The Complete McAuslan (56 page)

It was, consequently, a fairly torpid audience that I used to find awaiting me in the platoon lecture room afterwards, all 36 of them jammed into the two back rows, snoozing gently against the whitewashed walls, whence Sergeant Telfer would summon them to git tae the front and wake yer bluidy selves up. When they had obeyed, blinking and reluctant, I would announce:

‘Right. Education Period. Pay attention, smoke if you want to. Now, what we’re going on with this afternoon is . . .’

The formula never varied; it was as settled and comforting as a prayer. Whether the subject was British Way and Purpose (whatever that was, something to do with why we’d fought the war, as if anybody cared), or Care of the Feet, or How-to-get-civilian-employment-when-you-are-demobilised (a particularly useful lecture that, since it was delivered by a subaltern who’d never held a steady job in his life to a platoon who’d spent most of their time on the dole), or any of the numerous subjects prescribed by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs, it was invariably introduced as ‘what we are going on with’. Why, I don’t know; it probably dated from Marlborough’s time, and it has been the signal for successive legions of young British soldiers to settle themselves contentedly on their benches and sleep with their eyes open, dreaming about Rita Hayworth (or Florrie Ford or Nell Gwynn, depending on the era) while their platoon commander gasses earnestly at them.

There is a whole generation of elderly men in these islands today who, if you whisper ‘what we are going on with’ in their ears, will immediately relax, with an expression of feigned interest in their glassy eyes, gently munching their lips as a prelude to dropping off. That’s what army education does for you. The only way I ever discovered of reclaiming my platoon’s attention during a lecture was to drop in a reference to football or women; once, to settle a bet with the Adjutant, I read them a very long passage from Hobbes’
Leviathan
, and when they were drowsing nicely I suddenly began a sentence with the words ‘Gypsy Rose Lee’ – the effect was electric: 36 nodding heads snapped up as though jerked by wires, quivering like ardent gundogs, and 72 eyes gleamed with animation. From a lecturing point of view it posed me a difficult problem of smooth continuity, but it won me my bet.

Two subjects only were barred at education periods – religion and politics. In fact, they could be mentioned provided they weren’t, in the Army’s mysterious phrase, discussed ‘as such’ – a distinction which went for nothing when Lieutenant MacKenzie, product of Fettes and the grouse-moors, and politically somewhere to the right of Louis XIV, got embroiled during a lecture (on Useful Hobbies, of all things) with his platoon sergeant, one McCaw, who in civilian life was a Communist Party official on Clydeside. Exchanges like: ‘If ye’ll pardon me for sayin’ so, comrade – Ah mean, sir’ and ‘I’ll pardon nothing of the sort, my good man – I mean, sergeant – the General Strikers should have been put up against a wall and shot, and don’t dam’ well argue’, are not conducive to good order and military discipline. Especially when the platoon sit egging on their betters with cries of: ‘Kenny’s the wee boy! Kenny’s tellin’ ’im!’ and ‘Get tore in, McCaw! Go on yersel’!’

So politics we avoided, gratefully; for one thing, the Jocks knew far more about it than we did. Religion was even trickier, with that fundamentalist-atheist, Catholic-Protestant mixture – I recall one ill-advised debate on ‘Does God Exist?’ which would have had the Council of Trent thumbing feverishly through their references, and ended with a broken window. And of course religion in the Scottish mind – or the Glasgow mind, anyway – is inextricably bound up with sport, to such an extent that I have seen an amiable dispute on the offside rule progress, by easy stages, through Rangers and Celtic, to a stand-up fight over the fate of some ancient martyr called the Blessed John Ogilvie, in which Private Forbes butted a Catholic comrade under the chin. I wouldn’t have thought either of them cared that much, but there you are.

Thereafter I confined the education periods to personal monologues on Interesting Superstitions, How Local Government Works, and What Should We Do with Germany Now? That last elicited some interesting suggestions, until they discovered that I wasn’t advocating mass bombing or deportation, but social and political restructuring, as laid down in the Army pamphlet. After that they just dozed off again in the warm North African afternoon, salty and soporific from their swimming, until the cook-house call sounded for tea.

And then one day the Colonel, finding mischief as colonels will, discovered that his clerk at company headquarters couldn’t orient a map. This is a simple technical matter of laying a map out so that its north corresponds with magnetic north; normally you do it with an army compass. Apparently the clerk couldn’t use a compass, which didn’t surprise me — I knew there was at least one member of my platoon who didn’t know north from south, and God help the man who tried to teach him. But the Colonel was shocked; he sent out word that every man in the battalion must become a proficient map-reader henceforth, so on the next education period my lecture-room had 18 maps and compasses laid out on the big table, one to every two men, working together. This is a very sound idea; it halves the chance of total ignorance, theoretically anyway.

Looking over my platoon, I wasn’t so sure. Most of them were bright boys, but there in the front rank stood the legendary Private McAuslan, the dirtiest soldier in the world, illiteracy and uncleanliness incarnate, glaring with keen displeasure at the compass in his grimy hand.

‘Whit the hell’s this, then? Darkie no’ gaun tae give us a speech the day? Ah thought we were jist meant tae
listen
tae edumacation. Sure that’s right, Fletcher?’

‘Sharrup,’ said Private Fletcher. ‘Yer gaun tae learn tae read a map.’

‘But Ah cannae read. Darkie knows Ah cannae read. Sure he knows Ah’ve been tae the Edu-macation Sergeant for a course, an’ the daft bugger couldnae learn me anythin’. He’s a clueless nyaff, yon,’ added McAuslan, in disgust at the Education Sergeant’s shortcomings. ‘Couldnae teach ye the right time, him.’

‘Readin’ a map’s no’ like readin’ a book, dozy. It’s jist a matter o’ lookin’ at the map an’ seein’ where ye are.’

McAuslan digested this, slowly, strange expressions following each other across his primitive features. Finally:

‘Ah know where Ah am. Ah’m here.’ He dismissed the map with a sniff that sounded like a sink unblocking. ‘An’ Ah don’t need this bluidy thing tae tell me, either.’

At this point, fortunately, Sergeant Telfer called them to attention, and I got off to a smooth start by telling them that what we were going on with this afternoon was map-reading and, more specifically, map-orientation.

‘It’s quite easy,’ I said, with lunatic optimism, aware of McAuslan’s fixed stare; it was rather like being watched by a small puzzled gorilla with pimples. ‘We just have to turn the map round so that it points north. Right?’ I decided, in an unwise moment, to conduct a simple test, just to make sure that everyone knew what the points of the compass were – McAuslan. I was pretty certain, didn’t know them from Adam, but there might be others in the platoon who shared his ignorance.

‘Suppose that’s north,’ I said, indicating the wall behind me, ‘where is south-west?’

Indulgently, the platoon pointed as one man to the correct far corner of the room – with the usual single exception. McAuslan was pointing to the ceiling. By heaven, I thought, ex McAuslano semper aliquid novi. How had he worked that one out?

‘Haud on, sur,’ he said, and I realised that his raised hand had been designed simply to catch my attention. ‘Ah mean, ‘scuse me.’ He breathed heavily. ‘Wid ye mind repeatin’ that?’

‘It’s all right, McAuslan,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’m just establishing that if that’s north, then that’s south, and that’s east, over there, and that’s west. See?’

‘But you said —’

‘Now, the points of the compass are divided into 360 degrees, which means that between each of the four main points there are – ’

My frantic burst to escape from him didn’t work; his hand was up again, and he was frowning like a judge who has just heard a witness use an obscenity.

‘Degrees?’ he said suspiciously.

‘That’s right, McAuslan,’I beamed. ‘Degrees; 360 of them – ’

‘Like onna thermometer?’

I fought back a vision of myself lying in a fever, with McAuslan kneeling by my bed in a nurse’s wimple, trying to take my temperature with an army compass. ‘Not exactly,’ I said, and strove to think of a simple explanation. By God, it would have to be simple. ‘Let’s see,’ I said, improvising madly, ‘the degrees on a thermometer go up and down, but the degrees on a compass go round in a circle.’

Well, I know I’m a rotten teacher, but with McAuslan it was hard to know where to begin, honestly. And there were 35 other men in the platoon to think of, who knew what I was talking about, badly and all as I might be doing it. While McAuslan was reflecting on degrees which rotated, as against those which leaped perversely up and down, I hastened on to a practical demonstration of the army compass, showing how it must be applied to the eye so that one could see the reflected numbers moving past. Within two minutes the platoon had mastered the art, and were turning their maps in a soldier-like manner to point north, with the compasses pointing neatly along the magnetic north line.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Now they’re oriented, and if we take them outside, and orient them again, we can establish our own position on the maps, and then compare features on the maps with the things we actually see in front of us. Let’s – yes, McAuslan?’

He was glowering at me in accusation. ‘Sur,’ he demanded. ‘These maps pointin’ north?’

I admitted it, uneasily.

‘But you,’ he remonstrated, ‘said
that
wis north.’ And he pointed to the wall behind me. ‘That’s no’ the way the maps is pointin’. Oh, no. They’re pointin’ ower there, an’ – ’

It was entirely my fault, of course, for using an arbitrary illustration. ‘I’m sorry, McAuslan,’ I said. ‘Before, what I meant was,
supposing
that wall
was
north; it isn’t, really, but I was just trying to show . . . to find out . . . if everybody knew the points of the compass . . .’

He regarded me more in unwashed sorrow than anger. ‘Ye got it wrong,’ he said, tolerantly. ‘That wall’s no’ north at a’. That’s north, where the maps is pointin’, where the fellas has turned them, see, ower there, an’ —’

‘That’s right!’ I cried. ‘And we found out north by looking into our compasses, and turning them, and watching the numbers, the degrees, and – oh, God, everyone outside, Sergeant Telfer, and we’ll do it again!’

I wouldn’t have you think that I was callously abandoning McAuslan in his ignorance. After the lesson was over, and the rest of the platoon had shown that they could orient and take bearings competently, I took him aside for some special tuition. Sergent Telfer, while I was busy with the others, had shown him how to hold the compass to his eye, as a preliminary to taking a bearing, and McAuslan, having snivelled over it and complained that the bluidy thing widnae haud still, had attempted to level it out, and torn the metal cover off – a feat roughly equivalent to biting a rifle in two.

So when the others had gone I strove to impart to him the rudiments of map-reading, beginning with the fact that the sun rose in the east – yes, invariably, I said, because after half an hour of McAuslan’s company you began to doubt even the verities. There it was, going down in the west, and up there was north. That, I eventually drove home, was where the compass needle always pointed, provided you stayed well away from heavy metal objects.

‘ “Samazin” ’, was his verdict, when I had finished; he regarded the compass with some of the satisfaction Galileo might have shown in identifying a new heavenly body. ‘A’ways the same way. It’s a great thing, right enough.’

‘You can test it out when we go on a night exercise next week,’ I said. ‘We’ll find the North Star, and you’ll see that the needle always points to it. Okay, fall out, and tell the Cook-Sergeant I said you could get a late tea.’

It was more, I reflected virtuously, than I would get myself; the officers’ mess waiters would have removed the last curledup sandwiches long ago. However, I was compensated by the glow of satisfaction at having taught McAuslan something – it didn’t happen often, heaven knows, and when it did you felt like a don whose favourite student has got a starred first. I was so chuff with myself that I even boasted mildly about my triumph at dinner.

‘Don’t believe it,’ said the Colonel. ‘Fellow doesn’t know right from left. Never did.’

‘That’s a different thing, sir,’ I said. ‘A compass doesn’t tell you that. But it does point north, and McAuslan knows it — now.’

‘You’re not claiming McAuslan can
read
a compass?’ said MacKenzie. ‘I won’t have that.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘but he can look at a needle. Which is as much as most of your platoon can do. I’ll bet. I don’t see anybody in A Company giving Copernicus a run for his money, if it comes to that.’ For I was naturally defensive about McAuslan; the trouble was, everyone in the mess knew it.

‘I’ll grant you he can look at a needle,’ said the Adjutant, ‘but knowing McAuslan’s capacity for lousing things up, I’m willing to bet that any compass that has been in his hands for two minutes will probably point south, strike twelve, and sound the alarm.’

‘You’d think McAuslan was the only dumb brick in this battalion,’ I said warmly. ‘When I think of some of the troglodytes I see shambling about headquarters — to say nothing of MacKenzie’s shower of first-class minds in A Company, who have to be taught a drill for getting into bed —’

‘My platoon,’ said MacKenzie, continuing the debate on the high level which I had set, ‘can map-read a ruddy sight better than yours can.’

‘Your platoon,’ I said, ‘have difficulty reading the
Beano,
because the words are too long, and don’t have the syllables split up with hyphens, like
Chicks Own.’

‘Like to bet?’ snapped MacKenzie, and of course that did it. I was preparing to take him up on it when the Colonel, having heard the magic word ‘bet’, said he was glad to see this spirit of healthy competition, because it augured well for the series of night exercises he was planning; having given orders that his battalion should become experts in map and compass work, he was all afire to test the results.