by Alan Hackney
“What do you think?” said Catherine. “The M.O. lectured them on how not to get girls into trouble.”
“What is the object of all weapon training? The Object Of All Weapon Training. I’ll tell you what is The Object Of All Weapon Training. The Object Of All Weapon Training is to teach the soldier the correct ’andling of his weapons at all times in order to kill the enemy. What is The Object Of All Weapon Training—Travers? Smartly-to-attention, then.”
“Sergeant?”
“What is The Object Of All Weapon Training?”
“Killing the enemy, Sergeant.”
“You horrible man. Oh, you horrible man. The Object Of All Weapon Training is to teach the soldier the correct ’andling of his weapons at all times in order to kill the enemy. What is The Object Of All Weapon Training?”
“Philip, what do you suppose is The Object Of All Weapon Training?”
“What we’re going on with now is the Bren L.M.G. Lesson Two, Loading and Unloading. Recapitulation of Lesson One, Naming of Parts. Point out the magazine catch—Windrush. Correct. The flash eliminator—Flash ’Any—I mean, Reeves. All right, all right. Joke over.”
“Hullo, Stanley. So you are here. Enjoying life?”
“Hullo, Arthur. Well … I’m in Number Nine Platoon. How are you?”
“Right as rain. Well, have you been into the town much?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t been out. I’ve been reading a bit.”
“In four days? Come out with me, if you like, this evening. Plenty of places. Just a friendly tip, though. That cap-badge. What polish do you use?”
“It says Soldiers’ Friend on the tin. You have to spit with it.”
“I’ll get you fixed up with some good stuff. See you half-past seven.”
He went off briskly, soldierlike.
Egan was happy.
That evening they met by arrangement outside the gate. Egan, it seemed, had not wished to prejudice his chances by perhaps being sent back to clean up if he had appeared with Stanley at the Guard-Room.
However, all went well, and they walked down into the town.
“How about a canteen?” asked Egan. “There’s the Y.M., Church Army or the Congo.”
“Congo?” asked Stanley.
“Congregational Church canteen. That’s open till half-past ten. Or a pub. Would you care for a cider? My treat?”
“Well, all right.”
They turned into a public-house in a yard off the main street. Egan ordered two ciders at the bar, while Stanley sat awkwardly with his back to a dark-brown partition and his feet under a circular iron table, embarrassed at being seen in public in his strange, lumpy anti-gas battledress.
“Ciders,” announced Egan, dumping them on the table with an air of concealed bravado. “Cheers.”
It was a rough cider, raw and potent.
“Don’t you think,” said Stanley hesitantly, “it’s all rather fantastic? I mean all the bugles, bullshit and so on. Do you know, yesterday when we had a lecture we were told: Sit to attention? And polishing. I’ve been twice ticked off by Sergeant Morris for mine.”
“All very essential, you know,” said Egan seriously. “It tones you up no end. When you come to think of it, we’ll probably be just in time for the Second Front.” He said it with a certain anticipation as if it had been the second house at a cinema.
“I don’t think it’s really doing me any good,” said Stanley. “That P.T. corporal with the extraordinary squeaky voice has his knife into me, I’m quite sure.”
Raised voices beside them intervened.
“No,” a seedy little man in a cap was saying. “No, straight up. These soldiers will—wonchoo, lads? They’re sports, eh, lads? My old regiment, too. You’ll put names and addresses on the backs, wonchoo? Eh? Any old name,” he added in a low tone.
He flourished little printed slips at them.
“Er——?” said Stanley.
“Tomorrow’s races, Jack,” said the man. “Spot of runnin’ I’m doin’ ’ere,” he went on, lowering his voice again. “Go on, lads, sign here, please. These blokes at the bar, mates of mine, dead windy. Any name’ll do, Jack. Pen?”
He thrust a fountain-pen into Stanley’s right hand.
“I write with my left,” said Stanley.
“Up to you, Jack,” said the little man, pointing a wavering finger at the right place.
Stanley confected an address and handed it back.
“I don’t quite understand——”
“Not a word, my old mate,” said the little man, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Careless talk.”
He thrust the pen and a slip at Egan.
“Good lads,” he cried warmly. “Sid, Sid. Coupla bitters ’ere for the lads of my old regiment. It was bitters you was ’avin’, wasn’t it? Yer, bitters, Sid, ta.”
He stood genially over them while they drank his health.
“Let’s go on to this Congo,” said Stanley.
“Leaving?” asked the little man brightly. “’Ere, I got a sideline, no coupons. If you or your mate ’ere …”
*
When they arrived at the Congo there were egg-and-bean suppers being served to a blast from a radio loudspeaker.
“It looks quite wholesome,” said Stanley.
“And yours was?” asked the girl.
“I think we’ll have two, please,” said Stanley.
“Yours till the end of life’s storee,
Yours till the birds fail to sing.”
moaned the radio.
*
“The Y.M. has concerts sometimes,” said Egan. “Let’s pop in and see.”
There was no concert, but there was a queue for a sudden arrival of off-ration chocolate. They joined it, shouting to each other above the loudspeaker.
“Doesn’t this training make you terribly hungry?” shouted Stanley.
“Johnny’s got a zero,
Johnny’s got a zero,
Johnny got a zero today”
howled the loudspeaker.
*
“Rise and shine,” roared the orderly corporal. “Out of it! What a lot of lazy people. Gitoutofit!”
“Corporal,” asked Stanley, “how do you go and get some medicine?”
“Going Tom and Dick?” asked the corporal, whipping out a form. “Name’n nummer?”
“Can’t one just go and get something?”
“Eh? Eh? Now, son, son. I ask you. Is this the bleeding Ritz? Tell me that. Ooze goin’ to run after you?”
“Well,” said Stanley, “I thought if I did the running, up to the what d’you call it—M.I. Room—and asked. Would that be all right?”
“Hoo,” said the orderly corporal mincingly. “Ho, Reallah? Name? What-rush? Windrush? Right. Go sick. Report Comp’ny Office 0700 hours sharp. See the ord’ly sarnt. Right? Right.”
He rushed immediately out of the door to the hut Arras, adjoining, with cries of “Wakey-wakey! Out-abed!”
With some difficulty Stanley got up to the Company Office by seven. The orderly sergeant, early-pale and impatient, smoked within.
“You Windrush? O.K. Going sick. Well. Report here 0800 hours with your small kit in kitbag, overcoat worn, put your kit in Comp’ny Stores, come straight the way back here, see me. Clear?”
He rattled it off in a wearied monotone.
“But I only wanted some Alka-Seltzer,” protested Stanley. “I was just feeling a little fragile and——”
“You what?” said the orderly sergeant. “Double away, lad, smart. You’re on sick report now, and no change can be made. Stone the crows. Get out of it! And ’ave them overcoat buttons clean.”
Stanley left.
The orderly sergeant took up the absentee report and signed it palely.
“Excuse me.”
Stanley had returned.
“Well, what now?”
“What does small kit consist of?”
The orderly sergeant exhaled at length.
“Knife-fork-spoon-razor-shaving-
brush-toothbrush-spare-shirts-spare-socks-drawers-cellular,” he said tonelessly. “In addition, P.T. vests and shorts, gym shoes, housewife and contents thereof. Right?”
“Thank you,” said Stanley.
“Stanley went sick,” announced Catherine. “And he got M. and D. This jargon is appalling.”
“Never go sick,” said Stanley to Egan.
CHAPTER FOUR
“SARMAJOR,” SAID Major Harkness.
“Sir?”
“Do I gather from this A.C.I. that now all candidates for commissions must go to a War Office Selection Board before being admitted to an OCTU?”
“Yessir.”
“And Area Orders say these potential-officer people we’ve got are to go to an OCTU?”
“Pre-OCTU, sir.”
“Yes, but that’s where everyone is supposed to go now after they’ve passed their Selection Board.”
“Yessir.”
“Then these chaps are to go to a Selection Board from the Pre-OCTU? Extraordinary.”
“Yessir.”
“And supposing they don’t pass? They come back here, I suppose.”
“Yessir.”
“To Depot Company, I take it?”
“Yessir. Until such time as they’re otherwise posted.”
“Just like the bloody Army.”
“Yessir.”
*
“Now I hear we’re to go to a WOSB?” said Stanley. “What do they do?”
“Psychiatrists,” said Egan. “They tell me they ask you all sorts of questions.”
“Oh dear,” said Stanley.
“Then they have all sorts of tests.”
“Tests?”
“Yes, intelligence tests and a lot of climbing ropes and solving tricky situations.”
“Yes, I expect they would.”
“I suppose it’ll be terribly interesting, really.”
“I suppose it will,” said Stanley forlornly.
They were in the last week of their Primary Training. The threat of their coming Selection Boards was another weapon for the N.C.O.s.
“Five weeks and you can’t do the Leopard Crawl proper!” stormed Sergeant Morris. “Gorblimey, I dunno. Remember, if you don’t pass your WOSB you’ll be back ’ere up Depot Company in Dicky’s Gardenin’ Squad. Next! Windrush! Down! Crawl! Oh, you ’orrible bloody terrible man. Keep your arse-end down, lad!”
My Dear Stanley, wrote Mr. Windrush, I am glad to hear that you are to go to an Officer Cadet Training Unit. I doubt if it will be like Sandhurst, to which your uncle Bertram went for a time, but I should strongly advise you not to follow his example in constantly attending race meetings. There was, in addition, some difficulty with a married lady. I’m afraid I’m extremely busy these days with my monograph, but do call if they give you leave. Advise me early and I will send an itinerary. Sarah sends her regards.
Your affectionate
Father.
A week later. Stanley and the rest of the university intake were being delivered by an officer, two sergeants and five corporals to 652 Brigade Pre-OCTU at Rootbridge. Four three-ton lorries borrowed from the R.A.S.C. bore them and their kit, buffeting through the autumn-lit Kent countryside to their new home. Their kitbags bulged. Steel helmets, cunningly designed to be slightly too large for the mouth of a kitbag, occasionally spilled out with a clatter at bends in the road. Stanley, left with an armful of small kit impossible to cram into his bag, had had to buy a small fibre attaché-case for ten shillings from a lance-corporal.
The lorries ran through the village of Rootbridge and beyond. The village itself nestled under the escarpment of the North Downs, away from the main London road but with two unspoilt coaching inns to point to its former importance as a halting-place. It was, however, a quiet place now, and genteel, and the lorries whipped straight through it with little more than a shattering scream of a gearbox, and on to the Pre-OCTU, a mile and a half beyond in a large damp wood. They passed through the entrance gates and along narrow concrete roads through the trees, in which innumerable Nissen huts lurked. The place was liberally sprinkled with slit trenches, dug for protection against air attack, making it dangerous to walk between the huts after dark. Everywhere walked cadets, in the idiosyncratic variations of uniform of many different regiments, but all wearing the white shoulder-flashes of their status. Those in denim overalls wore a little white rectangle (known locally as the Rootbridge Medal) announcing their surnames over the left breast pocket.
The intake dismounted at the Reception Centre and tottered with their kitbags along endless woodland paths to their Nissen huts. Stanley had hardly time to take in the wire-netted windows, cheerless concrete floor and creaking wooden beds before the hut sergeant appeared.
“Gather round. This is the Holding-in Company. You must make yourself familiar with Company Standing Orders, posted on the tree opposite Company Office. Company detail is posted up on the next-door tree. Any questions?”
He looked round aggressively and began to read out a series of anxious “Hut Standing Orders” of his own confection. They mainly concerned the table.
“Boots will not be cleaned on the table.”
“Rifles will not be cleaned on the table.”
“Cigarette ash and ink will not be spilt on the table.”
“The table will not be damaged in any way.”
By his side stood the vulnerable table, its edges chipped and cigarette-burned, the surface scored and stained with dark patches of oil.
“First parade tomorrow, rouse p’rade 0715 hours. Bed spaces will be swep’ out before rouse p’rade.”
*
Seven-fourteen and a misty morning. Stanley wandered through the woodland paths, mug in hand, on the way back from breakfast. Feverish cadets flitted past him towards the Company Office. A sergeant of the staff leaned on the wooden railings at the crossroads, calling in a mild tone: “Come along now, you idle gentlemen.”
The morning was devoted to lectures. The Commanding Officer, brisk and sunburnt, reviewed their coming training and warned them against tipping the permanent staff. A brigadier from the Indian Army, touting for volunteers, showed lantern slides of the Martial Races: Punjabis, Rajputs, Sikhs, Madrassis, Gurkhas. He cleared his throat at frequent intervals so that it sounded as if he didn’t believe a word of it.
“They need you young British officers because they trust you. Hrm. They regard you as—hrm—cleanliving. Hrm. Honest, trustworthy and competent. Hrm.”
He would like to relate a typical incident.
“… and the Havildar whispered: ‘Sahib, we are surrounded.’”
After a heavy lunch a strange officer took them out on a forced march. In three hours, running down hills, they covered fourteen miles. The officer was alone in being cheerful at the end of it.
“Foot inspection in ten minutes,” he cried merrily, pulling at an enormous moustache. “Feet will be clean, bright and slightly oily.”
And at six-thirty the hut sergeant read out a list of names.
“Aforementioned cadets parade tomorrow morning 0700 hours for proceeding off to War Office Selection Board at Redgate.”
*
Stanley and his companions got down from the truck at Redgate and formed up automatically in threes.
A long-haired and rather decadent sergeant-major watched them in some pain, hands in pockets.
Egan, who had been put in charge, brought them to attention.
“Oh dear,” said the sergeant-major. “There’s no need to do that here.”
He leaned back against a tree.
“Now take your caps off,” he said. “That’s a lot better. I have to tell everybody. You can do just as you please here. Change into civvie shoes after I’ve finished talking to you. Now, are you all here?”
He removed one hand from a pocket and read out names.
“Right. Well, now go and get those armbands over there and put them on. Lovely. Well, civvie shoes, and then come up to the house.”
They were led t
o a large Edwardian dwelling, porticoed and ornate, set in a maze of rhododendrons. Inside, every ground-floor-room door gave a glimpse of crowded oil paintings.
“Take a seat,” suggested the sergeant-major, leading them into a deep-carpeted lounge. It was hung with impressionists; a log fire hissed in the grate. Near the french windows a Steinway grand gleamed back at the fire. Stanley sank into a deep armchair.
The sergeant-major leaned on the bust of one of the gilt angels supporting the mantelpiece.
“Well, well,” he said, “I suppose you’ve heard a lot of horrible tales about these Selection Boards, eh? Really speaking, you’ll find it not hard at all. I don’t know. I always have to tell everybody: smoke if you want to. Don’t you want to be comfortable? Mind you, you won’t be able to play a part and keep it up. That’s why we’re here three days. You couldn’t do it. But there’s no concealed microphones and no cameras in none of the pictures. These pictures are all quite harmless. I thought some of the nudes were—what shall I say?—interesting. That’s at first, but you get quite used to them. There’s no lights-out and no reveille, but breakfast is at eight and we like you better washed.”
Cream double doors opened at this point, and a full colonel and six majors came diffidently in.
“This is the Board,” said the sergeant-major casually, with a wave of the hand. “Colonel Argent, the president, probably wants to say something.”
“Good morning,” said the president. “I’ll introduce the Board, if I may.”
“It’s terrifying,” said Stanley after lunch. “I’m sitting opposite our testing officer and there’s that life-size nude on a couch just above him.”
