The Complete McAuslan. George Fraser MacDonald
his brow in acknowledgment, and at the soft signal, “Right, Wully,” the ball would be off again.
I used to watch them wheeling like gulls, absorbed in their wonderful fitba’. They weren’t in Africa or the Army any longer; in imagination they were running on the green turf of Ibrox or Paradise, hearing instead of bugle calls the rumble and roar of a hundred thousand voices; this was their common daydream, to play (according to religion) either for Celtic or Rangers. All except Daft Bob Brown, the battalion idiot; in his fantasy he was playing for Partick Thistle.
They were frighteningly skilful. As sports officer I was expected actually to play the game, and I have shameful recollections still of a company practice match in which I was pitted against a tiny, wizened creature who in happier days had played wing half for Bridgeton Waverley. What a monkey he made out of me. He was quicksilver with a glottal stop, nipping past, round, and away from me, trailing the ball tantalisingly close and magnetising it away again. The only reason he didn’t run between my legs was that he didn’t think of it. It could have been bad for discipline, but it wasn’t. When he was making me look the biggest clown since Grock I wasn’t his platoon commander any more; I was just an opponent to beat.
With all this talent to choose from—the battalion was seventy-five per cent Glasgow men—it followed that the regimental team was something special. In later years more than half of them went on to play for professional teams, and one was capped for Scotland, but never in their careers did they have the opportunity for perfecting their skill that they had in that battalion. They were young and as fit as a recent war had made them; they practised together constantly in a Mediterranean climate; they had no worries; they loved their game. At their peak, when they were murdering the opposition from Tobruk to the Algerian border, they were a team that could have given most club sides in the world a little trouble, if nothing more.
The Colonel didn’t speak their language, but his attitude to them was more than one of paternal affection for his soldiers. He respected their peculiar talent, and would sit in the stand at games crying “Play up!” and “Oh, dear, McIlhatton!” When they won, as they invariably did, he would beam and patronise the other colonels, and when they brought home the Command Cup he was almost as proud as he was of the Battle Honours.
In his pride he became ambitious. “Look, young Dand,” he said. “Any reason why they shouldn’t go on tour? You know, round the Med., play the garrison teams, eh? I mean, they’d win, wouldn’t they?”
I said they ought to be far too strong for most regimental sides.
“Good, good,” he said, full of the spirit that made British sportsmanship what it is. “Wallop the lot of them, excellent. Right, I’ll organise it.”
When the Colonel organised something, it was organised; within a couple of weeks I was on my way to the docks armed with warrants and a suitcase full of cash, and in the back of the truck were the battalion team, plus reserves, all beautiful in their best tartans, sitting with their arms folded and their bonnets, as usual, over their faces.
When I lined them up on the quayside, preparatory to boarding one of H.M. coastal craft, I was struck again by their lack of size. They were extremely neat men, as Glaswegians usually are, quick, nervous, and deft as monkeys, but they were undoubtedly small. A century of life—of living, at any rate—in the hell’s kitchen of industrial Glasgow, has cut the stature and mighty physique of the Scotch-Irish people pitifully; Glasgow is full of little men today, but at least they are stouter and sleeker than my team was. They were the children of the hungry ’thirties, hard-eyed and wiry; only one of them was near my size, a fair, dreamy youth called McGlinchy, one of the reserves. He was a useless, beautiful player, a Stanley Matthews for five minutes of each game, and for the rest of the time an indolent passenger who strolled about the left wing, humming to himself. Thus he was normally in the second eleven (“He’s got fitba’,” the corporal who captained the first team would say, “but whit the hell, he’s no’ a’ there; he’s wandered.”)
The other odd man out in the party was Private McAuslan, the dirtiest soldier in the world, who acted as linesman and baggage-master, God help us. The Colonel had wanted to keep him behind, and send someone more fit for human inspection, but the team had protested violently. They were just men, and McAuslan was their linesman, foul as he was. In fairness I had backed them up, and now I was regretting it, for McAuslan is not the kind of ornament that you want to advertise your team in Mediterranean capitals. He stood there with the baggage, grimy and dishevelled, showing a tasteful strip of grey vest between kilt and tunic, and with his hosetops wrinkling towards his ankles.
“All right, children,” I said, “get aboard,” and as they chattered up the gangplank I went to look for the man in charge. I found him in a passageway below decks, leaning with his forehead against a pipe, singing “The Ash Grove” and fuming of gin. I addressed him, and he looked at me. Possibly the sight of a man in Highland dress was too much for him, what with the heat, for he put his hands over his eyes and said, “Oh dear, oh dear,” but I convinced him that I was real, and he came to quite briskly. We got off to a fine start with the following memorable exchange.
Me: Excuse me, can you tell me when this boat starts?
He: It’s not a boat, it’s a ship.
Me: Oh, sorry. Well, have you any idea when it starts?
He: If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be the bloody captain, would I?
Now that we were chatting like old friends, I introduced myself. He was a Welshman, stocky and middle-aged, with the bland, open face of a cherub and a heart as black as Satan’s waistcoat. His name was Samuels, and he was not pleased to see me, but he offered me gin, muttering about the indignity of having his fine vessel used as a floating hotel for a lot of blasted pongos, and Scotch pongos at that. I excused myself, went to see that my Highlanders were comfortably installed—I found them ranged solemnly on a platform in the engine room, looking at the engines—and having shepherded them to their quarters and prevented McAuslan falling over the side, I went to my cabin. There I counted the money—it was a month’s pay for the party—and before I had finished the ship began to vibrate and we were away, like Hannibal, to invade the North.
I am no judge of naval behaviour, but looking back I should say that if the much-maligned William Bligh had been half as offensive as Lieutenant Samuels the Bounty would never have got the length of Land’s End, let alone Tahiti. At the first meal in the ward-room—which consisted for him of gin and chocolate biscuits—he snarled at his officers, bullied the stewards, and cross-examined me with a hackle-raising mixture of contempt and curiosity. We were going to the Grand Island, he knew; and what did we think we were going to do there? Play football, was it? Was that all pongos had to do? And who were we going to play, then?
Keeping my temper I told him we had several matches arranged against Service and civilian teams on the island, and he chose to make light of our chances. He had seen my team come aboard; they were midgets, and anyway who had they ever beaten?
At this one of his officers said he had seen us play, and we were good, very good. Samuels glared at him, but later he became thoughtful, applying himself to his gin, and when the meal ended he was still sitting there, brooding darkly. His officers looked nervous; they seemed to know the signs.
Next morning the African coast was still in view. I was surprised enough to ask Samuels about this, and he laughed and looked at me slantendicular.
“We’re not goin’ straight to the Island, Jocko,” he explained. “Got to look in at Derna first, to pick up supplies. Don’t worry, it won’t take long.” He seemed oddly excited, but distinctly pleased with himself.
I didn’t mind, and when Samuels suggested that we take the opportunity to go ashore at Derna so that my boys could have a practice kick-about, I was all for it. He went further; having vanished mysteriously into the town to conclude his official business, he returned to say that he was in a position to fix up a practice match against the local garrison side—“thought your boys might like a try-out against some easy opposition, like; some not bad footballers yere, give you a game, anyway.”
Since we had several hours