A Soldier Erect: or Further Adventures of the Hand-Reared Boy. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ in good order, topees high, and transferred our kit to a line of three-tonners standing waiting for us outside the station. All trucks, we understood, were called gharris now that we were in India. We climbed into the gharris and the tailboards were slammed up after us. Now we were no longer military in appearance, and the salesmen moved in on us again until driven off.

      Sergeant Meadows peered into our platoon truck.

      ‘Everyone okay in there?’

      ‘I get travel sick ever so easy, Charley,’ Dusty Miller said.

      ‘That’s better than having to march, isn’t it? Just see you spew up into your topee in proper orderly fashion, that’s all. Right now, we’ve got half-an-hour’s ride to the barracks at Kanchapur. There’ll be a meal laid on when we get there and then straight to bed, okay? Heads down as soon as possible. It’s zero-two hours now. Reveille five-thirty and a run round the block before dawn and it gets too hot to move.’

      Groans all round.

      ‘And just remember – you’re in a tropical country. No buying any food off of these street-wallahs, understand? That way, you get maggots in your bellies. If I catch any of you trying to buy food off of the street-wallahs, I’ll have you up before the CO so fast, your feet won’t touch. Just watch what the old hands do – like Chalkie White, who’s been out here before, same as me – don’t panic, remember India isn’t Glorious Devon, and you’ll be okay. Thik-hai? Remember, the Indians are supposed to be on our side.’

      Ironical cheers.

      ‘The Indians are supposed to be on our side. They are part of the British Empire and it is our duty to protect them. That’s what we’re out here for. Never be familiar with one. Treat the Indians with respect and don’t let the buggers near your rifles. Never remove your topees in daylight in direct sunlight – sunstroke is a self-inflicted wound and will be punished accordingly.’

      We looked down at him in silence. Charley Meadows was a big man with a soft-looking face. His cheeks trembled with earnestness. He feared for us. Much of what he said to us he had said almost every day on the boat; to hear it repeated was pleasurable. It helped to keep us awake.

      ‘What about women, Sarge?’ Jackie Tertis asked.

      ‘You’re too young to ask such questions, Tertis,’ Charley said, and everyone laughed.

      The truck-ride lasted over an hour. We swayed in unison as our vehicle bumped along. The convoy wound out of Indore and through a countryside of increasing wildness. The few dust-coated villages we drove through were absolutely desolate. The only life we saw, beyond the odd cow, was an occasional mangy dog, a piyard, glimpsed in the headlights of the following vehicle; it turned its red eyes on us as we passed … Every now and again, our gharri would surge forward as the driver tried to run one of the dogs over. Hate the place – hate its inhabitants – already the official message was getting through to us!

      ‘I don’t think I’m going to go much on India,’ Geordie announced. It was even registering on him.

      The barracks loomed up, looking as deserted as the villages – except that they were guarded. They consisted of several great blocks, two-storied, with colonnades on the ground floor and wide balconies above. No lights burned, except in the mess hall, where grumpy cooks served us a meal of bully beef hash, plums and custard, and tea. As quickly as possible – and that meant pretty fast – we ate, scrambled for beds, and got our heads down.

      We had our run next morning at five-thirty, as promised. The sky cracked at the edge, horizontal beams of light burnished our hairy legs. It was another military day: the country was different, the orders were familiar.

      After breakfast, we paraded for the local CO to address us. He was a heavy man, with that air of authority which confers anonymity on senior officers. You could tell he wasn’t a Mendip, just by looking at him. We stood on the drill square, rigid in KD and topees, listening to the tale of how this was a soft station at which we were to get acclimatized before proceeding first to jungle training and then to the real business of driving the Jap out of Burma.

      ‘I know the reputation Burma has in the UK, and it is a bad reputation. Don’t be misled by it. You will soon discover how the Chindits, together with other units of the British Army, are pressing the war home against the Japanese even now. We’ve learnt by previous mistakes. The Jap is not invincible and we are going to send him home with his tail between his legs. Burma – most of it anyway – is ideal fighting country for infantry.’ A murmur in the ranks, at which the CO grew slightly more rigid.

      ‘I repeat – ideal fighting country! That’s where British 2 Div comes in. You will be fighting in Burma, make no mistake about that. Over the next few weeks, you are going to be turned into ideal fighting machines. I know you have courage already – our job is to see you leave for the front with fitness also on your side.

      ‘In that connection, I would advise you to drink very little alcohol and plenty of water. Drink your water with salt in, as much as you can take. Also, keep away from local women, all of whom have the pox. You may be offered women down in the bazaar. Refuse them. Don’t be misled. They will have the pox, so stay away from them. It’s a hot climate, so keep yourselves morally pure. That’s all.’

      We dismissed.

      Many of the bods wandered back to the barrack-room muttering to themselves, dazedly, ‘Morally fucking pure … What does he think we are …’

      In the afternoon, we paraded at the quarter-master’s stores for new kit. All the kit with which we had been equipped before leaving Blighty had to be turned in. That included our KD, our respirators, and the hated solar topees. In exchange, we were fitted out with drab green jungle-dress, in sizes that fitted us to some extent. We also acquired steel helmets and bush hats. The latter made us look like Aussies; we swaggered about in them, calling each other ‘cobber’ and ‘me old darlin’’, but it was the CO’s speech of the morning which really preoccupied us.

      ‘Are there really a lot of women in the bazaar, corp?’ Wally Page asked the store corporal, as we collected mosquito nets.

      The corporal paused and looked at Wally suspiciously. ‘What do you mean, are there a lot of women in the bazaar?’

      ‘What I say – are there a lot of women in the bazaar?’

      The corporal was a thin, sandy, faded man, all rounded surfaces, as if he had spent his life in a pullover two sizes too small for him – a man designed by nature for the fusty darkness of the QM stores. We had heard him addressed as Norm. Removing a stub of cigarette from his mouth with thumb and forefinger, he looked Wally and me over contemptuously and said, ‘You young admis want to get a bit of service in! You’re fresh from the Blight, aren’t you?’

      ‘I was in France in 1940 – where were you?’ I asked.

      ‘I don’t want none of your lip! You want to get some Indian service in, that’s what counts. We don’t call them women out here, malum? We call them bibis, black bibis. That’s Urdu, that is. You lot want to bolo the bhat a thora, you do!’

      We had already noticed the convention: as many Urdu words were to be crammed into the conversation as possible. It was as effective as a display of medals for dismaying young upstarts like us.

      Sticking to his original point Wally gave me a blow on the upper arm and said, ‘The Corp ain’t going to let on about what СКАЧАТЬ