Sergeant Nelson of the Guards (29 page)

O
XLEY BROODS
for a few seconds, and then says: “See what I mean? If it was a Jerry, or a Wog, or a Wop, well, if he run away it’d be no more than what I expected and so I wouldn’t hold it against him. But a bloke in your own mob, no, he’s not entitled to run away, not even from you. Where do you stand if blokes on your own side start running away all of a sudden? No disrespect to the dead, but say you found yourself in a trench next to a bloke that run away from you? Would that be good for your morale?”

His face softens. “I admit I never could stick him,” he says, “but I will go so far as to say he marked me up a bit. Bill Nelson was a
body-puncher
. It didn’t show much, but it felt. He sort of lifted up a kind of … I don’t know quite what to call it, but a sort of punch as if he was lifting a sack of flour, and always at the body. It told. After a few of those, you felt sort of not quite so fresh. And I don’t mind saying that if he’d put a few of those body-punches round about the head, well, I would have got up all right, but maybe I wouldn’t have got up quite so soon. I couldn’t stick Nelson at any price, but in a way he was like me in the matter of a punch—he put some sting into it.”

“He was soft-hearted,” says Bearsbreath. “He’d punch you in the guts but not in the teeth because he didn’t like to do any damage that couldn’t be repaired. He hated to leave a mark.”

Hands says: “Mark! Hah! Did you ever hear about the time Bill Nelson and me got tattooed in Egypt?”

Hands rolls up a sleeve and uncovers something that is supposed to represent a terrifying reptile in faded red, tattooed on his forearm.
“What I really wanted to have done was one of those belly-dancers. The general idea is, they tattoo them over the muscle, and then when you wiggle your arm, they dance. Their little bellies kind of waggle,
provided
you got muscles enough to provide the background. That was my original intention when I got tattooed. But as it so happened, fate
intervened
.”

Sergeant Crowne says: “It’s a thing of the past, tattooing. Only kids and crooks get it done. Lots of old sweats have got a mark or two … a snake here, a crucifix there, or something like
I
Love
Amy,
or
Death
Rather
Than
Dishonour,
but they only get that done when they’re very young, and they’re sorry afterwards. Skin is like wallpaper. If you got to live with it you might as well have it plain. Bill Nelson only had one tattoo mark that I know of, and that was …”

“Two clasped hands,” says Dagwood.

“Nothing of the sort,” says The Budgerigar. “It was a palm tree.”

“As far as I remember,” says Hands, “it was——”

“A skull and cross-bones,” says Crowne, “and a motto, a motto which said:
My
Mother
Is
My
Only
Sweetheart.”

“Now that I come to think of it,” says The Budgerigar, “it could have been the Regimental Star done in blue and red.”

“Listen,” says Hands, “I happen to know that Bill Nelson had two tattoo marks. One was on his wrist, or thereabouts. It was a kind of a blue bird. And there was another one on the left-hand side of his chest which said:
I
Love
Daisy.
It was supposed to be over his heart, but the bloke that did it was some kind of a Syrian, and according to this here Syrian, Bill’s heart was somewhere near his armpit. The coloured races are ignorant.

“It was the most ridiculous thing you ever heard of in your life. I don’t suppose you ever heard of Sergeant-Major Twine? We used to call him Swine. He was a misery. He only made one joke in his life, and to this day nobody can be certain that he wasn’t serious. First parade on board the ship going East, after he dismissed the parade, he said: ‘All right. Dismiss. Nobody leave the ship.’ He was unpopular, but actually I got
on with him fairly well. He was regimental, but fair, and usually when he said a thing, he more or less meant it. I can’t vouch for his loyalty, but he was once seen standing up for one of his sergeants during some argument or other. I forget what. He was a real old sweat. He had a wife and kid in Cairo, an Irish wife. Well, all of a sudden, this kid of his seemed to grow up like a mushroom, almost overnight. One day she was a skinny little girl with long legs, and the next afternoon she blossomed out into a raving beauty such as I’ve never before seen in my life. You know Ann Sheridan? You remember Marie Dressler? Well, compared with this kid Pat, Ann Sheridan was as plain as Marie Dressler. She was a blond, with black eyes, and very well developed for her age, or, for that matter, any other age. I dare say she must have been about seventeen, or probably less. She got about eleven proposals of marriage every twenty-four hours. As soon as you saw a feller putting scented brilliantine on his hair, you knew perfectly well that he was going to propose to Pat Twine.

“I was young and foolish then, and I don’t mind admitting that in a way I fell for her myself. It was probably the climate. I hung around this kid like any lovesick mug. The funny thing is that I was quite serious then. So was nearly everybody else in Cairo. But she, I need scarcely say, was aiming no doubt at bigger game than mere mugs of N.C.O.s in the Brigade of Guards. After all, she had the example of her father before her to warn her what this mob can do to a man after seventy or eighty years of service. I don’t think she wanted to be a soldier’s wife at all, because she was a sharp kid and she could see what had happened to her Mum through being a soldier’s wife. The old girl was pretty awful.

“All the same, although we all knew we were wasting our time, we hung around her. You know what kids are when it comes to love and all that kind of thing. Bolts and bars won’t hold them. Well, one day, when I was off duty, I ran into her and began to chat with her a bit. You know how ridiculous these girls stand, twiddling their heels, and
blinking
their eyes, and swinging their arms about, and showing off their
figures. She waggled herself about, and then got around to talking about some fellow called Finnan who, she said, wanted to marry her. Of course, I asked her whether she cared anything about this Finnan, and needless to say she hummed and hawed, and tried to make me jealous, and succeeded in doing so. And she said: ‘Well, I don’t know, Sergeant Hands, but I’m certain that Walter Finnan would make a very devoted husband. Do you know what he did, only the other week? He had my name tattooed over his heart, as a proof that, whether I would have him or not, he would never look at another woman as long as he lived.’

“And then I started to tell her that all that was nothing. I told her how real devotion to a young woman came from the heart, and was more than skin-deep. After all, tattooing was only skin-deep. She seemed to be offended at that and said that, after all, it was Finnan’s business what he did with his devotion or his skin, and no business of mine.

“I had it bad. I could think of nothing and nobody but her, and I lay awake nearly all that night, unreasonably annoyed with this Finnan, who was a very harmless sort of mug, and somehow going into a rage about his having her name tattooed over his heart. And then I made my mind up to get tattooed with her name myself, the very next payday.

“Well, there was a little Syrian bloke whose name was Hassan, who did a good deal of Army tattooing off and on. There were better tattooers, but Hassan was cheap. I believe he used to either drink, or smoke opium, or take hashish. Or maybe he was just a bit of a lunatic, like everybody else connected with the Army. Be that as it may, he was pretty hot on
Death
Rather
Than
Dishonour
and graveyard crosses with
In
Memoriam
underneath them. Poor mugs of soldiers, their own silly skins are about all they can count on carrying about with them for certain in peacetime. And I’m not so sure about that either…. So I go to Hassan, and this little Hassan wallah is sitting down, rather like a pig in a trance. He asks me what I want and I tell him that I want
I
Adore
Pat
right over my heart, in blue letters of a reasonably-priced size.

“I’ve never had anything done to me that hurt me half so much. It hurts like hell, this tattooing gag. No more of it for me, I don’t care who
I fall in love with. They ought to give you gas. It took him a long time, too, because he seemed to be somehow a little bit dopey. The more he hurried the more he hurt me, but at last he got through it and I paid him and scrammed. But as I’m going out, who should I meet in the doorway but Bill Nelson.

“‘What you doing here, Bill?’ I ask him.

“‘Oh, nothing,’ he says, ‘nothing at all. I just come to make a couple of enquiries. I tell you what I’ll do, Handsy—I’ll meet you for a drink across the road in about half an hour’s time.’

“All right. I go and get myself one lukewarm beer, which takes about half of all the money I have left, and I wait, and at last, after nearly an hour and a quarter, Bill Nelson turns up and sits down opposite me. He has the price of two beers, so he orders, and we sort of have a bit of a chat.

“Then he says: ‘Handsy, what were you doing over there in Hassan’s?’ And I tell him that I’ve just gone and had one or two decorations put on me, and he asks what.

“Well, he’s a pal, so I take him into my confidence and I tell him that it’s practically impossible for me to go on living without this girl Pat, and so I’ve gone and had her name tattooed over my heart, since it seems that she likes that sort of thing. At this poor old Bill looks very down in the mouth and asks me: ‘What did you say over your heart, Handsy?’ So I tell him, and he says: ‘Oh, Jesus.’ I ask him what’s up, and he says: ‘Well, to tell you the honest truth, Handsy, I feel pretty much the same way about her myself. And to be perfectly frank with you, I’ve been and had my own heart sort of decorated with the same motto.’ I ask him if it hurts, and he says it hurts like stink. Then I say to him: ‘Bill, let’s see what sort of a job that little dopey idol done on you.’ He says: ‘No, you let me see yours first.’ So he undoes his tunic and waits, holding his great big hands over his bosom, like the naked girl in that picture of September Morn. I rips open my tunic and shows him my bit of lettering. I’ve got it here to this day. I dunno what to do with it. It has practically ruined my life, this bit of tattooing. Bill looks, and he kind
of grins as if he’s very proud of himself, and he says: ‘I’ve got a dollar’s worth of fancy scrollwork round mine.’ I say: ‘Let’s look, Bill.’

“He lets me see, and I takes a good look and then I practically have to strangle myself to stop from busting out laughing. Because do you know what this nigger Hassan has been and done? Under the influence of whatever it was he took to liven himself up, he’d done a marvellous job of work, a smashing hot job. He’d put the lettering inside a sort of fancy heart, with twiddley bits all round it; but instead of the name Pat he’d gone and put Daisy. Don’t ask me why. I dare say some other mug had got tattooed with the name of Daisy, and it had somehow sort of come to the front of his mind just as these things will when you’re a bit tight.

“I said: ‘That’s smashing, Bill,’ and he said: ‘It’ll be pretty hot in a week or so when the swelling goes down.’

“That night our tattooings swell up. Have you ever tried to do a slope with fresh tattooing on your chest? You want to try it some time. The agonies we suffered, nobody would believe. You couldn’t read a thing; there was just blue and red blobs. Then, at last, the swelling goes down and the inscriptions stick out like a punch in the mouth, and Bill says ‘Daisy? Daisy? I don’t know no Daisy. There is something very funny about this.’ I say: ‘You better go and argue that out with Hassan,’ and Bill, looking very much like business, goes to look up this here tattooer. I, in the meantime, go and look for this kid Pat, and I find her, and I tell her about this proof of my devotion and I undo my shirt and show her this bit of lettering. I’m not the man to do down a pal, but all is fair in love and war. I say to her: ‘If I were you, Pat, I wouldn’t take too much notice of Bill Nelson, who seems to be hanging around you. He has just got himself tattooed with a great big heart and the name of Daisy in it. Whereas, I love you alone.’ She says: ‘Oh Daisy, eh?’ And leaves me standing.

“I saw Bill that night. It seemed that this tattooer, Hassan, had either died or otherwise disappeared. No satisfactory conclusion could be reached about this misprint on poor old Bill Nelson. And for days and
days Bill went about with a face as long as a fiddle. But a funny thing happened. Young Pat started to run after old Bill. Wherever he went she was sure to be hanging about, and once or twice she collared him and asked him who was this woman Daisy who she had not heard anything at all about. This, of course, got poor old Bill embarrassed, and he gave her what you might call evasive answers. She, naturally, was not satisfied with what Bill said. And so the end of it all was, that instead of Bill running after Pat, Pat kept running after Bill, absolutely dying to get a look inside his shirt. This seems to be in the nature of the so-called sex. And so she developed a sort of infatuation for Bill, and the more she developed this infatuation, the more Bill wondered what he could have seen in her, until the end of it all was, he flatly told her not to keep hunting him down and making his life a misery. Yet there was not a man in the battalion who would not have given his right hand to be in Bill’s position.

“It all comes out in the wash, pals, it all comes out in the wash.

“We shifted. We done a bit of the good old hand-to-hand with the good old Wogs, and that was that.

“As for the little blue bird, I believe that was done, so to speak, to relieve the boredom when we was out in the desert, by some Mick that had taken a correspondence course in tattooing. But we had some fun with the Wogs …”

“A
ND THERE
you are,” says Dagwood. “There’s life all over.”

“What’s life all over? D’ya mean, life all over?” asks Crowne.

“Why,” says the deliberate-voiced Sergeant, lounging on his bed, “what I mean is this. Here’s dozens of us all talking about Nelson, who we knew well, and that was our pal, see; and here we are shouting the odds, and chewing the rag about Bill Nelson this, and Bill Nelson that … and, well, I’m damned if we don’t forget what he looked like. You can’t even remember what like he was tattooed.”

“Shut up,” says Hands.

“Ah,” says Dagwood, and there is a sad twist in his smile. “Who remembers what Bill Nelson looked like? What colour eyes?”

“Grey,” says Hands.

“Blue,” says Dagwood. “Light blue. What height was he, about?”

“Five foot nine,” says Hands.

“About five-eleven,” says Butcher.

“He was about six foot one or two,” says Dagwood. “And he weighed no more than a pound or two under twelve stone. Hair?”

“Fair,” says Crowne.

With some excitement, Hands cries: “Dead wrong! His hair was blackish.”

“There you are,” says Dagwood, “one says light, another says dark One says blue, another says grey. He had hair the same colour as mine—mousey, or what they call Brown. Teeth? Any teeth?”

A pause. “Yeahmp, he had some teeth,” says Crowne.

“Real or false?”

“He wasn’t a horse, and I wasn’t
buying
the man,” says Crowne, annoyed. “Well? Real or false?”

“I never noticed myself,” says Dagwood. “Distinguishing marks or characteristics?”

“He had a good walk,” says Hands.

“A busted nose. Slightly busted,” says Butcher.

“You’re telling me,” mutters Oxley.

“Scars?” asks Dagwood.

“Slight scars on forehead,” says Bearsbreath, “from when his eye come out.”

“And a deep scar on his jaw,” says Dagwood. “I was around when that one happened. It was sort of an accident. I kind of shot him.”

Dagwood opens his slim old knife and pares some frugal slices off a plug of tobacco. Between palms like little millstones he rubs the slices to shreds, and fills the untouchable-looking pipe Sergeant Brown gave him.

Every man has his little parsimony. Hands makes a tin of brass polish last two years: Crowne would lie circumstantially and bare-facedly to avoid giving away a metal fly button, of which he has accumulated a secret hoard of more than fifteen hundred. And Dagwood won’t buy a pipe. It is fascinating to watch Dagwood trying to make somebody give him one. This knobbly-faced old soldier who never owed a penny and who maintains a sublime independence by disciplining his desires and needs will coquette for a foul old pipe like a glamour girl who yearns for furs.

He will say—picking up the carbonized remains of six-penn’orth of unseasoned briar—“Pretty far gone, Bill?”

“Think so, Dag?”

“All burnt ’n cracked.”

“Bit of insulating tape ’d fix that up, Dag.”

“I’ll tape it up for you if you like, Bill. I got some tape.”

“That’s all right, Dag. Don’t bother.”

“That’s all right, Bill; no bother.”

“… Leave that bloody pipe alone, Dag!”

“I was only looking, Bill.
You
don’t want a pipe like this, Bill. Pipe like this is no use to you.”

“No? I wouldn’t part with that pipe for a million quid.”

“I
wouldn’t mind smoking a rotten old pipe like that, Bill. I could do with a pipe.”

“You’ll get that pipe over my dead bloody body, Dag.”

“Keep calm, Bill.”

“I am calm, Dag.”

“I could give you a lovely lighter for that pipe, Bill.”

“What sort lighter?”

“I got it at home, Bill. I found it by a stroke o’ luck when I was doing the drains. A lovely brass lighter, and all it wants is some petrol.”

“Has it got a wick?”

“Well, not exactly a wick, no.”

“Wheel?”

“Well, it might need a bit of a wheel.”

“Flint?”

“To tell you the honest truth, I don’t believe there is a flint. Not a
flint,
Bill, no. But all you need do is spend a bob on it for repairs and you’ve got a lighter that’d cost you quids.”

“I wouldn’t take a fifty-pun-note for a pipe like this, Dag; let alone a busted old lighter.”

“I wouldn’t take a man’s pipe for nothing, Bill: I’d have give you a thirty-five-shilling lighter for it.”

“For a pipe like this I wouldn’t take fifty pound down and three pound a week for life, Dag, on my word of honour.”

“Well, all right, Bill. I’ll help you mend it if you like. A bit of tape …”

“Oh, go to hell, you scrounging, loafing bastard! Here you are, take the lousy pipe. I was going to chuck it away, anyway.”

“Beg pardon, Bill? What’s that? Pipe? For
me?
Why, that’s very nice of you, Bill …”

The Budgerigar, also, has a weakness for very old and unspeakably foul pipes. Sometimes, he and Dagwood make an exchange.” These two big, dapper N.C.O.s sit and haggle for hours over some blackened and stinking cherrywood, like tramps quarreling over the pickings of a dustbin.

“… A deep scar on his jaw,” says Dagwood. “I shot him.”

“You
shot Bill?” There is astonishment in the hut, for Dagwood is a born marksman, who aims a rifle as you or I point a finger. A man like Dagwood doesn’t have accidents with firearms.

“Well, to be more exact, I missed him just there,” says Dagwood. “It was sort of like this …”

*

We was together a lot (says Dagwood), from the time we were
recruits
together. There was a kind of friendly feed between us. A feed—when two fellers are out for each other’s blood. Feud, is it? Right, feud. We could run just about the same, and jump and drill fairly equal, and box each other to a standstill so that it was always hard to come to a verdict when Bill and me was in the ring together. But the thing Bill was proudest of was shooting.

He was pretty fair. We were in the same Company. We fired that Empire Musketry thing together. Bill scored a possible, twenty bulls. So did I. It was hottish firing. The officer was dead pleased. He measured our grouping with a calliper, and so help me it was pretty well dead equal in each case. We both got a medal—one of those little silverish things about big enough to put in a Christmas pudden. Only there’d be danger of swallowing it. Soppy little medal, mannyfactured in
Brummagem
by some Italian firm. But it’s the honour of the thing that counts. I got my medal still. My old woman keeps it in a locked cupboard. I call it the Dagwood Plate. In the middle of the night she’ll wake up and snatch a poker and say: “The burglars are after your medal.” I should put its value at fourpence, but it’s about all the silverware there is in the house.

Well, Bill and me go to the Training Battalion together and we fire
our course there. That time, I was a bit up on Bill’s score. He said it was because a fly got into his eye. It might have done, because Pirbright is full of flies. I once asked a man what was the cause of all the flies at Pirbright, and he said: “You know how flies and bluebottles and things always get round a dead body? Well, Pirbright’s mostly dead ground.” That was only a gag. But, anyway, I had a possible, and Bill was one under. But next time we fired together, Bill was one up on my score. Then, at a Company Shoot, we fired a possible each again, and the
Company
Commander gave us a hundred cigarettes each.

We used to call each other all the names going, but only in the
friendlies
t kind of way, because we got along very well together on the whole. He was easy enough to get on with. But we used to accuse each other of cheating, foul play, and all the dirty tricks you could think of. But whatever we did in competition with each other we came out even. Bill and I, for instance, were in a lot of the Company sports. We always jumped exactly the same height or length. It’s funny. I don’t know why. On a cross-country run, for example, we both came in fifth, we
dead-heated
for fifth place. However much I strained myself I couldn’t throw a grenade farther than Bill, and nor could he throw farther than me. Although there was a certain amount of difference in our sizes, we must have had exactly the same amount of strength or something. Later on, when we got a bit beyond sports in general, it all boiled down to shooting. And for years on end we just about tied in our scores. I’m not sure to this day which of us was better. I think, maybe, on the whole, Bill was just a little bit better than me, but I was regarded as pretty hot. People don’t seem to shoot any more like we used to shoot when we was young.

Well, what I was going to say was this. Bill and me went East in the same draft. And I’m glad to say—because after all it was what you might call a bit of an experience for us—yes, I’m glad to say that we got into the riots together. Bill was the one to tell you about the Wogs. Old Bill would talk about the moon, and the desert, and make a whole
rigmarole
out of it so that it was a pleasure to listen to him. And as a matter
of fact, I’ve heard Bill tell stories about places where he was with me and he describes things that I, personally, never saw happen. Some say he just made them up. I think that it was a better sense of observation. Be that as it may. I doesn’t do to speak ill of the dead. I never could understand how Bill, at eight hundred yards, behind a hill, in the
middle
of the night, without a moon, could tell you not only the colour of a Wog’s eyes, but also the expression on his face….

Well, you sort of know how it was. In some villages we put down a few Wogs that wanted to get us with knives, treating them gently with pick handles and not firing a shot. We simply made ’em listen to reason and did little more than knock a few of them unconscious for longer or shorter periods. But then we had to go out right into the desert, and there’s only a little tiny handful of us, and we had to get from one point to another point … sort of beetling around … and then all of a
sudden
there’s a bit of an attack. I will say one thing for Wogs. They can hide themselves. They wear them long robes pretty much the same colour of that dirty white sand, and they can make themselves look like bits of desert, and I don’t mind admitting that if you’re of a timid disposition it
can
give you the willies when, in broad daylight, you hear a rifle go off at about two hundred yards, and a bullet cuts your coat, and there’s absolutely no sign of where it came from—in wide open desert. But on the whole, once you get used to the idea of protective background you get along all right.

On this occasion, if you might call it an occasion, a fairly large
number
of Wogs cut us off and there is quite a lively little bit of sniping. They make a kind of a ring round us and it settles down to steady
potting
. Bill and me carried on with the good old competition. It was like a game of darts. We were almost chalking up our hits. I got a matter of six Wogs and so did Bill. And then, at about three hundred yards, some bloke with a beard like Santa Claus sticks up his silly great head and sort of goggles at us, and Bill says “Hi-de-hi” and fires quick and that makes him one up on me, because this Wog with the big beard goes up into the air like a sky-rocket and comes rolling down to quite near
us. Well, all this was all very nice, but it was near midday, and we were short of water, and it was easy to see that we couldn’t really hold out indefinitely, and the general point of view of the officer Was that unless some poor mug got through this ring of Wogs and managed to get about ten miles to bring up another mob, we were in a pretty poor way.

I have only one thing against Bill Nelson, and that is that he liked to push himself forward. As soon as he gets to hear of this, before anybody else could get a word in edgeways, he said: “I got an idea I could
manage
it, sir.” The officer says: “Have you, by God? Well, if you don’t, I’m afraid I shan’t be alive to mention the fact in despatches for the
gratification
of your next-of-kin.” And Bill says: “I ain’t got no next-of-kin,” and off he goes.

Now Bill and me had done a good deal of individual movement, and Bill, who had one of those snaky figures, was rather better at it than most of us. He doesn’t take a rifle. He does a bear crawl for twenty yards or so and he wriggles round a sand dune and disappears. And then I heard about fifty million shots going bang, bang, bang, and I knew the Wogs had spotted him. And I hoped he’d get through all right because our little shooting match wasn’t what I would call over, not by any manner of means. We watched, me in particular, sort of anxiously,
because
a certain amount really does in a way depend on Bill getting through. For instance, our lives, and what not. But there is no sign of Bill at all. We are not chucking our ammo away, needless to say, and so we watch where we’re shooting and do not use a round unless we’re pretty sure where it’s going to go. We wait, and there is a sort of silence from the Wogs, and the sun gets so hot we can hear our brains bubbling like pitch. Then I, looking through the heat waves, see a solitary Wog behaving in a very peculiar way. First, he crawls ten yards, and then he falls down flat and disappears. And then he wriggles and goes
sideways
like a crab and behaves in general as if he’s gone a bit mad.
Actually
, what was mad about it was this: he was doing what looked like an Army crawl as taught to rookies in camp … only he was a Wog, all right, in Wog robes. He is maybe seven hundred and fifty yards
away when I get a chance of a shot at him, and I fires. He goes down flat. And then he gets up again and goes crawling on. And I, shoving another round up the spout and cursing the heat waves that were
spoiling
my aim, saw another funny thing. This Wog I’d missed, crawling along, came face to face with another Wog, also crawling. It was funny. They stayed there for one tick, face to face, like two cats. Then the new Wog jumped on this one I’d missed and in that sunlight I saw a knife flashing like a signaller’s mirror. And then, all of a sudden, I realized that the man I’d fired at and missed was none other than Bill Nelson. He had got hold of the clothes or at least the robe of a dead Wog (and my God, he didn’t half have to be fumigated afterwards) and using those clothes as a sort of camouflage had managed to get just about that far without the Wogs suspecting anything.