Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

by Gerald Kersh

  They were lining up for them boats like people waiting for the eight-penny seats outside a picture palace. And you can believe me or believe me not, but some of our mob was putting themselves straight, as far as possible. Those that had any boots left was cleaning them up a bit. They were trying to look decent. It may be crazy, but there it is. And the sight of it cheered Bill up. He said to me: “Purcy, this is what I like to see. In a way it was worth while coming this far to see it. In a way it was. This was a mistake, Purcy. They dropped us a —— But you wait. I know we’ll be back and wipe ’em up. I know it, Purcy, I know it! The whole of bloody England ’ll be up and at it by five o’clock tomorrow morning, making stuff. Aeroplanes? Millions of ’em. Tanks? Bags o’ tanks. Shells? I’ll tell you something—shells so big it’s going to take a day to walk round one of ’em …”

  You see, he was a bit delirious after all he’d been through, what with that eye, which I could almost see the throbbing of; and the strain. Because he’d always kept in front, and carried more, and kept up a line of bull-and-boloney to keep everybody going.

  He was delirious, you understand, and not in his right sort of mind just for a few minutes.

  He said: “No profits, Purcy. No profiteers. Nothing of that kind! Every geezer with twopence ’ll rush out and say: ‘Buy a round of ammo for the Nazis.’ Every geezer with one good hand left ’ll rush out and say: ‘Lemme do a spot of hard graft.’ I got it now, Purcy. I got it. I grasp it. They will. They will, Purcy. I tell you they will. After that kid…. You saw the way that kid died, Purcy? Cried himself to death with a kind of misery? Everybody in England, from top to bottom, ’ll come out in a mob to pay that off. I bet you everything I got. I bet you everything I ever had. I lay my head on it. Nobody ’ll strike a light if it takes a drop o’ petrol out of a plane to pay off that kid. Fat old women ’ll sell their rings to pay off that kid. Did you see that kid’s mother? And the little ’un, Purcy? Was it a girl or a boy? It was too young to have any sex, wasn’t it? Why, they gave that woman a burst while the baby was sucking milk! D’you think anybody back home ’ll take that lying down? I saw the milk still running down. Old millionaires ’ll give everything they’ve got and go to work in factories shovelling coal, to pay that off. I know it, Purcy, I know it! Tomorrow morning, five o’clock, all England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales ’ll be up working to pay it off!”

  And when Bill said that I knew he was delirious.

  Then he let out a “Hi-de-Hi” like a wolf-howl; and hundreds of the kids heard it and gave him back the old “Ho-de-Ho!” It run up and down. And out at sea it was like shaking a sheet of tin … and the boats were coming up.

  Bill went spark out then. I thought he was dead. I listened for his heart. It was going all right. I propped his head up, and he came to. I said: “I thought you’d snuffed it then, Bill.”

  And he said: “Oh no, Purcy, my little snowdrop, oh bloody no, Purcy my cocko. Some other time, perhaps.”

  And he got up on his feet and waited.

  We were scared in case there wouldn’t be enough boats and we might get left behind. But there was a boat. We got Bittern into it. Nelson wouldn’t set foot on it till we was all in. Then me and Bullhorn dragged him in and we pushed off. There was others waiting. You could see by their faces they was scared of being left. It was a lousy few minutes for them. We had it ourselves when it was our turn and we waited on that beach. Some of ’em swum out. But the rest kept their proper order … as well as could be expected.

  We got on a ship. We got back. We got some fags and chocolates and stuff. Bill’s eye had to come out.

  Later on we got some proper breakfast.

  A titled woman give me an orange. It’s not every day you can say a titled woman give you an orange.

  *

  “We’ll never see the like of Bill again,” says Hands. “You could go on talking about him all night and not get tired.”

  Epilogue

  A Word from Dusty Smith

  WELL, THE night falls deep, and everybody sleeps as only soldiers can sleep, and day dawns, as dawn it must. Sparrows twitter, a cock challenges the morning to come and be damned; the Drum Major’s dog barks and the melancholy drummer blows a great screaming Reveille, and the Camp stirs. Defaulters is blown. The condemned men on C.B. rush madly out to answer their names, and the others go galloping to the washhouses to get the night’s crop of manly beard hewn down and washed away.

  Sergeant Crowne rises looking surly and confides to Dagwood his dread of the new shower of tripe the Depot is sending today. Dagwood says “Ah,” and nods with an air of the profoundest conviction, and Hands breathes something that sounds like an ultimatum from Genghiz Khan; and Bearsbreath scowls at Butcher the Butcher. Out of the little radio a soprano at whose feet the Crowned Heads of Europe have thrown their kingdoms sings an aria from something or other, and an Instructor of Physical Training says to the loudspeaker: “Shut your jaw, you moaning cow!” Like the honking of wild geese breaks out the reiterated command: “Get these swabbing jobs done! Get this lousy hut dug out!” One of the men sweeping the floor finds a penny, which five others instantly claim. A blackout screen falls on Sergeant Crowne’s head, and he gives it a look which almost makes it leap back again.

  Breakfast is eaten and groused at. Crowne, in a state of unutterable melancholy, waits for the new squad, and, having seen something he didn’t like in the day before yesterday’s newspaper, wishes that he had the writer of it alone for five minutes … alone on a desert island, where there is no law but the law of the knife. Dagwood goes to get his platoon for a little musketry. Hands is due to conduct some live-grenade-throwing, and seems to contemplate some fearful act of sabotage. It looks as if everybody wants to assassinate everybody else. Only one Guardsman Clegg is cheerful, and keeps singing: “Oh, Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms” on one note, making up for his ignorance of the rest of the words by crying: “Dee-dee-dee, dah-dah-dee, dwa-dwa-dahum!” Until he is told to shut up: a command which he obeys for one second before singing on.

  The morning’s work goes ahead. Dinner is eaten, and groused at. Everybody curses the coming afternoon. Life is going on much the same as it did the day before yesterday.

  The new Rooks come in from Caterham in the early afternoon, marching with fierce precision and desperately anxious to make a good impression. Dusty Smith leads one group in, with the air of a man who has done this kind of thing just about once too often. In due course he goes to catch himself a pint of beer and a gallon of scandal, and a train back. He mets Dagwood, Hands, Bearsbreath and Crowne, and there is the inevitable conversational opening….

  “Ha, Dusty?”

  “Browned off. Howya, Handsey?”

  “Jarred off.”

  “Cheesed off.”

  “I’m more cheesed off than what you are.”

  “You can’t be more jarred off than what I am.”

  “Nobody could be more browned off than me.”

  “Cha having?”

  “Mild. This is my shout.”

  “Oh, turn it up, this is my shout.”

  “Ah, turn it in, I’m buying this.”

  Then they all buy one.

  Hands says: “Lousy luck on old Bill.”

  “What old Bill?” asks Dusty.

  “Nelson,” says Crowne.

  “What’s the matter with Nelson?” asks Dusty.

  “Haven’t you heard?” says Dagwood. “He got killed in the blitz.”

  “When?”

  “Couple of days ago,” says Crowne. “We was going to whip round for a wreath.”

  “Crushed under a house over in Groombridge Junction,” says Hands. “Butcher the Butcher was nearly killed too.”

  “What is this?” asks Dusty. “Bill Nelson killed? One-Eye Nelson? Old Bill Nelson, the One-Man Wave Of Destruction? Why, he’s my best friend.”

  “Well, now you know,” says Crowne.

  “No, I don’t know,” says Dusty. “Bill turned up at the Depot this mo
rning before I left.”

  “What d’you mean, Bill turned up at the Depot this morning before you left?” demands Crowne furiously.

  “He come in before I left with my shower,” says Dusty. “I don’t believe in ghosts. Not ghosts of Bill Nelson. He was in tripe, and bandaged a bit, and about forty hours pushed. He had a good bar, though. It was on his pass. He’d been trying to get some geezer out of a shelter, or something, and got trapped. They dug him out a bit, and shoved him in hospital for a few hours, and then he come back. Bit of a bashing, it looks like. Bit of a hole where a nail, or a screw, or a beam, or something, stuck in him. I didn’t have time to find out exactly. He did look about half dead, now you come to mention it. Bust his glass eye again. Can’t keep an eye five minutes. Strained back. Dead? Shut up, Crowney! There’s nothing left of Bill to kill except skin and bone and a couple of Hi-de-Hi’s and Ho-de-Ho’s. Why, I remember the time when Bill Nelson and me——”

  “You can keep it,” says Bearsbreath. “You can tell it to your squad. But for now, do me a favour and put a sock in it. Nelson, Nelson, Nelson. All I hear is Nelson.”

  “Well, there it is,” says Dusty. “He gave me the old Hi-de-Hi, and about a million rooks give him the old Ho-de-Ho, and he goes off to report to the sick-bunk. That’s all.”

  “Butcher,” says Hands. “I hope Butcher’s bloody blood pressure bursts.”

  “I’ll burst that Butcher,” says Dagwood. “I’ll splash him over seven hundred yards. Him and his Nelson!”

  “Did I ever tell you,” asks Dusty, “about when me and Bill——?”

  “Who cares about Bill?” asks Dagwood.

  “—Me and Bill was at——”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” says Bearsbreath.

  GLOSSARY OF SOLDIERS’ SLANG

  BAR, an excuse. An alibi.

  BOLO, an elastic word meaning Disorderly, or Cockeyed, or in any way unconventional. Slightly queer: e.g., “You got your cap on bolo,” or “Number 1252? That’s a bolo number.”

  BROWNED OFF, fed up. Also, CHEESED OFF, JARRED OFF.

  CHINA, a Pal, a Mate. Abbreviated rhyming slang, China Plate.

  CHASE, to drill ferociously.

  DRILL PIG, Drill Sergeant.

  DARBY-AND-JOAN, alone; on your own; on your Darby-and-Joan. Rhyming slang like.

  DICKY BIRD, which means Word.

  FORKS, hands.

  GESTAPO, Military Police.

  GLASS HOUSE, The Military Prison, at Aldershot.

  NORTH-AND-SOUTH, mouth. Rhyming slang again. Similarly PLATES OF MEAT means Feet.

  NAFFY, The Navy, Army and Air Force Institution … a sort of co-operative canteen.

  PUFF, means Life, but isn’t used much now.

  POZZY, jam—the stuff you smear on your bread.

  PUSHED, late, or overdue.

  SMOKE, The Smoke is London. London, you see, is smoky.

  WAD, biscuit or cake.

  WOG, Arab, or Moor.

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2013

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © The Estate of Gerald Kersh, 1945

  The right of Gerald Kersh to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–30455–4