Sergeant Nelson of the Guards (34 page)

T
HEN
Bittern says: “It’s a bit of a joke, when you come to think of it.”

Bearsbreath shrugs. Crowne says: “Why, what’s so screaming bloody funny?”

“I saved his life in France,” says Bittern.

“It makes a bit of a change,” says Hands. “Now somebody saved
Bill’s
life. I suppose Nelson said: ‘I’m dying for a smoke,’ and you gave him a fag. That’s how you saved his life.”

“Oh,” says Bittern, with unshakable calm, “I didn’t earn any medals. I didn’t mean to save Bill’s life. It wasn’t deliberate. It was partly an accident. Seen my shoulder?”

“All my life I been dying to see your lovely shoulder,” says Hands. “Why don’t you wear ev’ning dress? Gorgeous!”

“If my shoulder hadn’t been in the way,” says Bittern, “the bullet that hit Bill in the eye would have scored a direct hit and come out the back of his skull. That’s all. I didn’t mean to do it. Only that shoulder gave me trouble. I didn’t begrudge it. Bill wasn’t so bad, a pukka Guardsman, and we got on pretty fair. Taken all-in-all, now that I come to think of it, I liked Bill. Well, that’s nothing; everybody liked Bill and Bill liked everybody. I wasn’t sorry to have him with me that time. I’ve seen worse soldiers than Nelson. I’ve seen one or two worse than him in my time. So, Bill’s dead. Well, we all got to die some time. The meanest louse bags hang on to their old age till it burns their fingers and goes out with a stink. Fairly decent chaps like Bill die first, always. What d’you expect?”

“Ah, I wish I’d been there,” says Butcher the Butcher. “But I’m
Employed
. I’m supposed to have blood pressure.”

“You should worry,” says Bittern. “You didn’t miss much. I could have got on all right without being there. Still, it gives you something to talk about. What else is a war for? You were there, Bearsbreath—
you
have a nice time?”

Bearsbreath shrugs again. He has nothing to say to Bittern. He
dislikes
that strange man, and his too-calm philosophic face. There is
something
about Bittern that reminds you of Cattle: only Cattle is at rest, and Bittern is not. You feel that Corporal Bittern’s brain is like a mouse in a panel: behind his blank face it scratches and nibbles, disturbing his rest … alive, elusive, insistent, secretly procreative, hungry,
watchful
, always out of reach. You hear it; you smell it; it irritates you. But it won’t let much of itself be seen. Cattle’s calm comes from within. The calm of Bittern has been put on, fitted, and screwed down over something that is far from calm and nobody’s business. Cattle
accumulates
experiences as an old maid collects string; ties up the odd ends and lets them accumulate without purpose, neatly arranged in a
cupboard
. But Bittern knots and unknots, ravels, unravels, splices, stretches, and restlessly tangles things into patterns. But he is calm and cool—that expression, under his raised eyebrows, is what reminds you of Cattle. He used to be some kind of clerk to some kind of merchant, in some small city somewhere. Then he joined the Guards, three years before the war. There is a bile-green tinge of misanthropy in his talk … a twang of sarcasm, a curl of the lip, a grittiness that gets men’s tempers like the east wind.

The sound of Bittern’s voice makes Bearsbreath savage. He gives Bittern a look that seems to bite like a splash of acid, and goes out.

Bittern grins. “I get that man down,” he says. “I’m just like sand in his teeth. I wonder why?”

Lazily, Cattle says: “Nelson was everybody’s pal round here, you see. And it’s just a way you have of talking …”

Bittern says: “Don’t get me wrong.”

“Bitt talks bolo,” says Purcell. “But Bitt ain’t so bad. We met on that bloody road, didn’t we, Bitt?” He lights the butt of a cigarette, “They was bleeding like pigs.
YeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaoooOOOOOO
—
bobobobobobobobobop!
—remember that noise, Bitt?”

“And—KARUP!” says Bittern, knocking over four clanging iron basins.

As these roll, reverberating, Purcell screams again:
“Mmmmm
eeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaooooOO
O
O
!”

“KARUP!”

“Turn it in,” says Sergeant Crowne, with menace.

Silence.

Then Bittern begins to talk.

*

It was rough, in a way. I can’t remember being in many rougher places, in my time. As far as I could gather, it was a crack-up. We didn’t know at that time what was happening. I never did believe much in anything or anybody. But Bill did, and Bill took it harder than me, in a way. I always expect the worst. But Bill was the sort of mug that couldn’t see the worst ever happening. He wasn’t made that way. The rumour got around that the French had broken. They said the Jerries were through, and coming in strength. Well, latrine rumours—you’ve heard them a million times and so have I. They’d been coming over. Then they started to come good and proper. To me it looked like one of those pictures you see of one of those whirlwinds that go round and round like corkscrews, picking up dust and stuff. They seemed to be coming out of the sky just like that. Purcell saw it too. So did plenty others. It looked like all the planes in the world peeling off and coming down, like twirling water out of a wet sock. Bombing and dive-
machine-gunning
is all right within limits. There comes a time when it annoys you. If it doesn’t kill you it shakes you. Well, you don’t want to let it shake you, because that’s what it’s for. When you hear a plane coming down on you, it sounds as if it’s only a foot above your head. You duck down. Then they start dropping it on you.

Your eardrums aren’t built to stand up to that sort of row. Nor are your nerves made to stand up to that much shaking and blast. It seems to get in your eyes and nose and guts. It’s just then that you’ve got to hold on to yourself, if you see what I mean. If you break, you’re done. When it began to get really bad we had to lie down and wait a bit. I don’t know about others. I’m talking about Nelson, me, and some others out of our Company. I’ll tell you a peculiar thing. One man, Gabb, started to get out and run. The mug wanted to do something about it, I suppose. I caught him by the wrist. Then I found myself holding Gabb’s hand, as if he’d been a girl next to me in the pictures. Just Gabb’s hand. No Gabb. They’ll have a job to find that mug when they blow the Last Trump, I think….

In a bit of a lull, I said to Nelson: “What’s happening, I wonder?”

He said: “Didn’t anybody tell you there’s a war on?”

Mulkin, Perch, Ted Dinning, and Clarkie went down before he got the words out. We didn’t have very good cover. Then somehow the word came that we were retreating. I don’t know how. But it got about before we had any official word about it. Bill said: “It’s a dirty, filthy lie.” I never saw anybody so mad with rage; only he kept fairly quiet. “A dirty filthy lie! I’ll nail the next bastard that repeats it to the next bastard that listens to it! So help me God! Go on—somebody say it!” Nobody did.

We stood that attack for about seventy-two hours longer. Imagine you’re in a concrete mixer. It was like that. Then we knew that the French were done. We saw some of ’em. There was something crazy about it. Fifth Column stuff. Somebody had opened the door. What did we know about it, anyway? The foreigners seemed to be in a panic. They felt they’d been sold out. They felt it was every man for himself. We stuck on. There wasn’t much of a chance for us to go and mix it with the Germans, in any proper way. As far as we could judge
afterwards
, they were coming from the sides, as it were.

Then it seemed pretty certain that we were cut off. Nelson said to me: “One thing’s certain. If our mugs
are
getting back out of it for the
time being, this mob’ll be the last to go. If there is going to be any kind of stepping back a bit”—the proper word stuck in his gizzard—“we’ll have to cover ’em.”

I said: “Why?”

He said: “Why? Why? I’ll tell you why. In a hundred years’ time they’ll write books about it, and for the sake of regimental records and what not we can’t very well
not
be the last out.”

I said: “You’re talking bullsh, Bill.”

He said: “Shut up, Bittern.”

Then the attack started again. God only knows what they were chucking at us. They were hammering us with everything they could find to throw. Most of all, there were planes. It was all very well for Bill to talk. It was as if we were out in a real blinding thunderstorm and a blizzard combined, in the middle of the moors on a pitch-dark night. It was like that. It was impossible to go and impossible to stay. It was madness either way.

Bill kept shouting and keeping everybody alive. “Coconuts!” he said. “Sing it, you horrible men! Sing it, you jelly-bellies! Hi-de-Hi!”

Back came the old “Ho-de-Ho!” And Bill started to sing
Coconuts.
He had a voice like a saw. A sort of cow-bell voice; hoarse, but it carried miles. I shouldn’t be very much surprised if the Jerries heard us singing. I forget the exact words….

It was crazy as bloody hell. Everybody picked it up. Everybody started to sing, putting all his beef into it, while the bombs came down and the planes came over, and as true as I sit here the ground looked like a pavement in a thundershower with the bullets splashing up dust out of it. We all sang, and it broke the tension. You could see everybody’s mouth moving, although you couldn’t hear your own voice for the H.E. and the plane engines and the M.G.’s and everything else. Johnny Stallion died singing it, and so did a few more….

I’ll never forget it, not in all my life. When I was in dock afterwards, delirious, I was singing my guts out all the time: that same song.

Then, thank Christ, there was a Jerry infantry attack, after a style. A shower of them came over and we mowed ’em down and swept ’em back; and then they swept us back; and then we swept them back. And there seemed to be a bit of our artillery banging about somewhere. I said to Bill: “I wonder what the big idea is.”

Bill said: “I somehow fancy either one of two things, Bittern. Either we’re advancing or retreating. Either the Jerry tanks are right through and we’re doing what we can to let the other kids slip out; or else we’re waiting for reinforcements. I’m not quite certain which.”

But then the officer passed the order, and we knew which it was all right. Back. Coast. We had to scram. We’d been left standing. It was true about France having been bought and sold, it seems. The officer said: “Don’t worry. We’ll be back.”

Bill said: “Hi-de-Hi, sir!” But he didn’t look like Hi-de-Hi just for that second or two. His face was twitching like a ferret in a bag. He’d had more strain than any of us. But he yelled like a mad lion: “Come on, you horrible men! What d’you think this is? A private hotel? Come on, you shower of women! Hi-de-Hi!”

They said “Ho-de-Ho!” We started to move, still trying to sing
Coco
nuts
.
The men were dead beat. We’d had it for days and nights. Days and days, and nights and nights. We had plenty of rough ground to cover to what there was of the road. You go out fresh in the morning from here with a belly full of breakfast and clean socks and shirts on, for a little thirty-five-mile route-march, and you feel it’s pretty hard. We were dead men before we started. We’d held out for (it seemed like) years; no grub worth mentioning; hardly any of us left, and those few so stinking tired we had to bite our lips to keep ourselves awake;
bomb-blasted
to jelly; thirsty; sick to bleeding death … the Jerry after us all the time, gunning for us, trying to stop us. We were rotten with tiredness. We were more exhausted than a man dying of fever. We had temperatures. Some of us were wounded. Some of us were scared. I would have lain down and died if it hadn’t been for Bill. So would we all. The officer went down like a … coconut. Not too bad a kid. Shot in the head. Bill was in charge. I said I would have lain down and died. I wanted to. I really wanted to. I was too fagged out to live. But as a Lance-Jack I couldn’t very well set the example. And Nelson was tireder than me, and he was going strong. He told us to dump our packs and stuff. He made us keep our respirators in case Jerry used gas. Rifles we dumped, and chucked the bolts in a pond so that they’d be no use to Jerry. We had no ammunition, only thirty rounds or so, which Bill took. He kept his rifle. He kept his pack. He was setting an example. I said: “What now?”

He said: “There’s something like a matter of sixty-odd miles to go, as I work it out. Sixty to seventy. At the double. To the coast. That’s why we’re travelling light. Step it out for your lives, you bastards!
Hi-de-Hi!”

It came back like a whisper: “Ho-de-Ho.” Then one feller, dead tired, burst out crying. His nerves were all frayed out to string. Bill put his arm round him like a woman, and talked to him like a baby, and the feller hit the road. Yes … Bill got us on to the road. There wasn’t one
single hope in hell. Not one single hope in hell. If it hadn’t been for Nelson we’d have stayed where we were.

But we started to walk. Don’t ask me where we got the strength. Ask Purcell, he might know. I don’t. If we’d been fresh that road would’ve been hell. And we weren’t fresh. We were walking corpses. But we walked. You ask Purcell….