LITMIR.BIZ

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front, with here and there a trickle of sweat or a limb shaking with the strain of standing still. I remember telling one that he was smartly turned-out, and he gave a controlled shudder, like a galvanised frog, and licked his lips nervously. I asked another whether he had volunteered for this particular regiment, and he stammered: “Nossir, I wanted to go intae the coal-mines.”

      Perhaps I was over-sensitive because I had been more than two years in the ranks myself, and had stood sweating while pinkish young men with one painfully new pip on their shoulders had looked at me. I remembered what I had thought about them, and how we had discussed them afterwards. We had noted their peculiarities, and now I wondered what mine were—what foibles and mannerisms were being observed and docketed, and what they would say about me later.

      I don’t know what I expected from that first inspection—a rapturous welcome, three cheers, or an outbreak of mutiny—but what I got was nothing at all. It was a bit damping; they didn’t seem to react to me one way or the other. Maybe I should have made a speech, or at least said a few introductory words, but all that I could think of was Charles Laughton’s address to the crew of the Bounty, which ran: “You don’t know wood from canvas, and you evidently don’t want to learn. Well, I’ll teach you.” It wouldn’t have gone over.

      So eventually I watched them fall out, and turn from wooden images into noisy, raucous young men crowding round the tea-man, abusing him happily in Glasgow-Arabic. One or two glanced in my direction, briefly, but that was all. I walked back to the company office, suddenly lonely.

      The trouble was, of course, that in the exultation of being commissioned at the end of a hectic training in India, and the excitement of journeying through the Middle East and seeing the wonderful sights, and arriving in this new battalion which was to be home, I had overlooked the fact that all these things were secondary. What it all added up to was those thirty people and me; that was why the king had made me “his trusty and well-beloved friend”. I wondered, not for the first time, if I was fit for it.

      It had seemed to go well on the day of my arrival. The very sound of Scottish voices again, the air of friendly informality which you find in Highland regiments, the sound of pipe music, had all been reassuring. My initial discomfort—I had arrived with two other second-lieutenants, and while they had been correctly dressed in khaki drill I had still been wearing the jungle green of the Far East, which obviously no one in the battalion had seen before—had quickly blown over. The mess was friendly, a mixture of local Scots accents and Sandhurst drawls, and my first apprehensions on meeting the Colonel had been unfounded. He was tall and bald and moustached, with a face like a vulture and a handkerchief tucked in his cuff, and he shook hands as though he was really glad to see me.

      Next morning in his office, before despatching me to a company, he gave me sound advice, much of which passed me by although I remembered it later.

      “You’ve been in the ranks. Good. That”—and he pointed to my Burma ribbon—“will be a help. Your Jocks will know you’ve been around, so you may be spared some of the more elementary try-ons. I’m sending you to D Company—my old company, by the way.” He puffed at his pipe thoughtfully. “Good company. Their march is ‘The Black Bear’, which is dam’ difficult to march to, actually, but good fun. There’s a bit where the Jocks always stamp, one-two, and give a great yell. However, that’s by the way. What I want to tell you is: get to know their names; that’s essential, of course. After a bit you’ll get to know the nicknames, too, probably, including your own. But once you know their names and faces, you’ll be all right.”

      He hummed on a bit, and I nodded obediently and then took myself across to D Company office, where the company commander, a tall, blond-moustached Old Etonian named Bennet-Bruce, fell on me with enthusiasm. Plainly D Company, and indeed the entire battalion, had just been waiting a couple of centuries for this moment; Bennet-Bruce was blessed above all other company commanders in that he had got the new subaltern.

      “Splendid. Absolutely super. First-class.” He pumped me by the hand and shouted for the company clerk. “Cormack, could you find another cup for Mr MacNeill? This is Cormack, invaluable chap, has some illicit agreement with the Naafi manager about tea and excellent pink cakes. Mr MacNeill, who has joined our company. You do take sugar? First-class, good show.”

      I had been in the army quite long enough not to mistake Bennet-Bruce for just a genial, carefree head-case, or to think that because he prattled inconsequentially he was therefore soft. I’d seen these caricature types before, and nine times out of ten there was a pretty hard man underneath. This one had the Medaille Militaire, I noticed, and the French don’t hand that out for nothing.

      However, he was making me at home, and presently he wafted me round the company offices and barrack-rooms on a wave of running commentary.

      “Company stores here, presided over by Quartermaster Cameron, otherwise known as Blind Sixty. Biggest rogue in the army, of course, but a first-class man. First-class. Magazine over there—that’s Private Macpherson, by the way, who refuses to wear socks. Why won’t you wear socks, Macpherson?”

      “Ma feet hurt, sir.”

      “Well, so do mine, occasionally. Still, you know best. Over yonder, now, trying to hide at the far end of the corridor, that’s McAuslan, the dirtiest soldier in the world. In your platoon, by the way. Don’t know what to do with McAuslan. Cremation’s probably the answer. Nothing else seems to work. Morning, Patterson, what did the M.O. say?”

      “Gave me some gentian violent, sir, tae rub on.”

      “Marvellous stuff,” said Bennet-Bruce, with enthusiasm. “Never travel without it myself. Now, let’s see, Ten platoon room over there, Eleven in there, and Twelve round there. Yours is Twelve. Good bunch. Good sergeant, chap called Telfer. Very steady. Meet him in a minute. No, Rafferty, not like that. Give it here.”

      We were at a barrack-room door, and a dark, wiry soldier at the first bed was cleaning his rifle, hauling the pull-through along the barrel. “Not like that,” said Bennet-Bruce. “Pull it straight out, not at an angle, or you’ll wear away the muzzle and your bullets will fly off squint, missing the enemy, who will seize the opportunity to unseam you, from nave to chaps.” He tugged at the pull-through. “What the hell have you got on the end of this, the battalion colours?”

      “Piece of four-by-two, sir,” said Rafferty. “An’ a bit o’ wire gauze.”

      “Who authorised the gauze?”

      “Eh, At got it fae the store,” said Rafferty uneasily.

      “Take it back,” said Bennet-Bruce, “and never, never use it without the armourer’s permission. You know that, don’t you? Next time you’ll be in company office. Carry on. I really do despair, sometimes. Morning, Gray. Morning, Soutar. Now, let’s see.” He stopped at the company notice-board. “‘Team to play A Company’. Good God, you’ve got me on the right wing, Corporal Stevenson. That means that Forbes here will bully and upbraid me through the entire game. I don’t really think we’re the best thing since Matthews and Carter, do you, Forbes?”

      “Just stay on yer wing,” said the saturnine Forbes. “Ah’ll pit the ba’ in front of you.”

      “Well, I rely on you,” said Bennet-Bruce, passing on. “That chap Forbes is a marvellous footballer,” he went on to me. “Signed by Hearts, I understand. You play football? Good show. Of course, that’s the great game. The battalion team are district champions, really super team they are, too. Morning, Duff …”

      And so on. Bennet-Bruce was at home. Finally, he introduced me to Sergeant Telfer, a sturdy, solid-looking man in his mid-thirties who said very little, and left us to get acquainted. This consisted of going over the nominal roll, meeting the corporals, and making polite remarks on my part; obviously if I didn’t make the running we would have long silences. However, it seemed to be going well enough for a start.

      Next day came that first inspection, and after that the routine drills and exercises, and learning people’s names, and getting into the company routine. I worked rather cautiously, by the book, tried a joke or two without response, and

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