The Hill
Authors: Ray Rigby
© Ray Rigby 1965
Ray Rigby has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1965 by W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd.
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
The first truck drove through the open gates of the Field Detention Prison. The Prison Officer, or Staff, as he was normally addressed turned his head and spat as the dust and sand, churned up by the wheels of the truck, enveloped him from head to foot. He choked and swore under his breath as he closed the gates and glared after the truck, and watched it stop and reverse about two hundred yards away. The driver glanced backwards out of the cab, his face white as a clown’s where the sand and dust had crusted over the sweat on his face, then slowly edged the truck backwards, halted it, revved the engine, adjusted the controls and tipped the back of the truck high into the air and watched the sand tip out. Then, jumping out of the cab he lit a cigarette and grinned at the sullen line of prisoners who were waiting, armed with shovels, to start work.
The prisoners watched the driver leaning against the wing of his truck, smoking.
The driver inhaled then exhaled smoke and looked with a sideways grin at the prisoners. “What’s it in aid of, then?” he enquired as he looked at the small heap of sand.
No one answered him.
The driver grinned again and made a great show of enjoying his cigarette. Like the prisoners he was stripped to the waist, his body burned a deep brown. He wore celluloid goggles to protect his eyes from the dust and sand. The prisoners were less fortunate. The driver dogged out his cigarette, dropped it on the ground and buried it with the toe of his boot.
The prisoners watched him and still said nothing, but some of them had marked the place where the dog-end was buried. The driver grinned again; glancing about him to make sure he wasn’t observed by any of the prison officers he deliberately dropped a packet of cigarettes on the ground and kicked sand over it; then winked at the prisoners and walked away to the back of the truck.
One of the prisoners collected the packet and, breaking it open, shared the cigarettes with his mates. The prisoners hurriedly hid the cigarettes and the empty packet was buried in the sand again. They looked more cheerful now as they leaned on their shovels and waited for Staff Burton to join them and start bawling orders. They were not exactly looking forward to the task ahead of them. Working in the heat of the sun where the temperature varied between 110 and 120 degrees by mid-day was no joke. It was a dry heat and this helped, but it was still intensely uncomfortable.
The driver climbed back into his truck, adjusted the tipper to level again, gave the thumbs-up sign to the prisoners and got a grin out of some of them, and drove away.
Staff Burton walked across the parade ground, bawling orders at the top of his voice. The prisoners immediately started work. They shovelled the sand into a neat heap and then, on the order, flattened the heap of sand and rebuilt it again.
All day long trucks roared into the prison grounds and deposited sand, and slowly the hill began to take shape. The prisoners, bare to the waist and sweating in the intense heat, shovelled away in silent fury. More prisoners carrying heavy rocks staggered on to the hill, dropped the rocks, ran down the hill and collected more rocks and returned and dumped them on the hill; the prisoners with shovels buried the rocks in sand and so the hill grew.
For a week the prisoners worked and sweated, and then at a shouted command they stopped work and stepped back and looked at the sprawling, high, ugly, man-made heap of sand and rock. They had seen larger hills, green hills, more beautiful hills, but this hill they had sweated on and constructed themselves and they knew why they had been detailed to build it, and every man-Jack of them hated the sight of it.
It was a good seventy yards long and over sixty feet high and in the full heat of day it shimmered, and the white sand made the prisoners screw up their eyes as they looked at it.
R.S.M. Wilson walked briskly towards the hill and the prisoners sullenly watched him as he stood gazing at it, nodding his head as if well satisfied. Then he made a short run at the hill and clawed and slipped his way to the top; ran a short distance along the crown and stopped and pulled himself upright and, standing erect and straight, surveyed his kingdom. From where he stood he could see every inch of the prison and the grounds. The flat-roofed dazzling white buildings of A B C and D wings, that formed an almost perfect square, and inside the square, the parade ground, with the Union Jack hanging limply on the flag post. The pool, edged by burnt, dead grass and sand-crusted, lifeless bushes. The Field Kitchen, a large grey tent. The Chapel, a small white building with a black cross surmounting it. The medical officer’s hut, another small white building that stood alone a hundred and fifty yards from the gates.
He glanced at the high walls, mounted with barbed wire, that surrounded the prison and smiled grimly to himself. He could see clear across the walls to the transit camp opposite the prison, and watched the small khaki-clad figures lounging away another day as they waited for a posting back to their regiments. He followed the black tarmac coast road that ran alongside the prison, and for hundreds of miles in both directions. To the left on to Tripoli, to the right on to Benghazi and the salt-flats — then on to the green hills of Derna — the dustbowl called Tobruk — the empty desert. The burnt-out tanks and trucks, discarded ammunition cases, guns, old army clothing and boxwood crosses and the dead soldiers buried in the sand beneath them.
R.S.M. Wilson turned eyes left and watched the black tarmac road disappear into the town. From where he stood the town, about a mile away, looked white and cool and attractive. But he knew it to be a nondescript smelly hole. Step off the main road and you found yourself in a maze of small, narrow, evil-smelling side streets. The Wogs lived in the evil-smelling hovels and R.S.M. Wilson despised them. Small towns like this one were dotted all along the coast and how the Arab residents lived he neither knew or cared. A certain amount of bartering went on in the market places and he knew that a pound of tea, for example, would fetch a fantastically high price, as did sugar, cigarettes, flour, army clothing. The Arabs would buy practically anything and pay good prices. Outside any town an army of small boys would gather, clutching large sums of money in Italian lira in their grubby fists. Where or how they got the money no one seemed to know. They shouted and pushed and waved their money in the air, and the soldiers sold them anything they could scrounge. R.S.M. Wilson knew all this of course; half the prisoners in his care were inside for trading with the Arabs.
He smiled to himself again and squinted upwards at the sun, then shaded his eyes and watched Staff Harris drilling a squad of prisoners. The prisoners wore khaki shorts and drill shirts, dazzling white webbing and carried packs on their backs. He listened to Harris as he chanted the drill orders. “Left, right, left, right, about turn! Wait for it now. About turn. You, you, the dozy man rear rank. Yes, you dozy. I mean you. Don’t turn your head, lad. Don’t look at me. I’m no raving beauty. I’m no Betty-bloody-Grable. You know I mean you, lad, don’t you? Eyes front then. Better, that’s better. Keep them arms up then, up — keep ’em up! About turn. You look as if you’re gonna fall arse over tip, lad. Arms up, up, chin up, chest out. Better. Ace — King — Queen — Jack. Keep in time. Keep them feet moving. Better. Right turn. No talking there — I said no talking!”
Wilson noted that some of the prisoners were showing signs of fatigue. Their heavy ammo boots still pounded into the soft sand with a thud, but their legs moved just a fraction, a split fraction of a second, slower than usual, and their shoulders slumped and they leaned slightly forward, hardly noticeably. But Wilson could smell out a man who was tiring even before the man knew it himself. He watched the prisoners turn and turn again as they obeyed the orders and he could scent their resentment as they marched and stamped their heavy ammo boots in the soft yielding sand and turned and turned again. Mouths open as they sucked air into their aching lungs. On the order they halted and stood ramrod still and then, with visible relief, they obeyed the order “Stand at ease.”
Wilson marched from one end of the hill to the other. It’s a splendid hill, he thought, and the rocks beneath the soft sand will make running difficult. Yes, a splendid hill, specially constructed for defaulters and the awkward squad. And run on it they will and over it and round it. Run? They’ll fly over it by the time I’ve finished with them. I’ll have them so fit they’ll grow feathers and fly. But first — ah, first! Have to get to know it, won’t they? Have to suffer on it, eh? Get bloody great blisters on it. Punish themselves on it. Yes. They’ll have to learn about punishment and how to obey orders and not give any lip. Yes, a man will soon get tired on this hill and he won’t want to travel on it too often with the blinding sun playing down on him. R.S.M. Wilson smiled and placed his arms behind him as he looked down at the sweating, fatigued prisoners.
*
The R.S.M. kept strictly to a time-table. At 8 am. every morning he inspected the Medical Officer’s room. He walked very fast, completely ignoring the intense heat, crossed the parade ground, past B Wing, then paused outside the Medical Officer’s room and flung open the door and walked in. The room was plainly furnished. White-washed walls, a stone floor, a table, two chairs, a couch. Two large cupboards that contained medical supplies and equipment. A first aid box hanging on the wall, but all that Wilson noticed was a soiled bandage on the table.
Captain Markham jumped slightly as the door burst open, then smiled and sat up straight in his chair.
Wilson saluted. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t expect you in this early.”
“Your usual inspection, Sergeant-Major?”
R.S.M. Wilson slid the soiled bandage off the table with the end of his swagger stick and it fell into the waste-paper basket. “Doesn’t look as if you’ve had the cleaners in this morning, sir.”
“No, Sergeant-Major. Er ... ”
The R.S.M. looked about him and noticed that sand had seeped in under the door and had been trodden into the room. He frowned as he saw a grubby towel hanging over the back of a chair and moving to the wash-hand basin, he stared bleakly at the dirty water and the black scum that clung to the sides of the bowl. “I’ll chase somebody for the state this room’s in, sir.” He walked to the door, giving the room one last fleeting glance, opened it and screwed up his eyes as the sun hit him. The Medical Officer followed him and they both stared towards the prison gate.
“We’re expecting a new intake of prisoners, aren’t we, Sergeant-Major?”
“I’ve five listed, sir, but we can count on a lot more.”
“Can we?” Captain Markham lit a cigarette and dropped the dead match on to the sandy ground.
Wilson kicked sand over the dead match with the toe of his boot. “The new push has started. Soon as there’s a bit of action the bloody layabouts are begging to get inside here.”
“We’ve hardly room as it is.”
“There’s plans for expansion, sir. Get another hundred prisoners in here comfortable.”
With a grim smile he pointed with his swagger cane to a squad of prisoners who were struggling with tents and erecting them between A and B Wing.
“Tents, eh.” Captain Markham smiled as he turned back to R.S.M. Wilson. “You’ll have them complaining, Sergeant-Major.”
Wilson laughed. “Maybe, sir.”
“I still think a hundred’s an optimistic figure.”
“I’m no optimist, sir. We’ll have another hundred line dodgers in here before we’re much older.”
“Then I’ll need some help, Sergeant-Major.”
“For healthy men, sir? They won’t need your services. Just content yourself with passing them fit and leave the rest to me.”
“I know you can be relied on.”
The R.S.M slapped his leg with his swagger cane. “When I double them out of here they look like soldiers. I’ve a Special coming in, sir. A broken Warrant Officer.”
“Roberts? So they found him guilty?”
“There wasn’t no doubt about that, sir.”
“I suppose not.” Markham looked perplexed. “The damned fool. Why did he do it?”
“I want him fit, sir.”
“If he’s fit you’ll get him, Sergeant-Major.”
“I want him, sir.” Wilson stared hard at Markham, then lowered his gaze and stared critically at Markham’s protruding Adam’s apple. Markham removed his hat and wiped the sweat-band with his handkerchief, then mopped his brow. Wilson switched his attention now to Markham’s almost bald dome. Markham replaced his hat at a jaunty angle. He had bent the brim slightly in the middle and built up the front with cardboard to give it extra dash. He looked ten years younger when he wore his hat.
“I know my job,” said Markham curtly.
“He’s on his way here, sir.”
“A regular, isn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Should know better then, shouldn’t he?” Markham smiled and showed his white even teeth, then opened the door of the Medical Room and closed it behind him.
R.S.M. Wilson stared at the closed door, then turned and walked briskly away.
*
Staff Harris was showing Staff Williams over the prison. They stood in the centre of the parade ground under the limp Union Jack. No breeze to flutter it or give it even a semblance of life. Harris stabbed the air with his swagger cane. “A Wing.” He turned and pointed again. “B Wing. My lot.” He glanced down at Williams’s white knees and then up to his lobster-red face. Straight out from Blighty, eh? he thought. He was curious to have the latest news about England but decided not to make any polite enquiries yet. “C and D Wings.” Harris pointed with his stick to the east and the west, then stabbed his stick towards D Wing again. “D Wing, where we keep the niggers.” Another side-glance at Williams to get his reaction to this remark. Harris considered himself a good judge of human nature, but Williams’s face was impassive. He merely nodded his head. “Field Kitchen.” Harris pointed to the tent. “Chapel. Holy Joe’s in charge of that. Looks in the mess for a drink now and then. But he’s hard to talk to. Got the book on his mind all the time,” he added, as though that explained everything.
