily out of the gate with rolled denim overalls under their arms, as if employed on detachment with some other unit in the neighbourhood, and spend the day as window-cleaners in a nearby town. Another had a milk round, four used to work in the kitchens of various cafés in the town, and on one memorable occasion the military police had rounded up twenty-three who had for some time been employed as skilled tradesmen in the local brewery.

The orderly sergeant emerged from the office and looked suspiciously at the parade.

“Fall out the sick, lame, lazy and employed,” he shouted.

A little over half the parade vanished. The orderly sergeant consulted a list of fatigues.

“Right, now. Six men to sweep out the Naafi. You six. Four to report to ‘A’
Company orderly
sergeant
. Right, you. Lance-Corporal and eight, coal fatigue.”

Stanley and a little man called Cox were detailed,
with an old-stager of Depot Company, to tar a shed on the range. The old-stager (on his arm four of the
long-service
chevrons known as “dodgers”) was given a chit for three haversack rations to be collected from the cookhouse. To Stanley’s surprise he immediately altered the 3 to 13, and when they had collected the vast quantities of food the old-stager went off to dispose of most of it at the café where he worked.

“The orderly sarnt wants to see me first,” he
announced
. “I’ll see you two geezers up the old range, only I got to see this orderly sarnt first.”

Stanley and his new comrade went off into the countryside to seek the firing range.

“We won’t see that dodgy bastard again today,” said Cox cheerfully. “You new ’ere, are you?”

“Yes,” said Stanley. “I came here yesterday.”

“OCTU wallah?” said Cox. “I thought so.
Personally
meself‚ I bin ’ere now gettin’ on for nigh on three months. I got upgraded to A1. Got to do corps training.”

“What’s that?” asked Stanley. “Will they put me on it, too?”

“I expect so. Werl, being infantry, it’s infantry training. You do it up the camp. Ten weeks weapon trainin’, route marches, P.T., all that caper. Then, all of a sudden—ullo, yer posted. Maybe Secont Front, maybe the old banana boat and orf to the old Mystic Orient. Lovely. All them Indian girls. I’m from Brixton. You know it? This is my wife. Smashing, eh? Had that taken in Guildford. What was you in Civvy Street? At college? I ’ad this van. What I did. Took this van round all the markets and my mate used to do the old
Dutch auction. ’E ’ad all the patter off. Sometimes it was chocolates, sometimes ornaments. My mate ’ad it all off like a piece-a poetry. See ’im flog those skin ’andbags.
‘Watch! That’s python! That devil was alive last night! We’ll save you money, girls!’
I tried to get in the Service Corps, drivin’, only I wasn’t un’ealthy enough.”

When they got to the range there was a new
corrugated
iron hut at the four-hundred-yard firing point. In a hut behind the butts, and under a pile of
dismounted
targets and signalling discs, was half a drum of tar and two brushes. Stanley and Cox made a sort of palanquin with planks and bore the tar barrel down the range to the new hut. They lit a fire to heat the tar, and sat quietly smoking in the still autumn air.

There was a good view. Behind the butts ran the long, uneven chalk escarpment of the downs, spotted with hardy shrubs. To their right, across the undulating fields and orchards, square grey church towers jutted up from ancient hamlets. Before them, two hundred yards away, stood the large, solid, brick house of the neighbouring farm.

After an hour the tar began to heave and bubble. Cox climbed onto the roof of the shed. It was thick with fallen leaves from an overhanging tree. Most of these they shoved off with the brushes, but an intermittent breeze sprang up and each puff showed more leaves down.

They decided to tar them over. Cox stood on the roof with a brush while Stanley passed up tins of the boiling pitch. When they had done the roof and one wall, the tar ran out and they ate their haversack rations.

After this Cox relaxed.

“Drop of kip,” he said. “Call me quarter-to four. Look a bit dodgy going back before that.”

He closed his eyes.

Stanley read Cox’s
Daily
Mirror
from cover to cover and then woke him.

As they began to walk back Cox stopped at the
farmhouse
.

“Cup of char,” he said. “’Ere we go.”

He walked to the back door and knocked.

“Good afternoon, ma,” he said cheerfully. “Could we ’ave a glass of water, d’you reckon?”

On the kitchen table stood a bottle of whisky and a teapot. A kettle was simmering on what Stanley took to be a hob.

The woman brought two glasses of water.

“People round ’ere wouldn’t give you the time if they had ten gold watches,” said Cox bitterly as they went away.

Back at the barracks the orderly sergeant said: “Well? You tar that Nissen hut?”

“Nissen?” said Cox. “No. Square hut at the firing point.”

“Oh, cor starvin’ Annie!” said the orderly sergeant. “You ’orrible man! That’s the wrong hut. That hut belongs to that farmhouse. Clear off, for Gawd’s sake, before I go out of my mind.”

“Of all the close buggers,” said Cox, as they went gloomily to the Naafi. “They must’ve seen us doin’ it. Dead mean. They wouldn’t give you three bloody cheers.”

It had, in fact, been a good day’s work by Depot Company standards, and Stanley lay on his bed in
“F” Block the whole evening, exhausted and reading. Fingers of draught poked up through the old,
ill-fitting
floorboards, making a corner of the coconut matting flap. Occasional nibbling and scratching behind the wainscot punctuated the scurrying of the mice in their ancestral runways.

Next morning they paraded again.

“Watch it,” said Cox. “Here comes Charles
Laughton
the Second.”

The Company sergeant-major had clumped round the end of the offices.

“Pay attention,” he called out in his strangled voice. “Returnees from Rootbridge Pre-OCTU will parade outside Company Office immediately for interview with O.C.”

“Good ’ealth, mate,” said Cox under his breath. “Well, my old Stan, try and get employed. That, or try and get posted on a course.”

Stanley and his companions fell out and waited for fifty minutes outside the office. Then a window was flung up and a major leaned out.

“Come into the parlour,” he said.

They went in. The sergeant-major intercepted them.

“Where’re you off, then?” he asked menacingly.

“To see Major Hitchcock, sir,” said Stanley, standing to attention. “He asked us in.”

“Form up! Form up!” roared the sergeant-major. “Single file. Orders, orders SHAH. By-der-front, QUIMARCH. Eft-ite-eft-ite-eft-ite-eft. Mark-time! ’Alt! Left turn! Pick up your dressing. Stand still! Orders present, sir!”

“Thank you very much, Sergeant-Major,” said
Major Hitchcock, seated elegantly behind his desk. One foot was up on it.

Charles Laughton went out.

“Well, well,” said Major Hitchcock in a cheery tone. “Do sit down, all of you, will you? I feel sorry for you blokes. If they’d had these WOSB’s in my day, d’you know I hardly think I’d have got through. I’m damned sure of it. My brigadier used to say to me: ‘Hitchcock,’ he’d say, ‘you’ll never make an officer while you’ve got a hole in your bottom.’”

He stubbed out his cigarette and offered the case all round.

“So don’t be too disappointed,” he went on, “and watch out for my sergeant-major or he’ll have you by the short hairs. Now, I’ve been looking up the A.C.I.s and it seems you all have to do corps training with George’s company up at the camp.”

A pigeon-hatch in the wall shot open and part of the sergeant-major’s face appeared.

“Lady to see you about Private Horrocks.”

The hatch shut.

“It’s about some child,” explained the major. “I really can’t be responsible for what my company gets up to off parade. Arthur!” he shrieked
suddenly
.

A hatch in another wall opened and the head and one shoulder of a lieutenant came into view.

“Arthur,” said the major, “see to that young lady, there’s a good chap. About Horrocks. It’s more in your line.”

“A’right,” said the lieutenant without enthusiasm. He grimaced and shut the hatch.

“I’m rather busy, I’m afraid,” said the major. “We must have a chat some other time. Actually, you’re all supposed to go before the Personnel Selection Officer and do peculiar tests so that the Army doesn’t get any square pegs in round holes. Curiously enough,” he went on ruminatively, “the tests you do
are
just that sort of thing: putting pegs in holes. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep you all here and raise the tone of the place—that’s if you care for it here. You should meet my runner. Cambridge man. He translates Chinese lyric poetry into English lyric poetry. But I’m afraid I haven’t many like him here. They’re an odd lot. Keep pinching the nominal roll, too. Well, cheer up and off you go.”

As the jobs for the day had been allocated they skulked cautiously in the Naafi till lunchtime.

After lunch Stanley went carefully round the back way to “F” block and began to change into civilian shoes.

A corporal came in.

“Ah!” he said. “We want big tough people. Do you live in Dover?”

“No,” said Stanley.

“Right, you’ll do,” said the corporal. “Boots on. We’re going to Woolwich, collect a deserter. Meet me at the Guard-Room, fifteen minutes’ time. I got to get the documents.”

Stanley hung about outside the Guard-Room. From inside came raucous noises of the energetic regimental police at play. A loud voice, echoing round the girders, sang “The First Noël.”

A prolonged series of “Oi’s” attracted Stanley’s
attention. Three large grinning faces of R.P.s packed one of the barred windows.

“Yes?” said Stanley.

“’Ere,” called one of them. “’Ere a minute. Which one of us is the ’andsmest?” The three ugly gorilla faces became immobilised in their grins for the choosing.

Stanley pointed to the middle gorilla.

“He is,” he said.

They greeted this decision wildly, the two losers falling on the winner and sitting heavily on him.

Then one got up.

“’Ere,” he said in a whisper. “Guess what that mark is on the wall.”

“It looks like dried blood,” said Stanley.

“You’re dead right there, tosh,” said the R.P. eagerly. “We ’ad some drunk Canadian come in, few nights back; tried to get funny with one of the boys. So what ’appened? So someone bashed ’im up. I dunno who, mind. Eh, Alf? No. Eh, Cyril? Know who bashed up that Canadian?”

“No, mate,” said Cyril solemnly. “Musta bin
someone
come in and done ’im.”

They burst into shouts of laughter, and one swung on the girders to work off energy.

After a while he dropped off and came to the window.

“’Ere,” he said, “you sound like a bloke we got in the cells. OCTU wallah. Very dodgy. Awaiting transfer, ’e is; got ’undred an’ twelve days in the glasshouse. Used to be a lawyer. Cor, honest, you’d die laughing, ’ear ’im talk! Fetch ’im out, Fred.”

“Well,” said Stanley, “d’you think you ought to?”

“Yer,”
said Fred, rubbing his hands briskly, like a market vendor. “Anything to oblige,” he intoned. “We can do everythink for you here. We can even put you in the family way, but we can’t make you love the child.”

“That’s right,” said Cyril, joining in. “The old firm. The more you put down, the more we pick up. They used to call me Robin Redbreast; now they call me Robbin’ Bastard. ’Ullo, ’ere we are.”

The barrister was led to the window and Stanley chatted to him. The three regimental policemen stood close by in enraptured silence, bursting occasionally into exultant cackles of mirth.

“Hew! Stewn the crews!” minced the policeman Fred. “Gibback in there, Mary Ann.”

“’Ere,” called the policeman Cyril. “’Ullo.”

They all three crowded to the window and then hurriedly withdrew. A well-dressed young woman was walking over from the gate.

“It’s ’is sister,” whispered the policeman Alf. “Stand by yer beds.”