A Soldier Erect Part 5

'You never want to listen to rumours,' Bamber said.

We had one consultant to whom we could always turn for advice. That was Ali, our char-wallah. In mid-morning, during late afternoon, and all evening until lights-out, Ali sat in or patrolled our barrack-block, selling his thin sweet tea at two annas a mug, dispensing his little sweet cakes for four annas each. He would make his last round before ten o'clock, his urn perched on top of his turban, giving out his low cry, 'Lovely cake, and char, lovely cake arid char! Last round of the evening, gentlemen, before finish!' Chaps who rolled in late would ask, 'Where's Ali?' and f.u.c.k and blind if they had missed him. Ali was a landmark.

Ali was respected. He had seen countless new intakes through Kanchapur, and knew how to deaj with them. He was regarded as a sharp old b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He ran a limited credit system, which is to say that he would occasionally let you have a mug of tea or cake when you were completely skint, on promise of payment the following Friday pay-day. He never wrote anything down, and could remember countless petty sums. By Thursday, all the boozers would be penniless and stay in barracks, playing pontoon for match-sticks and getting mugs of char to be paid for on the following day.

Apart from Ernie Dutt, our corporal, the oldest bod in 2 Platoon was Chalkie White. Chalkie was a real old sweat, with a leathery face and perfectly blancoed equipment and polished boots. He was the goalie of our team. On guard parades, Chalkie always fell out as stick-man. He spoke very quietly and was a deadly shot, like Bamber. Chalkie had been out in India before, way back in 1935; the very first day that 8 Brigade had arrived at Kanchapur, Ali came up to him and humbly demanded five rupees.

It turned out that Ali had been a char-wallah, or perhaps just a char-wallah's mate, up in Peshawar in 1935. Chalkie had then run up a debt of five rupees. Eight years and many intakes later, Ali lived to collect the cash. He never forgot a debt or a face. Chalkie, of course, paid up like a gent.

This feat of memory on Ali's part raised his stock very high in our company. It also raised Charlie's stock; he became famous as the only man who had escaped from India without paying his char-wallah.

To Ali we went for confirmation or denial of all rumours, and for obvious reasons: Ali, mindful of Chalkie's long debt, kept himself informed on all possible troop movements. He did this through the network of sweepers, bearers, and traders who worked in the camp and the company office.

It was Ali who informed us we were going to Belgaum for training in amphibious operations.

This information was greeted with groans, especially from those who had at first thought they heard Belgium mentioned.

Tin going f.u.c.king sick, me, mate,' said Wally Page, rolling his sleeves up his fleecy yellow arms and striking me three inches above the elbow. 'How about you? Belgaum! b.u.g.g.e.r that! They aren't getting this boy on any amphibious operations.'

'Perhaps it'll just sort of be for a week or two like,' suggested Geordie. 'A week or two wouldn't be too bad, would it?' He looked anxiously at Wally and me.

Td rather go to the Arakan and see a bit of action,' I said.

'Me too, Stubby! We can leave Geordie down in f.u.c.king Belgaum. Willie Swinton wants his f.u.c.king head looking at!' Willie Swinton was Lieutenant-Colonel William Swinton, Officer Commanding the 2nd Royal Mendip Borderers. 'He's just letting Mountbatten f.u.c.k him about. We could have done amphibious ops in b.l.o.o.d.y Blighty, couldn't we?'

'Not in b.l.o.o.d.y Belgaum, you couldn't,' Geordie said.

's.h.i.t in it, Geordie! I'm not splashing through mangrove swamps with a wireless set strapped to my back for Willie Swinton or anyone, I tell you straight.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks! You're off your f.u.c.king rocker, Page! You'll b.l.o.o.d.y splash when they say splash, and you know it!'

'You think so? You want to bet?'

But as usual we all splashed when they said splash, the protesters like Wally as well as the non-protesters like Geordie.

Ali was right. Belgaum, down on the west coast below Bombay, it was - there we were destined to spend Christmas, and many other weary days besides.

We marched out of barracks very early one morning in December, wearing FSMO, with exhortations from the sergeants to show bags of bull as we approached the town. As we went down the road, st.u.r.dily singing The Old Red Bags That Mary Wore, dawn flooded in behind the Pa.r.s.ec tower of silence. The night clouds were torn apart and despatched, turning from slate to gold as they went, in less time than it would take to rip through a Wagner overture, and then fading to nothing before you could tune up for the next number. There was a sort of thrilling terror in the way the sun struggled up into its sky - you knew what a pasting it was going to give you before it set.

Farewell, Kanchapur! And farewell - but I never knew her hot little name!

All that Prestatyn had ever been as a name of hatred, Belgaum became. There was no other similarity between them.

We were not in Belgaum itself - a sleezy military town which we came to look upon as a comparative haven - but in an area much nearer the coast called Vadikhasundi. Here we lived in tents for two months on a freak stretch of red desert, while all about us were jungle, rivers, creeks, hills, the sea, and the mangrove swamps predicted by Wally Page. Here we could fall off LTCs into five feet of stinking water and attack thorn-covered high ground to our heart's delight. We were often so s.h.a.gged by the end of the day that we could hardly stagger back to camp.

'Never mind, lads,' said Charley Meadows, mopping his big red face. 'After this, Burma will be a piece of cake.'

Vadikhasundi was what they called a permanent camp. Others had suffered there before us. There we pa.s.sed Christmas, singing I'm Dreaming of a White Mistress with heavy relish for our own wit. Traces of the other poor b.u.g.g.e.rs who had trained in Vadikhasundi lay in the parade ground, where its red sand was discoloured by patches and streaks of yellow - signifying the site where hundreds of BORs had pretended to swallow the morning mepacrine tablet and instead had ground it underfoot, happily risking malaria in the exercise of their own free will.

The whole place was prehistoric. Centipedes and scorpions cantered about by night, snakes skittered under every stone and the mosquitoes were almost big enough to mate with the blue-bottles which stormed through our latrines. The standing tents in which we lived were ancient and rotten; Jack Aylmer, our all-knowing orderly, claimed they had been left over from the Mesopotamia campaign in the first world war. Our mess was just a big native basha, a rattan-screen affair with a roof thatched with palm leaves.

Geordie Wilkinson, Dusty Miller, and I strolled over to this mess for tiffin on the day after Boxing Day, discussing the latest rumour, which was that our training was to be cut short, that we were returning to Kanchapur to pick up stores and M/T, and that we were then going straight across India to join a Burmese invasion force at Madras. A nice juicy rumour to get the teeth into, unlike the food we were offered.

The cooks stood in a row outside their cookhouse - three big fat greasy men. One of them, the biggest and greasiest, a goon called Ron Rusk, was cordially disliked by all for his cheerful cry of 'Get in, pigs, it's all swill!'

They dished us out with a chunk of bread, meat stew, mashed potato, and a mug of scalding char. It was only a few yards to walk from the cooks into the mess.

As we strolled along chatting, there was a sudden rush of air and a great bird, flying from behind us, dived between Geordie and me and scooped a double claw-full of the stew out of Geordie's mess-tin, which went skittering out of Geordie's hand along the ground. He jumped back yelling, his Adam's apple bobbing in alarm.

Tuckin' h.e.l.l, mate! I've been f.u.c.kin' attacked! That's my b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.kin' grub, that is! I b.l.o.o.d.y earnt that grub!'

By now, the shabby bird was alighting on top of the cook- house roof, next to its buddies. The three cooks were roaring with laughter, rolling about behind their counter.

'You're in f.u.c.king India now, mate,' one of them said. 'Did you think that was a canary? Haven't you ever seen s.h.i.te-hawks before?'

'I have,' I told him. 'They're what you put in this f.u.c.king stew, aren't they?'

'I don't want any lip from you either,' Rusk told me. 'You want to get your b.l.o.o.d.y knees brown before you speak to me.'

The universal kite-hawks - universally known as 's.h.i.te-hawks' - had been plentiful in Kanchapur; in Vadikhasundi, they were two a penny. Like the fly, the s.h.i.te-hawk was one of India's essential scavengers, and always advanced as a prime item in the squaddie's oft-repeated proof of India's filthiness.

'Never mind our f.u.c.king knees, I want some more stew,' Geordie said, holding his mess-tin out. 'I mean, I've got a legal right, like, to some more.' I saw that the bird had raised two b.l.o.o.d.y weals on his flesh, stretching from near his elbow right down to the ball of his thumb.

'There's no such thing as rights in this man's army. You've had your ration,' Rusk said, waving a ladle indignantly. 'If you've wasted it, that's your fault, but you aren't getting no more, not from us, you ain't!'

'Come on, man! You saw what b.l.o.o.d.y happened - give me some more. Please!' For a little while Geordie looked near to tears.

'p.i.s.s off, Jack! That's your lot. No double helpings - this ain't the Ritz.'

'Give him some b.l.o.o.d.y more!' Dusty and I said. 'You stingy b.u.g.g.e.rs; you've got a f.u.c.king dixie full of the s.h.i.t!'

'There's others beside you, you know. You aren't the only b.u.g.g.e.rs in this man's regiment, if you think you are. Now -shove off, will you ? Jao!'

I looked about me. 'Where's the orderly corporal? Why isn't he here? Come on, Geordie, let's get the orderly corporal! He'll soon sort these c.u.n.ts out. Their f.u.c.king feet won't touch.'

Geordie hesitated. He was not the pugnacious type. But Rusk decided the matter.

'Buzz off and find the orderly dog - he'll tell you same as I do. One man, one ration, that's the rule, and if you're fool enough to give yours to the s.h.i.te-hawks, that's up to you!'

'What were you trying to do? Tame it?' one of the other cooks asked, and they all laughed, their stomachs shaking. By now, more types were lining up for grub, and we moved off. It was useless to get mixed up with the orderly corporal, who was some clot from 'C' Company.

'I'll fix those b.a.s.t.a.r.d cooks,' Geordie said, as we sat down at the tables. It sounded like an empty boast.

'Want a bite of my s.h.i.te-hawk stew, Geordie?' Dusty asked.

We all burst out laughing.

It was marvellous being one of the lower cla.s.ses, with the particular generalized lower-cla.s.sness of the Army. You could be your own awful self, provided you observed the unwritten rules. All the hypocrisies of home-life dissolved. Above all, you did not have to pretend to be content; in the Army, it went the other way - the ideal was to complain all the time.

Certainly there was always something to tick about. Our manoeuvres were pure h.e.l.l - 'total aggs', as the phrase went. On a nearby foetid lake, we plunged off tethered a.s.sault-craft into four feet of muddy water and charged ash.o.r.e. We ran for miles to attack imaginary machine-gun posts. Through thick jungle we stalked others of our kind acting as j.a.ps. We swung across cables and crawled on our bellies. We made long forced marches at night. We slogged through sea and mangrove swamp. We slept in the open and practised street-fighting in a dummy village. We sweated our guts out. And all the time we grumbled.

We grumbled because this was not the real thing but a stunt laid on by GHQ Delhi; we grumbled because the real thing loomed ahead. We grumbled about the j.a.ps, the war, the Army, the sergeants, the officers, the food, the drink, the climate, the lack of sleep, our feet, everything. I loved every minute of it in retrospect.

Even s.h.i.tting was fun. The latrines were situated not far from the cookhouse. Wally Page and I were there late one afternoon, balanced with our a.r.s.es over the pole, c.r.a.pping into a pit.

'Another b.a.s.t.a.r.ding night march tonight,' I said.

'I'm covered with jungle sores. Burma will be heaven after this b.l.o.o.d.y circus!'

The wireless set plays h.e.l.l with your p.r.i.c.kly-heat, doesn't it?'

All of India sprawled before us, over low bushes. My trousers were round my ankles. Sweat ran down my chest. You could see a bit of the lake among the dispirited trees. Beyond it rolled the hills. Our t.u.r.ds dropped smack down into the lime-covered mess below. Huge flies zoomed about. The sun was getting low, but even the nights were hot.

Wally reached for a bit of newspaper. 'At least we're saving money here. My old man and me are going to leave the factory and open up a fish-and-chip shop when I get home.'

'If you get f.u.c.king home!'

'Yeah, if I get f.u.c.king home.'

All the pretensions had gone. The complexities of middle-cla.s.s life, designed to hide what one was really hoping, feeling, enjoying, suffering - all bowed to the Army code. The Army code was designed to be so simple that the thickest intellect could grasp it; it could be summed up in a cla.s.sical five-word apothegm: 'Do what you're f.u.c.king told!' with its unspoken rider: 'And get away with what you can,'

We did our night march. Apart from the fact that we should have been asleep, it was wonderful to breathe the night air, so much more alive and mysterious than England's air. We hardly needed a compa.s.s to find the next village -you could smell it half-a-mile away.

Gor-Blimey was leading our section during this exercise. I followed behind him, humping the wireless set. We moved into a large stone house set in its own grounds on the edge of the village. It was temporary HQ, and there were already other troops there. I had to stay with the captain and raise Brigade HQ while the other lucky sods settled down for a brief kip.

I sat on a balcony upstairs, pa.s.sing useless messages. Someone brought us up mugs of tea. India was out there -never silent even at three in the morning. Jackals were yelping and unidentifiable night-birds called.

'Wake up, Stubbs! Get me Dog Five again, will you.'

'Yessir.' Here we go again. 'h.e.l.lo Dog Five, h.e.l.lo Dog Five. Report my signals. Teapot to Dog Five, over.'

The faint hiss of static and meaningless things, and then a bored voice I recognized as Handsome Hanson's, coming from perhaps half-a-mile away. 'h.e.l.lo Teapot, h.e.l.lo Teapot. Receiving you Strength Five, over.'

I handed the microphone to Gor-Blimey. After some frigging about with the pressel-switch until he got things right, he spoke to Blue Spot. I sat staring out into the night.

There was no chance of anything as worthwhile as a good screw that night. b.l.o.o.d.y Gor-Blimey had really got his teeth into the role of Teapot and was working it for all he was worth. Not until after five was I allowed to slink into a corner of a room and stretch out on a length of matting. No mosquito net, no chance of removing boots and puttees. The flies woke ,me at seven-thirty.

There was Gor-Blimey, striding about as fresh as ever, enjoying himself, radiating confidence. He was a solid man with a heavy face and a little b.u.t.ton-nose, Eric Gore-Blakeley. His manner was quietly authoritative, though he could bellow like a bull when he judged the occasion called for it. My mother had once set eyes on him from afar and conceived a great admiration for him. In 2 Platoon he was considered to be a bit dodgey.

It was mid-day before I staggered back into our Mesopotamian tent. Wally Page was lying luxuriously on his charpoy smoking, his hands clasped behind his neck.

'How long have you been there, you cushy b.u.g.g.e.r?'

'You want to get some service in, Stubbs! I've been here on my a.r.s.e the last two hours. Had a shower and got straight on with the charpoy-bashing.'

'You're a jammy sod! I'm going to get an hour's kip in before dinner. Old Gor-Blimey kept me on the hop all night -I never got my head down at all.'

'You ought to have made your set go dis, same as I did. You want to use your b.l.o.o.d.y loaf, Stubbs, or we'll never win this war the way you're carrying on.'

's.h.i.t in it, Page - go and do yourself a mischief!'

'And you! Do you want to get that dirty water off your chest? I know where there's a woman here.

Ginger Gas-cadden told me. Apparently all of No. 1 Platoon's been through her.'

'A woman in this b.l.o.o.d.y dump? You're going puggle, Page, that's your trouble! Too much tropical sun.'

He sat up and appealed to Charley c.o.x who was slumbering in the end bed. 'Isn't that right, Charley?

Didn't Ginger Gascadden say he'd had a woman down by the lake?'

'He said she was a proper smasher,' the lance-corporal volunteered.

Wally laughed. 'Yes, well you wouldn't know much about that, Charley, would you now? You prefer sheep or goats, don't you? Little boys, sheep and goats!'

'f.u.c.k off, Page!''

'f.u.c.k off yourself!'

'Where is this woman, anyhow?' I asked.

c.o.x told me. 'According to Ginger Gascadden, she turns up at that little ruined basha down by the lake every evening, with a Wog with her to collect the money - her husband, I shouldn't wonder.'

As I peeled my puttees off and sank on to the bed, I asked, 'Is she any good, Charley? I wouldn't mind a go.'

'You can't keep away from it, you young lads! They're none of them any good,' c.o.x said. 'Rotten with syph. Even the b.l.o.o.d.y ground's rotten with syph here - that's why nothing grows. Take the advice of an old soldier, Stubby-boy, and keep off 'em. f.u.c.k your fist, same as I do, and you're safe. Honeymoon in the hand.'

Wally laughed. 'Yes, but you've got w.a.n.kers' Doom, c.o.c.k, you have! Don't care if I do go blind ...

Mrrhhhh, nothing wrong with me, sergeant, it's just the old Doolally Tap.' Trembling and juddering, rolling his head to one side in imitation of someone in the extremes of deterioration, Wally began to sing:

Fifteen years you f.u.c.ked my daughter, Now you gone and stopped her water - O, Doolally sah'b! O, Doolally sah'b!

c.o.x and I bellowed to him to be quiet, and I crawled under my mosquito net to catch some sleep before dinner. After last parade, I promised myself, I would go down to the lake and see for myself if anything was happening there. Clutching my p.r.i.c.k affectionately, I sank into elusive dreams.

After tiffin, I took a stroll which led me to the sh.o.r.es of the lake. I had combed my hair and washed my face and shaken off Geordie, saying I would meet him at the canteen.

In my mind, I saw it all. The girl stayed in the hut and I had to pay the bloke first - a hard financial transaction! My mystery girl had cost me ten rupees; outdoors, it should be cheaper. Once I stepped into the hut, all would be right. Our eyes met. She was beautiful - demure and rather shy, brown and shining, with slender legs and a bracelet round her ankle. Without speaking, we established a sort of rapport. I took her in my arms very gently, we kissed, and I learnt for the first time how to remove a sari. Then we made love outside in the sand, while a silver moon rose over the lake.