The Complete McAuslan (3 page)

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, care-free 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, Ah 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 told myself it was early days yet. They were a better platoon than I had expected; they were aged round about twenty, a year younger than I was, they were good on drill, did a fifteen-mile route march in five hours without any sign of distress, and on the rifle range were really impressive. But they were not what could be called forthcoming; off parade they were cheery enough with each other, but within my orbit they fell quiet, stolid and watchful.

As I say, I don’t know what I expected, but I began to feel depressed. There was something missing; they did what they were told smartly – well, fairly smartly; they took no liberties that I noticed. But if they didn’t dislike me they certainly didn’t seem to like me either. Perhaps it was my fault; they were happy enough with Bennet-Bruce and any other company officers who came into contact with them. I envied Macmillan, the subaltern of Ten platoon, who had been in the battalion about six months and abused his platoon good-naturedly one minute and tore strips off them the next; they seemed to get on with him. I wondered if I was the Tiberius type (‘let them hate me so long as they fear me’), and concluded I wasn’t; it seemed more likely that the Selection Board who took me out of the ranks had just been wrong.

In the mess things went fairly well until one evening I knocked a pint glass accidentally off the arm of a chair, and a liverish major blasted my clumsiness and observed that there were only about half a dozen of those glasses left. I apologised, red-faced but faintly angry; we looked at each other with mutual dislike, and the trivial incident stuck in my mind. Other things were prickling vaguely, too; my service dress wasn’t a good fit, and I knew it. I suspected (wrongly) that this gave rise to covert amusement and once this tiny seed had taken root I was half-way to seeing myself as a laughing-stock.

This can be a dreadful thing to the young, and not only the young. In no time at all I was positive that my platoon found me faintly ridiculous; occasionally I caught what I thought was a glint of amusement in an eye on parade, or heard a stifled laugh. I would tell myself I just imagined these things, but then the doubts would return.

One morning there was a platoon rifle inspection, and I must have been on the down-swing, because I went on it half-conscious of a resolve to put somebody on a charge for something. This, of course, was a deplorable attitude. I had never charged anyone yet, and I may have felt that I ought to, pour encourager the platoon in general. Anyway, when I came to a rifle in the middle rank that seemed to have dirt in the grooves of the barrel, I nailed its owner.

He was a nondescript man called Leishman, rather older than the others, a quiet enough character. He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him his rifle was dirty, and then I turned to Sergeant Telfer and said, ‘Put him on a charge.’ (Six months later I would have said, ‘Leishman, did you shave this morning?’ And he, dumbfounded, knowing his chin was immaculate, would have said, ‘Yes, sir. I did, sir.’ And I would have said, ‘Of course you did, and it’s all gone down the barrel of your gun. Clean the thing.’ And that would have been that.)

I went off parade feeling vaguely discontented, and ten minutes later, in the company office, Cormack the clerk observed that I had shaken Leishman, no mistake. He said it deadpan, and added that Leishman was presently in the armoury, cleaning his rifle. Puzzled, for I wondered why Cormack should be telling me this, I went off to the armoury.

Sure enough, there was Leishman, pulling the cleaning-cloth through his rifle, and crying. He was literally weeping. I was shocked.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said, for this was a new one to me.

He snuffled a bit, and wiped his nose, and then it came out. He had been five years in the army, his discharge was coming up in a few weeks, he had never been on a charge in his life before. He was going to have his clean sheet marred almost on the eve of getting out.

‘Well, for God’s sake,’ I said, relieved more than anything else. ‘Look, don’t get into a state. It’s all right, we’ll scrub the charge.’ I was quite glad to, because I felt a warning would have done. ‘I’m certainly not going to spoil your record,’ I said.

He mumped some more, and pulled his rifle through again.

‘Let’s have a look at it,’ I said. I looked down the barrel, and it still wasn’t all that good, but what would you? He was obviously badly upset, but he muttered something about thanks, which just made me uncomfortable. I suppose only born leaders don’t find authority embarrassing.

‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘Give it another few pulls-through, and keep your eye on it until your ticket comes through. Okay?’

I left him to it, and about ten minutes later I was passing the door of Twelve platoon barrack-room, and heard somebody laughing inside. I just glanced as I went by, and stopped short. It was Leishman, sitting on his bunk at the far end, laughing with a bunch of his mates.

I moved on a few steps. All right, he had made a quick recovery. He was relieved. There was nothing in that. But he had seemed really upset in the armoury, shaken, as Cormack said. Now he was roaring his head off – the quality of the laughter somehow caught the edge of my nerves. I stood undecided, and then wheeled round and shouted:

‘Sergeant Telfer!’

He came out of his room. ‘Yessir?’

‘Sergeant Telfer,’ I said, ‘stop that man laughing.’

He gaped at me. ‘Laughing, sir?’

‘Yes, laughing. Tell him to stop it – now.’

‘But. . .’ he looked bewildered. ‘But . . . he’s just laughin’, sir. . .’

‘I know he’s just laughing. He’s braying his bloody head off. Tell him to stop it.’

‘Right, sir.’ He obviously thought the sun had got me, but he strode into the barrack-room. Abruptly, Leishman’s laughter stopped, then there was what might have been a smothered chuckle, then silence.

Feeling suicidal, I went back to my billet. Obviously Leishman had thought I was a mug; I should have let the charge stick. Let someone get away with it, even a good soldier, and you have taken some of his virtue away. On the other hand, maybe he had been laughing about something else entirely; in that case, I had been an idiot to give Sergeant Telfer that ridiculous order. Either way, I looked a fool. And my service dress didn’t fit. To hell with it, I would see the Adjutant tomorrow and ask for a posting.

I didn’t, of course. That night in the mess the liverish major, of all people, asked me to partner him in a ludo doubles against the Adjutant and the M.O. (In stations where diversion is limited games like ludo tend to get elevated above their usual status.) In spite of the M.O.’s constant gamesmanship, directed against my partner’s internal condition, we won by one counter in a grandstand finish, and thereafter it was a happy evening. We finished with a sing-song – ‘Massacre of Macpherson’ and ‘The Lum Hat Wantin’ the Croon’, and other musical gems – and the result was that I went to bed thinking that the world could be worse, after all.

In the morning when I inspected my platoon, Sergeant Telfer did not roll on the ground, helpless with laughter, at the sight of me. If anything, the platoon was smarter and faster than usual; I inspected the rifles, and Leishman’s was gleaming as though he had used Brasso on the barrel, which he quite probably had. I said nothing; there was no hint that the incident of yesterday had ever happened.

On the other hand, there was still no sign of the happy officer-man relationship by which the manual sets such store. We were still at a distance with each other, and so it continued. It didn’t matter whether I criticised or praised, the reception was as wary as ever.

Remembering the C.O.’s advice, I had reached the stage where I knew every man by name, and had picked up a few nicknames as well. Brown, a clueless, lanky Glaswegian, was Daft Bob; Forbes, the villainous-looking footballer, was Heinie (after Heinrich Himmler, it transpired); my own batman, McGilvray, was Chick; and Leishman was Soapy. But others I had not yet identified – Pudden, and Jeep, and Darkie, and Hi-Hi; one heard the names shouted along the company corridors and floating through the barrack-room doors-‘Jeep’s away for ile
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the day’, which signified that the mysterious Jeep was hors de combat, physically or spiritually; ‘Darkie’s got a rare hatchet on’, meaning that Darkie was in a bad temper; ‘yon Heinie’s a wee brammer’, which was the highest sort of compliment, and so on. It was interesting stuff, but it was still rather like studying the sounds of a strange species; I couldn’t claim to be with it.

My own batman, McGilvray, reflected the situation. He was a good worker, and my kit was always in excellent condition, but whereas with his mates he was a cheery, rather waggish soul, with me he was as solemn as a Free Kirk elder. He was a round, tousled lad with a happy pug face and a stream of ‘Glasgow patter’ which dried up at the door of my room and thereafter became a series of monosyllabic grunts.

Well, I thought, this is the way it’s going to be, and it could be worse. If I couldn’t like them, yet, I could at least respect them, for they were a good platoon; when Bennet-Bruce held his full-dress monthly inspection for the Colonel, the great man was pleased to say that Twelve platoon’s kit layout was the best in the battalion. It should have been; they had worked hard enough. Having been, for a time at least, in the Indian Army, I had my own ideas about how kit should be laid out; I had taken aside Fletcher, the platoon dandy, and shown him how I thought it should be presented for inspection – if you black the soles of your boots, for example, they look better, and a little square of red and white four-by-two cloth under an oil-bottle and pull-through is smarter than nothing at all. Fletcher had watched me stonily as I went over his kit, but afterwards he had supervised the whole room in laying out their stuff on the same pattern. Our one problem had been what to do with Private McAuslan, the dirtiest soldier in the world; I solved that by sending him into town for the day as guard on the company truck, which had nothing in it anyway. His kit was placed in an out-of-the-way cupboard, his associates affecting to be disgusted by the mere sight of it, and securely locked up.