Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

by Gerald Kersh

  Fou! … Wahnsinnig! … Loco!—quite crazy, demented, nuts—mad Englishman! Methodical in his eccentricity; cool to man and openly affectionate only to dogs and horses; stirred to applause or catcalls by nothing in the world but the struggles of twenty-two men with a ball; seemingly more engrossed in the defence of three stumps and a pair of bails against a five-and-a-half-ounce ball, than in the defence of an Empire against barbarism; prone to forget everything in his eagerness to ascertain that one horse can run faster than eight others; regulating all combat by rules as of sport; unassuming as a mole and arrogant as a lion; an islander of islanders, regarding his salty wet rock as a universe, and the universe as too foreign for serious consideration; looking upon himself, in a strange land, as the one Briton in a world of gibbering aliens; blindly despising and blindly tolerating all outlandish things; incredibly blundering into chaos and fantastically blundering out of it; conspicuously inconspicuous; insanely cheerful; bland as a fat man in an asylum who thinks he’s the Buddha; and maddeningly calm … always bewilderingly calm.

  Calm. What looks calmer than a flywheel at top speed? What is calmer than the heart of a whirlwind?

  Men like this sailed on the Birkenhead. It is a simple story. They had a pride of birth far deeper than any sentiment born of false reasoning or well-hammered propaganda. The Birkenhead struck a submerged reef. Think of the thing as a scene in a film: the night, the stars, the heaving, shining sea. Then the crash, long and grinding. Furniture goes mad: immovable things fall and movables fly. Women scream. You catch a glimpse of men’s faces in the vague half-dark: black gaps of shouting mouths, pale teeth. Then the list of the gutted ship and the swinging out of the boats. There is barely enough space in the lifeboats for the women and children, and the Birkenhead is sinking damnably fast.

  There are some hundreds of English soldiers aboard.

  These were soldiers like any other English soldiers. The same kind of men went down at Hastings and at Passchendaele—inveterate grousers, individuals who would sometimes skive if they got the opportunity, and frequently chanced their arms in the matter of boots and buttons. They saw off the women and children. Clouds came over. Night had put on the Black Cap.

  These condemned men were formed up on deck. I do not doubt that even then, and there, there was a bucko sergeant who yelled “Order yer arms when you got yer dressing!”—or words to that effect—“Dress forward number three in the centre rank! God damn it, any soldier’d be ashamed to stand in a rank like a dog’s leg! Stand still!”

  They stood still. The sea rose. The ship sank. The soldiers stood to attention on deck until the water closed over them—Tom, Dick and Harry, saying forever good-bye to beer and skittles, tea and wads, the dawn they’d never see again, wives and children, love and life. They drowned by inches in the cold, empty ocean, because it was expected of them that, there being no chance of getting away, they die like Englishmen.

  That’s an old story, like the death of Nelson. We—it is typical of us—hide our admiration in our hearts, and giggle at “Kiss me, Hardy,” and “England expects …”

  But Nelson knew exactly what to say on his last memorable naval occasion. Emotional as a ballerina, but calm as the Angel of Death in crisis; sick as a dog at the heave of a ship, yet dragged out onto the ocean by the ancient sea-wolf that tugged inside him; Norfolk Puritan salted with old Scandinavian—there was plenty of the pale firewater in his mixture; and something sweet, too, for he could be gentle as a woman. He was a very gentle Englishman; a very English gentleman.

  But you can imagine the French admiral making a song and dance about glory, honour, death, the France, liberty, the Emperor, Marengo, Austerlitz, the illustrious memory of Monsieur Chose, and so to the peroration. Nelson merely said, in effect: “Being Englishmen, fight to the death.”

  That was the duty England expected of them. And there is no doubt at all that in every ship in the English fleet, sailors, treated much worse than dogs and scarred as much by punitive flogging as by battle, growled that England expected a hell of a lot…. England expected a bloody sight too much … and England could go and do something impossible to itself … and they were browned off, and to hell with England. Whereupon they fought furiously and won the day.

  The Englishman, that inveterate gambler, has loved the feel of long odds against him, since the dawn of his history. You can’t breed out what is in the old blood. And here, there is plenty left of the blood that got splashed about when Caractacus threw his handful against Rome—the Caractacus who said to Cæsar, as we might say to Hitler: “You fight to make men your slaves: we fight to stay free men.” There is plenty of the spirit that came out best in affairs like Agincourt, where 9,000 knights and bowmen engaged an army of 27,000, and killed a man apiece and sent the rest flying. History is veined like an inflamed eyeball with our Thin Red Lines!

  Crazy Englishman! Incomprehensible Englishman, who would die rather than admit his satisfaction in finding himself outnumbered and out-equipped, perched on a rock with all the weight of a swollen Dark Age in front of him, and three thousand miles of terrible sea behind him … who sourly smokes the wayward butt of a Wild Woodbine and gathers his strength for the most terrific struggle in the red calendar of homicide which is the History of Mankind.

  II

  The Foundry

  THE CALENDAR says early August, but the sky says late September. The world is stuffy, like an unventilated room, and the clouds crawl slowly like melting grease under the dim sun. The brick and asphalt Depot has strange acoustic properties. It rings and echoes like a sore head. We shamble across to the Receiving Station. At this point we are neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. Clipped heads protrude from civilian collars; a bristly residue of our first haircut still clings in the folds of our ears. Yet we are in the Army. We are in the Guards, rather, which represents a fate somewhat worse.

  We have had our first Army bath, in sinks under showers in cubicles which to some of us seemed strangely familiar. It was Barker who said: “Where’s the clurk to write out the tickets?” Those cubicles were very much like the ones they have in pawnshops.

  We were a little shy. Thurstan, strangely enough, went to extraordinary lengths to prevent anyone watching him as he washed. Even Barker stood like the girl in “September Morn”; while Dale seemed to suffer with a primeval embarrassment, and the wire-haired boy from Widnes crouched under the shower like shamed Adam in the rain. He couldn’t adjust the temperature of the water and struggled with the lever of the tap, while his body became red, white and blue. Hodge just turned cold water on himself, and stood with an expression of dumb suffering, soaping himself conscientiously from head to foot. Johnson of Birmingham dashed madly in, protesting too much that he was not afraid, and repeating again and again that he bathed almost every day and liked it. Bullock the bruiser, inured to nakedness in little athletic dressing-rooms, looked at us with sombre astonishment. Alison, the old soldier, went through the process of washing as one who carries out a fine but hackneyed ritual: he bathed as some men recite the Lord’s Prayer—as if he felt that it was doing him some incalculable good, but was best got over quickly…. “Our Far chart nevn, Harold bethy Name”—he was bathed and dried in no time at all, and out, gloomily smoking, in the dim humid daylight.

  So we went for inoculation. Bates asked: “What do they do to yow?”

  “Stab you in the arm,” said the Old Soldier.

  “Is it noice?”

  “Horrible.”

  “What ’appens?”

  “Your arm swells up. Sometimes you get a temperature. Some men have to go sick with it.”

  “And what ’appens when yow go sick?”

  “You soon wish you hadn’t.”

  “And ’ow do yow go sick?”

  “You get a form filled up.”

  “And say yow’re sick and don’t go sick?”

  “You get into trouble.”

  Bates became sad and thoughtful. At last he said: “Do yow get shot for deserting?”<
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  “Not unless it’s in the face of the enemy.”

  “Are we in the face of the enemy now?”

  “It’s hard to say.”

  “If they don’t shoot yow, what do they do to yow?”

  “Send you to the Glass House.”

  “Is that noice?”

  “I’ve done twenty-eight days there,” says Alison, and pauses, struggling between two strong desires. Like all old soldiers, he wants to terrify the recruit. Like all men who have been In Detention, he wants to laugh it off. He says: “You heard of Devil’s Island?”

  “Where there’s crocodoiles and sharks?”

  “Well, Devil’s Island is like the Y.M.C.A. compared to Aldershot.”

  “Whoy did yow go there?”

  “For nothing.”

  “Oh bloimey!”

  The time will come when, to us, an inoculation will be just another Jab—when we will even hope for a serious one, which will mean forty-eight hours off duty, “Attend C, Bed Down.” But now, everything connected with the Army is strange and slightly terrible. We file past the M.O. As we wait, we hear the thud of a heavy fall. A big buck Jock who would laugh at a bayonet has fainted at the prick of the needle. He is revived, and left to his shame: the world will end before that moment of weakness is forgotten. In years to come, on remote bivouacs in the hearts of awful deserts, or in the mud of questionable positions under earth-shaking barrages, there will be somebody who will say: “Remember Jock?” And somebody else will reply: “Got the D.C.M. Captured a tank with a jackknife. Won the heavyweight title in such-and-such a year. Nearly got a V.C. for taking on seven Jerry tommy-gunners with a Bren-gun cleaning rod, and licking ’em. Carried an anti-tank rifle sixty miles. Toughest guy I ever knew. They once mounted a three-inch mortar on his back and fired seventy bombs off him while he held it.” And then the first speaker will say: “Yet—funny thing—first time that feller got a Jab, he went out like a light. It only goes to show.” “You’re right, son: it only goes to show …”

  We emerge from the Receiving Station. Bates, by the power of suggestion, has a paralysis of the arm. Johnson maintains that it doesn’t hurt; that no Jab can hurt him.

  At this point there rises the banshee howl of a siren. Something in the upper air goes poppity-pop. We stand and gaze at a flattish grey nothingness, until an old sergeant, medal-ribboned to the condition known as “fruit salad,” roars “Genna shelter! Gorn, you silly great things, you, genna Shelter!” We take cover, and sit still, looking at one another. Can it be that the Excitement is starting? An old sweat, decorated with a round badge bearing the words “Trained Soldier,” says:

  “Another ‘Red.’ There’s a Jerry in the sky. Bah. I’ll tell you the honest truth: I’m losing patience with this ’Itler. This is on the up-and-up: I’m gettin’ browned off with this ’Itler. I’ll tell you straight: sometimes I begin to get sort of annoyed with this so-called ’Itler. Oo do ’e think ’e is, anyway, this ’Itler? Shall I give you my honest opinion? Right from the shoulder—politics aside—every man is entitled to ’is own opinion, and I’m entitled to mine, and I tell you, between you and me and the lamppost, it’s my candid view that ’e’s beginning to get a swollen ’ead, this ’ere ’Itler. Adolf. I’ll Adolf ’im. ’Im and ’is ‘Mine Camp.’ Adolf! If I come acrost ’im I’ll say ‘And oo are you?’ and if ’e says ‘I’m Adolf ’Itler,’ I shall say: ‘Never ’eard of yer.’ And then if ’e cuts up rough—bif!—boff!——”

  The Trained Soldier shadow-boxes. Shorrocks says to him:

  “Been here long, lad?”

  “What did you say?”

  “Been here long, lad?”

  “Lad? Lad? LAD? Now look. You’re a Recruit, and as such you’re ignorant. I pity your ignorance, Rookie, and so I shan’t be ’ard on you. You’re as ignorant as gorblimey, otherwise you wouldn’t dare to call me ‘Lad,’ any more than you’d call Lieutenant Colonel the Earl of Romney ‘Old Cock.’ Do you realise who I am? I am a Trained Soldier! It’s all right: don’t be frightened. You didn’t know. Well, you’ll know in future. You always, always, mind you, always address a Trained Soldier as ‘Trained Soldier,’ and stand smartly to attention when you talk to ’im. In the Brigade of Guards, you address me as Trained Soldier; a Lance or Full Corporal as ‘Corporal,’ a Lance-Sarnt or Full Sarnt as ‘Sarnt,’ and everybody else as ‘Sir,’ and you stand smartly to attention. Nor are you, strictly speaking, supposed to speak unless spoken to. A guardsman is a man. A recruit is not a man yet. A recruit is a child. Bear that in mind.”

  Somebody asks him, with full title, how long he has been in the Guards. He replies:

  “Seven years, four months, eleven days. And let me tell you, you get it cushy ’ere now. You ought to of joined the peacetime Guards for real soldiering. Ah, those were the days, son. Those were the good old days. You couldn’t call your soul your own. Why, when I come ’ere as a recruit, like you, they pretty near broke my ’eart. Three suits o’ scarlet, S.D., and everything. White webbing, mind you, and it ’ad to be perfect. Perfect? More than perfect. If it was only perfect, you went in the book. We used to blanco our webbing day and night. Then, if there was so much as a sponge mark on it, our Trained Soldier would chuck it plonk into the coal box. As for brasses, well, all I can say is, gorblimey. The slightest speck, and you was run into the cooler faster than your legs could carry you. As for chasings on the square, we used to faint in ’eaps. I remember when I was on a Buck Guard …”

  “Buck?”

  “Buckingham Palace. Buck is the Palace. Jimmy is St. James. I lowered my butt less than a quarter of an inch. I got seven days. Blimey. Some of you will be in my squad, I suppose. I tell you ’ere and now: do as you’re told, and you’ll be all right. Nobody’ll worrry you, just so long as you make your minds up to do just what you’re told. You’ve got to get yourself into the Army way of doing things. You’ve got nothing to worry about. All the worrying is done for you. Get that. All you do is, obey. If you’ve got a loaf to use, you’ll be given a chance to use it later on. Meanwhile, you got no responsibility, except in obeying an order exactly as it’s given you. My name is Brand, Trained Soldier Brand. Bear that in mind…. Ah-ah, there goes ‘All Clear.’ Now get outside. You rooks are going to ’ave to draw your kit.”

  *

  There is a general feeling that all we need to do is, get a gun and a uniform, and there we are. But when we get to the Quartermaster’s Store, we find ourselves in a kind of forest of equipment. There are sacred groves of boots, avenues of battledress, hanging gardens of slippers, a foliage of vests, undergrowths of socks. We hear the Quartermaster blasting a wicked man.

  “So. Your slippers are too small. What size do you take? Eight. And what size are those slippers? It says eight? Then they are eights. And they’re too small. Then why the hell didn’t you take nines? Obviously, you take nines. You tried them on before taking them, didn’t you? What do you mean, you suppose so? Stand to attention! You did try them on. You know you did. And weren’t they too small for you then? What d’you mean, you don’t know? Did they feel small? Oh. Oh. A bit tight, eh? They felt a bit tight, did they? And so you took them away, and now you bring them back, do you? Could you do that in Civvy Street? Could you do that in a shop? After you’ve worn them for three days? Who’s going to wear them after you? No consideration for yourself or anybody else. Where there’s no sense there’s no feeling. Just because you’re in the Army, you think you can take all kinds of dirty rotten liberties. All right. I’ve got my eye on you. Stand still. Give him a pair of nines…. Now, do they fit? Are you sure they fit?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Are you positive they fit?”

  “Yessir.”

  “They fit, then?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You won’t come back and say they don’t fit, the day after tomorrow?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then go away.”

  “Please, sir …”

  “What is it now?”

&n
bsp; “They’re too loose.”

  “Oh God, give me patience! Oh, Good God in Heaven Almighty, give me strength! Oh God blind O’Reilly suffering Christ in Heaven above so help me! You … you…. Take him away. Take him away before I tear him to pieces! … What’s all this? Recruits? More recruits? The Guards used to be exclusive, and look at it now! If my poor father were alive to see it he’d turn in his grave. Lead ’em in.”

  The men who work in the Store have an eye for size. They can look at you and issue, without wasting a word, equipment that more or less fits you. Each man gets a blue kitbag. Then comes a cataract of clothing.

  Boots, ankle, pairs, two; a pair of braces; socks, knitted, pairs, three; slippers, pairs, one; shorts, gym, pairs, one; vests, gym, two; caps, F.S., one, and a hard cap with a cheesecutter peak that covers the eyes and makes you hold your head up; two pairs of underpants; one stocking hat; holdalls, one; housewives containing needles, thread, thimble, and spare buttons—one; knives, one; forks, one; spoons, one; shirts, three; suit of canvas, consisting of blouses, denim, one, and trousers, denim, pairs, one; battledress … blouses, serge, two, and trousers, serge, pairs, two, or one suit of Best and another for Second Best; a greatcoat. The kitbag bulges. Trained Soldier Brand sweats and strains like a man with a thirty-mule team. Do we think we’re done yet, he asks. Oho. Let us not think so for a moment. If we want his candid opinion, we haven’t begun yet. There is Web Equipment yet to be drawn. We draw it … a large valise, a small pack, two ammunition pouches, bayonet frog, a tangle of strange straps with brass D’s and dim buckles, a thing to contain a water bottle, and a water bottle for it to contain. Is this all? Ha. This, says Trained Soldier Brand, is far from all. This is by no means all. There is still a ground sheet to come; and an anti-gas cape; and a respirator, and a respirator case, and a strap to hang it on; and another kind of anti-gas cape, rubberized and obsolete, but useful for training purposes; and a badge; and mess tins; and a canvas bag to keep mess tins in; and a steel helmet complete with chinstrap and lining; and a clothesbrush, and a button-stick, and a button-brush, and a shaving-brush, and two bootbrushes, and a toothbrush, and a nailbrush, and a safety razor complete with blades, one, unusable except by downy creatures not more than six months on the wrong side of puberty. Then, of course, every man must have a rifle, a Short Lee Enfield, together with a bayonet.