Ginger, You're Barmy

by David Lodge

  I had quickly developed a bruised heel from marching which made P.T. very painful, and I debated inwardly whether to go sick and get excused P.T. But this would also mean being excused all training, and if that went on for more than a few days I would be ‘back-squadded’, the most dreaded sentence of all: it meant joining a fresh Intake, and starting Basic Training all over again. It was worth any pain to avoid that, and very few of us went sick during Basic Training.

  After P.T. the day was occupied mainly by drill, relieved by the odd lecture on fire-arms or V.D. We squatted on the grass in a circle round an oily-fingered N.C.O., who took a Sten gun to pieces with the dexterity of a magician, and sneered at our attempts to reassemble it. ‘The object of war,’ he said, ‘is to kill the enemy.’ He paused to let the words sink in. ‘Don’t aim at his head: you may miss. Don’t aim at his legs: you may not kill him. Aim at his body.’ A little tremor of blood-lust rippled through his audience. A young medical officer stared at a point on the wall at the back of the lecture-room and said: ‘The best way to avoid getting V.D. is to refrain from sexual intercourse.’ There was more interest in his description of other ways. On camps overseas, contraceptives and carbolic soap could be obtained at the guardroom, we learned.

  These lectures were welcome opportunities for resting aching muscles, but Mike and I most looked forward to the Education periods, when those of us who were P.O.s were left in the library. We were supposed to study Current Affairs. Mike and I sat around chatting and reading the Arts pages of the weekly reviews,—the latter an almost painfully nostalgic occupation. News of the latest books and plays seemed to come from a great distance, from a bright, unattainable world thousands of miles away. Sometimes its controversies and talking-points seemed trivial and frivolous compared to the more concrete world of our present discontents; but I longed to return to those trivialities and frivolities.

  Mail was distributed after lunch. I received few letters, and those few from my parents. Regular food parcels from my mother, exquisitely selected and packed in fond memory of my special tastes, were very welcome, but did not appease my hunger for letters, for communion with the outside world. For the first time in my life I realized how few friends I had, and for the first time I regretted the fact. One felt a great need for the kind of sympathy parents could not supply,—particularly my parents, since I could never bring myself to tell them how miserable I was. I had no girl-friend, and found myself almost coveting the letters the other lads received, their contents flamboyantly advertised by lipstick imprints and cryptograms like SWALK (Sealed With A Loving Kiss) over the seals. To receive a letter, however, could be more unpleasant than not receiving one. Letters from girl-friends ‘breaking it off’ were common. Usually the girl had found another admirer, or was tired of being tied to a soldier who was absent most of the time, and penniless when he was at home.

  I was curious about the letters in long, pale mauve envelopes which Mike received every other day. They looked feminine in origin, but I had never seen him with a girl at college, and he never mentioned one. He rarely wrote letters himself. For some reason I refrained from questioning him on this point. If Mike proved to have a girl, I felt obscurely, she would come between us in some way.

  There was no such thing as ‘free’ time in Basic Training. The evenings and week-ends were fully occupied, mainly by cleaning and polishing equipment, or in army jargon ‘bull’. Someone had obviously given considerable thought to this part of our training. First of all we were issued with brasses that were green and deeply corroded, and therefore had to be rubbed for hours with emery paper before the application of ‘Brasso’ produced any effect. Our boots had a dull, orange-peel surface, which is of course a characteristic feature of good waterproof foot-wear, but we had to eradicate the dimples and produce a patent-leather shine. The approved method was to heat a spoon handle over a candle and to rub the boots with it, squeezing out the oil and smoothing out the surface. This process naturally ruined the boots qua boots, but such functional considerations were irrelevant within the mystique of ‘bull’. Some of the lads used more drastic methods, such as rubbing a hot iron over the boots, or even covering them with polish and setting fire to them. In addition to brasses and boots, there was webbing to be blancoed and clothing to be pressed. When we were first issued with webbing Baker ordered us to scrub off the existing, deeply ingrained khaki blanco. ‘I want them white,’ he said. Four hours’ scrubbing with cold water produced a dirty grey. The next day we were instructed to blanco the webbing again in exactly the same colour as that in which it had been issued. The 21st tanks themselves, like all battalions of the R.T.R., wore black webbing, which gave them a peculiarly brutal and sombre appearance. Until we were allocated to particular regiments at the end of our training we wore khaki webbing. ‘I hope I’m not put in the Tanks,’ Mike observed to me once, ‘I’d feel like a bloody Black-and-Tan.’ But the black webbing, which was treated with shoe-polish, seemed to me to be much easier to keep clean.

  Pressing was somewhat difficult for me at first, because I had never pressed a single garment in my life before I was called up. The usual pressing technique was to use the iron over a sheet of brown paper which had been wetted with a shaving brush. The hiss of steam and the pungent odour of scorched brown paper are still inextricably connected with the Army in my mind, like the whine of shells and the smell of cordite in the memories of war-veterans. I minimized the pressing by using my own pyjamas and underpants. I pressed the Army’s issue once, according to the regulation measurements, and kept them undisturbed for kit layouts throughout my service, carrying them carefully from place to place in polythene bags.

  The amount of equipment that was required to be laid out for inspection in the mornings was subtly increased during the period of Basic Training, starting with a few items and culminating in a series of full kit-layouts which kept us working late into the night. An additional vexation was the occasional ‘Fire Picquet’, a quaintly-named duty which consisted in parading with the guard in steel helmets and peeling potatoes for two hours in a small annexe to the cookhouse, awash with freezing water and potato peel. One had heard of this sort of thing of course,—peeling potatoes was more or less a cartoonist’s cliché for depicting the Army—but it came as a shock, to me at least, to find myself doing it. I had supposed that it was some kind of punishment, and probably obsolete, like flogging. I felt the same, only more strongly, about cookhouse fatigues.

  One Sunday we had a Church parade. I presumed that even the Army would not compel me to attend church, and said so to Baker, with a certain challenging note in my voice which was probably my undoing.

  ‘You can presume what you fugging well like,’ he replied. ‘You’ll parade with the rest of the squad. After the inspection, fall out and report to me. We’ll find you something to do while the others are saying their prayers.’

  When I reported to him he sent me over to the cookhouse. If there is a God, and if, as some say, He whiles away the long light evenings of eternity devising choice punishments for His creatures, He need not hesitate over selecting my particular hell. It would be an everlasting cookhouse fatigue. By the end of that Sunday I was almost weeping with misery and a sense of injustice. Whereas those on the Church parade were free (relatively speaking) by noon, I slaved all day in that stinking, greasy cookhouse. It was an old building, irremediably dirty: platoons of soldiers could not have scrubbed it clean, though the Cook Sergeant nearly drove me and my companions into the tiled floor in the attempt. I remember kicking a hot water pipe in sheer wretchedness and frustration, and the shudder of disgust that shook me as a swarm of cockroaches scuttled out over the wall. I kicked and kicked at the pipes in a masochistic frenzy until the wall was alive with the repulsive vermin. Then I retched into a nearby sink. I went over to the Cook Sergeant and said pleadingly: ‘I’ve just been sick. I feel ill. Can I leave?’ He looked at my white face and gave permission with a contemptuous jerk of his head. Blessing him, I staggered weakly back to the
hut, and collapsed on to my bed. Mike was less sympathetic than I had expected. ‘You can now count yourself one of the glorious martyrs for Agnosticism,’ he said. Percy, sitting on the same bed, laughed. Their visit to church seemed to have put them in good spirits.

  ‘At the moment I’d cheerfully become a Jehovah’s Witness, if it would get me out of cookhouse fatigues,’ I said savagely.

  ‘A very good idea,’ he replied. ‘Being a Jehovah’s Witness would get you out of the Army altogether. They’re conscientious objectors.’

  ‘That’s the religion for me,’ I said.

  ‘My brother-in-law was a Jehovah’s Witness, but it didn’t get him out of the Army,’ observed the soldier on the bed opposite to mine. He was an odd, though pleasant little chap called Barnes, with a quaint Leicestershire accent. He had seen me reading the Inferno one evening. ‘What you reading? Po’try? Here’s some good po’try.’ And he had thrust a tattered second-hand copy of The Lady Of The Lake into my hand. Encouraged by this evidence of literacy, though by no means sympathetic to his tastes, I had attempted to extend the discussion. ‘Do you like Scott?’ I had asked him. But he hadn’t seemed to realize that the poem was by Scott. ‘That’s good po’try’ was all he would say; and taking the volume from me, he had returned it carefully to his locker.

  ‘What happened to your brother-in-law then?’ inquired Mike.

  ‘Well, it was in the war, like. And they wouldn’t let our Ernie be a conscious objector. But Ernie said he weren’t going to put on a bloody uniform no matter what they did. So they sent him to this training depot, and he wouldn’t put on his uniform. So they put him in this cell in his underclothes, and threw in his uniform. It were winter, like, and they reckoned he’d be so cold he’d have to put the uniform on.’ Barnes paused.

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Did he fugg. When they opened the cell next morning our Ernie were still in his underclothes; and on the table were his uniform,—all in pieces.’

  ‘What d’you mean, all in pieces?’

  ‘He’d spent the whole night taking his uniform to pieces. He never tore nothing mind you. He bit through the seams with his teeth. His socks were two balls of wool. He said with a bit more time he could have taken his boots to pieces. He could’ve too. He was in the boot trade.’

  The story pleased us immensely.

  ‘They should put up a statue to that man,’ said Mike reverently.

  ‘What happened to him eventually?’ I asked.

  ‘A few days after they came and told him his ma had been killed by a Jerry bomb. Went fuggin mad he did. Couldn’t get his uniform on quick enough. Joined the paratroops and finished the war with thirteen medals.’

  We laughed ruefully.

  ‘The traitor,’ said Mike.

  ‘God, is there no way of getting out of this Army?’ I wailed.

  ‘Roberts told me he’s going to buy himself out,’ said Percy. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘Christ!’ I exclaimed. ‘How much does it cost? I’d sell my birthright to get out of the Army.’

  ‘Calm down, Trooper,’ said Mike. ‘Only Regulars can buy themselves out. Anyway, he’ll only be called up again to do National Service.’

  ‘He says he won’t,’ answered Percy. ‘Because he works in the mines. He said he joined the Army to get out of the mines, but now he can’t wait to get back.’

  ‘Well, Jon,’ said Mike, ‘there’s only one thing you can do now. Shoot your trigger finger off, like they used to do in the Great War.’

  ‘My bulling-finger you mean,’ I replied, inspecting my forefinger, red and sore from rubbing brasses and boots.

  THREE

  ‘WAKEY-WAKEY!’

  The call of the Orderly Corporal scratched the surface of my sleep without penetrating it. I turned over and dozed, until the sound of someone whistling off-key woke me at seven. Leaning from my bed I pulled back the curtain over the door of my cubicle and held out a mug to the nearest soldier.

  ‘Get me a cup of tea when you go to breakfast, Scouse,’ I said. ‘Send it back with one of the other lads.’

  ‘Right, Corporal,’ he replied, taking the mug from my hand. He was a new arrival to Badmore, who treated me with flattering deference. He added: ‘Ah’m a Geordie, not a Scouse.’

  ‘Oh well, I never know the difference between those little villages up north,’ I countered mechanically. One must never let slip an opportunity of teasing the next man about his geographical origins. Geordie, Scouse, Taff, Paddy, Jock. Shakespeare knew what he was doing when he made the comedy in his army play, Henry V, a comedy of dialects.

  At 7.30, refreshed by the tea, I got up, washed and shaved. I then supervised the cleaning of the hut. There was a Monday-morning gloom in the air, but I felt cheerful. My last Monday. Dust-motes glittered prettily in the bright sunlight.

  ‘Come on! come on! Get that shit swept up,’ I said briskly to a group leaning on their broom handles.

  ‘Don’t be like that, Corp. You’ve not got long to push. Why worry?’

  ‘See they’ve got you on guard tonight, Corporal,’ said Jock Gordonstone. ‘Will you want me to do your boots for you?’

  My mood darkened. ‘Fuggit, yes. I’d forgotten about that.’ I pondered. ‘Yes, do them for me will you, Jock, unless I tell you not to at Naafi-break.’

  Jock was always broke, because every month he took a forty-eight home to Paisley. Deducting the time he spent travelling, he only had about twelve hours at home, and his fares cost him nearly four pounds, but he always took the forty-eight. When I was on guard I usually gave him half a crown to clean my boots.

  Morning parade was at 8.15. I called the roster for my troop, and handed the sheet to Sergeant-Major Fotherby. His predecessor had rarely bothered to take the morning parade, but Sergeant-Major Fotherby was keen. Or, rather, he had been keen: already there were signs that he was realizing the impossibility of mending the ways of Badmore. On his first morning parade he had taken an hour over his inspection. Now he surveyed my troop with pained resignation, and broke his silence only once, to observe to Jock Gordonstone that his hair was long enough for him to wipe his arse with it.

  Badmore was, and always would be, the despair of any sergeant-major, because the sergeant-major is a man who works in the medium of outward appearance. His object is to make every man look identical, because if all men look alike, they will act alike, and eventually think, or, rather, not-think alike. But the sergeant-major must have a basic structure of uniformity to work on. Without this he is like a theologian without dogma. The analogy is not inapposite. A regiment is like a religion. Its dogma governs the way its members wear their lanyards, the angle they wear their berets, the manner in which they perform the movements of drill. As in Newman’s theory of religious doctrine, developments may occur. It is the responsibility of the sergeant-major, as of the theologian, to control and rationalize such developments, to distinguish genuine developments from heresies, and ruthlessly to suppress the latter. In fact, in the Guards, the regimental sergeant-majors of each battalion have an annual conference, a sort of General Council, in which such matters are discussed and regularized.

  Badmore, however, was not a regiment. Known officially as the R.A.C. Special Training Establishment, its function was to train officers and N.C.O.s in the use of new technical developments in armoured vehicles. Its courses were attended by personnel from all the regiments of the R.A.C., and it was staffed with soldiers from as many regiments. When the entire unit paraded for the Queen’s Birthday Parade it looked as if remnants of a whole defeated army had met up and banded together. There were cap-badges of every description: the antique tank of the R.T.R., the skull and crossbones of the Dragoon Guards, the wreath of the Bays, the harp of the Irish Guards, the crossed lances of the Lancers. The R.T.R. wore black berets and black webbing; the cavalry wore navy-blue berets and khaki webbing. The R.T.R. wore plain black lanyards; the cavalry wore white or yellow plaited lanyards. Insignia on shoulder tabs and lapels varied similarly. Even
from a long distance the 11th Hussars or ‘Cherry Pickers’ disturbed any impression of uniformity with their curious brown, badgeless berets ringed with a band of crimson, the stigma of some ancient disgrace, when the regiment had stopped to pick cherries on the way to a battle. Soldiers belonging to R.E.M.E., the Signals, the Catering Corps and the Royal Artillery, only added to the confusion. It was enough to break a sergeant-major’s heart.

  Beneath the surface Badmore resembled a regiment even less. It was more like a sort of military Narkover. The ranks were composed largely of National Servicemen under twenty; the N.C.O.s of aged and decrepit Regulars. The former had been sent to Badmore because they had flat feet, or compassionate reasons for a home posting, or were unemployable elsewhere; the latter because they had varicose veins, or had been involved in some scandal in their regiments, or were unemployable elsewhere. The relationship between the two groups resembled that between the boys and masters of Narkover. National Service N.C.O.s like myself occupied the position of prefects. It was impossible to think of the ranks as anything but boys. Once, Captain Pirie, searching for something to say to Fotherby before a big parade, had asked him: ‘Are the men in good heart, Sergeant-Major?’ The inquiry was kindly meant, and not without relevance: ‘A’ Squadron was sufficiently apprehensive about being inspected by a visiting Brigadier. But the contrast between the image summoned up by the words, of grim Tommies with blackened faces, waiting to go ‘over the top’, and the reality—an irregular file of pimply youths fidgeting in their best uniforms,—was richly comic.