The Complete McAuslan. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ he clears his throat and regards the thirty still figures, each looking to its front with frozen intensity, the young subaltern realises that this is it, at last; this is what he is drawing his meagre pay for.

      In later years he may command armies or govern great territories, but he will never feel again the same power-drunk humility of the moment when he takes over his platoon. It is elating and terrifying—mostly terrifying. These thirty men are his responsibility, to look after, to supervise, to lead (whatever that means). Of course, they will do what he tells them—or he hopes they will, anyway. Suppose they don’t? Suppose that ugly one in the front rank suddenly says “No, I will not slope arms for you, or shave in the morning, or die for king and country”? The subaltern feels panic stealing over him, until he remembers that at his elbow there is a sergeant, who is wise in dealing with these matters, and he feels better.

      There are young officers, of course, who seem to regard themselves as born to the job, and who cruise through their first platoon inspection with nonchalant interest, conversing airily with the sergeant as they go; possibly Hannibal and Napoleon were like that. But I doubt it. A man would have to be curiously insensitive not to realise that for the first time in his life thirty total strangers are regarding him with interest and suspicion and anxiety, wondering if he is a soft mark or a complete pig, or worse still, some kind of nut. When he realises this he feels like telling them that he is, really, all right and on their side, but of course he can’t. If he did, they would know for certain he was some kind of nut. They will just have to find out about each other gradually, and it can be a trying process.

      I have only a hazy impression of inspecting my platoon for the first time. They were drawn up in the sunlight with their backs to the white barrack wall, against which an Arab tea-vendor was squatting, waiting for the ten-minute break. But all I can remember is the brown young faces staring earnestly to their front, with here and there a trickle of sweat or a limb shaking with the strain of standing still. I remember telling one that he was smartly turned-out, and he gave a controlled shudder, like a galvanised frog, and licked his lips nervously. I asked another whether he had volunteered for this particular regiment, and he stammered: “Nossir, I wanted to go intae the coal-mines.”

      Perhaps I was over-sensitive because I had been more than two years in the ranks myself, and had stood sweating while pinkish young men with one painfully new pip on their shoulders had looked at me. I remembered what I had thought about them, and how we had discussed them afterwards. We had noted their peculiarities, and now I wondered what mine were—what foibles and mannerisms were being observed and docketed, and what they would say about me later.

      I don’t know what I expected from that first inspection—a rapturous welcome, three cheers, or an outbreak of mutiny—but what I got was nothing at all. It was a bit damping; they didn’t seem to react to me one way or the other. Maybe I should have made a speech, or at least said a few introductory words, but all that I could think of was Charles Laughton’s address to the crew of the Bounty, which ran: “You don’t know wood from canvas, and you evidently don’t want to learn. Well, I’ll teach you.” It wouldn’t have gone over.

      So eventually I watched them fall out, and turn from wooden images into noisy, raucous young men crowding round the tea-man, abusing him happily in Glasgow-Arabic. One or two glanced in my direction, briefly, but that was all. I walked back to the company office, suddenly lonely.

      The trouble was, of course, that in the exultation of being commissioned at the end of a hectic training in India, and the excitement of journeying through the Middle East and seeing the wonderful sights, and arriving in this new battalion which was to be home, I had overlooked the fact that all these things were secondary. What it all added up to was those thirty people and me; that was why the king had made me “his trusty and well-beloved friend”. I wondered, not for the first time, if I was fit for it.

      It had seemed to go well on the day of my arrival. The very sound of Scottish voices again, the air of friendly informality which you find in Highland regiments, the sound of pipe music, had all been reassuring. My initial discomfort—I had arrived with two other second-lieutenants, and while they had been correctly dressed in khaki drill I had still been wearing the jungle green of the Far East, which obviously no one in the battalion had seen before—had quickly blown over. The mess was friendly, a mixture of local Scots accents and Sandhurst drawls, and my first apprehensions on meeting the Colonel had been unfounded. He was tall and bald and moustached, with a face like a vulture and a handkerchief tucked in his cuff, and he shook hands as though he was really glad to see me.

      Next morning in his office, before despatching me to a company, he gave me sound advice, much of which passed me by although I remembered it later.

      “You’ve been in the ranks. Good. That”—and he pointed to my Burma ribbon—“will be a help. Your Jocks will know you’ve been around, so you may be spared some of the more elementary try-ons. I’m sending you to D Company—my old company, by the way.” He puffed at his pipe thoughtfully. “Good company. Their march is ‘The Black Bear’, which is dam’ difficult to march to, actually, but good fun. There’s a bit where the Jocks always stamp, one-two, and give a great yell. However, that’s by the way. What I want to tell you is: get to know their names; that’s essential, of course. After a bit you’ll get to know the nicknames, too, probably, including your own. But once you know their names and faces, you’ll be all right.”

      He hummed on a bit, and I nodded obediently and then took myself across to D Company office, where the company commander, a tall, blond-moustached Old Etonian named Bennet-Bruce, fell on me with enthusiasm. Plainly D Company, and indeed the entire battalion, had just been waiting a couple of centuries for this moment; Bennet-Bruce was blessed above all other company commanders in that he had got the new subaltern.

      “Splendid. Absolutely super. First-class.” He pumped me by the hand and shouted for the company clerk. “Cormack, could you find another cup for Mr MacNeill? This is Cormack, invaluable chap, has some illicit agreement with the Naafi manager about tea and excellent pink cakes. Mr MacNeill, who has joined our company. You do take sugar? First-class, good show.”

      I had been in the army quite long enough not to mistake Bennet-Bruce for just a genial, carefree head-case, or to think that because he prattled inconsequentially he was therefore soft. I’d seen these caricature types before, and nine times out of ten there was a pretty hard man underneath. This one had the Medaille Militaire, I noticed, and the French don’t hand that out for nothing.

      However, he was making me at home, and presently he wafted me round the company offices and barrack-rooms on a wave of running commentary.

      “Company stores here, presided over by Quartermaster Cameron, otherwise known as Blind Sixty. Biggest rogue in the army, of course, but a first-class man. First-class. Magazine over there—that’s Private Macpherson, by the way, who refuses to wear socks. Why won’t you wear socks, Macpherson?”

      “Ma feet hurt, sir.”

      “Well, so do mine, occasionally. Still, you know best. Over yonder, now, trying to hide at the far end of the corridor, that’s McAuslan, the dirtiest soldier in the world. In your platoon, by the way. Don’t know what to do with McAuslan. Cremation’s probably the answer. Nothing else seems to work. Morning, Patterson, what did the M.O. say?”

      “Gave me some gentian violent, sir, tae rub on.”

      “Marvellous stuff,” said Bennet-Bruce, with enthusiasm. “Never travel without it myself. Now, let’s see, Ten platoon room over there, Eleven in there, and Twelve round there. Yours is Twelve. Good bunch. Good sergeant, chap called Telfer. Very steady. Meet him in a minute. No, Rafferty, not like that. Give it here.”

      We were at a barrack-room door, and a dark, wiry soldier at the first bed was cleaning СКАЧАТЬ