‘I do think that, I tell you.’
‘And why, whatever?’
‘The Sergeant-Major is a married man, you must know.’
‘So you think girls are just for young lads like me, Sergeant-Major? That is good for me, I’m sure.’
‘Never mind what I think, Corporal.’
‘He is a lucky man, the Sergeant Major,’ said Sergeant Pendry sententiously. ‘You will be glad when you reach his age, no longer foolish and running after girls.’
‘Oh, dear me, is it true what Sergeant Pendry says, Sergeant-Major, that girls are for you no longer? I am that sorry to hear.’
CSM Cadwallader allowed himself a dry smile.
‘Have you never heard, Corporal Gwylt, there’s those to find many a good tune played on old fiddles?’ he said benevolently.
The Embarkation Staff Officer turned up at that moment with a sheaf of papers. The Battalion was on the move again. Corporal Gwylt had just time to blow a kiss to the girls, who waved frantically, redoubling their gigglings. The Company tramped off towards the train in a siding.
‘Now then, there,’ shouted the Sergeant-Major, ‘pick up the step in the rear files. Left – left – left, right, left …’
We steamed through bare, dismal country, wide fields, white cabins, low walls of piled stones, stretches of heather, more mountains far away on the horizon.
‘This will give us better training areas than back home,’ said Gwatkin.
He had recovered from his sea sickness and the tension brought on by the move. Now he was relatively calm.
‘We shall be more like soldiers here,’ he said with satisfaction.
‘What happens when we arrive, Rowland?’ Breeze asked. ‘I hope there’ll be something to eat.’
Breeze’s questions were usually aimed to score the textbook answer from Gwatkin.
‘The second echelon of the supply column will have preceded us,’ said Gwatkin sharply.
‘And what do they do?’
‘They will have broken bulk and be ready to issue to units. You should spend more time on your Field Service Pocket Book, Yanto.’
We arrived at a small, unalluring industrial town. Once more the Battalion formed up. By now the men were tired. Singing was sombre as we marched in:
‘My lips smile no more, my heart loses its lightness,
No dream of the future my spirit can cheer,
I only would brood on the past and its brightness,
The dead I have mourned are again gathered here.
From every dark nook they press forward to meet me,
I lift up my eyes to the broad leafy dome.
And others are there looking downward to greet me,
The ashgrove, the ashgrove, alone is my home . .
Gwatkin was right about being more like soldiers in these new surroundings. Barracks had been created from a disused linen factory, the long narrow sheds in which the flax had formerly been treated offering barrack-rooms stark as a Foreign Legion film set. Officers were billeted in a forlorn villa on the outskirts of the town, a house that had no doubt once belonged to some successful local businessman. It was a mile or more away from the barracks. There, I still shared a room with Kedward, Breeze and Pumphrey, the last of whom had not yet achieved his RAF transfer. Another subaltern, Craddock, was in with us too, brother of the girl to whom Kedward was engaged. Craddock, fat and energetic, was Messing Officer, which meant he returned to billets in the middle of the night several times a week, when he would either turn on the light, or blunder about the room in the dark, falling over other people’s camp-beds in a fruitless effort to find his own. Both methods were disturbing. There was, in any case, not much room to manoeuvre round the beds, even when the light was on. Craddock’s midnight arrivals were not the only inconvenience. Breeze left old razor blades about in profusion, causing Pumphrey to cut his foot one morning. Kedward talked in his sleep throughout the night, shouting commands, as if he were drilling a company: ‘At the halt – on the left – form close column of – platoons …’
Pumphrey, inclined to bicker, would throw towels about and sponges. A window pane was broken, which no one ever seemed responsible for mending, through which the night wind whistled, while cold struck up insistently from the floor, penetrating the canvas of a camp-bed. Snow had returned. I record these conditions not as particularly formidable in the circumstances, but to indicate they were sufficiently far from ideal to encourage a change, when, as it happened, opportunity arose. This came about through Gwatkin in an unexpected manner. During the weeks that followed our arrival in these new surroundings, I began to know him better. He was nearer my own age than the other subalterns, except Bithel. Even the captains tended to be younger than Gwatkin and myself, as time went on, some of the older ones being gradually shifted, as insufficiently proficient at their job, to Holding Battalions or the Infantry Training Centre.
‘We’re getting rid of the dead wood,’ said Gwatkin. ‘Just as well.’
His own abrupt manner of speaking continued, and he loved to find fault for its own sake. At the same time, he evidently wanted to be friendly, while fearing that too easy a relationship with a subordinate, even one of similar age, might be unmilitary. There were unexpected sides to Gwatkin, sudden displays of uncertainty under a façade meant to be very certain. Some of his duties he carried out very well; for others, he had little or no natural talent.
‘A company commander,’ said Dicky Umfraville, when we met later that year, ‘needs the qualifications of a ringmaster in a first-class circus, and a nanny in a large family.’
Gwatkin aspired to this dazzling combination of gifts – to become (as Pennistone later said) a military saint. Somehow he always fell short of that coveted status. His imperfections never derived from any willingness to spare himself. On the contrary, inability to delegate authority, insistence that he must do everything himself, important or unimportant, was one of Gwatkin’s chief handicaps in achieving his high aim. For example, he instituted a ‘Company Officer of the Day’, one of whose duties was to make sure all was well at the men’s dinners. This job, on the whole redundant, since the Orderly Officer of necessity visited all Mess Rooms to investigate ‘any complaints’, was made additionally superfluous by Gwatkin himself appearing as often as not at dinners, in order to make sure the Company Officer of the Day was not shirking his rounds. In fact, he scarcely allowed himself any time off at all. He seemed half aware that this intense keenness was not, in final result, what was required; at least not without more understanding on his own part. Besides, Gwatkin had none of that faculty, so necessary in the army, of accepting rebuke – even unjust rebuke – and carrying on as if nothing had happened. Criticism from above left him dreadfully depressed.
‘It’s no good letting the army get you down,’ the Adjutant, Maelgwyn-Jones, used to say. ‘Just remember, when you’re worrying about the Brigadier’s inspection, that day will pass, as other days in the army pass.’
Maelgwyn-Jones himself did not always act upon this teaching. He was an efficient, short-tempered Regular, whose slight impediment of speech became a positive stutter when he grew enraged. He wanted to get back to the battalion he came from, where there was more hope of immediate action and consequent promotion. Thoroughly reliable as an officer, hard working as an adjutant, Maelgwyn-Jones did not share – indeed was totally unapprehending of – Gwatkin’s resplendent vision of army life. When he pulled up Gwatkin for some such lapse as unpunctual disposal of the Company’s swill, Gwatkin would behave as if his personal honour had been called into question; then concentrate feverishly on more energetic training, smarter turn-out. In a sense, of course, that was correct enough, but the original cause of complaint was not always put right in the most expeditious manner. The fact was Gwatkin lacked in his own nature that grasp of ‘system’ for which he possessed such admiration. This deficiency was perhaps connected in some way with a kind of poetry within him, a poetry which had somehow become a handicap in its efforts to find
an outlet. Romantic ideas about the way life is lived are often to be found in persons themselves fairly coarse-grained. This was to some extent true of Gwatkin. His coarseness of texture took the form of having to find a scapegoat after he himself had been in trouble. The scapegoat was usually Breeze, though any of the rest of the Company might suffer. Bithel, usually in hot water of some kind, would have offered an ever available target for these punitive visitations of Gwatkin’s, but Bithel was in another company. All the same, although no concern of his in the direct sense, Bithel’s appearance and demeanour greatly irked Gwatkin in a general way. He spoke of this one afternoon, when Bithel, wearing one of his gaiters improperly adjusted, crossed our path on the way back from afternoon training.
‘Did you ever see such an unsoldierly type?’ Gwatkin said. ‘And his brother a VC too.’
‘Is it certain they’re brothers, not just fairly distant relations?’
I was not sure whether Bithel’s words to me on that earlier occasion had been spoken in confidence. The tone he had adopted suggested something of the sort. Besides, Bithel might suddenly decide to return to the earlier cycle of legends he had apparently disseminated about himself to facilitate his Reserve call-up; or at least he might not wish to have them specifically denied on his own authority. However, Gwatkin showed no wish to verify the truth, or otherwise, of Bithel’s alleged kinships.
‘Even if they are not brothers, Bithel is a disgrace for a man with a VC in the family,’ Gwatkin said severely. ‘He should be ashamed. That VC ought to give him a pride in himself. I wish a relative of mine had won the VC, won an MC even. And it is my belief, I am telling you, Nick, that all about Bithel’s rugger is tommy-rot.’
That last conviction was unanswerable by this time. No one who had seen Bithel proceeding at the double could possibly suppose his abilities in the football field had ever been more than moderate.
‘Do you know when Idwal was Orderly Officer last week,’ said Gwatkin, ‘he found Bithel in his dressing-gown listening to the gramophone with the Mess waiters. Bithel said he was looking for Daniels, that servant of his I don’t much like either. And then we are expected to keep discipline in the unit.’
‘That bloody gramophone makes a frightful row at all hours.’
‘So it does, too, and I’m not going to stay in those billets any longer. I have had enough. My camp-bed was taken down to the Company Office this morning. That is the place for a company commander to be. Half the day is lost in this place walking backwards and forwards from billets to barracks. We are lucky enough to have an office next door to the Company Store. The bed can be folded up and go into the store for the day.’
We had reached a fork in the road. One way led to barracks, the other to billets. Gwatkin seemed suddenly to come to a decision.
‘Why don’t you come down to the Company Office too?’ he asked.
He spoke roughly, almost as if he were demanding why I had disobeyed an order.
‘Would there be room?’
‘Plenty.’
‘We’re pretty thick on the ground where I am at present, even though Idwal is on the Anti-gas course at the moment.’
‘It won’t be so lively sleeping in the office.’
‘I can stand that.’
‘The great thing is you’re on the spot. Near the men. Where every officer should be.’
I was flattered by the suggestion. Kedward was at the Corps School of Chemical Warfare at Castlemallock – usually known as the Anti-gas School – so that Breeze and I were Gwatkin’s only subalterns at that moment, and there was a lot of work to do. As I have said, accommodation at the billets had little to recommend it. The Company Office was at least no worse a prospect. To be in barracks would be convenient, not least in its reduction of continual trudging backwards and forwards to the billets.
‘I’ll have my kit taken down this evening.’
That was the beginning of my comparative intimacy with Gwatkin. Sharing with him the Company Office at night altered not only our mutual relationship, but also the whole tempo of night and morning. Instead of the turmoil of Kedward, Breeze, Pumphrey and Craddock getting dressed, talking, scuffling, singing, there was only the occasional harsh, serious, professional comment of Gwatkin; his tense silences. He slept heavily, often dropping off before the electric light was out and the blackout down; never, like myself, lying awake listening to the talk in the Company Store next door. The partition between the store and the office did not reach all the way to the ceiling, so that conversation held in the store after Lights Out, although usually carried out in comparatively low tones – in contrast with the normal speech of the unit – was often audible. Only the storeman, Lance-Corporal Gittins, was supposed to sleep in the store at night, but, in practice, the room usually housed several others; semi-official assistants of Gittins, friends, relations, Company personalities, like Corporal Gwylt. These would gather in the evening, if not on guard dudes, and listen to the wireless; several of those assembled later staying the night among the crates and piles of blankets, to slumber in the peculiar, musty smell of the store, an odour somewhere between the Natural History Museum and an oil-and-colour shop. Lance-Corporal Gittins was CSM Cadwallader’s brother-in-law. He was a man not always willing to recognise the artificial and temporary hierarchy imposed by military rank.
‘Now, see it you must, Gareth,’ I heard the Sergeant-Major’s voice once insisting on the other side of the partition. ‘In time of peace – in the mine – you are above me, Gareth, and above Sergeant Pendry. Here, that is not. No longer is it the mine. In the Company we are above you. It would be good you remember that, Gareth.’
Gittins was a figure of some prestige in the Company, not only on account of dominion over valuable stock-in-trade, but also for his forcible character. Dark, stocky, another strongly pre-Celtic type, he could probably have become sergeant – even sergeant-major – without difficulty, had he wished for promotion. Like many others, he preferred to avoid such responsibilities, instead ruling the store, where he guarded every item as if it were his own personal property acquired only after long toil and self-denial. Nothing was more difficult than to extort from him the most insignificant replacement of kit.
‘I tell you, not without the Skipper’s direct order,’ was his usual answer to such requests. This circumspection was very generally respected. To coax anything from Gittins was considered a triumph. One of the attractions of the store was its wireless, which would sometimes be tuned in to Haw-Haw’s propaganda broadcast from Germany. These came on just after midnight:
‘… This is Chairmany calling … Chairmany calling … These are the stations Koln, Hamburg and DJA … Here is the news in English … Fifty-three more British aircraft were shot down over Kiel last night making a total of one hundred and seventeen since Tuesday … One hundred and seventeen more British aircraft have been shot down in forty-eight hours … The British people are asking their Government why British pilots cannot stay in the air … They are asking why British aircraft is inferior to Chairman aircraft … The British people are asking themselves why they have lost the war in the air … They are asking, for example, what has happened to the Imperial Airways Liner Ajax … Why is the Imperial Airways Liner Ajax three weeks overdue, they are asking … We can tell you .. . The Imperial Airways Liner Ajax is at the bottom of the sea … The fishes are swimming in and out of the wreckage of the Imperial Airways Liner Ajax … The Imperial Airways Liner Ajax and her escort were shot down by Chairman fighter planes… The British have lost the war in the air … They have lost the war in the air … It is the same on the water … The Admiralty is wondering about the Resourceful … They are worried at the Admiralty about the Resourceful … They need not worry about the Resourceful any more … We will tell them about the Resourceful … The Resourceful is at the bottom of the sea with the Imperial Airways Liner Ajax … The Resourceful was sunk by a Chairman submarine … The Admiralty is in despair at Chairman command of the sea … Britain has lost the war on the
sea … One hundred and seventy-five thousand gross registered tons of British shipping was sent to the bottom last week … The British Government is in despair at these losses in the air and on the water … That is not the only thing that makes the British Government despair … Not by any means … The food shortage in Britain is becoming acute … The evacuated women and children are living in misery … Instead of food, they are being fed on lies … Government lies … Only Chairmany can tell you the truth … The Chairman radio speaks the truth … The Chairman radio gives the best and latest news … Chairmany is winning the war … Think it over, Britain, think it over … Chairmany is winning the war … Listen, Britain … Listen, Britain … We repeat to all listeners in the Far East … Listen, South America …’
Someone in the store turned the button. The nagging, sneering, obsessive accents died away with a jerk, as if a sack had been advantageously thrust over the speaker’s head, bestowing an immediate sense of relief at his extinction. There was a long pause next door.
‘I do wonder he can remember all that,’ said a voice, possibly that of Williams, W.H., one of the singers of Sardis, now runner in my platoon.
‘Someone writes it down for him, don’t you see,’ said another voice that could have been Corporal Gwylt’s.
‘And do they give him all those figures too?’
‘Of course they do.’
‘So that is it.’
‘You must know that, lad.’
‘What a lot he do talk.’
‘That’s for they pay him.’
‘Bloody sure he is Germany will win the war. Why does he call it like that – Chairmany – it’s a funny way to speak to be sure.’
‘Maybe that’s the way they say it there.’
‘If Hider wins the war, I tell you, lad, we’ll go down the mine for sixpence a day.’
No one in the store attempted to deny this conclusion. There was another pause and some coughing. It was not easy to tell how many persons were collected there. Gittins himself appeared to have gone to sleep, only Gwylt and Williams, W. H., unable to bring the day to a close. I thought they too must have nodded off, when suddenly Williams’s voice sounded again.
The Valley of Bones Page 5
