by Alan Judd
‘You’re not serious,’ said Charles.
‘’Course I’m serious. Standing Operational Procedures, paragraph 4b – “In vehicles respirators are to be available at all times.” A train is a vehicle.’ He found his respirator. ‘I’d advise you all to find yours.’
‘But we’re not going to the O Group. And we’re still in England.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Thoroughgood, stop being irrelevant. Just find your respirator and have it available.’ Edward straightened his beret in the mirror and clambered over their kit to the door. ‘Which way’s the CO’s carriage?’ he asked.
‘Left,’ said Tim.
‘Was it left?’ asked John, when Edward had gone.
‘Haven’t a clue.’
The three of them rummaged slowly through their kit for their respirators. Charles couldn’t find his. He had never learned to travel lightly and seemed to have as much kit as the other two together. He gave up and tried to read. The night before he had said goodbye to Janet, his girlfriend, and memories of the uncomfortable evening kept coming back in snippets. There had been nothing positively unpleasant. It was just that he could not think of it without a sense of hopelessness, in much the same way as he felt about the ensuing four months in Northern Ireland. This was due not to any pessimistic appreciation of the situation there, nor to any dislike for the place, which he had never seen, any more than the previous night’s hopelessness had been anything specifically to do with Janet. It was a more general malaise in which he was the only common factor, though he was inclined to blame the CO.
‘Don’t get killed, please,’ Janet had said. They were in a restaurant in Fulham, and she had said it whilst sipping her mock-turtle soup, peering earnestly at him over the spoon.
‘No, of course not,’ he said, feeling absurdly British.
She lowered her spoon. ‘Really, Charles, I’m very worried.’
‘So am I.’
‘It’s worse in a way, staying behind.’
‘I’m sure it isn’t.’
‘Don’t be so selfish.’ She looked down, apparently occupied in making patterns in the soup. With her forehead bent towards him and her gaze averted she always seemed at her most vulnerable, and Charles felt inclined to be tender. But it was a distant sort of tenderness and it could not survive in conversation. She looked up again. ‘I still don’t understand why you joined the Army.’
This had been a bone of contention for some months now. He suspected that what exasperated her most was not the weakness of any explanations he might have given but the fact that he had never really given any. He didn’t know why for certain, though he was dimly aware of various promptings – a feeling he ought to do something different, uncharacteristic, a desire to shock his friends, a not-to-be-acknowledged desire to please his father, an insufficiency of cowboys and Indians during childhood, a surfeit of his subject, history, and the simple feeling that he ought to do something. Janet had become an enthusiastic social worker for Wandsworth Council. He knew that his obvious lack of concern for the difference between her profession – caring – and his – killing – annoyed her. She thought that he thought lightly of hers.
‘You will write, won’t you?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘It must be awful, all that killing and suffering. I couldn’t bear it. I’d have to do something.’
‘It’s the living conditions that worry me.’
‘I know. All those dreadful slums.’
‘Ours, I mean. There’s no possibility of privacy. We have to sleep in school boiler rooms, factories, police stations and warehouses.’
‘But you get paid extra for it, don’t you? Hard lying money or something. And lots of people have done it before, so it won’t seem so bad.’
‘It will.’
‘It’s your own fault for joining.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, don’t be unreasonable on our last night.’
They went back to her flat, and thence to bed. Their love-making lacked both affection and passion. The thought that this was probably their last time for four months added nothing to the occasion. Charles had wondered whether he would be subjected to an oblique and tentative interrogation of his feelings for her afterwards, but she fell asleep immediately. He left in darkness early the following morning. If nothing else, the hour and the cold precluded any attempt at an emotional farewell, and they parted silently with a tasteless kiss. He wondered vaguely whether she would sleep with anyone else whilst he was away. There was very little chance that he would.
The journey back to Aldershot on the early train was one of the most depressing experiences he knew. The bleak suburbs slid past like a bad dream repeated. They seemed to emphasise the unreality of his life in the Army, which he had at first mistaken for an unpleasant form of reality. But the Yorkshire exercise had convinced him that his world was not a real one. Seven days and seven nights on the moors, digging trenches, then living in them, then filling them in, then digging more and living in them, and so on. Seven days and nights of rain, during which they had the first recorded case of trench-foot in the British Army for years. This was a condition, well known during the First World War, in which a kind of crust formed on the foot after it had been deprived of air and immersed in soggy socks and boots for days and nights on end. In very bad cases toes were lost. The envied victim, a private in A company, was sent to hospital. The CO urged everyone to think how much worse it would have been on the Somme.
During the first few hours of the exercise, kit became waterlogged and never thereafter had the chance to dry. The imaginary but ubiquitous enemy – to Charles, an obvious personification of the CO’s paranoia – was more troublesome than a real one could ever be. After the first two days everyone was too depressed and wet to speak except to pass on orders and their subsequent amendments and contradictions. During the middle of one day – recognisably so because of a barely-perceptible lightening at the base of the clouds – Charles and his platoon came to a stone bridge over a swollen stream. The downpour continued. They were about to cross the bridge when Charles was aware of a surging in the water and the CO and his wireless operator emerged from beneath the bridge. They had been standing up to the tops of their thighs in the stream.
‘You have been mortared,’ the CO said to Charles. ‘Your platoon is decimated and you are dead.’
For one wild moment Charles thought he might be sent home in disgrace.
‘What do you intend to do about it?’ continued the CO.
The rain hissed in the stream. The CO and his wireless operator were still standing in it. Charles’s platoon gazed at them without curiosity. ‘We had to make a detour via the bridge, sir,’ said Charles, ‘because there’s a cross-country motor-cycle event upstream.’
‘You could have forded it. Why didn’t you do that?’
‘We were told that the stream was the Rhine, sir.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘With respect, sir, you did.’
The CO waded ashore and scrambled up the bank, followed, at the second or third attempt, by his heavily-burdened wireless operator. The rain ran in streaks through the mud on his face and tiny droplets clung to his heavy eyebrows. His dark eyes looked for a few moments as though he were considering whether to have Charles shot or drowned. He then looked at the stream, as though he had decided the business was not worth a bullet, and then as far up the hill as the clouds permitted. ‘You should have used your initiative. Anyway, how did you know this bridge was still standing?’
‘Well, sir, I could see it.’
‘Not this bridge, nincompoop, not this physical bridge. The one over the Rhine that you were attempting to cross. How did you know that was still standing, eh?’
‘I suppose I didn’t, sir.’
‘I suppose you didn’t too. Any more than you knew it was covered by heavy mortars, which you should’ve. D’you understand me?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good.’ The rain streame
d down their faces. ‘Now, what’s all this about a motor-cycling event?’
‘They’re holding one upstream, sir, in the area that we were supposed to occupy.’
‘But this is a military training area. It’s MOD land. Didn’t you throw them off?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did you try?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You’re as wet as the bloody weather, Thoroughgood. Show me.’
They set off back the way they had come. Charles’s platoon was depressed beyond speech or gesture and squelched mindlessly behind the CO. The CO marched briskly, however. He seemed to be a man who enjoyed a challenge. He no doubt saw rain as a challenge, and the more it rained the more it challenged, so the more he marched. They reached the scene of the outrage, which consisted of a huddle of wet spectators watching men obliterated by mud drive noisy motor-bikes up and down hills, and fall off on corners. The CO approached the young man who was easily the tallest, rightly assuming him to be the leader.
‘This is a military training area,’ said the CO.
The young man had a pleasant, intelligent face. ‘Good day, Colonel.’
‘There is a military exercise in progress. If you don’t get your people and your machines out of here within the next few minutes there is a very good chance that you will be mortared. My men are about to cross the Rhine.’
‘That would be unfortunate, since I have a letter here from the Army Department giving us permission to use this area today.’ He produced a soggy envelope.
‘Civil servants interfering again. It’s bloody silly.’
‘I quite agree, Colonel. Where is your Rhine?’
The CO jabbed his thumb towards the stream. ‘Down there.’
‘Yes, of course. I see it now.’
They hung around. The CO clearly wanted to continue the conversation. Four motor-cyclists collided in a great shower of mud and then, moving like moon-men, slowly disentangled themselves and their machines. The soldiers gazed impassively at the spectacle. It was doubtful whether even a real mortar bombardment would have stirred them to interest. However, the CO could not leave without a parting shot.
‘You must have a pretty spare job anyway if you can spend your afternoons watching this sort of rubbish,’ he said.
The tall young man inclined his head politely. ‘Actually, Colonel, the same as yours. Nicholas Stringer, Coldstream Guards.’
Though forced to acknowledge that there were elites other than No. 1 AAC(A), the CO always denied them real status. He referred to them all as ‘self-appointed’. This was particularly true of the Guards, and of all the Guards regiments the Coldstreams – whom he always called ‘magpies’ because of their black and white colours – were the worst, in his view. He looked at the Guards officer with an expression of baffled anger, until a retort came to mind. ‘Whose side were you on in the Civil War?’ he snapped, then turned and squelched away. The Guards officer watched him go, his own face registering polite incomprehension.
Charles squelched after him, similarly puzzled. He had a vague idea that the Coldstreams had been on Cromwell’s side. Whichever it was, No. 1 AAC(A) had no battle honours from that war, not having been raised until a century after and then not in the present form. Nevertheless, the CO’s discomfiture was something he was able to savour for the rest of the exercise as a slight antidote to his own.
This time it was the sound of the sliding door of the compartment being slammed back that jerked Charles from his reflections. It was Edward returning from the O Group, red and flustered. He stumbled bad-temperedly over legs and kit. He had been berated because of C company’s alleged scruffiness. His career was again in jeopardy. He seemed unaware of any other business discussed at the O Group. ‘Lost your respirator?’ he said to Charles. ‘Your own fault for leaving it lying around for someone to walk off with. Care of kit, first rule of survival in the Army. You’d better nick one from somewhere before the CO finds out. Go and inspect your platoon.’
Charles’s platoon was in the last but one carriage. It took about ten minutes of squeezing and shoving in the crowded corridor to reach them. When he found them the floor was littered with beer-cans and cigarette-ends, the air thick with smoke, laughter and obscenities. His soldiers sprawled in their seats, unbuttoned, feet up on the tables, happy. He knew there was no reason to inspect them, and nothing to inspect them for. It was simply that Edward felt someone ought to be doing something. He counted them and stayed chatting for a few minutes. Their company was frequently more congenial than that to be had in the Officers’ Mess. Sergeant Wheeler, his platoon sergeant, was, as usual, nowhere to be found. Charles never ceased to be amazed by the ability of soldiers to transform an environment. Within minutes they could make anywhere look as though it had never been anything but a transit camp, handling thousands of troops every week. Perhaps one day he would take them for tea in Fortnum and Mason’s.
For the rest of the journey Charles was able to read. Edward was gloomily silent, and Tim and John kept him company. None of them had books. The only interruption was when the company colour sergeant brought round cold tea and stale sandwiches, which were welcome none the less.
2
It was dark when they pulled into the station at Liverpool, and raining. They were to get the night ferry to Belfast. Charles struggled into his webbing and lugged his kit on to the platform. It took him two journeys. The noise and confusion combined with the darkness and rain to make the station seem like some vast purgatorial clearing house. Soldiers and their kit filled the platforms. Rumour flourished. It was said that the coaches that were to take them to the boat had not arrived, that they had arrived but had left, that there was a nonsense over the stations, that the ferry had left, that they would have to march to the docks. Charles’s platoon was just outside the station, where there was no shelter from the rain. For once Sergeant Wheeler was where he should be. He was the playboy of the Sergeants’ Mess, a good-looking, good-natured athlete, successful with women but too easy-going with soldiers.
‘What’s happening, sir?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘How long are we going to be here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How far is it to the boat?’
‘I don’t know.’
Sergeant Wheeler moved his dripping, handsome face a little closer. ‘Sir.’
‘What?’
‘Any chance of us getting out of the rain?’
Charles was not sure whether ‘us’ was himself and Sergeant Wheeler or the entire platoon. He suspected the former. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Look after my kit, will you? I’m going to find the lavatory.’
‘Bog’s closed, sir. For alterations.’
‘Well, there must be one somewhere.’ Charles trudged off and found that the main lavatory was indeed closed. After a search he found a tin shed marked ‘Staff Only’. The rain drummed heavily on the corrugated iron roof. When he had finished he decided to wait there a while. Every scrap of privacy had to be savoured. He leant against the wall and filled and lit his pipe, gazing out at the rain and the teeming station. He was disturbed by a discreet cough and looked round to see the second-in-command, Anthony Hamilton-Smith, sitting fully clothed in a lavatory cubicle. The 2IC was reading the Daily Telegraph. ‘Hallo, Charles,’ he said, amicably.
‘Hallo, Anthony.’ All the other subalterns called the 2IC ‘sir’, as they were supposed to do, but for some reason unknown even to himself Charles never had. ‘Anything happening out there?’
‘Chaos. They can’t find the coaches. The CO’s going berserk and tearing strips off some poor RCT man.’
‘Wheel-men, you see. They’re all the same. Donkey-wallopers. Can’t get you anywhere.’ Someone had called Major Anthony Hamilton-Smith the last of the great amateurs, and it had not been meant unkindly. Aged about forty and probably passed-over for promotion – a fact that did not seem to worry him – he was still slim, fair-haired and fine-featured, with an elegant moustache. He nev
er hurried, never worried and had never been known to be angry. Nor had he ever been known to work. No one knew what he did all day, but it was generally agreed that his presence lent to the battalion a certain tone, which was otherwise entirely lacking. He had an estate somewhere and bred race horses. No one knew how he got on with the CO, who seemed unaware of him most of the time, except as an afterthought. It was rumoured that during the Yorkshire exercise he had somehow contrived to avoid spending a single night in the open. ‘Thought I’d pop in here out of the way,’ he said.
‘Nowhere else to go,’ observed Charles.
‘One more officer flapping his wings and squawking wouldn’t help anyone very much.’
‘Wouldn’t help at all.’
‘Might even be a hindrance.’
‘Almost certainly.’ There was a companionable silence for a few moments.
‘What’s that you’re smoking?’
‘Foster’s number two.’
‘Very agreeable.’ The 2IC indicated his paper. ‘Things seem to be hotting up out there again.’
‘Belfast?’
‘And Derry. Looks like we’ll have to do a bit of head-bashing. Ever been there?’
‘No.’
‘I have. Years ago, mind you. Family has a few acres over the border. Beautiful country. Charming people. Very polite. Might pop over and visit it.’
‘Will we get much leave?’
‘Shouldn’t think so for a moment. We’ll be lucky to get any – certainly as far as you’re concerned. Might be able to fix something, though.’
‘Wouldn’t that be rather dangerous?’
‘Could be, I daresay. Could be. Still, may as well get what pleasure one can out of life. We’re a long time dead.’ He took up his paper again. ‘Be a sport and give us a yell if anything happens suddenly, won’t you? Wouldn’t like to be left behind.’
