How I Won the War (26 page)

“That’s all they understand, them Ruskies,” said Sergeant Transom. “Just like the Wogs or the Gungas. Nothing they respect like brute force. A good old kick up the arse or a clip round the ear, and they know you mean business.”

“Your outlook is quite outdated,” I said. “Those
unfortunate
men may now be driven to attack us in revenge for the indignities they have suffered. As President Roosevelt so wisely said, only by allaying their suspicions and showing the open hand of friendship can we win the goodwill of the Russian people …”

“Here’s your socks … and your right boot. Those Bolshies have made off with your left one …” He stopped and pointed up the road. “Aye-aye, lads! Get set … looks as if them sawn-off Caucasians are coming back for another barney.”

Around the bend came the Russian patrol once more. At their head walked one with stripes on his arm, bearing before him in one hand my left boot and in the other, my wrist-watch. Their faces wreathed in smiles, becking and nodding as affectionately as car-passing Royalty, they marched up to the bridge.

“Ug … Ug … Ug-Ug!” snapped the leader. His men halted. He came forward, beaming like first dividend, and presented the boot and the watch to Sergeant Transom. As the sergeant took the offerings the Russian clasped him to his bosom and kissed him three times on each cheek.

“Ug …” he boomed admiringly. “Ug …
Tovarishch
… Ug-Ug-Ug!”

He flourished his cap and his followers cheered in unison.

“Ug-Ug!
Tovarishch!
Ug-Ug-Ug!”

They took their sacks from their shoulders and produced bottles of every alcoholic shape.

“
Tovarishch!
”
cried Sergeant Transom. “Good health, matey, and Ug-Ug-Ug!”

Twelve Platoon echoed his sentiments and after boisterous Anglo-Russian kissing all round settled in to punish the
bottles
with the Siberians. Sergeant Transom, arms linked and
brandy flask shared with the headman, came over and gave me my left boot.

“There you are, sir,” he said. “I told you there was nothing a Russian respects like a good old boot up the arse.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. But I do assure you that such action is quite out of keeping with modern concepts of international relations and the American way of
diplomacy
…”

But before I could finish he was borne off by his
companions
to the centre of the bridge where, to the music of an Ukrainian concertina, Privates Drogue and Spool were on mobile hunkers Cossack-dancing with a pair of pig-tailed Tartars. As I bent to pull on my boot, Private Clapper came over.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, “but while the others are suitably engaged might I have a few words with you?”

“Certainly, Clapper,” I said pulling tight the laces. “Is it Mrs. Clapper again?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

I stood up and straightened my uniform. This was familiar country. This was my type of war.

“We’ll walk up to the farm together, Clapper, and you can tell me all about it. Now let me see … we left Mrs. Clapper, if I remember rightly, as an uninsured, vegetarian, swimming bath attendant?”

“That’s right, sir. And it’s that swimming bath what’s caused all the trouble. There’s this health-and-strength bloke gets in there three times a week, bringing his own dumbbells, turning somersaults over the springboards, and body-building himself like Hercules’ big brother. Struts up and down the side of the bath flexing his deltoids and blowing up his triceps till Mrs. Clapper just don’t know which way to look. First off, he used to follow her about on her ablutionary duties and kept trying to back her up into empty cubicles. Eighteen stone of Mr. Universe he’s got there, sir, and that’s more nor her poor little seven-and-half stone of flesh and blood can stand.”

“You don’t mean, Clapper,” I said “that he’s … er … he’s wreaking his wicked will on her in a public cubicle of her own swimming bath?”

“She wouldn’t let him, sir. Not my little girl. She hollered for the Superintendent, my mum says. So now that
overgrown
Tarzan has taken to picking her up bodily and
carrying
her down to the used towel store and having his huge hoggins off her in there three times a week. The poor little kid’s right puny on just them vegetables all the time, my mum says, and ain’t no longer got the power to resist him…. Now is it right, sir, that’s all I want to know, while a man’s away fighting to liberate Europe from the Yoke, for bleeding street-corner Samsons to keep on stuffing it up his wife in a used towel store? That’s all I’m asking sir, is it?”

“I quite take your point, Clapper. We must not be deterred by disappointment. Let us take this rebuff as a spur to further ingenuity. Now let us consider where to find the sexual Achilles’ heel of the modern Atlas. These muscle-men, I have found, are usually terrified by any mental pursuit which demands exercise of the brain. Now, it seems to me, if we could find some suitable course at adult evening classes for Mrs. Clapper to take up, we might well provide her with a line of intellectual conversation which would rapidly frighten off her gymnastic persecutor…. Now let me see…. What about the Early English Poets … quotations from Caedmon or Langland have ever been lowering…. Or the Meaning of Art … verbal descriptions of modern paintings can be most bewildering to the predominantly muscular?

“I’m afraid, sir, Mrs. Clapper never was no good at the drawing.”

“Never mind. We must persevere. We’ll find something to suit her, never fear….”

As we walked together towards the farmhouse we left Twelve Platoon behind on the bridge, Corporal Dooley and some grandson of Ghengis Khan in loving embrace and singing “Otchi Chernia,” Private Drogue and Spool
fan-dancing
lasciviously with my two allied Flags, Corporals Hink and Globe, with four poker-faced Uzbekistanis, playing
ring-o’-roses
round the grandmother clock, and Sergeant Transom leading the combined British and Russian forces in a
high-stepping
, Anglo-Mongolian knees-up.

A
ND THUS
I
LEAVE
my Command at our moment of Final Glory when East and West joined hands in ultimate Victory.

It is with a proud heart and a pricking eye that I have looked back at my Army days when Comradeship flowered in the Forcing-house of War and I was privileged to lead Twelve Platoon, the Fourth Musketeers, the grandest bunch of chaps who ever marched to the beat of the drum. How dearly would I like to see them all again! I have tried every year since demobilization to organize a Platoon Reunion, but, unfortunately, I have never seemed to strike a date and venue which everyone found suitable to their differing
commitments
.

However, we must look forward as well as back. What with the Cold War, the Space Race, and all this rock-
and-roll
, it has not been an easy wicket for Britain since 1945. But, as I often tell the lads at the Youth Club, so long as our youngsters remember their Noble Heritage and play a Straight Bat in the Game of Life, they will see the Old Country through just as my generation did before them. If they will but use those simple virtues of grit, pluck, and never-say-die, which it pleases Almighty God to breed in every Britisher, then they will neither be found wanting when the Great Call comes, nor unworthy of their fathers, the Heavily-Armed Civilians of World War II. I am confident that they will rally again to the Flag, look up in defiance as the mushroom cloud foams across the sky, face the nuclear fallout with unflinching courage, and start a fresh page in our Glorious History as the heroic symbols of the New
Elizabethan
Age, proud to be known as the first of the Heavily Radioactive Civilians.