‘Well, sir, I mean I’ve had a run of bad luck, sir, losing my stripes and all that. Now we’re on Overseas Service, sir, I want to pull myself together and make something of myself. I am a Regular, sir. I thought if there was a quick refresher course in New Delhi or somewhere …’ Modestly.
‘You’re not stupid, are you, Stubbs?’ Insultingly.
‘Sir?’ Insultingly.
‘You aren’t planning to become a proper wireless operator or anything, are you?’ Coldly. We were moving across the parade ground; I was swinging my arms a bit and looking ahead with chin up in the approved manner, and finding it a ridiculous attitude in which to conduct a conversation. There seemed no suitable answer to his question except to say again, ‘Sir?’ I injected a note of keenness into it, to be on the safe side.
‘I’ll see what I can do for you, Stubbs, but you understand I can promise nothing.’ Surprisingly.
‘Thank you, sir.’ Surprisedly.
‘Fall out.’ Inscrutably.
‘Sir.’ With a suitable dying fall.
I visualized myself in New Delhi, taking a long course by day, living with a beautiful and rich Indian girl by night, learning the language, assimilating the whole way of life – and of course getting stuck in every day. India was so vast, so complex – perhaps it would be possible, even for Army personnel, to disappear from mortal view into the life-enriching stews of its cities.
So I hoped, so I dreamed.
The gloomy fantasies of Stalin, the grandiose aspirations of Churchill, the calculations of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, had fluttered down through the lists to us, serving time in Kanchapur. They had clobbered our amphibious plan. Yet, even without such a set-back, the Army could always operate under a system specially designed to annihilate anyone’s time-sense. It punctuated long periods of inertia with sudden frenzied activity, in which everything had to be done – or half-done – in the shortest possible time.
You get switched from slow motion into rapid motion, and that was what happened to us in Kanchapur, half-way through March. Perhaps the Generalissimo had a bad night’s sleep. As a result of these switches, you don’t know – as the poetical phrase has it – whether it’s arsehole or breakfast time. Such is the advantage of the system, since what you are doing is generally insufferable by normal time standards.
Our days were measured out in cigarettes, half-smoked cigarettes, football games, and visits to the NAAFI, while we waited in the heat for everything to burst apart and be different. The lists were coming home to roost. And the Japanese were preparing their March on Delhi.
We kept fitting in one more visit to the canteen.
I was coming out of the canteen with Geordie when the wheels began to grind again. Geordie was telling me some complicated and inarticulate story about his and his father’s adventures in the Vickers engineering works in Newcastle, where he worked as a clerk, when he interrupted himself.
‘Hello, here comes trouble! I’d better push off, mate – you won’t want me. Here’s the sergeant-major with invisible stripes, your friend and my friend – Jock McGuffie!’
This was said loud enough so that Jock, coming towards us with the brisk march he reserved for public places, could catch the gist of it.
‘Aye, well, why aren’t you young soldiers on parade or away blancoing your equipment? Ye’ll get no promotion if you spend all your time boozing away in the canteen, young Geordie, I can tell you that. Now, do you mind if I have a wee word in the ear of Stubbs, here?’
‘Taking him off on another of your sort of whorehouse-bashing, Jock?’
‘Och, away to your mither’s breasts, sonny boy!’
Geordie nodded unhappily to me and walked off. Since communication was strictly codified, major meaning was conveyed non-verbally. The form of exchange between Jock and Geordie was entirely traditional, like so many of our exchanges; you took the meaning from the tone of voice and, more importantly, facial expression and gestures – they were what determined whether the intention was friendly or hostile. Geordie was definitely hostile to Jock – as far as he was definite about anything – while Jock could never be said to be friendly to anyone in any ordinary sense of the word.
There were indications, now that Geordie was heading towards barracks, that Jock was under emotional strain. He gripped my arm and looked up into my face.
‘The bastards, the fucking mean scab-devouring mankey-minded shower of mother-fuckers! They’re all for their fucking selves and no bloody mistake! I’ll do them, I’m telling you!—’
‘What’s happened, Jock?’
‘What’s happened? What’s happened? They’ve only turned down your application, that’s what’s happened!’
‘What application?’
‘Christ-on-fucking-crutches!’ He clutched his ginger skull in dismay. ‘What fucking application, he asks! Your application, man! Your application to go on a Radio Operator’s course in New Delhi, that’s what application.’
‘That! I never thought that would come off. Gor-Blimey told me—’
‘Yon bugger! Fucking Spunk Bucket! Look, mate, he could have pushed that application through if he had tried, you mark my words! Dodgey bastard! I’m going to fix him for you, you see if I don’t!’
I laughed. ‘Come on, Jock, I’ll buy you a drink.’ I made a gesture towards the canteen.
‘No, I’m not going in there, there’s someone as hates my fucking guts in there. We’ll go over to the Q stores and see my old mate, Norm – he’ll have a drink for us sure enough. But I’ll get even with Gore-Bastarding-Blakeley, I’ll fix him good and proper—’
As we moved towards the Q stores – I reluctantly, for I had detested the round-shouldered Corporal Norman since our first encounter – I said, ‘I didn’t expect the application to come off. Gor-Blimey warned me it probably wouldn’t. Burma calls, Jock, old lad, and it’s too late to get out of it now – we should have thought of that in England!’
His eyes narrowed. He went very cool and sinister. ‘Rely on Jock McGuffie … Rely on Jock McGuffie … That’s all I say! Stick by him, he’ll stick by you. We’ll get ourselves out of this yet. But by God, if I could have driven you to New Delhi, they’d never have seen us for dust!’
‘You’d got it all planned, then!’
‘’Course I’d got it all planned – what d’you take me for, a flaming idiot?’ We were coming to the Q stores now, and he led round the back, always with his own guarded air, as if alert for ambush. ‘But I’ve got other plans, you know that? Ay, other plans … There’s a mucker of mine up at Division, and I’ll be away to see him this evening. He’ll help me with a little idea I’m working on. Never fear, laddie – we’ll get even with all those wey-faced bullshitting …’
His voice sank to a scurrilous hum. We walked forward into the building, our eyes adjusting to the dimness. The stores was a small warehouse choked with shelves and lockers, and tiny rooms made out of lockers and shelves, where everything from bales of barbed wire to heavy winter woollen underpants unfit for tropical use were piled, in the type of order peculiar to the Army: that is, alphabetically, so that bags, kit, universal; blankets, barrack; blouses, battledress, serge; boots, ankle; bowls, washing, enamel; braces, trousers for, pairs of; buckets, fire, iron; buckets, assorted; and burgees, marking, large and small, were all to be seen piled in one grey corner, despite their natural antipathy for one another.
In the middle of this three-dimensional excess of spelling, Corp Phil Norman, known as Norm, had his being; and the smell of his permanently burning fags could be traced to a cubbyhole where, snug among masks, dust; masks, eye; and mats, fibre; on the one hand, and sheets, waterproof; and shirts, bush; in various sizes on the other, he lived, slept and entertained his friends.
As Jock and I moved towards the front of the stores, picking our way along an aisle where an Indian orderly was arranging kit in lockers, we came upon Norm. He stood at the ’shun, his pale eyes looking meekly upwards at – none other than Captain Eric Gore-Blakeley him
self.
‘Yes, sir, yes, sir!’ he was saying smartly, interrupting himself to cry to the orderly, ‘Ali, don’t slack off, now, get all them vests bundled up proper-like!’ Then again, ‘Yes, sir, yes, sir!’
To a certain extent horrified at the presence of any officer, and our platoon commander in particular, I turned to check on Jock’s reaction. He was retreating fast, signalling to me, signalling to Norm over Gore-Blakeley’s shoulder, contorting his face into extraordinary caricatures of warning (to me), hatred of officialdom (to Norm) and devotion to military discipline (to the Captain’s back). At this moment, Gor-Blimey turned and saw us; the devotion-to-military-discipline expression became frozen on Jock’s face while, in mid-step, he changed from a fugitive about to scram through the rear door to a soldier advancing to salute his superior officer.
‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, I was just coming to see Corporal Norman about a bit of transport business, sir.’ He marched past me and stood before Gor-Blimey, who surveyed him without pleasure – not that I had ever seen Gor-Blimey survey anyone with pleasure. I sprang to attention behind McGuffie, noting that his left hand was gesticulating to me behind his back.
‘I wanted to see you, McGuffie.’
‘Sir. I am here, sir.’ He managed to contort his frame into an attitude of compliance while remaining at the ’shun.
‘So I notice. It’s about the non-delivery of a desk to the detachment at Indore. Your pigeon, I believe.’
‘Desk, sir? Desk? Oh, yes, sir, the metal desk! Well, I can easily explain that, sir, you’re quite right to complain about it – in fact I’ve been complaining about it myself, sir, only this morning, as it happens—’
Gor-Blimey’s face looked as expressionless as those stone things on Easter Island. ‘Right, well, I’ll hear about that after tiffin, McGuffie. Report to my office before parade. Just now, I’m giving Corporal Norman instructions.’
‘Ay, I quite understand, sir. No offence, sir, but I’m a bit busy myself just now—’
‘Dismiss!’
McGuffie saluted smartly and turned, giving me ferocious grimaces as he passed. I interpreted them as meaning I should retreat too – which was quick of me, since I was partly preoccupied with the way Jock, in addressing the captain, had anglicized his voice, using an expression like ‘just now’, where normally he would have said something sounding like ‘th’ noo’.
As I was also turning to go, Captain Gore-Blakeley said, ‘Stubbs, I want you!’
‘Sir!’
‘Stand at ease.’ I stood there while he resumed his talk with Norm. It was a technical discussion to do with kit inventories and kit surpluses in which I took no interest, beyond noting that Norm had now relaxed so much that a lighted stump of fag appeared in his hand as he and the captain bent over their lists. The mention of Rear Baggage Party made me listen more closely. Norm was part of Kanchapur’s permanent cadre; he would be responsible for seeing that our company moved forward with stores up to strength.
‘… We can leave that aspect to the sergeant-major,’ Gore-Blimey was saying. ‘And I want Stubbs in the rear detail. The CO thinks he should be given the chance to get his stripes back.’
He turned abruptly to me and said, ‘Stubbs, since we are to be moving into action pretty soon, your application for refresher course has been turned down by Brigade HQ. All courses are cancelled w.e.f. date, throughout the division.’
‘Sir.’
‘Will you be moving straight into action, sir, do you know?’ Norm asked.
‘It is pretty common knowledge that 2 Div, which is at present spread all over the sub-continent, is moving eastwards towards the catchment areas.’
‘I suppose 2 Div will be heading for the Arakan, sir.’ Norm said this in a tone implying that Gor-Blimey had a master plan in mind.
‘That is not for me to say.’
‘Oh, of course not, sir. It’s a terrible country to fight in, is the Arakan, terrible country. The White Man’s Grave.’
‘The Fourteenth Army is trained to fight anywhere.’
‘Of course it is, sir. Unfortunately, the Japs are too.’
Gore-Blakeley, who had been showing off his inflexibility of mind by maintaining this side-conversation without removing his gaze from me, now said to me, as if Norm had vanished, ‘If we all come out of Burma intact, I suggest you re-apply for an operator’s course then.’
Directly he took his attention from Norm, the latter – having squeezed a precious drop of information for himself – did vanish, fading into the recesses of his drab emporium as if he had never been.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Don’t get involved in any more fights, Stubbs. You’ll be able to exercise your warlike spirit in Burma now.’
‘Sir, I don’t believe I have a warlike spirit.’
‘Nonsense, man, don’t argue! There’s a touch of nonconformity in you, isn’t there, Stubbs?’
‘Sir?’
‘I’ve seen those pictures above your bunk, those gruesome Hindu gods.’
There wasn’t much I could say to this. We let his statement lie between us, undisturbed apart from the shuffling movements of the Indian orderly, who was pushing boxes of badges, regimental, along shelves. Most of us had pictures above our beds, mainly girls, cut from the Daily Mirror or Lilliput or Razzle; they were standard wanking-pit equipment, as the phrase went. Among my nudes lurked the Monkey God and other evil deities which not all the platoon’s jibes had induced me to take down.
‘Are you interested in Hindu gods, Stubbs?’
‘I s’pose I am, sort of, sir.’ I was as adept in my way as McGuffie in adopting the current idiom.
Gor-Blimey just stared at me, then said, ‘I shall be in charge of rear detail when we move out of Kanchapur. A signaller might be needed. You’ll come under Corporal Dutt. Okay? Your name will come up on Orders in a day or so.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Christ!
He was making to go. Norm emerged from the shadows, pinching out an inch of cigarette as he came.
‘If I might make a suggestion, sir, since I’ve seen many a rear detail leave here and sometimes kit getting lifted – you know how it is, sir. It might help to have a good reliable driver i/c the M/T move. Perhaps I might suggest Driver McGuffie, who’s proved his worth.’
‘How reliable is he?’
‘Oh, he’s very reliable, sir, and of course he knows everyone.’
‘Well, I’ll be speaking to him this afternoon.’
‘Thank you, sir! I’ll leave it in your hands, then.’
Gor-Blimey left after the usual cascade of salutes. Norm nodded to me superciliously. ‘It was touch-and-go there then!’ By screwing his head round to one side, he managed to light up his inch of cigarette without burning his nose.
‘How do you mean?’
‘What I say – it was touch-and-go there for a minute! I thought the bugger was after your ring. I wouldn’t trust him further than what I could throw him.’
‘Piss off!’
‘Don’t you tell me to piss off, mate! You’ve been busted, and don’t you forget it.’
‘I’ll bust your fucking nose!’
He pointed a yellowed finger to his stripes. ‘What do you think these are, then? Scotch mist? Look, mate, I’ve got nothing against you but you want to get some service in. I thought Jock was a mate of yours?’
‘What if he is?’
‘Well, then, you want to speak up for your mates, don’t you? The way I did. If you want to get on in this man’s Army, you got to know who your mates are and stick by them, and never mind all the rest of the shower.’
‘I’ll remember what you say.’
He had now sidled behind his counter and stood there with his hands resting on it, blowing smoke from his morsel of cigarette.
‘I’ll tell you summink else. You want to watch your step with me, or you’ll be in trouble, see?’
At that particular moment, my inclination was to get out of the stores and enjoy a breath of air unflavou
red by old denims.
‘I’m not looking for trouble! I came in here perfectly friendly with Jock, didn’t I? What are you getting so snooty for? You were sucking up to officers a couple of minutes ago.’
‘This place is out of bounds, you know that? Except to my mates. Another thing, you call me Corporal, get it? You want to watch your step with me, mate, ’cos I can be a bit dodgey at times, like. I’ve got a lot of friends round this camp, more than what you might think, see? What did Jock want, anyhow?’
‘Something about a mate of his at Div, I believe.’
‘What mate at Div?’
‘He didn’t happen to tell me. All right if I go now?’
He took the fag out of his mouth and rubbed his nose with a knuckle. ‘What are you waiting for?’
You could tell the real regular soldiers, I thought. They formed an army within an army. People like McGuffie and the detestable Norm, and Rusk in the cookhouse were regulars by temperament. Conscripts like Wally Page and Enoch and Geordie were mere innocents by comparison. It was much like old lags versus first offenders in prison.
The lists were coming home, like rooks in evening light. Our prison was altering shape, propelling us towards Burma and the fighting for which we had been trained. Ali confirmed it: ‘You go Calcutta first, sah’b, then across the Bramaputra River to the Burma Land.’ But Ali had been making similar noises for some weeks.
The atmosphere in the barracks changed slightly. We could hear the jungle noises from the East. They made our last few days in Kanchapur unreal.
I managed a letter home. I walked alone near Kanchapur, making one or two crude landscape sketches on a signals message pad – the relic of a craft I had learnt mainly for Veronica’s sake. I played football, drank, laughed, swore, determined to have one last woman before we went into action and all got blown to bits.
The nightly piss-ups grew more riotous, the morning runs more strenuous. On the last night but one before the main force moved out of Kanchapur, I was almost flat broke, and went down to the Vaudette with Aylmer and Geordie to sit in the four anna seats and watch Humphrey Bogart in ‘Casablanca’, a Warner Brothers film; Warner Brothers were then my favourite studio, because they had Ida Lupino on the payroll.