The Complete McAuslan
‘It’s bluidy great,’ he said solemnly. ‘Wonderfullest song ever wrote. ‘Atsa fac’, sur.’
He really meant it, and I knew McAuslan well enough to be aware that when he believed something, it was engraved on marble, or whatever his brain was made of. And while musical obsession was something new, well, different strains work their magic on different ears, and if he was enthralled by ‘Because’, I wasn’t going to argue – on his recent showing, it wouldn’t have been safe. I left his cell thinking there were many things that I knew not, and the deeps of McAuslan’s mind was the first of them. Why ‘Because’? Was I missing something? I whistled the tune absently, and paused, repeating the words under my breath.
Because you come to me
With naught save lo-ove . . .
‘Beg pardon, sir?’ said Sergeant McGarry anxiously, and I left hurriedly, still pondering why that ordinary (even syrupy, as Chisholm had said) little tune should stir such passion in my platoon’s answer to Karloff. Tauber sang it beautifully, to be sure, but hardly well enough to justify battery. Having nothing better to do, I turned off to the library, which was empty at that time of night and still bore signs of the evening’s discord; ‘Because’ was still on the gramophone, so I cranked the handle and let her rip, and Tauber hadn’t unleashed more than a couple of sobs before there was a cry of alarm from the inner office and the Padre shot out, pale-faced and hiding his spectacles; he stopped with a gasp of relief and subsided on a chair.
‘Thank God it’s yourself – for a minute I thought it was yon Gorbals troglodyte back again. Has McGarry bound him with fetters of brass, I hope?’
‘Sorry I startled you, bishop. Just doing some research on Tauber.’
The Padre cocked a critical ear. ‘Ah, the Cherrnan lieder. Chust so. Fine voices, but they aye sound to me as though they’ve got something trapped. I’m an Orpheus Choir man myself, and a wee bit of Brahms, but I’ve no taste. “Because”, eh? I once knew a tenor who sang it in the Gaelic . . . mind you, he was from Tiree . . .’
‘Wonder why it appeals to McAuslan?’
‘Who can say?’ The Padre prepared to go into a Hebridean philosophic trance. ‘Barrack-room sentiment? Childhood memory? Maybe his mother sang him to sleep wi’ it.’ He shivered. ‘Can ye picture such a woman? Mrs Medusa McAuslan. Aye, well, I could have seen her son far enough this night, the ruffian. And yet,’ he gave a reflective sigh, ‘there’s consolation in it, too. Better that he and Chisholm should thrash each other over music than over cards or drink or the Rangers and the Celtic. D’ye not think so, Dand?’
One who didn’t was the Colonel. He gave them three days in close tack, with stoppage of pay for damages. The platoon, when the cause of the brawl became known, waxed hilarious over McAuslan’s Orphean tendencies, but when I heard that Private Fletcher had serenaded beneath his cell window with a ribald version of ‘Because’, I thought it time to warn them that they were playing with dynamite, and added that if in future McAuslan was provoked to violence by musical humour, the joker could expect no mercy, d’you get that, Fletcher? I probably needn’t have bothered, for soon after his release the episode was forgotten in a new sensation from which McAuslan emerged, briefly, as something of a celebrity.
I have described the great Inter-Regimental Quiz elsewhere. What happened was that, to settle a bet between our colonels, a team from the neighbouring Fusiliers was matched against one from our battalion in a general knowledge competition, held in the presence of the Brigadier, garrison society, and a baying mob of supporters from both regiments. After a gruelling struggle in which I, for one, was drained of my great store of trivia, and the Padre was reduced to the point where he couldn’t tell the Pentateuch from the Apocrypha, the contest ended in a tie, at which stage the Brigadier, who was the biggest idiot ever to wear red tabs, said the thing should be settled by one sudden-death question which he would put to both sides and, if they couldn’t answer, to their supporters. Naturally we all cried sycophantic agreement, and the Brigadier, bursting with self-satisfaction, propounded the most fatuous hypothetical trick-question you ever heard: how can one player score three goals at football without anyone else touching the ball in between?
We didn’t know, of course, and suggested politely that the thing was impossible. Not so, said the Brigadier smugly; it was unlikely, granted, but theoretically possible – and that was the great moment when McAuslan, eating chips in the audience, rose from his seat like a fly-blown prophet and gave the right answer.4 It seemed he had once heard it in a Glasgow pub; what that says about the Brigadier’s intellectual circle you must judge for yourselves. Anyway, the Brigadier was delighted, and congratulated McAuslan, who won a box of Turkish Delight for his pains.
A harmless incident, apparently, but pregnant with disaster. For the Brigadier, gratified that his ridiculous question had broken the deadlock, remarked to our Colonel in the mess afterwards that he’d been impressed by that odd-looking bird who’d come up with the answer. What was his name again? McAuslan, eh? Not the kind, from his appearance. whom you’d expect to be able to solve a knotty problem like that – why, the Brigadier had been stumping people with it for years. Well, it just went to show, you couldn’t judge a sausage by its . . . by its . . . oh, dammit, he’d forget his own name next . . . yes, by its skin, that was it.
‘Kind of chap I used to watch out for in my battalion days,’ mused the Brigadier. ‘Chaps with potential often look a bit . . . well, strange. Wingate, for instance.’ I had a brief dreadful vision of McAuslan leading the Chindits, and then the Brigadier dispelled it with one of the most shocking suggestions ever made.
‘This chap McAuslan,’ he asked the Colonel, ‘ever thought of making him an N.C.O.?’
The Colonel admitted later that he hadn’t been so shaken by a question since the Japanese interrogated him on the Moulmein railway – and at least he’d been able to tell them to go to hell. With the Brigadier – whom he’d been heard to describe as an ass who ought to be put in charge of a company store and excused boots – he decided to employ controlled sarcasm.
‘Interesting idea, sir,’ he said smoothly. ‘Of course, we’ve thought long and hard about McAuslan. Haven’t we, MacNeill? We don’t overlook men of his calibre, not in this battalion. But as you know, sir, there are some men who simply won’t accept promotion. Pity, but what can one do? Waiter, another round here.’ Perfectly true, and totally misleading – there are men who won’t take promotion, but McAuslan was the last who was likely to get the chance.
The Brigadier frowned and said exceptional men should be persuaded; it was the Army’s duty to make them realise their full potential. The Colonel smiled – I guessed he was on the point of suggesting innocently that the Brigadier should take McAuslan into Brigade H.Q., possibly in Intelligence, but fortunately someone came up at that moment and the subject was changed.
‘That’s what they put in command of brigades nowadays,’ observed the Colonel, when the Brigadier had gone. ‘Well, thank God they kept him in Cairo during the war. Waiter, bring me another – and you can stop smirking, young Dand, and concentrate on keeping that blot McAuslan out of the public eye in future.’
That was easier said than done at the best of times, and now a combination of circumstances arose to make it impossible. First, Bennet-Bruce went off on yet another of those luxurious courses that seem to come the way of military Old Etonians - if it wasn’t Advanced French at Antibes it was water-skiing at Djerba – and our company came under the temporary command of that debonair and dangerous exquisite, Captain Errol. Secondly, the rest of the battalion, Colonel, H.Q., Support Company and all, went off on a seven-day exercise in the big desert, leaving only D Company to rattle about in the deserted barracks; officially we were maintaining a military presence, but in fact we were cleaning and decorating the transport sheds for the big occasion of the regimental year, Waterloo Night, which would be celebrated with dance and revelry on the evening of the battalion’s return. Thirdly, Private McAuslan went wit
h a fatigue party to collect extra furniture for the dance from the Brigade quartermaster.
All innocent events in themselves; it was their coincidence that made them lethal.
The Brigadier, returning from what must have been an unusually excellent lunch, happened by just as the fatigue party were loading their truck, and recognised McAuslan (as who wouldn’t) among them. Feeling paternal, he summoned the toiler and asked him what was all this nonsense about refusing promotion, eh? What McAuslan said is not recorded; no interpreter was present, and he was presumably in his usual state of stricken incoherence before High Authority. The Brigadier shook his head kindly and spoke of ambition and advancement; he may even have told McAuslan there was a baton in his knapsack (it was his good luck he couldn’t see inside McAuslan’s knapsack, not after lunch). Finally, he said why didn’t McAuslan change his mind and accept a lance-corporal’s stripe as the first step to higher things. I assume that at this point McAuslan made some noise which was taken for assent, for the Brigadier cried capital, capital, he would see to it, and ‘Carry on, Corporal!’
Most great military blunders stem from the good intentions of some high-ranking buffoon, but in fairness it has to be said that the Brigadier was seeing McAuslan at his best - awestruck dumb, naked save for identity discs and khaki shorts which gave no real idea of how revolting he looked in uniform, and engaged in the only work of which he was capable; to wit, carrying heavy and unbreakable objects across level ground under supervision. Even so, one good look at that neanderthal profile should have warned even a staff officer; perhaps he was short-sighted, and the lunch had been quite exceptional.
Strictly speaking it isn’t a Brigadier’s business to interfere in minor promotions, and if when he phoned the barracks he’d got the Colonel or Bennet-Bruce they would have thanked him for his recommendation and then forgotten about it. But in their absence he got Errol, who could have given lessons in mischief to Loki, and when the Brigadier said that a tape should be stuck on McAuslan’s arm forthwith, our temporary commander said he would be delighted to comply; he’d often thought McAuslan was due for a boost upstairs, and he would take the liberty of congratulating the Brigadier for having spotted talent from his Olympian height, or words to that effect. Knowing Errol’s line of oil, I imagine the Brigadier may have wondered if he shouldn’t have put McAuslan straight up to sergeant.
So there it was: the appointment of 14687347 McAuslan, J., to lance-corporal (acting, unpaid) went on company orders that afternoon, and my reaction, on returning from a hard day in the transport shed and suffering a minor apoplexy when I heard the news, was to inquire of Errol if he had gone doolaly, and if not, what was he playing at?
‘Respecting the wishes of my superiors,’ he said languidly, with his feet on the desk. ‘Have some tea.’
‘Are you kidding? Look – hasn’t anyone told you about McAuslan? The brute’s illiterate, his crime sheet’s as long as a toilet roll, he’s had to be forcibly washed God knows how often, he doesn’t know left from right, can’t tell the time of day, and is, at a conservative estimate, the dirtiest and dumbest bad bargain His Majesty’s made since Agincourt!’
‘You paint a pretty picture,’ he said. ‘Care to argue with the Brigadier, Mr MacNeill?’
‘Care to explain to the Colonel, Captain Errol? He’ll have your guts for garters.’
‘I’m just the slave of duty. When Brigadiers say unto me, go – I’ve gone already.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘it isn’t on. For one thing, my Jocks won’t wear it. Can you see them taking orders from that . . . that walking tattie-bogle? They’ll mutiny.’
‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Anyway, he’s been promoted. What d’you want me to do – bust him straight back? Without a reason?’
‘I’ve just given you about seventeen!’
‘For not promoting him, yes. Not for busting him. There’s a difference. The deed’s been done, he’s got his stripe, and he’s entitled to his chance.’ He raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘You ought to appreciate that – you’ve been a lance-jack yourself, and see where it got you.’
‘You’re a bastard, you know that?’
‘So they tell me,’ said Errol complacently. ‘Come on, let’s have a drink and I’ll play you fifty up before dinner.’
It was only when my initial outrage at the Brigadier’s folly (and Errol’s malicious acquiescence) had subsided that the enormity of the thing really sank in. McAuslan simply couldn’t begin to be a lance-corporal. You just had to picture the sequence of events when he shambled out, looking as though he’d just been cut down from the Tyburn gibbet, with a new stripe on his sleeve: the Jocks would collapse in mirth, McAuslan would give an order, it would not be taken seriously, and he would charge someone with disobedience – assuming he knew how. Then what? How could I, with a straight face, punish an honest soldier for ignoring an order given by a deadbeat whose military unfitness was a battalion byword? It might even be argued that McAuslan, whose imperative vocabulary consisted mainly of ‘Sharrup!’ and ‘Bugger off!’ was incapable of giving a lawful command. Suddenly the Nuremberg trial took on a whole new aspect, and I had to fight down a vision of the Tartan Caliban sitting in the dock scratching himself while the Nazi war criminals scrambled to keep away from him. More immediate pictures presented themselves: McAuslan, whose mere touch brought rust, inspecting rifles . . . McAuslan reprimanding someone for slovenliness . . . McAuslan calling the roll when he couldn’t even read. It was all a nightmare, impossible.
The effect on discipline would be disastrous. It was also, incidentally, most unfair to the man himself. Lance-corporal (which is an appointment, without even the dignity of a rank) is the most thankless number you can draw in the Army, a dogsbody’s job with responsibilities but no real power, as I knew from experience of which Errol had reminded me, although he probably didn’t know that I’d been a lance-jack no fewer than four times and been busted back to private on three of them – for losing, on different occasions, a tea-urn, a member of my section, and a guardroom.5 I had painful memories of trying to take charge, at the age of nineteen, of ten men all older and longer served than I was, of being the butt both of superiors and subordinates, and of the shame of those three reductions to the ranks. The fourth promotion, in Burma, was different; then it was life or death, with no time for doubts or indecisions, and I had kept my stripe. But it’s no fun, having that one tape (look what it did to Hitler) and for McAuslan, with all his natural handicaps, I could see it being traumatic.
I was dead wrong. Whoever suffered from that promotion, it wasn’t him. He took to that stripe like a Finnish sailor to schnapps; you’d have thought he’d been born with it. With the help of a new suit of khaki drill (issued, I later discovered, on the orders of the unpredictable Errol) he managed to look semi-human for his first few hours in authority, and in that time he became, in his own mind at least, a lance-corporal. He didn’t look, act, or sound like one, but he plainly felt like one, God help us. The presence of that newly-blancoed white chevron on his ill-fitting sleeve seemed to fill him with aggressive confidence, and he lumbered around like a badly-wrapped mummy bellowing irrelevant orders at anything that moved. And like many a dim-wit before and since he got by on the sheer force of his own ignorance and the tolerance of those around him. Greeted with derision by his section, he didn’t seem to notice; having reduced the elementary business of marching them to the transport sheds to a shambolic rout, he simply blared abuse – and they got there, eventually; after all, they knew the way. With no idea of how to organise a work-gang, he just repeated, with coarse embellishments, the orders of the full corporal in overall charge, and since no one paid any attention, no harm was done. He thought he was doing fine.
He wouldn’t have survived ten minutes of normal military duty, but supervising men as they heave planks and trestles around is simple stuff, and with the battalion away there was a relaxed and informal atmosphere undisturbed by parades, bugle calls, sergeant-majors, and the usual disciplinar
y apparatus with which he couldn’t have begun to cope.
To our shame, Sergeant Telfer and I kept out of the way. Our unspoken excuse was that we had to oversee the hanging above the bandstand of the Waterloo Picture, a gigantic oil painting (by Lady Butler, I think) which normally hung in the mess but was publicly displayed on this annual occasion. It showed the great moment which was the regiment’s pride, when our predecessors, having taken everything the French could throw at them, had caught hold of the stirrup leathers of the advancing Scots Greys and launched themselves against the overwhelming strength of Napoleon’s army in what posterity calls the Stirrup Charge; there has never been anything like it in war, and the Emperor himself is said to have stared in disbelief at ‘those Amazons’ and ‘the terrible grey horses’. We hung it just so, in its massive gilt frame, and as we worked we could hear, from the far end of the great echoing shed, sounds of the New Order being imposed on Three Section: McAuslan’s raucous bellows of ‘Moo-ove yersels, ye idle bums, or Ah’ll blitz ye!’ and ‘Ah heard that, Fletcher! Whit d’ye think this is on mah sleeve – Scotch mist?’ responded to with derisive obscenities. Obviously the section thought him a great hoot.
I knew that wouldn’t last long. Being ordered about by McAuslan might be an amusing novelty for a few hours, especially when the orders were superfluous, but they’d get fed up fast enough when the orders mattered and had to be obeyed, and the total unfitness of the thing came home to them. We had an example of this when Telfer put Three Section to tidying up the outside approaches to the sheds and I suggested that the stone borders of the paths could do with a lick of whitewash. Before Telfer could translate this into an order, Lance-Corporal Grendel, who had been lurking attentively, sprang into executive action.
‘Whitewash, sur! Right, sur, right away!’ He lurched forward, tripping on his untied laces, full of martial zeal. ‘Youse men – Forbes, Fletcher, Leishman! Get yersels doon ra Q.M. store! Get ra whitewash’n’brushes! C’moan, c’moan, c’moan, Ah’m no talkin’ tae mysel’! Moo-ove, ye shower, or Ah’ll be havin’ ye!’