Sergeant Nelson of the Guards (36 page)

W
ELL
,
THE
night falls deep, and everybody sleeps as only soldiers can sleep, and day dawns, as dawn it must. Sparrows twitter, a cock
challenges
the morning to come and be damned; the Drum Major’s dog barks and the melancholy drummer blows a great screaming Reveille, and the Camp stirs. Defaulters is blown. The condemned men on C.B. rush madly out to answer their names, and the others go galloping to the washhouses to get the night’s crop of manly beard hewn down and washed away.

Sergeant Crowne rises looking surly and confides to Dagwood his dread of the new shower of tripe the Depot is sending today. Dagwood says “Ah,” and nods with an air of the profoundest conviction, and Hands breathes something that sounds like an ultimatum from Genghiz Khan; and Bearsbreath scowls at Butcher the Butcher. Out of the little radio a soprano at whose feet the Crowned Heads of Europe have thrown their kingdoms sings an aria from something or other, and an Instructor of Physical Training says to the loudspeaker: “Shut your jaw, you moaning cow!” Like the honking of wild geese
breaks out the reiterated command: “Get these swabbing jobs done! Get this lousy hut dug out!” One of the men sweeping the floor finds a penny, which five others instantly claim. A blackout screen falls on Sergeant Crowne’s head, and he gives it a look which almost makes it leap back again.

Breakfast is eaten and groused at. Crowne, in a state of unutterable melancholy, waits for the new squad, and, having seen something he didn’t like in the day before yesterday’s newspaper, wishes that he had
the writer of it alone for five minutes … alone on a desert island, where there is no law but the law of the knife. Dagwood goes to get his platoon for a little musketry. Hands is due to conduct some
live-grenade
-throwing, and seems to contemplate some fearful act of
sabotage
. It looks as if everybody wants to assassinate everybody else. Only one Guardsman Clegg is cheerful, and keeps singing: “Oh, Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms” on one note, making up for his ignorance of the rest of the words by crying: “Dee-dee-dee,
dah-dah
-dee, dwa-dwa-dahum!” Until he is told to shut up: a command which he obeys for one second before singing on.

The morning’s work goes ahead. Dinner is eaten, and groused at. Everybody curses the coming afternoon. Life is going on much the same as it did the day before yesterday.

The new Rooks come in from Caterham in the early afternoon, marching with fierce precision and desperately anxious to make a good impression. Dusty Smith leads one group in, with the air of a man who has done this kind of thing just about once too often. In due course he goes to catch himself a pint of beer and a gallon of scandal, and a train back. He mets Dagwood, Hands, Bearsbreath and Crowne, and there is the inevitable conversational opening….

“Ha, Dusty?”

“Browned off. Howya, Handsey?”

“Jarred off.”

“Cheesed off.”

“I’m more cheesed off than what you are.”

“You can’t be more jarred off than what I am.”

“Nobody could be more browned off than me.”

“Cha having?”

“Mild. This is my shout.”

“Oh, turn it up, this is my shout.”

“Ah, turn it in, I’m buying this.”

Then they all buy one.

Hands says: “Lousy luck on old Bill.”

“What old Bill?” asks Dusty.

“Nelson,” says Crowne.

“What’s the matter with Nelson?” asks Dusty.

“Haven’t you heard?” says Dagwood. “He got killed in the blitz.”

“When?”

“Couple of days ago,” says Crowne. “We was going to whip round for a wreath.”

“Crushed under a house over in Groombridge Junction,” says Hands. “Butcher the Butcher was nearly killed too.”

“What
is
this?” asks Dusty. “Bill Nelson killed? One-Eye Nelson? Old Bill Nelson, the One-Man Wave Of Destruction? Why, he’s my best friend.”

“Well, now you know,” says Crowne.

“No, I don’t know,” says Dusty. “Bill turned up at the Depot this morning before I left.”

“What d’you mean, Bill turned up at the Depot this morning before you left?” demands Crowne furiously.

“He come in before I left with my shower,” says Dusty. “I don’t
believe
in ghosts. Not ghosts of Bill Nelson. He was in tripe, and bandaged a bit, and about forty hours pushed. He had a good bar, though. It was on his pass. He’d been trying to get some geezer out of a shelter, or something, and got trapped. They dug him out a bit, and shoved him in hospital for a few hours, and then he come back. Bit of a bashing, it looks like. Bit of a hole where a nail, or a screw, or a beam, or
something
, stuck in him. I didn’t have time to find out exactly. He did look about
half
dead, now you come to mention it. Bust his glass eye again. Can’t keep an eye five minutes. Strained back. Dead? Shut up,
Crowney
! There’s nothing left of Bill to kill except skin and bone and a couple of
Hi-de-Hi’s
and
Ho-de-Ho’s.
Why, I remember the time when Bill Nelson and me——”

“You can keep it,” says Bearsbreath. “You can tell it to your squad.
But for now, do me a favour and put a sock in it. Nelson, Nelson,
Nelson
. All I hear is Nelson.”

“Well, there it is,” says Dusty. “He gave me the old
Hi-de-Hi,
and about a million rooks give him the old
Ho-de-Ho,
and he goes off to report to the sick-bunk. That’s all.”

“Butcher,” says Hands. “I hope Butcher’s bloody blood pressure bursts.”

“I’ll burst that Butcher,” says Dagwood. “I’ll splash him over seven hundred yards. Him and his Nelson!”

“Did I ever tell you,” asks Dusty, “about when me and Bill——?”

“Who cares about Bill?” asks Dagwood.

“—Me and Bill was at——”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” says Bearsbreath.