by Gerald Kersh
“Shorrocks?”
“No Dictator tells me what to do.”
“Crowney?”
“I like what I like. I’m not satisfied with England, not by a long chalk, but it’s my country and I’m used to it. You can, at least, grouse round ’ere. Get me? I’d rather die grousing if I fancy grousing, than live bottled up. And there’s something about those soppy goose-stepping mugs that I ’ate the sight of. I don’t know what it is, but they set my teeth on edge. They get my goat. I wanna kill ’em.”
“And you, Schoolmaster?—and you don’t have to give us a song and dance about the Battle of Waterloo.”
“I’m fighting for the same as everybody else … to preserve what there is that’s decent and good in the world.”
“Barker?”
“Sarnt, shell I tell yer the honest truth?” Barker imitates the portentous tone of a politician. “I am fightin’ to make the sea free for the banana trade.”
“Bearsbreath?”
“Turn it up,” says Bearsbreath. “This sort of thing bores me.”
“Me too,” says Crowne. “Turn it up, Hands.”
“I’m trying to find out our War Aims,” says Hands.
“Let ’em keep their sights upright, ’old their bunbooks firm, and squeeze their triggers,” says Crowne, “and they’ll ’it whatever they’re aimin’ at.”
*
“Yuh,” says Dagwood, slicing his last, precious bit of twist with a jackknife. In this knife you may find clues to the character of the good Birkenhead sergeant: he has guarded it for a dozen years, using it constantly. The big blade is worn narrow towards the point. He never uses the small blade: that is for emergency; but both blades are honed to razor edges. If the need arose, he could mend his boots with that knife, or cut his way out of a place with it, or pick a lock, or perform a minor surgical operation, or carve a doll for a small girl or a boat for a boy, or cut a man’s hair, or kill him. “Yuh. You’ve all got to learn to shoot. You do some revision on rifle and Bren. Then you fire your course, wearing fighting order. Like the Schoolmaster says, musketry is always useful.”
John Johnson of Brummagem says: “Oi want to get moi ’ands on a Tommy gun.” Quite unconsciously, he says this out of the corner of his mouth. One can see the filmic fantasy with which he is entertaining himself … gangsters … the roar of fast cars … tupatupatup!—and an enemy falls on his face.
“They’re handy little things,” says Dagwood, “at fifty yards or so, they’re handy.”
“Give me a Bren every time,” says Hands.
“A Lewis, for rough work,” says Crowne. “A Bren is too accurate, sometimes. You put too many rounds in the same place. You can’t miss with a Bren. Any mug ’ere could score well with a Bren. But say you’ve got a mob rushing you, why, then it’s just as well to spray ’em a bit, if you get what I mean.”
“The prettiest thing I ever saw in my life,” says Bearsbreath, “was a shot with an anti-tank rifle. In France. Did you ever come across Cocky Sinclair? He got a Jerry officer and seven Jerries with one shot. It was as pretty as a picture. And that was the only time I ever saw an anti-tank rifle fired from the shoulder. I didn’t know it was possible. It ain’t possible. But Cocky was as strong as a bullock. He’s a stronger man that Ack-Ack Ackerman, even: stocky, a neck like a damned tree. He hoisted that anti-tank rifle up to his shoulder and let fly. And down went eight Jerries, plugged as clean as a whistle. The recoil knocked him down. While he was sitting on his backside, a Jerry plane came swooping down. He reloaded, just like he was handling a short Lee-Enfield, and laid back, supporting the anti-tank on his foot, and fired at the plane. And so help me God he brought it down. I didn’t learn till afterwards that the first shot broke Cocky’s collarbone. The whole point was, he was annoyed.”
“What ’appened to Cocky?” asks Crowne. “I put ’im inside, once. for insubordination.”
“Oh, Cocky was always in and out of the moosh,” says Bearsbreath. “He went absent once. The inside story of that was this: Cocky had a sister. See? She was all the relations he had. Cocky was sort of attached to this sister. Well, one day she got into trouble. Some bloke. This bloke treated her rough. She was a soppy sort of piece, and couldn’t take care of herself. This bloke gave her a black eye one night when she asked him to sort of marry her. Cocky got to hear. He couldn’t very well ask for a long week end just to give a bloke a hiding. And Cocky never told a lie in his life. He couldn’t. If he tried, he got tongue-tied and contradicted himself. So he just done a bunk, and went home. He borrowed the fare off of me. That’s how I knew. He got hold of this feller, and gave him the biggest coating you ever saw in your life. Then he came back, reported himself, and paid off fourteen days C.B. That was in peacetime. If he’d explained it to the C.O., I don’t know, but I daresay the C.O. would have let him off light. He didn’t like to. Said it made his sister out to be not respectable. The funny part is, this bloke married Cocky’s sister, and has never raised a hand to her since.”
“Where’s ’e now?” asks Crowne.
“Oh … around, somewhere. I hear he pulled some bloke out from under a burning car outside Dunkirk: lifted the car up by the front axle and kicked the bloke away. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised. He was a wild man in the Depot, but he got to be a good soldier afterwards.”
“Some are wild,” says Dagwood. “But as I see it, a wild man’s all right, so long as he takes to a bit of discipline in the end. You’ve got to direct that wildness. Ever take the charge out of a .22 cartridge? It’s little grey grains of stuff, sort of crystals. Put a match to it and it goes phut, a little puff of flame that couldn’t hurt a fly. Pack it in proper, and that same pinch of stuff will send your bullet just where you want it, and pretty fast, too. Personally, I like a wild man. It’s a sign of spirit. There are very few proper soldiers that haven’t been inside once or twice. The officers understand that. They may talk all wrist watch, but they’re not mugs, most of ’em. You can be wild, but wild in the proper place.”
Now in the hut there sleeps a Corporal who is an instructor of physical training. They call him Stranglehold: he is an expert in Unarmed Combat. But his real name is John Ball. He came into the Army—it is an open secret—under false pretences, calmly perjuring himself. Ball said he was thirty-one; he is thirty-seven, but of the type known as “Baby-Faced.” He needs to shave only twice a week. There is a juvenile bloom upon his pink-and-white cheeks. An accidental-looking pinch of ash-blond down on his upper lip represents the accumulated moustache of twenty years. His eyes are like the eyes of a baby, they are so full of quiet wonder and clear innocence: his teeth might be milk teeth. The merest draught stirs his fine-drawn golden hair. He weighs thirteen stone, is constructed like a Greek hero, spent seven years in a Highland regiment, and at thirty-odd made a living as an all-in wrestler under the pseudonym of “The Child Wonder.” His voice is high-pitched and peculiarly flat and metallic, with the carrying power of a cowbell. When annoyed he can trumpet like a bull elephant. He spends most of his spare time writing interminable letters to a girl in Middlesbrough: she is a Baptist, and he is a Freethinker; his communications are oddly compounded of ardent love and passionate reasoning. He hates sentimental music. When he gets up in the morning he does handsprings, and sings at the top of his voice. Nobody has ever told him that he is tone-deaf.
Ball says:
“You talk about discipline and what not. Well, take a look at this.” And he throws down a photograph. “Do you recognise me?”
We do and we don’t. He is standing in a group. Seven or eight little men, dark little men, are leaning upon rifles. Ball towers over them, with his fair, shining face. He is carrying a rifle, also; but as the camera clicked he instinctively drew himself into a military atttitude, and so stands, stiff as a poker, properly at ease. He is dressed in a kind of forage cap, a shirt, and trousers. A blanket is rolled and slung about him. Fantastically, through his rags, there has burst the white fire of the good old British Regular Army. Everybody
is covered with dust.
“Where’s this?” asks Crowne.
“Spain,” says Ball. “When the Civil War was on, I had a sort of crazy fancy to get into it. So I slipped into Spain and joined the Government Militia.”
“Well I never!” says Dagwood.
“Bit of adventure, you know,” says Ball. “I didn’t care who won, so long as it wasn’t Hitler and Musso. So I joined the Militia. I’d had seven years in the —— Highlanders. I thought I might put it to some use, you know. And I had the chance of seeing good men with bad discipline. Nobody bellyached about regimental nonsense more than I did before. But since then I’m dead regimental, as anybody’ll tell you.
“Those dagoes had enthusiasm. They had nerve. They could stand the pace. But what bust them, apart from lack of equipment, you know, was their discipline. They’d got several different kinds of politics, too, you know, and that’s always a bad thing for soldiers. They were fighters, you might say. But what was the use of it? Without discipline, they were a mob. The lousy Fascists were very little better, but they had better equipment, and what with one thing and another, they won. But it struck me that if my mob had got proper discipline, the Fascists could have been smashed up in Spain, you know; and then we’d have another ally at this present moment, instead of a Hitlerite in power in Spain. I did what I could, you know. But we were a rabble. With one battalion of Coldstream Guards, we could have taken Franco’s shirt off his back.”
“I bet you saw some sights,” says Dale.
“I saw some sights. The Fascists had brought the Moors in. The Moors are used to torturing. Fascists like that kind of thing. I saw some of the things the Franco boys did, you know. We came into a sort of dusty, greyish-brown village…. Well,” says Ball, “the other day I happened to look at somebody’s bright red belt thrown down on a brown blanket. I happened to look at it while I was thinking of something else. And I didn’t sleep that night, and when I did drop off about four o’clock I had dreams. You’d never believe what a woman can have done to her, and still live.”
“But you gave them a taste of their own medicine when you copped ’em, I bet,” says Barker.
“No,” says Ball, “we didn’t. You don’t stop that kind of thing by doing it yourself. We strictly did not do anything of the kind. That’s just where the Fascists are mugs, you know. They go in for tortures. That makes everybody hate them. They cut their own throats. I’ve seen the remains of people, all charred; soaked in petrol, you know, and lit. One of those dead bodies is a better argument against the Fascists than all the speeches in the world. And you don’t think we were mugs enough to give them similar arguments against us? Besides, if you’re fighting against a fellow because you don’t want what he stands for, damn it all, you don’t go and do just the very thing you’re fighting to put a stop to. Do you? Even if you want to, you don’t.”
“I dunno,” says Barker. “People must be mugs to stand for Nazis.”
“People are mugs to stand for anything they don’t want to stand for,” says Shorrocks.
“Don’t be silly,” says Old Silence. “Remember that Fascism and Nazism live by compelling people, in the first place. And so the Nazi becomes expert at making you do things you don’t want to do, making you stand for things, making you betray people you love …”
“——” says Sergeant Crowne, using a rude term of disagreement. “I’d like to see anybody or anythink make me do what I thought was lousy!”
“Me, too,” say several others.
Old Silence strokes his lank chin with a long, dark hand, and says:
“Assume something hard to swallow, Sergeant Crowne. Imagine—just for the sake of argument—that England was sold, and made a dishonourable peace with Hitler. It can’t happen, but just imagine it.”
“Well?” says Crowne.
“You’re imagining that. Imagine that England did as Pétain did. All right. You’re imagining that. The war is over. We are disarmed. We become a sort of vassal of Hitler. Are you imagining that? They still call us ‘England,’ but it’s only a name, a label. The Nazis hold all Europe. The Army is disbanded. Time passes. Are you imagining it? Ten years pass. Ten years. And after ten years, you, Sergeant Crowne, meet Sergeant Hands in, let’s say, Holborn. All right. If Hitler won this war, this is the kind of scene you’d find yourself in, Sergeant Crowne. You meet Sergeant Hands. And you talk. This is how it goes.”
And Old Silence, making patterns in the air with his smoking cigarette, tells his impossible hypothetical story:
*
“Look,” Hands might say, “how about a beer?”
And Crowne replies: “Whatever you say. I don’t mind.”
“Beer, then. Look, we’re quite near the old ‘Red Lion.’ What about there?”
“Like old times,” says Hands.
“Ah, those were the days, eh? Remember Bella?”
“Do I remember Bella? What about you? You always had a bit of a soft spot for Bella.”
“Not me,” says Crowne. “Well, maybe a bit. But she liked you best. She said you had nice eyes. Remember?”
“Ah, that was a long time ago,” says Hands.
“Well, well, well. After all these years …” says Crowne.
“Yes. I’ve often thought about you. Time and time again I’ve said to my old woman: ‘I wonder what’s happened to old Crowne.’ Ellen always liked you. She said you had personality. Over ten years, and you haven’t changed a bit. Good old Crowney! I knew you as soon as you came round the corner. That walk…. God in Heaven, how it all comes back!”
“They used to call us the Heavenly Twins.”
“Didn’t they, though?” says Hands. “Bella used to call us the Heavenly Twins.”
“I’d have been jealous if we hadn’t been pals,” says Crowne. “But how is good old Ellen?”
“Best wife I ever had. Hardly a grey hair.”
“And the kids?”
“All right, I suppose.”
“What,” says Crowne, “you only suppose?”
“No, no,” says Hands, “they’re fine. Only …”
“Only what?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. But you know how it is. You sort of …” Hands pauses, and then says: “As an old pal. As one old soldier to another, and as man to man … you get sort of fed up.”
“True enough,” says Crowne.
Hands says: “I can see it in your face, too. Oh, well. In the old days we had our worries, but my God, Crowney, my God Almighty, we were men, at least. Remember when they called you Grouser Crowne? Those were the days, eh? You had something to say, and you said it, straight from the shoulder, right out, bang, and done with it. Good old Crowney! Grouse now and see what it’ll get you!”
Crowne wants to change the subject. He says: “It’s a nice day.” But Hands is full, you understand, and he talks a bit.
“Once upon a time we could talk, we could grumble. Things were different, then. You were a man. You still had your soul. Your thoughts were your own. As long as you’ve got a voice in things, as long as you can still say: ‘I like this and I don’t like that,’ things aren’t so bad! But now! Honest to God, Crowne, you can’t trust anybody. They’ve got our kids. They’ve educated our kids to think their rotten way. But I’m talking too much …”
“I’m your pal,” says Crowne.
“I know it,” says Hands, “but things have got me down. Still … you’d never betray me. You never let me down. And sometimes I feel that if I don’t talk, I’ll burst. Ill go mad … and then …”
“Beer,” says Crowne.
“It’s such a price,” says Hands. “Remember? We thought the beer back in 1941 was bad. Well, I’d give a lot for a pint of 1941 bitter and a packet of real tobacco fags. What is this stuff?”
“Chemicals.”
“And the tobacco …?”
“Muck.”
“Do you remember, Crowney, when you used to be able to walk into a place and buy a steak? Underdone?”
“Wit
h proper chips,” says Crowne.
“And peas? Why damn it, cheese! Remember Cheddar cheese?”
“They used to give it away! Well, practically…. A few pence a quarter of a pound.”
“We live on German leavings,” says Hands. “On rubbish. And we’ll die on it.”
“Us,” says Crowne.
“Englishmen,” says Hands.
“We should have died first,” says Crowne.
Hands goes on: “After the steak we’d have a cup of tea, with real milk and sugar.”
“Real tea,” says Crowne.
“And change a ten-bob note and get some silver back.”
“Look at me,” says Crowne. “I got a rise last week. Know how much I get now? Seven hundred thousand pounds a month! Paper. My kids are getting thinner and thinner. Bread at two thousand five hundred pounds a small loaf …”
“And what bread? Acorns, sawdust, filth! By god, Crowney, sometimes I want to rush out into the street and shout—give ’em the old shout, the good old shout that made the rookies jump!—shout: ‘Long live England! Long live Liberty! Long live Democracy! God blast the Nazis! Live free, or die fighting!’ … and get shot down like a man, Crowney, like a man.”
“And me, Hands,” says Crowne.
“Honestly? Truly?”
“I saw my mother die of hunger,” says Crowne. “Under my eyes she died. And my wife too. What do I keep going for? For my kids. They hate my guts. I’m not a proper kind of Fascist, or Nazi, or whatever it is. But they’re my kids and I can’t help loving them, Hands.”
“I’m glad to hear you talk like that,” says Hands. “Where are you living now?”
“Goering Boulevard. It used to be Victoria Road. Number 76. Always home by six. And you?”
“7, Hitler Avenue. Well I’ve got to scram. You’ll keep in touch?”
“You bet,” says Crowne. “It’s like a breath of fresh air seeing you again.”
“Well … (look out, somebody’s listening!) … Heil Hitler!”
“Heil Hitler!” says Crowne. And so they part.
Hands walks East. Soon he pauses: stands, biting his nails—just as he’s biting them now—and then goes into a telephone booth. He dials a number and talks:
