Sergeant Gregson's War

by Jim Gregson

  Which is more than I could do, I thought. I remain bewildered about all four of those things. ‘I see, sir. Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Sorry isn’t good enough, Sergeant, We expect more from our senior NCOs than this. I have deleted the passages which you should never have written. You should now redraft your letter.’

  Major Hornchurch handed my now dog-eared page across the desk to me. All but three words were now obscured by red ink. The single sentence left was the last one I had written. It said simply, ‘I love you.’ I stared at the three words dumbly, not sure whether the tears that threatened me were of mirth or despair. I was glad I hadn’t found words for the more vigorous sexual couplings with Joy which assailed my imagination each night. This buffoon would have savoured those. I looked stolidly over his head and said as evenly as I could, ‘In view of your reminders to me, sir, I don’t think it would be safe for me to add much to that.’

  My censor seemed suddenly anxious to help. ‘You can elaborate, you know.’

  ‘Elaborate, sir?’

  ‘Elaborate on how you love your girl. That’s perfectly safe. That’s perfectly acceptable. You can list what you’d like to do to her in great detail, if you like. That information wouldn’t be of any use to the enemy.’

  I had a sudden vision of this bumbling commissioned idiot salivating over my imagined contortions with the innocent Joy. I said between lips which I scarcely opened, ‘Would that be the enemy we don’t have, sir? I don’t think I’d like to relay the details of my sexual desires to them. Frustrated as they might be, in this Godforsaken place.’

  Major Hornchurch spoke as if he hadn’t heard me, so engrossed was he by the prospect of vicarious enjoyment. ‘You can mention sexual parts, you know.’

  ‘Sexual parts, sir?’

  ‘Female sexual parts. You can mention all of them. You can dwell on them and say what you’d like to do with them.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like the officers who are charged with censoring our letters to have to read about that, sir. I feel it wouldn’t be fair on people like you.’

  Hornchurch stared hard at me, but I continued to stand to attention and look high above his head. After a tense moment of silence, he barked, ‘Dismissed, Sergeant.’

  It was the first time I had bandied words with an officer, even obliquely, and I decided when my temper cooled that I had rather enjoyed it.

  I never saw the florid Major Hornchurch again and scarcely even thought of him. It was not until the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial took place thirteen years later that I remembered him, and thought of him almost fondly. How the flushed major must be enjoying reading and re-reading the passages about John Thomases and flowers in pubic hair in the book which had been banned for so long. How excited he must be by the accounts of a titled lady being repeatedly fucked, with the word permitted in print for the first time.

  But in the October of 1956, I had to re-write my letter. I confined myself to the fiction that the British army held easy control in Cyprus and the fact that I dearly loved my distant Joy.

  On the last day of the month, the Anglo French bombardment of Suez began.

  Six

  There was a changing population in my tent at the transit camp. The other three occupants arrived and left at irregular intervals, reinforcing my impression that I had been forgotten and might vegetate here for the rest of my service. The only one who stayed with me for any length of time wore a single stripe which was as new as the three on my arm.

  Lance Corporal Beecham came from Preston, only ten miles from my native Blackburn. We’d watched the same footballers – he was delighted to find I adulated Tom Finney almost as much as he did. We had followed the same Lancashire cricket in the newspapers, and climbed the same Lake District hills as boys. We hadn’t a lot else in common, but that was more than most men thrown together in the confusion of the transit camp. And there was always the latest army idiocy to unite us in mirth or consternation. We struck up the kind of easy friendship which thrived on the common ground of national service. We enjoyed our alienation from the regular soldiers who took all this nonsense seriously.

  We came and went in the tent and didn’t often coincide. It was two days before I thought to ask him what his name was. He grinned the grin of a man who is resigned to the knowledge that his name will bring amusement to others. ‘It’s Billy Beecham, sarge. Same as the pills.’

  ‘And the conductor. I saw Sir Thomas Beecham conduct the Hallé in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. They played Mozart. He had to sit down to conduct and I think he wore carpet slippers, but the playing was magnificent.’ I was lost for a moment in the recollection. Like many other serious things, Mozart seemed an impossible distance away from Cyprus and road blocks and red-faced majors.

  Billy wasn’t familiar with the great conductor who was his namesake. But he rated the pills which were the foundation of the great man’s fortune. ‘They’re only little things, but you can shit through the eye of a needle after a Beecham’s pill. Worth a guinea a box.’ He was almost as nostalgic about the famous advertising slogan as I had been about the famous conductor.

  Although he was a national serviceman like me and thus imbued with the customary contempt for all things military, Billy was secretly quite proud of his single stripe. And why not? He’d probably had to fight harder for it than I had for my three. I asked him how he’d acquired it. ‘Kept me nose clean and me boots bright and me hair short, didn’t I? Learned how to throw a good salute and to drill just a bit better than the rest of the poor sods around me.’

  Billy was younger than me and I felt protective of him. It was a strange feeling for me, who had hitherto felt myself struggling for survival within the army and its bewildering requirements. He had been prevented by a shoulder strain from going with his unit to an exercise in the Turkish section of the island. I explained that I’d narrowly escaped a similar assignment during the previous week.

  Beecham raised an eyebrow at that. ‘Shouldn’t have though they’d want you for that, sarge. You’re a teacher really, aren’t you? Educating the troops. Helping them along, like.’ Billy respected rank, as he’d been taught to do; he didn’t call me a schoolie to my face. That contemptuous term was served for sergeants and above. It was the same culture that accepted that only brigadiers and above were allowed to catch VD from lavatory seats.

  Billy Beecham had no real idea what place education had in the complex world of the army. Sometimes I thought I knew just as little as he did about that. There’d been no call for it so far in the little I’d seen of Cyprus, and every evidence that no one had much idea what to do with me. I shrugged and said to Billy, ‘It was probably only my “excused boots” chit that saved me from crawling about on my belly in the fields with poor buggers like you behind me. There isn’t much call for education here at the moment. I expect that now the balloon’s gone up in Suez I’ll be posted there pretty soon. Maybe you will be as well.’

  As if in response to this sobering thought, a stern face above an erect and observant figure appeared suddenly in the entrance to our tent – a regimental sergeant major, the most senior and most feared of all non-commissioned ranks. Billy was as erect and as stiff as a ramrod even as I registered this formidable presence. I’d never seen the RSM before, not even at the other end of the transit camp’s drastically overcrowded sergeants’ mess. It seemed to be a feature of my life here that a constantly changing series of senior men appeared to issue me with orders and then were never seen again.

  This one now announced in a Geordie accent, ‘Sergeant Gregson, I have a job for you. You appear to be the only man with three stripes whom I can say for certain will be available to me tomorrow morning.’

  I felt no resentment. I was quite used by now to being told that I was being deployed as a senior NCO only because I had three stripes on my arm and because I was all that was available. Schoolies weren’t real sergeants, but they had to be used as real sergeants in an emergency. No one knew this better than an RSM, with his vast ex
perience of the unwritten as well as the written among army procedures.

  I tried not to let Billy Beecham’s rigidity beside me affect my speech. I could not show that I was in fact terrified. I was more frightened of this ogre who was officially on my side than of any enemy I had met so far. ‘Of course, sir. Any sort of action will be a relief.’ For me, RSMs were associated with parades and room inspections. I wondered what this one would make of the kit which lay on the two untenanted beds beside mine and Billy’s, of the kitbags which were all we had as lockers, of the two ragged bullet holes in the roof of our tent.

  ‘We have a civilian VIP visiting us tomorrow. A senior diplomat who’s passing through from Jordan. Apparently he’s coming here to talk with our general about negotiations with Archbishop Makarios. He is Sir John Hunt and he is to be greeted appropriately when he arrives here. We shall be mounting a guard of honour. The colonel will step forward and offer the formal greeting to Sir John, but there will be two ranks of soldiers for our visiting dignitary to inspect before he moves on to the business of the day. You will be the orderly sergeant in charge of that guard. Report to my office in the main building for a further briefing at zero eight thirty hours tomorrow morning. Best battledress. But shorts are still the dress of the day. You will be permitted one corporal or lance corporal to marshal the ranks. With everyone buggering off on manoeuvres, I shall have to find that man for you tomorrow morning.’

  I tried to digest this welter of information; it seemed more difficult to do that whilst standing as rigid and motionless as a statue. ‘Yes, sir. Very good, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but could the junior NCO be Lance Corporal Beecham here, sir?’

  The narrowed blue eyes gazed at me fiercely. You weren’t supposed to offer suggestions or thoughts of your own to RSMs. I added rather desperately, ‘It would be one less thing for you to worry about and we could make our plans together for the guard of honour, sir.’

  The ogre ran his gaze unhurriedly up and down my lanky frame, then glanced at the much smarter figure who stood like marble at my shoulder. ‘As you wish, Sergeant. At ease, Sergeant. At ease, Corporal Beecham. You will both report to my office at zero eight thirty hours tomorrow.’

  I was surprised to find when I was alone that I was rather pleased to have been allotted this duty. There was the simple fact that when you were bored it was better to be doing anything than doing nothing. But there was also the thought that greeting an important civilian seemed to take me outside the army and its concerns for a little while. Even though the mission was to greet this man with full military honours, Sir John Hunt must have real power. Perhaps he was going to discuss with the top brass whether Archbishop Makarios, at present exiled from Cyprus because he had refused to renounce violence, might be recalled to the island. Perhaps our visitor might be able to resolve the crisis here, to secure the disbanding of the EOKA terrorists, and to send us troops happily home to Blighty. I would have a tenuous connection with all of this. I would be close to the centre of great affairs, within touching distance of the man who could work things out and save many lives.

  I was slowly acquiring military experience, but I was still young and incredibly naïve.

  I managed to borrow an iron in preparation for the morrow’s great events. I gave ample time and attention to the pressing of my shorts, khaki, drill. Kiwi shoe polish, a new duster, and the experience gathered in Wales gave a respectable shine to my shoes, black, leather. When the morning dawned, I looked reasonably smart, with my knee-length socks and my beret at the correct angle, though I could not compare with the bullshitted splendour of Billy Beecham beside me.

  RSM Turnbull was too busy with other affairs to do more than issue us with our orders. ‘Sir John will arrive here by helicopter. His ETA is ten thirty hours, but when he actually appears will depend on what time his plane lands at Nicosia airport. The helicopter to which he will then transfer will land on the field behind the guardhouse, which is the flattest and most secure area in this transit camp. You will have twelve men in your guard, Sergeant Gregson, deployed in two ranks of six. You will offer a full military salute and present arms. The colonel will take over after Sir John has formally inspected your guard of honour. Get yourself organised, Sergeant. Practise whatever you need to practise, then await instructions in the guardhouse. You will be notified by telephone when the helicopter takes off from the airport.’

  Efficient and to the point. You didn’t reach sergeant major rank, and still less regimental sergeant major, without having a wealth of ability and common sense. I was by now according a grudging admiration to men like this, who were far more genuine and far more intelligent than many of the clipped-voice idiots who carried the Queen’s commission. The army wasn’t for me, but I was beginning to respect these men who had started at the lowest rank and proved themselves again and again, in harsher places than this.

  The men waiting for me at the guardroom were from an infantry regiment and their turnout was as impeccable as Lance Corporal Beecham’s. I led them out into the field where we were to greet and salute our important visitor. It was scarcely a field at all. With the transit camp pressure on any sort of space, it had been used for all sorts of disciplinary exercises. With the only small drill square in the camp in perpetual demand, soldiers had marched and wheeled and about-turned here. It had been used for vehicle maintenance and even for tank practice. There was not a blade of grass visible. After five months without rain, dried mud and dust were the predominant features.

  Fortunately, it was a calm and windless day, so the dust was not a serious problem. Billy Beecham organised the men by height into two lines of six and I put my troops through a couple of rehearsals for the guard of honour procedures. I conjured the orders from the depths of my stomach and my voice rang out impressively. As usual, the twelve men responded to my stentorian qualities and drilled impressively. They came smartly to attention, presented arms, and stood stock-still, with their gleaming rifles ready for inspection by their non-existent visitor. I strolled up and down the lines in his place, inspecting and approving the turnout and the arms of men who were slightly smarter than me.

  The sun was growing fiercer with each passing minute, so they were relieved when I ordered them to retire to the gloom of the guardroom. There we restored the pristine shine to our boots and awaited events. Neither I nor any of the men under my temporary command had ever seen a helicopter.

  Sir John was late. We had expected that. It would take some time for the present security precautions to be implemented and for him to be transferred to his helicopter. We were given ample notice of his arrival on the guardroom phone. By the time the welcome speck of the helicopter appeared against the azure sky and then moved swiftly into profile, we had been standing in ranks beneath the very hot sun for twenty minutes The aircraft carrying our VIP circled briefly above us, then dropped vertically but very slowly towards the ground, with its spinning blades controlling its descent.

  Probably someone in the camp knew what this manoeuvre would produce in the parched world below. No one had thought to inform me or anyone else connected with the guard of honour. I brought my twelve men to attention and the two ranks stood rigid as effigies. We remained so whilst the violent turbulence from the helicopter blades engulfed us in an intense sandstorm of dust. Sir John climbed down stiffly from his transport. I spat soil silently from my lips and roared out the order to present arms. My men responded gallantly. They carried such a thick layer of dust upon their fronts that they looked like large brown teddy bears in some bizarre comic pantomime.

  Sir John played his part to perfection. Perhaps it was his diplomatic training which helped him to maintain such a commendably straight face. His own dark grey civilian suit was immaculate after his journey. He moved along the ranks of men, pretended to inspect the rifles they held stiffly in front of them, and affected not to notice as accumulated dust and soil dropped suddenly away in slow motion, revealing patches of white skin on the rigid faces and arms beneath. ‘Excellent turnou
t, Sergeant!’ he said to the earth-encrusted man in charge, with only the faintest trace of a smile.

  The colonel stepped forward and took Sir John away. I wondered where the general in charge of our army was, and what prospect of a solution to the Cyprus emergency our urbane visitor carried in his briefcase. Perhaps it wouldn’t affect me. Perhaps I would be on active service in Suez by the weekend. Perhaps…

  I felt quite helpless in the face of forces much larger than me, as I had done ever since I had entered the army on that cold day in Oswestry in March.

  Billy Beecham and I scraped off what we could of the thick layer of mud and soil. Then we queued for our turns under the crude outdoor shower and tried to wash away the guard of honour effects from our aching limbs. Tepid water revealed white flesh as the rivulets ran down our legs. Towards the close of this strange and futile day, I thought of the men who were being real soldiers. The men in the Troodos mountains, who were searching for Colonel Grivas and his murderous terrorists.

  ‘Grivas is playing at home,’ said Billy grimly as he wiped his calves. ‘He knows the territory, every inch of it. Our lads don’t.’

  I nodded. Billy’s words would come back to me months later, when I least expected them. I didn’t like the army and its multiple lunacies. I still wondered why I was here. But I had a fellow feeling with the young men around me who were exposed to murderous violence, without even understanding the issues involved. The men who scrambled fearfully through the mountains were automatically ‘our lads’ to me and to Billy. We wanted them preserved and rewarded, not killed.

  It took us three hours to clean our rifles and restore our kit to a semblance of smartness after the assault from the helicopter blades. Billy seemed to enjoy the work, nodding with pride as the brasses on his belt began to gleam again in the last of the sunlight. I polished an acceptable shine back on to my shoes and went across to the small library I had discovered near the edge of the camp. There wasn’t a lot of choice, but books themselves were a luxury. I selected a very battered volume of Wodehouse’s Right Ho, Jeeves. It promised the read that would offer the greatest contrast to my present situation.