Sergeant Gregson's War

by Jim Gregson

  I was delighted to find that children thousands of miles away and from very much more privileged backgrounds were much the same as the ones in Hulme. These children were better clothed, but they were unspoiled and eager to learn, just as those scruffy kids in the Manchester grime had been. I had a good day and finished with a reading to them from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a copy of which I had found in the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. My group of eight were much taken with my highly suspect American accent and with Huck’s antics by the Mississippi. Boys seemed to be very much the same around the world and across the centuries.

  The children came out to see me off. I made a great show of attaching the magazine to my Sten gun, because that was what they wanted to see from a teacher in uniform. I removed it surreptitiously as soon as I was out of their vision. This was a strange island and a strange world. Innocence and beauty existed here side by side with much darker and more dangerous forces.

  I returned next morning to the field of the fuel store. My eight adult workers there had worked unsupervised during the day of my absence. They had transferred exactly the same modest number of jerry cans as they had under the stress of my exhortations and threats on the previous day. My presence here was totally unnecessary.

  No one except me seemed to mind that.

  Ten

  Christmas came and went. I missed Joy severely, as I had known I would. I wrote and told her that the best part of me was only present when I was with her. I needed her with me for the rest of my life if I was to be that better self. Sentimental twaddle? Perhaps. I think it was also true, though it took me a long time to work it out and force it into words for my letter.

  I was disturbed to find that this ethereal and spiritual love was disturbed by all sorts of much more earthly imaginings. Our brief honeymoon was a confused, splendid and increasingly distant memory. I was still much affected by that very physical and all too brief fulfilment. I was sincere and I was sure I was right about being a better man with Joy around, but I was assailed also by vivid thoughts of her bodily attractions. I didn’t need to feel guilty about such thoughts though, did I, because I was married? But my upbringing told me that the spiritual was important, that my love should be on a higher plane. I should have accepted that the two could be fused, but I was still very young and seriously Catholic.

  I didn’t put any of my physical fantasies into my letters to Joy. I was pretty sure that the post from the sergeants’ mess left Dhekelia and the island without being opened, but the memory of that Blimpish, red-faced major in the transit camp remained strong. I recalled his breathless exhortations to give rein to my most lubricious imaginings about Joy’s body and contained myself. I wasn’t going to give gratification to men like that.

  I wondered if Joy was disturbed by similar thoughts about me and my carnal equipment. Selfishly, I rather hoped she was. I feared that she wouldn’t be, though even considering the possibility made it difficult to sleep on Christmas Eve. She didn’t say anything about the physical stuff in her letters, but I didn’t expect her to. With her head girl ethos and her schooling in the Virgin Mary and the virtues of chastity, she probably wouldn’t even know how. She’d probably feel more guilty than I did if she felt stirrings in her loins – and I wasn’t even sure if Catholic girls were allowed loins.

  Meanwhile, I was thousands of miles away and must think of other and more worthy things. I re-read Dad’s letter, which gave me a detailed description of the centre half Blackburn Rovers had just signed from Everton, Matt Woods. It was a good letter and a good description, and I loved my dad. But I was plainly very unworthy: even images of Mum and Dad by the Christmas fire and even picturing the latest exploits of my beloved Rovers couldn’t divert my thoughts from fantasies of energetic congress with my absent wife.

  On the night of Christmas Day, we had a lively dance in the sergeants’ mess. An excellent dinner was served, drink aplenty followed, and the carpets were rolled back. Women in fine dresses flocked in from the neighbouring married quarters. The man in charge played records of a new band called Bill Haley and his Comets, which had apparently caused quite a stir in the UK. It seemed that teddy boys had been tearing up seats and dancing in the aisles of cinemas. And in those days, their elders couldn’t shake their heads and call for the reinstatement of national service: most of the offenders had already served their two years.

  In the Dhekelia sergeants’ mess, a good time was had by almost all. I was amazed that staid men with years of service could let their hair down and dance so uninhibitedly and effectively. Where on earth could they have learned such things? This kind of dancing was new, and they hadn’t had the opportunities to discover it at home. Yet men large and small, young and old, flung their feet energetically in time with the music and captured its hectic rhythms.

  It made me once more feel young and out of place. But then, encouraged by companions I liked and respected, I joined in. I’d never been a great dancer, but now, freed from the constrictions of handling a partner and liberated by drink, I cast away my inhibitions. I took more prolonged and vigorous exercise on that Christmas night than I had experienced for many weeks. And all without any action that should have brought a blush to my inexperienced cheek, or an admonition from my absent and beloved Joy.

  All of the women here were accompanied; all of them were partners of men I would meet in the mess in the following days. There was no Randy Rita here to set my pulses racing and my organ rising. I was glad of that. Of course I was. I was relieved about it, even when I retired for the night to my comfortable, celibate room. But a tiny, unworthy part of me felt just a little regret, just a little desire for quarter of an hour of the bawdy attentions of the uninhibited Rita.

  On New Year’s Eve, I volunteered to take my turn in charge of the sergeants’ mess bar, allowing those with families here to be at home in the married quarters. The bar was busy until midnight, but then rapidly less so. When the number of my customers dropped to three, I felt free to drink with them. To drink quite freely, in fact. Freely meant too much – I had some catching up to do after remaining conscientiously sober behind the bar whilst others drank.

  I discovered a new fact in the earliest hours of 1957. It is not a good idea to play darts with men who are as incompetent at the game as you and as inebriated as you are. We had to finish with a double. Our options declined slowly but inexorably, until four drunken men were taking turns to try to hit a double one and end the game. The dawn of this new year was the most frustrating one I have suffered in a long life. It was five to four before a lucky dart finally released our suffering quartet.

  Next morning, I awoke with a hangover and lay on my back to review 1956. I had been miserable for much of it, but it had been full of incident. I had got married. I had listened to the last post and stood beside the grave of a younger man than me. I was different now from the callow youth I had been a year ago. Although still hopelessly naïve when measured against most of the men around me, I was more experienced and a little better equipped to deal with life, though not in any moral sense a better man.

  I was married but without access to those delicious carnal moments that dominated the thoughts of a twenty-one-year-old. But the precious forty-nine shillings a week of marriage allowance was accumulating safely in a bank account in England, a nest egg which would hatch into the golden chicken of a deposit to clinch the mortgage and purchase a small house. Not many newlyweds in 1957 moved into their own houses. They lived in the houses of parents or paid rent for basic accommodation. For us, connubial bliss would be unrestrained.

  I had been successively: a gunner and a wanker and many worse things, according to a succession of bombardiers; a sergeant in training on a bizarre exercise on Salisbury Plain; a sergeant with bright new stripes upon my arm; a soldier for whom everything became dramatically serious with a posting to Cyprus; an NCO who had mounted the guard of honour for a VIP and been covered in Cyprus filth; a colleague who had supervised the last rites for a young
fellow-Lancastrian gunned down on murder mile; a sergeant/instructor with excellent facilities available but no students and a CO who did not want any; and a supervisor of native labour which achieved nothing and was expected to achieve nothing.

  I had expected nothing of 1956 save an irritating interruption to my career plans after graduation. The year had been that, certainly. Yet it had also been a strange and eventful period. I decided the year had been character forming. But a Catholic upbringing had ensured that guilt was endemic and suffering was supposed to be welcomed.

  *

  The early months of 1957 promised much less in the way of happenings. I watched the slow transfer of many thousands of jerry cans from one side of the fuel store field to the other. Sometimes I went back to the entrance to the area and stood outside the quartermaster’s office, whence I could watch my workforce moving like eight arthritic ants across the landscape. But for most of the time I stood or sat among them, nodding occasional approval and shouting the occasional ‘Pushti!’ towards any sign of resistance. No one appeared to think that I or my Cyps should achieve more than we did. Indeed, a more rapid transition of the precious fuel would probably have embarrassed higher ranks than me.

  Life was so dull that I forgot my birthday. It wasn’t until four o’clock in the afternoon that I realised I was now twenty-two. I felt no more mature than I had on the previous day, and just as useless as I gazed at the walls of jerry cans. I even tried writing poetry, without receiving any suggestion that I was neglecting my duties. But at the end of the day I tore up my disappointing sheets. Studying literature was inimical to your own creative efforts, I found. As I attempted verse on a variety of subjects, Shakespeare and Keats and Wilfred Own rang constantly in my mind. The vivid phrases of the masters eclipsed my puny efforts.

  It was a blessed relief to escape each Thursday to the little school near Larnaca. The number of children there decreased from eight to six and then to five. No one knew where the others had gone. Once, when we had finished our day together, the five took me down to a shallow lake where thousands of flamingos stood pink and static, as if providing the background for an Impressionist painting. It was as unexpected as it was vivid. The image of the lake and the flamingos and my five charges in the foreground remained sharp with me as I sat in the truck with my Sten gun and its magazine upon my knees. It was a vivid reminder of innocence and beauty as I rocked back into the crazy world of the Cyprus emergency.

  After a few weeks of 1957, my visits to the school were abruptly terminated. I never discovered why. I assumed that the few remaining children had been returned to the safer environment of the UK and I hoped that it was so. But in the way of the army, I was never given that information. Major Barker did not know and thought it strange that I should want to know. I’d have liked to say goodbye to that lively and responsive group of youngsters who represented my tiny contribution to education in Cyprus, but they had disappeared forever from my life.

  Despite my attempts to decry it, my snooker reputation waxed stronger in the sergeants’ mess. All my attempts to deny my skill were taken as natural modesty, or, much worse, attempts to negotiate better odds in the bets set up by the incorrigible Percy. These became more extravagant as the evenings proceeded and drink blurred perspectives. By ten o’clock and our final contests, Percy was offering starts which extended to twenty-eight and stakes which extended to five pounds.

  Percy’s skills seemed to remain undiminished however many whisky and gingers he consumed. I tried unsuccessfully to control the rows of rum and coke which lengthened in front of me. On the table, I played grimly safe and waited for the cheerful, popular Percy to get the chance of a substantial break. When he did, he rarely failed. I accumulated cash in my room against the dreaded day when Percy would overreach himself and I would need to make a major payout. That never came. We lost occasionally and paid up with a good grace. But that was enough to make other partnerships take us on with renewed hope. Our overall record remained impressive and profitable.

  It was late one evening, when snooker was over and almost everyone had left the bar, that Percy Bishop sat down beside me in a corner of the games room. ‘I want to talk to you, partner.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so cautious at the table. But I don’t feel able to take chances. I go for the easy pots and try to set up chances for you in the rest of the game. I’m not as good as you think I am.’

  ‘This isn’t about snooker. And if you tell anyone else what it is about, you’ll get my cue in your balls.’

  I glanced around me, wondering what dubious demand was coming next. We were at the end of the almost deserted room and no one else was within earshot. I raised a feeble grin. ‘What is it you want, Percy?’

  He dropped his voice and spoke urgently, as if it was important to him to speak before he could change his mind. ‘I’m not a substantive rank. I’m acting paid sergeant – have been for the last six years. I’m out of the army next year. It would make quite a difference to my pension if I was substantive.’

  ‘I’m sorry. What did you do that’s stopped you being substantive?’

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong, you daft sod.’ He glanced round the almost empty room. ‘Well, nowt the sods know about, any road. It’s not that. It’s the Army Certificate of Education, Class One, that’s buggering me.’

  I understood immediately. I should have done so much earlier. To be confirmed as fully qualified and ‘substantive’ in the rank of sergeant and above, you needed the Army Certificate of Education, Class One. This was to show that you had the minimum standard of education considered necessary for the senior NCO ranks. The fact that Percy Bishop hadn’t got it meant that his rank couldn’t be confirmed as substantive. Men who hadn’t got the ACE Class One were sensitive about admitting it. Understandably so, for the lack of it made them, in their own and other people’s opinions, ‘thickos’. Hence this low-key, late-night conversation in the corner of an almost empty games room.

  I said stupidly, ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t, you silly bugger. It’s not something I broadcast.’

  ‘I’m sure we can do something about it.’

  ‘Can you? There’s others, as well as me, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t, no. But we should do something about it. Especially now, when we’re hanging about here with nothing much else to do. Letting Colonel Grivas and EOKA dictate what goes on in our lives.’

  ‘You watch that tongue of yours, Jim. It’ll get you into trouble, if you go round sounding off like that. But do you really think you might be able to help me?’

  I’d no idea how thick Percy was. He’d been a lively and quick-witted companion over many hours in the mess. My guess was that he was probably intelligent but sparsely educated, like many worthy army men. I said with all the confidence I could muster, ‘You leave it with me. We’ll definitely do something about this.’

  ‘There’s a snag. I don’t want people in my unit to know about it. Most of them think I’m already substantive. I’d like it to stay that way, as far as possible.’

  A year earlier, I might have embarked on a sententious lecture arguing that this wasn’t Percy’s fault but a fault of the system and that he shouldn’t be at all ashamed about his lack of qualifications. Now I smiled grimly and said, ‘We could do it in the evenings, if you like. I could open up the education centre. No one would need to know that we were in there or what we were about.’

  Percy looked at me and nodded. I realised in that moment how much it had taken for him to come to this young upstart and reveal his problem. He beckoned over a staff sergeant in the Warwicks who had been watching us surreptitiously from the other side of the room. ‘Jim thinks he can help us. And he’s willing to do it in the evenings.’ His face broadened into an unexpected grin as he tried to dispel the tension they both felt. ‘He doesn’t realise yet how bloody thick we are!’

  I used my key to take them into the education centre on the next Monday evening. Within a fortnight,
the news had got round. My group had grown to eight and we had agreed to meet on Mondays and Wednesdays.

  Over the next forty years, I would teach in schools, colleges and universities. I was never accorded a more cooperative or enthusiastic group. And I certainly never had a more determined one. This was new ground for me and I was frank about that. I was in truth in considerable awe of these grizzled and experienced men. All of them were much older than me and some of them were twenty years older. I gave them what I could and they responded magnificently.

  I didn’t like the army and I didn’t see the need for national service in peacetime. But by now I had an admiration which I had never anticipated for the vast majority of the men in the sergeants’ mess. They were different from me in background and in aspirations. Joy and I were products of the revolution in secondary and higher education ushered in by the Labour Government of 1945 to 1951. We were part of the first generation of bright working class children to be afforded the benefits of sixth form, A levels, and university.

  The men around me in the mess had enjoyed none of this. Many of them had been through the Second World War and seen things I would never see. Others, who had been in secondary schools during the war years, had missed out on the education system as schools were sacrificed to more pressing concerns. The nation had stood alone against the threat of Hitler, had been threatened with invasion, defeat, and occupation. These men were mostly very right wing, which I was not. I suppose some of them were fascists, in the popular student epithet of the day, though I was rather vague about what that easily flung insult implied.

  What these temporary colleagues certainly were was honest and decent. They were career soldiers; in many cases they had joined the army because no alternative work had been available to them. Most of their aims and skills would never be shared by me. They were able men, many of them much abler than they realised. They knew much more of the realities of life and how to handle them than the young officers with public school educations and accents who supposedly directed them and in reality depended heavily upon them.