The Complete McAuslan (19 page)

I looked, and he was in a state. Apart from his natural foulness, he was in an extremity of terror, and looking thoroughly miserable. I was about to say: ‘Carry on,’ when suddenly it seemed all wrong and unfair.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not a dam’ chance. He’s mounted guard, he’ll do guard. Right, McAuslan? Carry on, Sergeant-Major.’

I saw the old guard – fusiliers, I think they were – off, and after that everything seemed peaceful, and none of it had ever happened. I think I slept most of the afternoon, and it wasn’t until late evening that I went into the guardroom, and saw everything was in order, and it was just on sunset when I took a turn outside, and it was one of those evenings, with the black, gaunt battlements against the sky, and the lights of Edinburgh winking in the dusk below, and I found myself thinking of the generations of soldiers who had guarded this place, and the Gay Gordon, and Bonnie Dundee, and the rest of it.

I came to the gate, and there was the inheritor of the great tradition: they had given him a clean shirt, and someone had polished his boots, and he was looking less like an ill-tied sack than usual, but his face was still its customary grey, and he was standing sentry like a yokel with a pitch-fork.

He sloped arms as I came up, and in giving a butt salute managed to half-drop his rifle. I helped straighten him out, and then turned away to breathe in the evening air. And then he spoke.

“Sa‘right, i’nt it?’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

“Sa’right. Guardin’ ra Castle.’

I digested this. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s all right.’

He sighed heavily. ‘Ah like it fine.’

‘You know what to do,’ I asked him.

‘Oh, aye, sir. Wan-I-take-up-a-position-at-the-main-gate. Two-I-patrol—’

‘Yes, yes, I know all that. That’s by the book. But you know what to do if someone tries to get past you?’

‘Sure, sir. Ah’ll kill the —’

‘Well, yes. And turn out the guard.’

‘Och, aye, sir.’

I left him standing there, and he was loving every minute of it, scruffy creature that he was. At the same time, I had nearly made a bigger fiasco of it than he, with all his natural talent, could ever have done.

At that moment I wouldn’t have swapped McAuslan for the whole Household Cavalry.

McAuslan’s Court-Martial

Considering his illiteracy, his foul appearance, his habit of losing his possessions, and his inability to execute all but the simplest orders, Private McAuslan was remarkably seldom in trouble. Of course, corporals and sergeants had long since discovered that there was not much point in putting him on charges; punishment cured nothing, and, as my platoon sergeant said, ‘He’s just wan o’ nature’s blunders; he cannae help bein’ horrible. It’s a gift.’

So when I found his name on the company orders sheet one morning shortly after his Edinburgh Castle epic, I was interested, and when I saw that the offence he was charged with was under Section 9, Para 1, Manual of Military Law, I was intrigued. For that section deals with ‘disobeying, in such manner as to show a wilful defiance of authority, a lawful command given personally by his superior officer in the execution of his office’.

That didn’t sound like McAuslan. Unkempt, unhygienic, and unwholesome, yes, but not disobedient. Given an order, he would generally strive manfully to obey it so far as lay within his power, which wasn’t far; he might forget, or fall over himself, or get lost, or start a fire, but he tried. In drink, or roused, he was unruly, admittedly, but in that case I would have expected the charge to be one of those charmingly listed under Section 10, which begins ‘When concerned in a fray . . .’ and covers striking, offering violence, resisting an escort, and effecting an escape. But this was apparently plain, sober disobedience, which was unique.

With Bennet-Bruce away on a ski-ing course in Austria (how is it that Old Etonians get on glamorous courses like ski-ing and surf-riding, while the best I could ever manage was battle school and man management?) I was in command of the company, which involved presiding at company orders each morning, when the evil-doers of the previous day came up for judgment and slaughter. So I sat there, speculating on the new McAuslan mystery, while the Company Sergeant-Major formed up his little troupe on the veranda outside the office.

‘Company ordures!’ he roared – and with McAuslan involved, the mispronunciation couldn’t have been more appropriate – ‘Company ordures, shun! Laift tahn! Quick march, eft-ight-eft-ight-eft-ight eftwheeohl! Mark time!’ The peaceful office was suddenly shuddering to the dint of armed heels, an escort and the sweating McAuslan stamping away for dear life in front of my desk. ‘Ahlt! Still!’ bellowed the C.S.M. ‘14687347 Private McAuslan, J., sah!’

While the charge was read out I studied McAuslan; he was his usual dove grey colour as to the skin, and his battle dress would have disgraced a tattie-bogle. He was staring in the correct hypnotised manner over my head, standing at what he fondly believed was attention, stiffly inclined forward with his fingers crooked like a Western gun-fighter. He didn’t, I noticed, look particularly worried, which was unusual, for McAuslan’s normal attitude to authority was one of horrified alarm. He looked almost pugnacious this morning.

‘Corporal Baxter’s charge, sir,’ said the C.S.M., and Corporal Baxter stood forth. He was young and moustached and very keen.

‘Sah!’ exclaimed he. ‘At Redford, on the 14th of this month, I was engaged in detailin’ men, for the forthcomin’ regimental sports, for duties, in connection, with said sports. I placed the accused on a detail, and he refused to go. I warned him, and he still refused. I charged him, an’ he became offensive. Sah!’

He saluted and stepped back. ‘Well, McAuslan?’ I said.

McAuslan swallowed noisily. ‘He detailed me forra pilla-fight, sir.’

‘The what?’

‘Ra pilla-fight.’

It dawned. At the regimental sports one of the highlights was always the pillow-fight, in which contestants armed with pillows sat astride a greasy pole set over a huge canvas tank full of water. They swatted each other until one fell in.

‘Corporal Baxter told you to enter for the pillow-fight?’

‘Yessir. It wisnae that, but. It was whit he said – that Ah needed a damned good wash, an’ that way Ah would get one.’

Some things need no great explanation. This one was clear in an instant. McAuslan, the insanitary soldier, on being taunted by the spruce young corporal, had suddenly rebelled; what had probably started off as a mocking joke on Baxter’s part had suddenly become a formal order, and the enraged McAuslan had refused it. I could almost hear the exchanges.

But it was fairly ticklish. Young soldiers, recruits, are used to being ‘detailed’ for practically everything. Told to enter for sports, or read Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall,
or learn the words of ‘To a Mouse’, they will do these things. As they get older they get a clearer idea of what is, and is not, a legitimate military order. But the margin is difficult to define. The wise n.c.o. doesn’t give off-beat orders unless he is positive they will be obeyed, and Baxter was a fairly new corporal.

One thing was certain: McAuslan wasn’t a new private. He might still be as backward as the rawest recruit, but he had heard the pipes at Alamein and had advanced, in his own disorderly fashion, to defeat Rommel. (God help the German who got in his way, I thought, for I’ll bet his bayonet was rusty.) And Baxter’s order should not have been given to him, and he felt outraged by it. Thoughtless and zealous people like Baxter probably didn’t realise that McAuslan could feel outraged, of course.

When in doubt, grasp the essential. ‘You did disobey the order?’ I said.

‘It wisnae fair. Ah’m no’ dirty.’ He said it without special defiance.

‘That’s not the point, McAuslan,’ I said. ‘You disobeyed the order.’

‘Aye.’ He paused. ‘But he had nae —— business tae talk tae me like that.’

‘Look, McAuslan,’ I said, ‘you’ve been talked to that way before. We all have, it’s part of the business. If you don’t like it you can make a formal complaint. But you can’t disobey orders, see? So I’m going to admonish you.’ Privately, I was going to eat big lumps out of the officious Corporal Baxter too, but for the sake of discipline McAuslan wasn’t going to know that. ‘All right, Sergeant-Major.’

‘Ah’m no’ takin’ that, sir,’ said McAuslan, unexpectedly. ‘Ah mean . . . Ah’m sorry, like . . . but Ah don’t see why Ah should be admonished. He shouldnae hiv spoke tae me that way.’ You could have heard a pin drop. For a minute he had me baffled, and then I recovered.

‘You’re admonished,’ I said. ‘For disobedience, which is a serious offence. Think yourself lucky.’

‘Ah’m no’ bein’ admonished, sir,’ he said. ‘Ah want tae see the C.O.’

‘Oh, don’t be so bloody silly,’ I said. ‘You don’t want anything of the sort.’

‘Ah do, sir. Ah’m no’ bein’ called dirty.’

‘You are dirty,’ interposed the sergeant-major. ‘Look at ye.’

‘Ah’m no‘!’ shouted McAuslan, all sense of discipline gone.

‘Quiet!’ I said. ‘Now, look, McAuslan. Forget it. This is just nonsense. Everyone has been called dirty, some time or other. You have, I have, probably the sergeant-major has. There’s nothing personal about it. We all have.’

‘No’ as often as I have,’ said McAuslan, martyred.

‘Well, you must admit that your appearance is sometimes . . . well, a bit casual. But that has nothing to do with the charge, don’t you see?’

‘Ah’m no’ hivin’ it,’ chanted McAuslan. ‘Ah’m no’ dirty.’

‘Yes, y’are,’ shouted the C.S.M. ‘Be silent, ye thing!’

‘Ah’m no’.’

‘Shut up, McAuslan! Sergeant-major, get him out of here!’

‘Ah’m no’ dirty! Ah’m as clean as onybody. Ah’m as clean as Baxter . . .’

‘Don’t youse dare talk tae me like that,’ cried the enraged Baxter.

‘Ah am. Ah am so. Ah’m no’ dirty . . .’

‘Dammit!’ I shouted. ‘This is a company office, not a jungle! Get him out of here, sergeant-major!’

The C.S.M. more or less blasted McAuslan out of the room by sheer lung-power, and I heard the procession stamp away along the veranda, to a constant roar of ‘Eft-ight-eft’ punctuated by a dying wail of ‘Ah’m no’ dirty’. The nuts, the eccentrics, I thought, I get them every time. McAuslan sensitive of abuse was certainly a new one.

Five minutes later I had forgotten about it, but then the sergeant-major was back, wearing an outraged expression. McAuslan, he said, was refusing to be admonished. He was demanding to be taken before the Commanding Officer.

‘He’s crackers,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t he know when he’s well off?’

‘He says he wants to be marched,’ said the C.S.M. ‘The hell wi’ him. Let him go.’

‘The C.O.’ll murder him,’ I said. We had just got our new C.O., only a few days old, a rather precise, youngish man, decent enough, but very Sandhurst. The thought of his reaction to a disobedient McAuslan was daunting. ‘What’s got into him, anyway? He never minded being called dirty before.’

‘Ach, it’s young Baxter,’ said the C.S.M. ‘He’s too full of himself.’

‘You can see his point, mind you,’ I said. ‘The idea of McAuslan going into the tank in the pillow-fight isn’t unreasonable. Oh, well, there it is. See that he’s at C.O.’s orders at eleven.’

This is the army’s procedure. If an accused man isn’t satisfied with the justice he gets at the lowest level, he simply demands to be ‘marched’ to the next higher level, in this case the battalion commander. And so on up, if he feels like it, until he gets to the House of Lords, I suppose. I had a vision of McAuslan at Westminster, facing the Woolsack and crying: ‘Ah’m no’ dirty,’ and their Lordships intoning their verdicts, ‘Dirty, upon my honour.’ Not, as I had pointed out, that his cleanliness was strictly relevant to the charge of disobedience.

McAuslan’s meeting with the C.O. was brief and sensational. Watching it, I felt like one witnessing the introduction of an orang-utan to T. Petronius Arbiter; McAuslan shambled in with his escort, the C.O. shivered a little as though he didn’t believe it, and if he had produced a gilded pomander and swung it under his nostrils I wouldn’t have been surprised.

The evidence was called again, McAuslan’s refusal to be dealt with at company level was verified, the C.O. sighed, tucked his handkerchief into his sleeve, and asked if accused had anything to say. Accused said, predictably, that he wasn’t dirty. The C.O., equally predictably, said that had nothing to do with it, and that he found the case proved. He then asked, according to formula:

‘Will you accept my award or go before a court-martial?’ expecting the invariable acceptance. But he didn’t get it. McAuslan, by this time grey with fright – the awful majesty of the C.O.’s office quite as much as the prospect of what lay ahead must have been working on him – swayed slightly at attention, coughed horribly, rolled his eyes and closed them, and whispered hoarsely:

‘Ah wannae be court-martialled, sir, thank ye.’

The C.O. said, ‘Good God,’ and asked him to repeat himself. McAuslan did, and there was a long silence. You could see what the trouble was: the C.O. didn’t want a man going for court-martial in the first week of his command; on the other hand, he was new, and felt he must play it by the book. Our old Colonel, full of sin and experience, would have sorted it out, either by terrorising McAuslan or by playing his celebrated let-me-be-your-father role and more or less charming the accused into taking seven days’ confinement to barracks. But the new C.O. was uncertain and on his dignity; he made some effort to find out what was behind McAuslan’s determination, but he didn’t understand his man, and his austerity of manner froze McAuslan into dumb panic.

Finally the C.O. said Very well, march him out, sergeant-major, and that was McAuslan for the big time, the Bloody Assize, the works. I don’t suppose he himself had more than a vague idea what a court-martial was, and he was obviously incapable of understanding the difference between the matter of his plain disobedience (which he admitted) and the matter of Baxter’s alleged provocation. All he knew was that he wasn’t going to be punished for his resentment at being called dirty by a young corporal with half his service.