How I Won the War (21 page)

A gentle inquiring silence came over them. They looked wonderingly at one another.

“Crick-et,” someone tinkled in two syllables.

“Cricket,” everybody muttered, clicking the word like castanets. “Crick-et … crick-et.”

Perhaps it stirred a faint bell in the Dolian memory; once, maybe, a commercial traveller had come into the tavern and told them about the cricketers of Corfu.

“Crick-et,” said a nubile olive presser in a sky-blue dress. “What, please, is the crick-et?”

I saw a chance to come off the defensive and switch to the attack. I was in there sharp as Portia and paying them out in their own money.

“Cricket,” I said, “is an English game played between two teams of eleven players. It is played on a cricket-pitch which is twenty-two yards in length. Three stumps, twenty-eight inches high and set nine inches apart are placed at either end. Each set of stumps is called a wicket. Cricket is played with a bat and ball. The bat is like a club with one side flattened and must not be more than four and a quarter inches wide and thirty-eight inches in length. The ball is about the size of an orange, weighs between five and a half and five and three-quarter ounces and is bound in red leather. The captains of the teams toss a coin to decide who shall bat first. To start the match, two members of the batting side stand with their bats, one before each wicket. The other team becomes the fielding side and nine of them are scattered around the cricket field. The remaining two are the bowler and the wicketkeeper and they place themselves one behind each wicket. The bowler’s duty is to hurl the ball from his wicket to the other. If he knocks down the stumps, the batsman is out. The batsman uses his bat to defend his wicket from the ball. In so doing he will deflect the ball about the cricketfield and the nine fieldsmen then try to
retrieve it. The batsmen can attempt to run between the wickets thereby scoring runs….”

Thirty-five minutes, with Spiros helping out, I kept them standing there, unable to get an alpha in edgeways, while I took them through the rules of our native ritual, the umpires’ duties, field-placing, elementary tactics, and general etiquette on and off the field of play. Agro whispered feverishly at the back, but before he could mount a counterattack an old lady piped up with a question.

“Crick-et, wick-et,” she clucked. “This one man has the square leg? How so?”

I gave them a further fifteen minutes on the vocabulary of fielding and they were so taken by the mystery of the Third Man and the elegance of Fine Leg that they departed
without
further mention of the alien olive pressers. Their gentle, marvelling murmur of “crick-et, wick-et … wick-et,
crick-et
” faded down the street like an outing of cicadas.

Next came fourteen members of the Federation of
Painters
and Decorators. Their spokesman carried a whitewash brush as his wand of office and asked that military transport be used to lift limestone from a deserted Government dump. Crudely, without any finesse, I just gave him the feed line right away.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t do that. It just wouldn’t be cricket.”

“Crick-et?” he said, scrubbing his beard with the brush. “What, please, is crick-et?”

“Crick-et,” I rattled off like a Stratford guide, “is a game played between two teams of eleven players. It is played on a cricket pitch which is twenty-two yards in length and has three stumps, twenty-eight inches high and set nine inches wide, at either end. Each set of stumps …”

I had my facts straight at this second reading and rolled monotonously over them for fully forty-five minutes while they stood before me opening and closing their mouths like handicapped goldfish. Sergeant Transom’s spirits had risen enormously by now and he took over and gave a good twenty minutes on the scorer’s duties and the science of bowling analysis. By the time Agro and Spiliou got them
outside, there were three delegations piled up on the stairs, an hour behind schedule and greeking rebelliously.

The Transport and General Workers Union came next, complaining that Army drivers were taking their business on the side.

“Such action would be quite unfair,” I said. “It would simply not be cricket.”

The two marshals shushed fiercely and nobody asked what was crick-et.

“If our drivers did that,” I went on, “they would definitely not be playing the game.”

“What game?” asked a puzzled mechanic.

“Cricket,” I rapped back. “Which is a game played
between
two teams of eleven players. It is played on a cricket pitch which is twenty-two yards in length and has three stumps, twenty-eight inches high and set nine inches wide, at either end …”

I gave them the full recital, an hour and a quarter of purest Wisden, and when I got to the difference between no, dead, and lost balls, the conveners lugged them out by main force.

The day was done by that time and the other deputations had to wait till next morning. They were well drilled
overnight
and when the Dolia Working Men’s Glee Club filed in, every man was tight-lipped and wary. I tried them with cricket and play the game, but none would take the bait.

“If the British soldiers can get drunk and sing on Saturday nights, why,” asked the bass-profundo, “cannot Greek people march in the Square and sing the ‘Red Flag’ on Sunday nights?”

“That,” said Sergeant Transom, “is a very crafty question. In fact, a regular googly.”

“Goog-lee? What, please, is goog-lee?”

“A tricky ball in cricket. And cricket is a game played between two teams of eleven players. It is played on a cricket pitch …”

He took them right through the usual routine and I did a bit of a Cardus on “A Few Cricketing Characters” before we let them go.

I caught the next lot inside a minute by saying their argument had me dead leg-before.

“Leg before what, please?”

“Wicket. As in cricket which is a game played between two teams of eleven players …”

The two commissars came wearily on with fresh
deputations
but, whichever way they played it, we got round to cricket in the end. If the petitioners resisted my known gambits we lured their curiosity on to the field with new ones—yorkers, body-line or tail-ender.

Just before tea on this second afternoon of my flannelled filibuster, Agro and Spiliou conceded the match. They’d heard our monologue eleven times and just couldn’t take any more. The fact that I’d been doing it in my John Arlott impersonation for the last three recitals may have been the final stroke that broke them down. The word had gone round, too, that all you got in my office was an iliad of cricket, and they couldn’t get people to join their deputations any more.

We were teaching Spiros to play cribbage that evening of victory when the Swede and Madame burst in together.

“Dis is de night,” boomed the Swede, “I have seen dem massing in de mountains. Thousands and thousands of dem with big guns and small guns and sharpening knives. It is tonight for sure dey come to cut everybody’s throats.”

“He’s right, Captain,” cried Madame. “That Iliou plays my piano, he sees his brother Tasos today and he tell him stay off the streets tonight because ELAS coming to kill the English.”

Spiros looked up from taking one for his nob.

“Not to worry, nobody,” he said. “Let the ELAS come. We will talk to them. They will be glad to go back to the mountains. Sir Lieutenant Goodbody will tell them about cricket.”

“Crick-et?” said the Swede. “What is crick-et?”

“Cricket,” said Spiros, “is an English game played between two teams of eleven players. It is played on a pitch …”

Whether Iliou told the ELAS about the cricket lecture that might be awaiting them, I never found out. Anyway, they didn’t come that night and within a week we were
ordered to proceed hotfoot back to Athens. As we pulled out of Dolia, they were setting up wickets made from olive branches in the Square. The Working Men’s Glee Club were in the field, the umpires were Agro and Spiliou, and the opening batsmen of the Combined Trade Unions XI were taking guard with herculean clubs flattened on one side but clearly measuring not more than four and a quarter inches in width and thirty-eight inches in length.

Which just went to prove, as I pointed out to Sergeant Transom, that the British Army is always right in the end. Our refresher course in Recreational Training—Cricket on the purgatory of F27 had not been, after all, just another moonstruck, military waste of time.

P
EACE AND UNEMPLOYMENT WAS
never the lot of the
Musketeers
and we were greeted in Athens with the news that the Division was off to France. We embarked at Piraeus and endured once again the ritual tortures laid down in Troop Transport Regulations.

We marched, laden like kleptomaniac refugees, to the appointed dock which, of course, was utterly shipless. After standing for the customary hour in drizzling rain we were told to move three-quarters of a mile across to the other side of the harbour. There we were shepherded on to a ship and urged to thread our ponderous way below. But being old sea-transport campaigners and familiar with the conventions, we waited patiently on deck for the next, inevitable move. It came, obedient to tradition, after twenty-five minutes … we were on the wrong ship. We were on the
Otranto.
We should be on the
Orontes
which was now waiting at a dock two hundred yards from where we had started.

Humping up once again, pack and kitbag, blanket and
rifle, we were herded like cattle back across the harbour. We mounted the gangways of the
Orontes
,
urged on by
Embarkation
Officers in brand new Service dress. The company moved in single file, following coloured arrows directing us to Mess Deck D14, down companionways, up ladders, and through a winding maze of metal corridors designed for the passage of emaciated midgets. The arrows, in conformity with T. T. Regulations, led us on a general tour of the ship’s intestines, taking in such places of interest as the galley, sick bay and engine rooms. We never, of course, went anywhere near Mess Deck D14 but came back, in the natural order of things, to the exact point on the deck from which we had started.

Since we were experienced in embarkation protocol this caused us no perturbation and we set off once again into the underworld, turning at each junction in the opposite direction to that recommended by the arrows. Our conga of armed coolies clattered like a weary, hobnailed snake in and out of the red lead tunnels until in due course the head arrived at the entrance to Mess Deck D14. The mess deck, in
accordance
with Cocker, was already packed full of troops. They were, as usual, the Black Watch. Never, throughout the duration of the war, did the Musketeers arrive at their allotted mess deck but to find every hammock, table and bench jam-packed with glowering, beetle-browed Scots.

It was at this point in any embarkation that the
Musketeers
would start baaing. The bawl would break up first from those in sight of the occupied mess deck and those behind would pass back the message that once again we were homeless on shipboard.

“Baa … baa … bay … baa … baa … bay … baa!

In tenor, bass, alto, and falsetto the plaintive bleating would be taken up along the endless chain of cheated men, queueing, stooped in small steel culverts, miserable, helpless, and loaded like martial Christmas trees.

“Baa … baa … bay … baa …baa!”

It was the soldier’s ultimate censure upon those whose bungling had brought him to this pass…. If we are to be treated like sheep, then we will protest like sheep…. The stupid sound expressed a scorn beyond the power of words
and, once provoked, spread throughout every sinew of the ship, echoed by those standing in other bowels in similar plight and by the rest, more fortunate, who were already ensconced in Calcutta black-hole comfort.

“Baa … bay … baa … baa … bay!”

All through the dreary process of turning everybody about and threading the needle back the way we had come, the contemptuous bleating went on and its wordless
condemnation
drove the ship’s officialdom raving mad.

“Stop your men making that damned noise,” snorted the purple-faced colonel who was resident O.C. Ship. “Order them to stop that baaing at once.”

“Ordering them won’t stop it, I’m afraid,” said Major Arkdust. “There’s only one way to make them stop.”

“And what the hell’s that?”

“Show them an empty mess deck. That always works.”

And so they wound us yet again, in and out and round about and finally into an empty mess deck. The mighty cargo of sheep vanished, the Musketeers baaed no more.

We duly performed the human chain rituals whereby rifles and kitbags were passed from hand to hand of a hundred men down into parts adjacent to the bilge water, there to lie inert till the morrow when it would be discovered that they were in the wrong holds and a really intricate game of pass-the-parcel could be organized to change them over. By the time this had been finally achieved we would be
approaching
our destination, of course, and the whole lot, the labels conveniently torn off the rifles, would have to be sent up along the human conveyor belt all over again.

My cup of weariness flowed over on my chin when we finally went afloat and Captain Tablet appointed me Ship’s Duty Officer for the ensuing twenty-four hours. My list of duties included the task of ensuring that all decks were cleared of Army personnel by midnight and that all
khaki-coloureds
were by then battened down below. Fortunately the soldiers, done brown by naval cooperation, were only too happy to hit their hammocks. But, although my midnight chore was easy, it did provide me with one of the most disturbing experiences of my Army career.

I found only one night bird, stretched out in a reclining
chair on the officers’ sun deck. He was draped in a strange, pale leather jerkin and his rank was hidden from view. A glass hung in his hand, a dying bottle of gin and a jug of water sat beside him.

“Duty Officer,” I said. “Time to go below.”

“Sit down, Duty Officer,” he said, waving the glass
majestically
and spilling alcohol on my boots. “Just you and me and the man in the moon. Have a drink.”

I hesitated, doubtful what to do. He spoke with an air of authority. I couldn’t see his rank. He could see mine and clearly wasn’t unduly scared even though I was a full
lieutenant
. He seemed in his early thirties, lean and wiry, his thick hair gone early grey.

“Sit down, Duty Officer,” he said. “Nobody’ll know. I’ll write you a chit for the King. Have a drink.”

I sat down.

“Musketeer, eh?” he said. “One of the willing horses. Exploited by tradition. It’s time they gave you poor buggers a rest.”

“The Musketeers,” I said, “serve wherever their King and Country need them.”

“That’s what I said. Exploited by tradition. You learnt that mouthful parrot-fashion at the depot. They indoctrinate you with guff like Jesuits with Sunday school kids. That’s how they make fighting soldiers. That’s how they keep you going chest-high to the guns. Worst thing you can do in time of war, old chap, is to join a famous fighting formation.”

“I am proud,” I said coldly, “to be a Musketeer.”

“Maybe, but you’re a mug as well. Think it out. Africa, Italy, Greece, and now France. They flog the good fighting units. They exploit the military mugs. If you’d got yourself in some nice, inefficient, nondescript outfit you’d be sitting on your thick end now guarding the pacifists of Cairo or the pipelines of Persia. Instead of going off to storm the Rhine. They treat you up-Guards-and-at-’em boys like pale-faced Gurkhas…. See that hill with the guns on top! Run up it, there’s good chaps, till you drop down dead…. Japan … that’s where they’ll have you next. Soon as Europe’s over it’ll be all the willing horses hotfoot for Japan…. Have a drink to all the willing little horses …”

He charged his glass and held it out.

“No, thank you. I do not drink on duty.”

“Oh-ho! A serious Musketeer.” He drank it himself. “
Never
take war too seriously. That’s the trouble with the Aryans. They still take war seriously. The only nation that really knows anything about war is the Italians. They were engaged in scientific warfare when we were painting our arses bright blue and the Teutons were still copulating with apes. The Italians have had war. They’ve grown out of it. They’ve seen through it. They’re the only true realists who know what to do about war…. As soon as you’re in it, get out of it…. Get back to the important things of life like vino and Verdi and vulnerable virgins. Leave the knockdown, drag out stuff to those not yet civilized enough to despise it…”

“But if we did that,” I said, “we’d just get beaten by the Germans and that …”

“We should have been beaten by the Germans already,” he broke in, “if we hadn’t been so dead lucky as to have Hitler on their side. It’s only the way little old Adolf keeps on interfering with his generals that saves us from paying for the botchery of our own…. What’s the biggest battle going on in France right now?”

“Er … the Battle of the Reichswald?”

“Wrong…. The battle between Montgomery and Bradley. For the history book title of ‘The Man Who Won the War.’ If they spent as much time out-scheming the Boche as they do at circumventing each other, we’d all be in Berlin by now. Poor old Eisenhower can barely get a clear weekend on the golf course without being called off the fifteenth to separate them. They were steamed up fit for personal fisticuffs during the Battle of the Bulge. If von Runstedt had been smart enough to withdraw sharply from between them, they’d have smacked together and had it out there and then, boot and bare knuckle in the Ardennes…. Generals! … Phwtt! …” He spat metaphorically. “
Prestige-chasers
! … Megalomania-mongers! … Thank God for
Hitler
!”

The Duty Officer’s Orders gave no guidance as to the action to be taken against defeatist talk on the high seas, but I felt obliged to speak up for our gallant generals.

“You exaggerate,” I said. “Our generals are fine,
responsible
men. Someone has to have the courage to make
tremendous
decisions. Someone has to make mistakes …”

“Too true, boy,” he broke in, “but there’s no call to make a way of life out of mismanagement. Did you see them bomb the abbey at Cassino?”

“Yes.”

“Just an example. Fourth Indian were up there on
Snakes-head
Ridge ordered to attack straight after the
bombardment
was done. They fixed the date. They fixed the time. They told the Fourth Indian … then they decided to bomb a day earlier. They dropped leaflets on the monastery telling the monks when they were going to bomb it … They told the Italians, they told the Germans, they told the generals … they told everybody except Fourth Indian up there on the ridge. And the first they knew about the time going forward a day was when bombs landed on them instead of Cassino. Even Hitler couldn’t save them from that.”

He poured himself some more gin at the memory and took a restoring swig.

“But they were lucky the Air Force was operating
normally
and kept its usual quota of bombs outside the immediate target area. God knows if they hit any Germans in Cassino, but they knocked hell out of Venafro, fifteen miles away, and wrote off a hundred and forty civilians. They straddled Eighth Army Headquarters which wasn’t a bad thing to do, bashed our own gun lines and killed forty-four artillerymen, and blew up a Moroccan hospital to knock off forty patients…. When they have a count-up after this war I reckon they’ll find the Allied Air Forces dropped more bloody bombs on us than they did on the enemy.”

“Really,” I said, “you are quite unfair …”

“Am I indeed?” He wobbled upright in offence and poured more gin over my boots. “Souk-el-Arba. What about that? … Miles behind the lines, and blasted to hell by bombers sent to hit Kasserine. Hundred miles off target that time, and Eisenhower paid fifty thousand quid compensation…. And remember those yellow identification triangles? You had them, didn’t you? In North Africa, tied under your chin like a bib. When approached by Allied aircraft, they said, hold
the points of the triangle at arms length to establish your identity. And what happened if you ever did that thing?” He fixed me with an accusing finger. “What happened when you stood out like a nit with your little yellow flag? Answer me that, matey.”

“They machine-gunned us,” I said. “But that was just an isolated mistake …”

“So was I. God knows how many poor trusting bastards met their Maker standing in the middle of the road extending those yellow triangles. They were good for only one thing. Making tops for nurses’ bikinis. And then the dye used to run in salt water and turn their busts bright yellow. Indelible it was too and never came off. I know because my brother, Conrad, married a North African, yellow-breasted, nursing sister twelve months ago and he can still wake up wondering if he’s in the top half of a Chinese brothel…. Do you know my brother, Conrad?”

“No,” I said. “Hadn’t you better get below now, it’s gone half past twelve.”

“Must tell you about my brother, Conrad. Another little drink, another little talk …” He was rambling drunk by now but his tongue never seemed to falter. “My brother, Conrad, won the Battle of Alamein. Now you tell me, Mr.
Musketeer
, what was Alamein?”

“It was,” I said patiently, “a famous victory.”

“It was,” he levelled the gin bottle like a cannon, “one bloody great mistake.”

“Nonsense. We won it magnificently.”

“One bloody great mistake. From beginning to end. But the benevolent God Mighty in Battle, the Christian monopoly of British brass battery, reached down the hand he uses on wandering babies and drunken sailors and saw us safely through. Him and my brother, Conrad…. Very clever chap is Conrad. Very important staff chap back down in Cairo. Never came out of Cairo on account of his maps. Had a warehouse big as Buckingham Palace full of maps. He had hundreds and thousands of maps all over Africa. Whatever happened on the Dark Continent, it could never take my brother, Conrad, by surprise. You want to fight a war
anywhere
in Africa, beat up the Boers in Bloemfontein or
conquer the cannibals up the Congo, you only had to ask my brother, Conrad, and he’d let you have the maps in a jiffy. A wonderful filing system he had to keep all those maps straight, especially when the map numbers keep repeating themselves every hundred sheets. And with half the desert maps a blank sheet of nothing it was a tricky job making sure you picked them from the right hemisphere. Conrad was a marvel at map selection and he never made a mistake till Alamein. What with Montgomery abolishing the back-
to-Palestine
plan and calling up his getaway truck, Conrad’s nerves were in a terrible state when Eighth Army
Headquarters
sent down their requisition. He went to pieces and met it from the wrong shelf. He sent them up sheets with the right numbers on but from the wrong set, a hundred or so sheets to the south. He found out his mistake mind you, a fortnight later when he was taking stock, but by then the battle was joined and there was nothing anyone could do about it.”