The Complete McAuslan. George Fraser MacDonald
own language, and got all the plants neatly arranged in columns of threes, dressed by the right, and in order of what he considered their seniority. For in his quiet moments there was a strong military sense in Wullie, as there should have been after 30 years in uniform. This was brought home to me in the only conversation of any duration I ever had with him, one day when I was orderly officer and was inspecting the whitewashed stones which Wullie’s Arabs were arranging in the headquarters plot. For some reason I mentioned to Wullie that I was not intending to stay in the Army when my number came up, and he said, with his direct, intent stare, “Then ye’re a fool, sir.” Only Wullie could have called an officer a fool, in a way which carried no disrespect, and only Wullie would have added “sir” to the rebuke.
And on another occasion he did me a great service. It was shortly after his Hogmanay escapade, and I was again orderly officer and was supervising the closing of the wet canteen. The joint was jumping and I hammered with my walking-stick on the bar and shouted, “Last drinks. Time, gentlemen, please,” which was always good for a laugh. Most of them drank and went, but there was one bunch, East End Glaswegians with their bonnets pulled down over their eyes, who stayed at their table. Each man had about three pints in front of him; they had been stocking up.
“Come on,” I said. “Get it down you.”
There were a few covert grins, and someone muttered about being entitled to finish their drinks—which strictly speaking they were. But there was no question they were trying it on: on the other hand, how does a subaltern move men who don’t want to be moved? I know, personality. Try it some time along the Springfield Road.
“You’ve got two minutes,” I said, and went to supervise the closing of the bar shutters. Two minutes later I looked across; they were still there, having a laugh and taking their time.
I hesitated; this was one of those moments when you can look very silly, or lose your reputation, or both. At that moment Wee Wullie, who had been finishing his pint in a corner, walked past and stopped to adjust his bonnet near me.
“Tak’ wan o’ them by the scruff o’ the neck and heave ’im oot,” he said, staring at me, and then went out of the canteen.
It was astonishing advice. About the most awful crime an officer can commit is to lay hands on another rank. Suppose one of them belted me? It could be one hell of a mess, and a scandal. Then one of them laughed again, loudly, and I strode across to the table, took the nearest man (the smallest one, incidentally) by the collar, and hauled him bodily to the door. He was too surprised to do anything; he was off balance all the way until I dropped him just outside the doorway.
He was coming up, spitting oaths and murder, when Wee Wullie said out of the shadows at one side of the door:
“Jist you stay down, boy, or ye’ll stay down for the night.”
I went into the canteen again. The rest were standing, staring. “Out,” I said, like Burt Lancaster in the movies, and they went, leaving their pints. When I left the canteen Wee Wullie had disappeared.
And now he was probably going to disappear for keeps, I thought that night after seeing him in the cell. How long would he get for assaulting a redcap? Two years? How old was he, and how would he last out two years on the hill, or the wells, or whatever diversions they were using now in the glasshouse? Of course, he was as strong as an ox. And what had McGarry meant, “For a’ the Colonel can say”?
What the Colonel did say emerged a few days later when the Adjutant, entering like Rumour painted full of tongues, recounted what had taken place at Battalion H.Q. when the town Provost Marshal had called. The P.M. had observed that the time had come when Wee Wullie could finally get his comeuppance, and had spoken of general court-martials and long terms of detention. The Colonel had said, uh-huh, indeed, and suggested that so much was hardly necessary: it could be dealt with inside the battalion. By no means, said the P.M., Wee Wullie had been an offence to the public weal too long; he was glasshouse-ripe; a turbulent, ungodly person whom he, the P.M., was going to see sent where he wouldn’t hear the dogs bark. The Colonel then asked, quietly, if the P.M., as a special favour to him, would leave the matter entirely in the Colonel’s hands.
Taken aback the P.M. protested at length, and whenever he paused for breath the Colonel would raise his great bald hawk head and gently repeat his request. This endured for about twenty minutes, after which the P.M. gave way under protest—under strong protest—and stumped off muttering about protecting pariahs and giving Capone a pound out of the poor box. He was an angry and bewildered man.
“So the matter need not go to the General Officer Commanding,” concluded the Adjutant mysteriously. “This time.” Pressed for details, he explained, in a tone that suggested he didn’t quite believe it himself, that the Colonel had been ready, if the P.M. had been obdurate, to go to the G.O.C. on Wee Wullie’s behalf.
“All the way, mark you,” said the Adjutant. “For that big idiot. Of course, if the G.O.C. happens to have been your fag at Rugby, I dare say it makes it easier, but I still don’t understand it.”
Nor did anyone else. Generals were big stuff, and Wullie was only one extremely bad hat of a private. The Colonel called him several other names as well, when the case came up at orderly room, and gave him 28 days, which was as much as he could award him without sending him to the military prison.
So Wullie did his time in the battalion cells, expressing repentance while he cleaned out the ablutions, and exactly twenty-four hours after his release he was back inside for drunkenness, insubordination, and assault, in that he, in the cookhouse, did wilfully overturn a cauldron of soup and, on being reprimanded by the cook-sergeant, did strike the cook-sergeant with his fist …
And so on. “I don’t know,” said the Adjutant in despair. “Short of shooting him, what can you do with him? What can you do?”
He asked the question at dinner, in the Colonel’s absence. It was not a mess night, and we were eating our spam informally. Most of the senior officers were out in their married quarters; only the second-in-command, a grizzled major who was also a bachelor, represented the old brigade. He sat chewing his cheroot absently while the Adjutant went on to say that it couldn’t last for ever; the Colonel’s curious—and misguided—protection of Wee Wullie would have to stop eventually. And when it did, Wee Wullie would be away, permanently.
The second-in-command took out his cheroot and inspected it. “Well, it won’t stop, I can tell you that,” he said.
The Adjutant demanded to know why, and the second-in-command explained.
“Wee Wullie may get his deserts one of these days; it’s a matter of luck. But I do know that it will be over the Colonel’s dead body. You expressed surprise that the Colonel would go to the G.O.C.; I’m perfectly certain he would go farther than that if he had to.”
“For heaven’s sake, why? What’s so special about Wee Wullie?”
“Well, he and the Colonel have served together a long time. Since the first war, in fact. Same battalion, war and peace, for most of the time—joined almost the same day, I believe. Wounded together at Passchendaele, that sort of thing.”
“We all know that,” said the Adjutant impatiently. “But even so, granted the Colonel feels responsible, I’d have said Wee Wullie has overstepped the mark too far and too often. He’s a dead loss.”
“Well,” said the second-in-command, “that’s as may be.” He sat for a moment rolling a new cheroot in his fingers. “But there are things you don’t know.” He lit the cheroot and took a big breath. Everyone was listening and watching.
“You know,” said the second-in-command, “that after the battalion came out of France in ’forty, it was sent to the Far East. Well, Wullie didn’t go with it. He was doing time in Sowerby Bridge glasshouse, for the usual offences—drunkenness, assault on a superior, and so on. When he came out the battalion had gone into the bag after Singapore, so Wullie was posted to one of our Terrier battalions in North Africa—it was Tom Crawford’s, in fact. I don’t suppose Tom was particularly happy to see the regiment’s