A Breed of Heroes (6 page)

Charles went back to the cell to collect his kit. Philip Lamb, the education officer, was lying on his bed reading and started guiltily when Charles entered. He was a small neat man with a trim
moustache. Though conscientious, he had nothing to do and felt unwanted, as indeed he was on the whole. He spent most of the next three weeks hiding in the cell and playing with his pistol, a thing
that intrigued and baffled him.

‘Have you got to go out on this operation?’ he asked.

Charles nodded.

‘All night?’

‘All night.’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘With tents and sleeping-bags?’

‘No. With nothing.’

‘You’ll freeze to death. Customs post, I suppose?’

‘Yes. It’s supposed to be very secret. How did you know?’

‘Apparently every new unit that comes here does it. It’s well known for miles around. People even turn up to watch, I’m told.’

However, everything went well in that nothing went wrong. The series of VCPs was executed without trouble or result. The evening meal in the field, near a river, would actually have been
pleasant but for the fresh wind and the prospect of the night ahead. They made the approach march to the customs post across several miles of fields and through two streams. Not trusting Sergeant
Wheeler, Charles navigated them and to his relief got it right. It was quite dark and already cold. It was obvious to everyone that the post, a small and practically featureless modern building,
did not need a platoon of thirty men to ambush it. A section of eight or nine under the command of a corporal would have been sufficient. They spent the night on their bellies in the grass and
withdrew through the wet fields at four-thirty in the morning. Their transport – lorries this time – had got lost and did not arrive for another three-quarters of an hour.

Afterwards, Edward congratulated Charles. The CO was delighted with the way things were going. ‘He’s thinking of letting us do all the night ambushes while the other companies do all
the boring daytime stuff. You’ve done us proud, Charles. Thanks a lot, old son.’

That day there were various barrack duties, briefings and working parties. Charles slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Dinner in the Mess that night was more boisterous than usual. The
CO was in a good mood, but in this as much as in a bad his presence unconsciously intimidated and directed the conversation. Edward was a little drunk and, riding on the crest of the CO’s
good opinion, recounted anecdotes about various regimental characters.

‘What about Chunky Jones with that fan in Aden? Sir, d’you remember Chunky Jones in Aden? Built like a gorilla with a solid bone head and no neck. Great man. Anyway, not a word of a
lie – I’m not kidding, it’s all gospel – in the middle of dinner one night he stood up on the table and – you know those fans we had out there, those big ones hanging
from the ceiling – well, he stood on the table and he stopped it with his head. Clunk, just like that. With his head!’ Several roared with laughter and Edward became even more excited.
‘And then, sir, and then about five minutes later someone bet him he wouldn’t do it again. Well, you know Chunky, he’ll do anything twice. Anyway, he gets up on the table to do it
again’ – Edward climbed halfway up on to the table – ‘like this, see, only this time you know what those bastards had done? They’d increased the speed of the fan. You
know, they’d switched it on to fast. The bastards! So when Chunky stood up and put his head in the way of it there was this sort of dull clunk, really wooden sound it was, and he keeled off
the table on to his back on the floor with this red line right across his forehead and his face covered in blood!’ The small dining room shook with the guffaws and the CO thumped his fist on
the table. Edward was ecstatic. ‘There was blood everywhere, I’ve never seen so much! And d’you know what they did then? – whisky – they poured a whole bottle of
whisky over him. Can you imagine? A whole bottle!’

Henry Sandy leaned across to Charles during the hubbub. ‘It won’t be long before it becomes a regimental custom, compulsory for all newcomers, whisky to be paid for by the
subalterns.’

Dinner continued unabated. Eventually, when one or two people were well into their second course, the CO’s voice was raised in anger and all conversation stopped.

‘Get that out!’ he said, emphasising each word for all it was worth.

Everyone looked for the offending person, but there was no blushing subaltern or grief-stricken company commander to be seen. No one moved, except Anthony Hamilton-Smith who continued to eat
whilst gazing with mild curiosity at the CO.

The CO banged his fist on the table. ‘Corporal James!’

The cook hurried in from the kitchen, his mouth hanging open and his flabby cheeks vibrating. ‘Sir.’

The CO pointed to the dish of gravy on the table. ‘Get that noxious liquid out of here.’

Corporal James picked up the dish. ‘Something wrong with it, sir?’

‘Everything’s wrong with it. It’s gravy.’

‘Sir. Did you want something else, sir?’

‘The point, Corporal James, is that it is gravy and I will not tolerate gravy in my Mess. I don’t care what else you give us but I never want to see that revolting brown liquid in
here again. Got that?’

‘Sir.’

‘Thank you, Corporal James.’ Corporal James waddled out with the gravy. The CO poured himself some more wine and one or two people tried timidly to get the conversation going
again.

Anthony Hamilton-Smith helped himself to some potatoes. ‘D’you not like gravy, Colonel?’ he asked.

‘I detest it, Anthony. Ghastly stuff. Can’t stand the sight of it.’

‘Oh dear, I didn’t know that,’ Anthony popped a large potato into his mouth.

After dinner the Mess split into its customary two camps. One consisted of the CO, Anthony Hamilton-Smith, the company commanders and those captains who felt it was time they were company
commanders. The other comprised everyone else and included the adjutant, an unusually popular man with more than his share of that weary resignation that is habitual with some officers. The padre,
who was no respecter of persons, moved freely and apparently unselfconsciously from one to the other. Philip Lamb hovered uneasily in between.

Night ambushes on lonely customs posts and isolated crossroads were a major feature of the battalion’s brief stay in Killagh. There were no results, although a sheep was shot, but the CO
and the Intelligence officer, Nigel Beale, remained enthusiastic to the end. Nigel was a squat, broad-shouldered, newly-promoted captain who took his intelligence work very seriously. He was of an
earnest disposition, a keen soldier who talked about the Need for Greater Professionalism. He sometimes engaged Charles in inconclusive conversations about the growth of subversive tendencies in
the universities, the BBC and the press, and his manner suggested that he held Charles partly responsible. His definition of ‘subversive’ embraced the civilian population, the Royal Air
Force and even certain regiments and corps of the Army, including Philip Lamb’s. A regular feature of his daily briefings – from which he tried without success to exclude Philip Lamb
– was his insistence that those ambushing roads near the border should look out for flat-bedded lorries without lights. This soon became a joke throughout the battalion and one night no less
than thirty-six such sightings were reported. Nigel was hurt and the CO furious. Walking-out was suspended for three days and no one ever again reported seeing a flat-bedded lorry. Nigel also had
to pass on the daily intelligence summaries from Headquarters. This was another duty he took more seriously than his audience, except for the CO. Most of the topics he mentioned had been reported
on and speculated about by the television news the day before. He was frequently mortified by this, regarding it almost as a breach of the need-to-know principle. This was the doctrine that secret
information should be known only by those that, for the purposes of their jobs, needed to know it. It was applied by Nigel and the CO with great determination but little consistency, with the
result that most people knew most things but weren’t sure what was secret and what wasn’t.

After a spate of particularly serious mid-week riots in Belfast Nigel told them that an intelligence source graded A1 had prophesied further trouble at the weekend.

‘D’you know who said that?’ asked Henry Sandy after the briefing.

‘No, I don’t,’ said Nigel, ‘and I wouldn’t tell you if I did.’

‘Well, I know and I can tell you. It was Jimmy Murphy, who commands the Third Battalion of the IRA in Belfast and is now resident in Dublin. He said it on
Twenty-Four Hours
last
night.’

‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ Philip Lamb said afterwards. ‘It was cruel. It hurt him.’

‘Hurt him? It hurts me to think that we’ll have to rely on him for knowing what’s going on round the next street corner when we get to Belfast.’

Nigel Beale soon became a joke throughout the battalion, the more so because his intense earnestness seemed unaffected by reversals. The result was that his wrongs were recalled with relish
while his rights, of which there were at least an equal number, went unrecorded.

One afternoon Charles went out for tea in the town with Henry Sandy, Philip Lamb and Chatsworth. The four of them, all young and variously disaffected, had instinctively formed a group apart
from all the others. Though three were graduates, what brought them all together was not a shared education but a communal sense of discontent, albeit for differing reasons. Henry Sandy felt
himself more suited to being a perpetual medical student than an Army officer, and did not like the CO. Philip Lamb had the sense of military inferiority common to many members of his corps and
wanted very much to be needed and accepted, but felt neither. Charles, on the other hand, feared to be needed and accepted – dimly divining that that was a two-way process that would involve
him in needing and accepting the Army – but was at the same time uncomfortable as an outsider. Basically, he wished people well but wished not to be too involved. Chatsworth, though, was
perhaps more different than anyone. He had been posted to C company in place of John Wheel who had suddenly been moved to one of the other battalions without any reason being given. Chatsworth was
tall, fair and gangling. He walked with his shoulders hunched, his hands clasped behind his back and his head nodding from side to side. He was nearly always grinning and was thought to be mad. On
his first day he had mistaken Edward Lumley for the paymaster and they had had a long and confused discussion about allowances before Edward realised. On his second night he had ambushed and
attempted to arrest an RUC patrol. He seemed unabashed by whatever happened.

‘I like the Army,’ he said, laughing after his scolding for the second incident. ‘I want to be a general. Napoleon commanded an army at twenty-six, which gives me just over
three years. But I don’t think I like it here. I don’t like some of the people and some of them certainly don’t like me, particularly the CO now. But the main thing is
there’s no killing. It’s boring. I hope it’ll change for the worse when we get to Belfast.’

They found a tea-shop near the town centre. It was run by an old lady and two young waitresses. It smelt of polish and home-made cakes. It seemed the sort of place where there was small chance
of meeting off-duty soldiers. Charles found it a great pleasure to wear civilian clothes again. He had that morning received an hysterical and loving letter from Janet who had seen television film
of the riots in Belfast and had positively identified him as a wounded officer being helped away. They ordered tea, toast and cakes.

‘I do enjoy tea,’ said Philip Lamb. ‘It’s so civilised, so nice. Except in the Mess where it’s like rugger and they all form a scrum round the toaster. I
don’t like rugger.’ They all nodded seriously. ‘I used to enjoy breakfast too but that’s all become rather tense now. I sat down this morning and my pistol fell out of my
pocket on to the floor with a great crash. Everyone stopped eating and the CO just stared. The only thing that saved me was that the same thing’s happened to him twice.’

‘What gets me,’ said Henry, ‘is the way we attached officers have to carry our bloody pistols night and day while the regimental officers who have rifles can put them in the
armoury when they don’t want to go out to play. I mean, we have to take ours to bed, to bath and to bog, with ammunition and a fifty quid fine if you lose any of it. Not that I’d know
how to use the damn thing anyway.’

‘In the last resort,’ said Philip, ‘they’re for using on ourselves, I suspect. I’m sure I’m the only target I could hit anyway. Although I must admit that
just holding it and looking at it gives one a pleasant feeling of lethality.’

Henry snorted. ‘The only lethal thing you could do with one of those is throw it at someone.’

‘Not true,’ said Chatsworth. ‘The nine-millimetre Browning is a lethal weapon, used properly. It’s more accurate than most of its users. But I agree about the pleasant
feeling of lethality. I carry one all the time.’

‘You don’t,’ said Henry.

Chatsworth laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘Why does no one around here ever believe anything I say?’

‘We usually hope you’re kidding.’

Chatsworth opened his jacket enough to reveal a shoulder-holster. ‘It’s not the Army’s, it’s my own. Legally, more or less. Though we’re not supposed to bring
private firearms out here, are we?’

‘Why do you carry it?’

‘Well, you never know.’

‘Never know what?’

‘What might happen. I always used to carry one in Panama.’

‘In where?’

‘The CO does too. You look at him next time he’s in civvies going to some dinner that he’s refused on our behalf. You can see he’s wearing a shoulder-holster.’

‘I thought everyone in that Mess was mad,’ said Henry. ‘You’re the maddest.’

‘I hope you’re right. I might make general yet. You see, none of the others know they’re mad but I know I am so I can make use of it.’

‘Just keep on the way you’re going.’

The waitress was a plump, homely, blushing girl with dark curls and rosy cheeks. ‘I haven’t touched a woman for nearly two weeks,’ Henry confided to her, seriously.