Sergeant Nelson of the Guards (8 page)

“Both, Trained Soldier.”

“’Ow old are you?”

“Thirty-four, Trained Soldier.”

“Well, son, we’ll soon find you plenty jobs round ’ere…. And your name?”

“John Johnson,” says the Brummagem Fly Boy suddenly.

“Not so much of the ‘John Johnson,’ you. Address me as Trained Soldier! Don’t tell me where you come from: I know. You’re a Brummy Boy. I can tell by your accent. Well, don’t get fly here, son. It won’t pay you. And you?”

“Bates, Trained Soldier. Oi come from Leicester. Oi was a brewer’s drayman. Oi’m Church of Englernd, Trained Soldier.”

“Married?”

“One proper woife, Trained Soldier, but she left me. She took all the furniture. Oi got an unmarried woife, now, and she’s noice, Trained Soldier. Yow loike to see a pic-tcher, Trained Soldier?”

“In a minute. And what’s your name?”

“Abbs, Trained Soldier. I got a brother in the Coldstream Guards. Did you ever meet him, Trained Soldier? Abbs, from Walsall. Jimmy Abbs. I’m Alfred Abbs. Thirty-five. I got six kids, all girls. My wife’s uncle just died of a growth in ’is throat—big as a babby’s head. I——”

“—Every morning,” says Trained Soldier Brand, “the hut will be swept and tidied, and everything will be put in its right place. Every Saturday, it will be scrubbed from top to bottom, and your bed-boards and trestles will also be scrubbed till they are as white as snow, because I don’t mind telling you, they’re ’ot on that. Also, you better take care
to scrub your ’oldalls till they’re like
driven
snow. They’re ’ot on ’oldalls, too. Got it? One other thing: don’t keep things under your mattresses in the daytime. More men get put in the book for that than anything else. And for God’s sake see your rifles are clean. A dirty rifle is a serious offence. Oh well …” He yawns. “Muck in,” he says, with conviction, “that’s the great rule of ’appiness. Muck in. Muck in. That’s what the Bible says: muck in. Do unto others as you would ’ave others do unto you. In other words,
muck
in.
Got it? What ’ave you got to do, Bates?”

“Not leave nothing under your mattress, Trained Soldier!”

“Oh Gord lumme, I want my mummy and the puddens she used to make!” cries Trained Soldier Brand. “Why should England tremble, eh? Did you hear me say ‘Muck in’?”

“I thought——”

“You thought. Wot with did you think? You ain’t ’ere to think. You’re not in Civvy Street now. Why, if everybody went around
thinking
, we wouldn’t
’ave
no army. Muck in. What did I say?”

Bates thinks deeply, and says: “Mook in, Trained Soldier.”

“There now. You got it right that time, didn’t you? You can do it if you try, can’t you? That’s the style. Go on like that and you’ll be a Brigadier before you know where you are.”

“Will oi really, Trained Soldier?”

*

There comes into the hut a man in shirt sleeves and a soft S.D. cap. You can tell, by his walk, that he is no ordinary man. He swings his legs out from the hip, and his iron heels cut little arcs in the floorboards. He is long and lean, sun-dried, wind-cured, boucanned, smoked, and sand-blasted. His face is brown as a kipper, and as expressionless. One of his eyes is fixed in a dreadful stare: it is of glass. The other blinks. There is nothing left of him but bone and sinew and vitals: years of service have sweated away all that was superfluous or decorative. He has an air of demoniac energy: a wild swagger, a steady, genial ferocity. Out of his neatly rolled sleeves hang arms as dark and gnarled as old Salami sausages. He has fists like mallets of black stinkwood; an
aluminium
ring; and a silly little blue bird tattooed on his left wrist. Quite effortlessly, he shouts, in a voice that makes us jump:

“I am Sergeant Nelson! (Ain’t I, Trained Soldier Brand?) I am Sergeant Nelson! I’ve got one eye, but both me arms! I died at
Trafalgar
but they dug me up again, and when I’m mad I’m a one-man wave o’ destruction! I’m poison! I’m terrible! I kill seven rookies before breakfast! I can spit fifty yards through the eye of a needle! D’you see that dead tree over there? They’ll tell you it was struck by lightnin’. Don’t believe ’em. I killed it! I slapped it down! You’re my new squad! I’m your Squad Instructor! Silence! Nobody say a word! You do as I say or you suffer. You suffer ’orrible tortures! Now, when I say
Hi-de-Hi
Squad!
you shout
Ho-de-Ho!
—and shout it loud! Now:
Hi-de-Hi
Squad!”

We roar:
“Ho-de-Ho!”

“Right. Whenever I shout Hi-de-Hi, let me hear you reply pretty damn quick, or I’ll chase you all round and round that square till the huts look like henhouses.
Hi-de-Hi!
”

“Ho-de-Ho!”

“Good. Now we’re introduced. I’m here to make Guardsmen out o’ you. Are you going to help me? Well, answer, you unsociable lot of squirts!”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“Good. You’d better. Soldiers get buried in a blanket. I’ll make Guardsmen out of you if you have to pass out of here in blankets. If you turn out flops, as soldiers, I’m responsible.
I
’m
the one that drops something on account of you. And I’d murder me best friend if he got me into trouble. I’d murder me great-grandmother. I’d cut her heart out and throw it on the floor and jump on it—wouldn’t I, Brand? Now on Monday you’ll be Squadded, and you start with me on the Square. I’ve got to drill you. I’ve got to hammer four months of drill into you
in eight weeks. It’s impossible. But I shall do it. You’ll see. But you’ve got to play ball with me. You’ve got to give me all you’ve got, with a good heart.” Sergeant Nelson becomes quieter, and very serious.

“Ask anybody in this Depot about me. They’ll tell you: I hardly ever punish anybody. I never, never bully my men. But you’ve got to work with me. There seems to be a war on. Isn’t there, Brand? So you’ve got to take things seriously. If there’s anything you want to know, don’t be afraid to ask me. If there’s anything you don’t grasp the first time, ask me again, ask me a hundred times: I’ll tell you. If there’s anything you want demonstrated, I’ll demonstrate it. I’m the best demonstrator on earth, aren’t I’ Brand? Definitely, I am. If you’re in trouble over anything except money, come to me, and if necessary I’ll march you into the Company Commander, or the Commandant himself. I’ll stand by you. But don’t try any funny stuff. If anybody tries to treat me rough…. By God! Call me Pig, and I’m Pig all through. Definitely Pig all through. Okay. Which is it going to be? Are you going to work with me?”

A chorus: “Yes, Sergeant.”

He roars again. “Okay-dokey, my little fluffy-’eaded chicks!
Hi-
de-Hi!”

“Ho-de-Ho!”

“Good. Now look. Recruits are babies. In one second, Cookhouse is going to blow. By rights I ought to march you about everywhere, definitely everywhere. But I’m going to let you go on your own, just to show you I trust you. You won’t get lost? Or make mugs of
yourselves
in any way?”

“No, Sergeant.”

Come
to
the
cookhouse
door,
boys,
cries the bugle.

“Knives, forks, and spoons, and scram, then!”

We rush to the door.

“Halt!”

We stop, paralysed by that shattering voice.

“Hi-de-Hi,
Squad!”

“Ho-de-Ho,
Sergeant!”

We go to Dinner.

That afternoon we get our first Fatigue. There isn’t much for us to
do until we are squadded. Hanging around, putting twice-ordered bits of kit again in order, looking around, exchanging speculative horrors, we wait, killing time by inches. One or two of us—Hodge, Dale, and Thurstan foremost, as it happens—start on our boots. The surface of these Ammunition Boots is what the shopkeepers call “Scotch Grain”: that is to say, it is all bumpy. This has to be smoothed out by the chemical action of spit and the mechanical action of polish. We have been warned that, at first, the more we polish the less there will be to show for our efforts. “Think of the Foorer,” says Trained Soldier Brand, “think of Gobbles, think of Gooring … and spit.” But the Ammos, or boots, would absorb the digestive juices of a shark. John Johnson watches us. Soon, he says: “You got no oidea, that’s what it is, no oidea.” And he picks up a boot and a tin of polish, and, baring his sunburnt arms,
begins
to polish away with a mad enthusiasm. All the misdirected energy of a little, misspent life, is being concentrated on a toe cap. He polishes as if some strange fate has condemned him to it … which, indeed, it has. “Oi’ll get that cap badge,” he says, “oi betcher a million pounds.” A Bedfordshire lad who used to work in a Nottinghamshire boot factory talks of buffing leather. He takes out of a battered fibre case a toothbrush; compares it with the Army issue, and finally strokes his boots with it. Everybody else follows suit. As any gentleman’s gentleman will tell you, it helps if you beat the surface of a leather boot flat with a bone … but you’ve got to put your weight behind it. Alison, the glum old soldier, says that if you smear the surface of the boots thickly with polish and then set light to it, you get the grease out quicker. Trained Soldier Brand, hearing this, says: “That is a serious offence,” and adds:

“Say you burn your boots. What happens? Boots are made of what? Well … what, Bates?”

“Oi don’t know, Trained Soldier.”

“Leather and stitches. Burn the leather, and you burn the stitches. Burn the stitches, and what happens? Well, Bates?”

“It’s a serious offence, Trained Soldier.”

“They bust. And if the stitches of your boots bust, what happens, Bates?”

“Oi don’t know, Trained Soldier.”

“One day your boots come apart. And remember—a soldier marches on his feet. On his … what, Bates?”

“On his feet, Trained Soldier.”

“Good. You’ll be a lieutenant colonel inside of a fortnight.”

“Will Oi——”

“So. Don’t burn your boots. If you’re without boots, you’re what, Bates?”

“Uh?”

“Say you’ve got no boots, what happens?”

“Oi don’t know, Trained Soldier.”

“You’re barefoot.”

“Oi know that, but——”

“Then why didn’t you say so? You can’t march, and the war is as good as lost. So no burning. Leather,” says Brand, “comes from abroad. It takes sailors. Sailors die so that you wear boots. Get it? Them boots are covered in the blood of sailors.”

Bates says: “Trained Soldier, Oi thought that was grease.”

“God give me strength,” says Brand.

We polish away. Later, a sergeant with a book under his arm comes into the hut and shouts: “Stand to your beds and listen! Is there
anybody
here who’s good at painting and decorating?”

Two men stand up.

“Anybody play football … I don’t mean just kicking a ball around: I mean, anybody who can play it well.”

One man rises and says: “I played for Underwood Wednesday.”

“And are there any market gardeners, or other men who know all about turfing and whatnot?”

Two more men rise.

“Excellent. Excellent. Lastly, is there anybody here of education up to matriculation standard?”

Old Silence stands up.

“That’s fine.” The sergeant with the book licks a pencil and says: “Names…. You will all report to the Green Lanes Cookhouse for spud-peeling.”

(“And let that be a lesson for you,” says Brand, grinning: “In the Army, you never volunteer for anything except certain death.”)

Those of us who have risen go out. A cookhouse sergeant says: “Do you mind eating spuds a little bit wizened?”

“No.”

“Then bloodywell peel them.”

The men left behind congratulate themselves, until a serious-looking Corporal, asking for men who know jig and tool making, the use of the typewriter, the elements of the banjulele and singing, salesmanship, care of livestock, bandaging, fire-fighting, bartending, building,
haircutting
, carpentering, ladies’ hairdressing, platen-minding, typesetting, fancy lettering, high jumping, and box making, drags in most of the others for floor washing, and, tiring of the joke, asks, all humour apart, for one intelligent man. Johnson leaps up. “You read books, I bet,” says the Corporal. “Ah,” says Johnson. “Then go and swab out the library,” says the Corporal In Waiting, and goes out, while Johnson swears that in this life there is no justice.

*

That Sunday is quiet. Recruits in the Naffy tell dark tales of
discipline
. Men three weeks squadded, already assuming the portentous air of old sweats, ask themselves rhetorically why they did not join something else. The Glorious Fusiliers, says one, do no drill; the
Dagenham
Foresters, says another, have dulled brasses for active service, and rightly so. Old Silence, pursuing the vexed question of spit-and-polish in the Brigade of Guards, asks the Trained Soldier about it.

Brand laughs. “You’ll work your boots and brasses up,” he says, “whether you like it or not. So you may as well do it with a good ’eart. When you get round to fighting, I dessay you’ll be told to let your brasses go dull and grease your second-best boots. Meanwhile, you’ll shine.
Why, you might ask. Because the Guards have got a tradition of smart turnout, that’s why. I admit you work harder in the Guards than
elsewhere
. Well, that’s the price you pay for the privilege of being in the ’Ouse’old Brigade. Don’t worry—you’ll learn as much of tactics and field-training and fighting as anybody in the Army; only you’ll be made to get the ’abit of smartness in your appearance. Why? Because we’re the Guards. We’re the Lilywhites, the Coalies, the Coldstreamers. It’s got to be kept up. At Dunkirk, our mob were still pick-outable on
account
of some of them still shining up their daisy-roots and working in a quick shave, even on the retreat. It’s crazy, I know. But personally, I like it. And so do you. Or if you won’t you will. And if you don’t, you’d better. Gorblimey, we’ve ’ad fellers ’ere like Wild Men o’ Borneo, and turned ’em out neat as a new pin in a few weeks. Carriage!
Smartness!
That’s the
real
uniform of the Guards. Because all battledress looks alike. And yet you could pick a Coldstreamer out of a thousand others. It may be a bit tough. Well, blimey, you’ve got to suffer to be beautiful … Ain’t you, you de-licious little peach-blossom?” he says, to Thurstan.