The Complete McAuslan. George Fraser MacDonald
route march in five hours without any sign of distress, and on the rifle range were really impressive. But they were not what could be called forthcoming; off parade they were cheery enough with each other, but within my orbit they fell quiet, stolid and watchful.
As I say, I don’t know what I expected, but I began to feel depressed. There was something missing; they did what they were told smartly—well, fairly smartly; they took no liberties that I noticed. But if they didn’t dislike me they certainly didn’t seem to like me either. Perhaps it was my fault; they were happy enough with Bennet-Bruce and any other company officers who came into contact with them. I envied Macmillan, the subaltern of Ten platoon, who had been in the battalion about six months and abused his platoon good-naturedly one minute and tore strips off them the next; they seemed to get on with him. I wondered if I was the Tiberius type (“let them hate me so long as they fear me”), and concluded I wasn’t; it seemed more likely that the Selection Board who took me out of the ranks had just been wrong.
In the mess things went fairly well until one evening I knocked a pint glass accidentally off the arm of a chair, and a liverish major blasted my clumsiness and observed that there were only about half a dozen of those glasses left. I apologised, red-faced but faintly angry; we looked at each other with mutual dislike, and the trivial incident stuck in my mind. Other things were prickling vaguely, too; my service dress wasn’t a good fit, and I knew it. I suspected (wrongly) that this gave rise to covert amusement and once this tiny seed had taken root I was halfway to seeing myself as a laughing-stock.
This can be a dreadful thing to the young, and not only the young. In no time at all I was positive that my platoon found me faintly ridiculous; occasionally I caught what I thought was a glint of amusement in an eye on parade, or heard a stifled laugh. I would tell myself I just imagined these things, but then the doubts would return.
One morning there was a platoon rifle inspection, and I must have been on the down-swing, because I went on it half-conscious of a resolve to put somebody on a charge for something. This, of course, was a deplorable attitude. I had never charged anyone yet, and I may have felt that I ought to, pour encourager the platoon in general. Anyway, when I came to a rifle in the middle rank that seemed to have dirt in the grooves of the barrel, I nailed its owner.
He was a nondescript man called Leishman, rather older than the others, a quiet enough character. He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him his rifle was dirty, and then I turned to Sergeant Telfer and said, “Put him on a charge.” (Six months later I would have said, “Leishman, did you shave this morning?” And he, dumbfounded, knowing his chin was immaculate, would have said, “Yes, sir. I did, sir.” And I would have said, “Of course you did, and it’s all gone down the barrel of your gun. Clean the thing.” And that would have been that.)
I went off parade feeling vaguely discontented, and ten minutes later, in the company office, Cromack the clerk observed that I had shaken Leishman, no mistake. He said it deadpan, and added that Leishman was presently in the armoury, cleaning his rifle. Puzzled, for I wondered why Cormack should be telling me this, I went off to the armoury.
Sure enough, there was Leishman, pulling the cleaning-cloth through his rifle, and crying. He was literally weeping. I was shocked.
“What’s the matter?” I said, for this was a new one to me.
He snuffled a bit, and wiped his nose, and then it came out. He had been five years in the army, his discharge was coming up in a few weeks, he had never been on a charge in his life before. He was going to have his clean sheet marred almost on the eve of getting out.
“Well, for God’s sake,” I said, relieved more than anything else. “Look, don’t get into a state. It’s all right, we’ll scrub the charge.” I was quite glad to, because I felt a warning would have done. “I’m certainly not going to spoil your record,” I said.
He mumped some more, and pulled his rifle through again.
“Let’s have a look at it,” I said. I looked down the barrel, and it still wasn’t all that good, but what would you? He was obviously badly upset, but he muttered something about thanks, which just made me uncomfortable. I suppose only born leaders don’t find authority embarrassing.
“Forget it,” I said. “Give it another few pulls-through, and keep your eye on it until your ticket comes through. Okay?”
I left him to it, and about ten minutes later I was passing the door of Twelve platoon barrack-room, and heard somebody laughing inside. I just glanced as I went by, and stopped short. It was Leishman, sitting on his bunk at the far end, laughing with a bunch of his mates.
I moved on a few steps. All right, he had made a quick recovery. He was relieved. There was nothing in that. But he had seemed really upset in the armoury, shaken, as Cormack said. Now he was roaring his head off—the quality of the laughter somehow caught the edge of my nerves. I stood undecided, and then wheeled round and shouted:
“Sergeant Telfer!”
He came out of his room. “Yessir?”
“Sergeant Telfer,” I said, “stop that man laughing.”
He gaped at me. “Laughing, sir?”
“Yes, laughing. Tell him to stop it—now.”
“But …” he looked bewildered. “But … he’s just laughin’, sir …”
“I know he’s just laughing. He’s braying his bloody head off. Tell him to stop it.”
“Right, sir.” He obviously thought the sun had got me, but he strode into the barrack-room. Abruptly, Leishman’s laughter stopped, then there was what might have been a smothered chuckle, then silence.
Feeling suicidal, I went back to my billet. Obviously Leishman had thought I was a mug; I should have let the charge stick. Let someone get away with it, even a good soldier, and you have taken some of his virtue away. On the other hand, maybe he had been laughing about something else entirely; in that case, I had been an idiot to give Sergeant Telfer that ridiculous order. Either way, I looked a fool. And my service dress didn’t fit. To hell with it, I would see the Adjutant tomorrow and ask for a posting.
I didn’t, of course. That night in the mess the liverish major, of all people, asked me to partner him in a ludo doubles against the Adjutant and the M.O. (In stations where diversion is limited games like ludo tend to get elevated above their usual status.) In spite of the M.O.’s constant gamesmanship, directed against my partner’s internal condition, we won by one counter in a grandstand finish, and thereafter it was a happy evening. We finished with a sing-song—“Massacre of Macpherson” and “The Lum Hat Wantin’ the Croon”, and other musical gems—and the result was that I went to bed thinking that the world could be worse, after all.
In the morning when I inspected my platoon, Sergeant Telfer did not roll on the ground, helpless with laughter, at the sight of me. If anything, the platoon was smarter and faster than usual; I inspected the rifles, and Leishman’s was gleaming as though he had used Brasso on the barrel, which he quite probably had. I said nothing; there was no hint that the incident of yesterday had ever happened.
On the other hand, there was still no sign of the happy officer-man relationship by which the manual sets such store. We were still at a distance with each other, and so it continued. It didn’t matter whether I criticised or praised, the reception was as wary as ever.
Remembering the C.O.’s advice, I had reached the stage where I knew every man by name, and had picked up a few nicknames as well. Brown, a clueless, lanky Glaswegian, was Daft Bob; Forbes, the villainous-looking footballer, was Heinie (after Heinrich Himmler, it transpired); my own batman, McClusky, was Chick; and Leishman was Soapy. But others I had not yet identified—Pudden, and Jeep, and Darkie, and Hi-Hi; one heard the names shouted along the company corridors and floating through the barrack-room doors—“Jeep’s away for ile* the day”, which signified that the mysterious Jeep was hors de combat, physically or spiritually; “Darkie’s got a rare hatchet on”, meaning