McAuslan in the Rough. George Fraser MacDonald
the villagers, who might have supposed that their treasure was being sought, they being unaware that it was now quite worthless. Hence their attempts to enter the fort nocturnally on at least three occasions to remove their hoard, on the last of which they had been detected and apprehended. It was difficult to see, the court added, that proceedings could justifiably be taken against the three captured Arabs, and their release was recommended. Just for spite we also consigned the notes themselves to the care of the provost marshal, who was the pompous ass who had convened the court in the first place, and signed the report solemnly.
“Serve him right,” grunted the Green Howard. “Let him keep them, and press ’em between the leaves of his confidential reports. Or burn ’em, if he’s got any sense. What, you’re not taking one of them, are you?—don’t be mad, you’ll catch the plague.”
“Souvenir,” I said. “Don’t worry, the man it’s going to is plague-proof.”
And when I handed it over, with a suggestion that it should be disinfected in a strong solution of carbolic, McAuslan was enraptured.
“Och, ta, sir,” he said, “that’s awfy decent of ye.”
“Not a bit; you’re welcome if you want it. You dug it up. But it’s worthless, mind; it won’t buy anything.”
He looked shocked, as though I had suggested an indecency.
“Ah widnae spend it,” he protested. “Ah’ll tak’ it hame, for a souvenir. Nice to have, like—ye know, tae mind us of bein’ inna desert.” He went slightly pink. “The fellas think Ah’m daft, but Ah liked bein’ inna fort—like inna Foreign Legion, like Gairy Cooper.”
“You’ve been in the desert before, though. You were in the 51st, weren’t you—Alamein and so on?”
“Aye, so Ah wis.” He sniffed thoughtfully, and rubbed his grimy nose. “But the fort wis different.”
So it was, but I didn’t quite share his happy memories. As a platoon commander, I was painfully aware that it was the place where Arabs had three times got past my sentries by night. One up to them, one down to us. I was slightly cheered up when—and this is fact, as reported in the local press—a week later, the warehouse where the provost marshal had deposited his noisome cache was broken into by night, and the caseful of useless lire removed. There was much speculation where it had gone.
I can guess. Those persistent desert gentlemen probably have it down in Yarhuna village to this day, and being simple men in some things, if not in breaking and entering, they doubtless still believe that it is a valuable nest-egg for their community. I don’t know who garrisons Fort Yarhuna now—the Libyans, I suppose—but if there’s one thing I’d bet on, it is that when the military move out again, shadowy figures will move in under the old carved gate by night, and put the loot back in a nice safe place. And who is to question their judgement? Fort Yarhuna will still be there a thousand years after the strongest banks of Europe and America have passed into ruins.
When I was a very young soldier, doing my recruit training in a snowbound wartime camp in Durham, there was a villainous orderly sergeant who used to get us up in the mornings. He would sneak silently into our hut at 5.30 a.m., where we were frowsting in our coarse blankets against the bitter cold of the room, suddenly snap on all the lights, and start beating the coal-bucket with the poker. At the same time two of his minions would rush from bunk to bunk screaming:
“Wake-eye! Wake-eye! I can see yer! Gerrup! Gerrup! Gerrup!”
And the orderly sergeant, a creature devoid of pity and any decent feeling, would continue his hellish metallic hammering while he shouted:
“Getcher cold feet on the warm floor! Har-har!” and sundry obscenities of his own invention. Then all three would retire, rejoicing coarsely, leaving behind them thirty-six recruits suffering from nervous prostration, to say nothing of ringing in the ears.
But it certainly woke us up, and as I did my first early morning fatigue, which consisted of dragging a six-foot wooden table-top down to the ablutions and scrubbing it with cold water, I used to contrast my own miserable lot with that of his late majesty Louis XIV of France, whose attendants used a very different technique to dig him out of his scratcher. As I recalled, a valet in velvet-soled shoes used to creep into the royal bedchamber at a fairly civilised hour, softly draw back the curtains a little way, and then whisper: “It is my humble duty and profound honour to inform your majesty that it is eight-thirty of the clock.” That, now, is the way to break the bad news, and afterwards the body of majesty was more or less lifted out of bed by a posse of princes of the blood who washed, fed, watered and dressed him in front of the fire. No wooden tables to scrub for young Louis.
And as I wrestled with my brush in the freezing water, barking my knuckles and turning blue all over, I used to have daydreams in which that fiend of an orderly sergeant was transported back in time to old Versailles, where he would clump into the Sun-King’s bedroom in tackety boots at 5.30, guffawing obscenely, thrashing the fire-irons against the fender, and bawling:
“Levez-vous donc, Jean Crapaud! Wake-eye, wake-eye! Getcher froid pieds on the chaud terre! I can see yer, you frog-eating chancer! Har-har!”
While I concede that this kind of awakening could have done Louis XIV nothing but good, and possibly averted the French Revolution, the whole point of the daydream was that the orderly sergeant would undoubtedly be flung into an oubliette in the Bastille for lëGse majesté, there to rot with his red sash and copy of King’s Regulations, while virtuous recruits in the twentieth century drowsed on until the late forenoon.
And while I stood mentally picturing this happy state of affairs, and sponging the icy water off the table-top with the flat of my hand, the sadistic brute would sneak into the ablutions and turn the cold hose on us, screaming:
“Two minnits to gerron rifle parade, you ’orrible shower! Har-har! Mooo-ve or I’ll blitz yer!”
I wonder that we survived that recruit training, I really do.
You may suppose that that orderly sergeant’s method of intimating reveille was as refined a piece of mental cruelty as even a military mind could devise, and I daresay if I hadn’t later been commissioned into a Highland regiment I would agree. But in fact, there I discovered something worse, and it used to happen once a week, regularly on Friday mornings. In nightmares I can hear it still.
On the other six days of the week reveille was sounded in the conventional way at six, by a bugler on the distant square playing the famous “Charlie, Charlie, get out of bed”. If you were a pampered brute of an officer, you used to turn over, mumbling happily, and at six-thirty your orderly would come in with a mug of tea, open the shutters, lay out your kit, and give you the news of the day while you drank, smoked, and coughed contentedly.
But on Fridays it was very different. Then the duty of sounding reveille devolved on the battalion’s pipes and drums, who were bound to march round the entire barrack area, playing full blast. The trouble was, in a spirit of schadenfreud comparable with that of the Durham orderly sergeant’s, they used to assemble in dead silence immediately outside the junior subalterns’ quarters, inflate their beastly bags without so much as a warning sigh, poise their drum-sticks without the suspicion of a click, and then, at a signal from that godforsaken demented little kelpie of a pipe-sergeant, burst thunderously into the squealing cacophony and ear-splitting drum rolls of “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?”
Now, “Johnnie Cope” is one of the most magnificent sounds ever to issue from musical instruments. It is the Highlanders’ war clarion, the tune that is played before battle, the wild music that is supposed to quicken the blood of the mountain man and freeze the foe in his tracks. It commemorates the day two and a quarter centuries ago when the broadswords came whirling out of the mist at Prestonpans to fall on Major-General John Cope’s redcoats and cut them to ribbons in something under five minutes. I once watched