How I Won the War (3 page)

“As you probably know, Goodbody,” said the colonel, rubbing his white moustache and muttering behind the active hand, “the country needs officers. One of my jobs is to find ’em. There’s a draft of fifteen recruits selected from previous intakes due to go to 212 O. C. T. U. in two days’ time. One of them has been careless and unpatriotic enough to get German measles. We’ve got to fill his vacancy on the course at short notice. Although you’ve only been with us barely a month you have been strongly recommended for the
vacancy
.” He riffled through the papers on his desk. “Sergeant Major Grope and R. Q. M. S. Dibson both give you most exemplary recommendations for the earliest possible posting to O. C. T. U. and Corporal Maloney indicates that your abilities are such that you would not profit greatly by any longer period at his depot. The mess corporal also spoke to me at lunch in glowing terms about your work with him…. What about you? Do you think you could make an officer?

“I am prepared to do my best, sir, in any station to which my King and Country may see fit to call me.”

“Are you a horseman?”

“Yes, sir.” I had frequently ridden the puller of Cawberry and Company’s delivery dray.

“Good show, I see you were a chief clerk and accountant. Who with?”

“Cawberry and Company, sir…. Corn-chandlers, sir.”

“Know a bit about victualling horses, then, eh?”

We spent a jolly half hour discussing fodder in all its forms and the intricacies of the equine digestion. The colonel shook me by the hand at the end, wished me the best of luck at 212 O. C. T. U. and expressed his assurance that I would not let down the Old Depot.

As I packed my kit next day and drew my warrant I reflected how unfortunate had been my start in the Army
and how unwise I would have been to have let it discourage me. If you persevere in the face of adversity and do your best at all times, your true worth will eventually be
recognized
by your superiors. It was undoubtedly the hard work which I had done for Sergeant Major Grope and the R. Q. M. S. which had earned me such approbation. And if I had not tried to explain Dale Carnegie to Private Calendar I would never have got the chance to work in either the orderly room or the stores. Everything happens for the best in the end, of course, but I did not appreciate at the moment of Calendar’s impact that my first impetus towards becoming an officer and a gentleman had arrived in the form of a jab up the crutch with the sharp end of a broom.

T
HE ACCENT AROUND ME
changed from Enoch and Eli to best “cut glass.” My new comrades seemed all aristocrats, juvenile stockbrokers, dons, undergraduates, and sons of tycoons. Plums grew in every throat and I took particular care to talk as far back in the mouth as possible and with every aspirate at my command.

“Welcome to 212 O. C. T. U.,” barked Colonel Grapple, the C. O., baring his teeth and thrashing his leg with a riding whip. “Straight from the shoulder. That’s m’way. Simple soldier-man. Cavalry fashion. All over the world. M’job now to make officers. Make ’em or break ’em, by gad! Silk
purses out of sow’s ears. Some of you’ll make silk purses. Some’ll never be anything but sow’s ears. Get rid of them. R. T. U.—Returned to Unit. Never mind. This is war. Damned hard times. Got to be ruthless. Only way to beat the Hun …”

I was most impressed by the staff of instructors. All were seasoned warriors who had spent a lifetime in the Army. Many were such valuable instructors that they could never be spared for actual righting and had devoted the whole of their careers to lecturing about it.

Our days and nights were loaded with work and we learnt how to inspect feet, salute when riding a bicycle, break step on bridges, build a World War I trench system, and outwit the wily Pathan. Major Hopfire, who wore spurs on his boots and honey-coloured puttees, was the ultimate authority on all things Pathan and advised us every Wednesday how hostilities were conducted on the Northwest Frontier.

“Never underrate the Pathan,” he would stress. “Damned wily chap, Johnny Pathan. When you’re under canvas always keep the rifles chained to the tent pole. Otherwise, he’ll have ’em. Strip himself mother-naked, greased all over and slippery as an eel, he’ll slide under the brailings like a snake. And if he can’t get a rifle, he’ll take the bolt. Wonderful craftsmen, the Pathan. Make a barrel and stock as well as anybody in Brummagem, but he can’t make a bolt. You can’t temper steel on a cow-dung fire, can you? So always take the bolt out, lock ’em in a box and chain that to the pole too…. Any questions, so far?”

I had always made a point of asking at least one question at every lecture. It showed the instructor that you were keen on the ball.

“Please, sir,” I said, “have the Pathans gone over to Hitler?”

“No, they haven’t. Too damned wily for that.”

“Then shall we be fighting them in this war, sir?”

“Of course you will, lad. British Army’s always been fighting the Pathans.”

“What about, sir?”

“What about? … Well … about all sorts of things.
Always
trouble up on the Northwest Frontier. Army’s job to
fight, my boy, not keeping asking why, why, why all the blasted time.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I just wondered why it was always the Pathans.”

“Because, my lad, the Pathans are just like you are. Damned troublemakers. What’s your name?”

He wrote my name in his little black book, muttering through his moustache that there were some right sow’s ears in this latest lot. I had plainly slipped one rung down the R. T. U. ladder and I’m afraid that a later misunderstanding during Chemical Warfare brought further descent.

Sergeant Hoop, the Anti-Gas Instructor, suffered,
unfortunately
, from educational insecurity. He feared the superior intellects of the dons, barristers, and public school wanderers in his audience and was ever suspicious that they were trying to come it over him.

“What we are going on with now,” he said from his platform, one drowsy afternoon, “is the use and handling of Anti-Gas Carpet. Now one roll of anti-gas carpet is proper to be held in each company stores. Anti-gas carpet is made of a number of laminated layers of heavy gauge paper specially coated with a chemical preparation which renders it resistant to liquid mustard gas. Anti-gas carpet is strong enough to support on normal ground the weight of troops in Full Service Marching Order. On encountering an area of liquid mustard gas advancing infantry should be given the
command
‘Halt!’ and the anti-gas carpet should immediately be brought up. The standard roll of carpet is four feet six inches wide and twenty-five yards long. It should be laid on the ground six feet from the contaminated area and the securing tapes released. Two men should then be detailed to advance on the carpet unrolling it before them as they go. When the carpet has been laid completely across the contaminated area the remaining troops should proceed smartly across it. The anti-gas carpet is an expendable item of stores and should be left
in
situ
and no attempt made to salvage any part of it…. Any questions?”

I stood up.

“Did you say, Sergeant, there was twenty-five yards in a roll?”

“That is correct.”

“What do you do then, if having unrolled the anti-gas carpet and marched all your troops on to it, you find that the area of liquid mustard gas is fifty yards wide?”

Sergeant Hoop looked at me silently for a long time.

“What’s your name?” he asked at last.

“Goodbody, Sergeant.”

“Mr. Goodbody,” he said precisely. “You want bull-f——ing.”

He wrote my name in his little black book, too, and went straight on with “Decontamination of Motorcycles.” I have never to this day had a proper answer to my question. And somewhere, troops could still be stranded in the middle of a fifty-yard gas patch on a twenty-five yard carpet.

In view of these failures to impress at Pathans and
Chemical
Warfare, it was fortunate for me that the War Office considered the most important subject in the training of an officer for World War II was the Design, Construction, and Furnishing of a Trench System for World War I. Half our waking hours were spent with pick and shovel excavating a second Ypres on Parsley Common. We built a labyrinth of trenches, six-feet across, sandbagged, loop-holed, revetted, fire-stepped, and duck-boarded throughout. Signposts with jocular names pointed the way through the warren, and we made vast dugouts equipped with bunks, candles in bottles, pinups on the walls, and allmod-con. Night after night we practiced trench reliefs, singing “Mademoiselle from
Armentieres
” and going over the top by numbers. I have always liked gardening and I really put my back into Trench
Warfare
. I was twice complimented verbally by Colonel Grapple himself; once on the smoothness of my spade backswing when digging in the crouch position, and again for the real 212 spirit I put into the second chorus of “Tipperary.”

The climax of our training, the final arbiter which sorted the field marshals from the R. T. U., was the series of Leadership Tests. We took turns at commanding our own sections on these exercises and were marked upon our
control
and initiative. It was a difficult task enforcing obedience from fellow cadets, and I had much trouble in dominating by personality Number 18 Section which included among its ten
members one Lord, one Sir, an actor, two barristers, and a don. For men of their background and intellect I must say that they behaved at times with an immaturity which led me to doubt whether they would ever make responsible officers. I endeavoured to influence them by my own example of unfailing obedience when they were taking their turns of command. But my efforts made little impression on their irresponsibility and merely resulted in my time being wasted in carrying requisitions to Sergeant Hoop for twenty-six and a half yards of anti-gas carpet and decking myself in foliage as a mobile observation tree.

The exercise always started in Little Ypres, and when my turn came for command we went in one evening with the rest of A Company to do a trench relief of B Company, followed by a night approach march across six miles of Parsley Common to attack Nob Hill which would be held by C Company.

The night march was carried out by sections and after I had received my orders I lined up my troops in the support trench and briefed them in detail.

“And now,” I said as I came to the end, “any questions?”

“Yes,” said Lord George Huby. “When do we get our bleeding kip? All the rest of the company got their heads down half an hour ago.”

It was ten o’clock and we were due to move off at midnight.

“Before retiring,” I said, “it will be useful if we just run through our notes on Night Patrols.”

“You do, Cornbody,” said Sir Rudolph Thrope, “and I run the toe of my boot up behind you.”

I had noticed Major Hopfire coming out of the command dugout and pressed on.

“As you say, Cadet Thrope, when on night patrol the toe of the boot should always touch the ground first. Now why is this, Cadet Brechin?”

“Oblige me, mate,” said Brechin, the actor, “by getting yourself quietly stuffed.”

“Now then,” said Major Hopfire as he came down the trench. “What’s all this noise about?”

I stood up and saluted smartly, hitting the gas alarm gong with my elbow and bringing the company awake.

“No. 18 Section, sir. Cadet Goodbody in command. We are just revising our Night Patrol notes in preparation for the exercise.”

“Then for Christ’s sake stop it and let me get some blasted sleep. Always the same. Once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker.”

He put another note in his little black book and went back to his cave. Which sent me off at midnight, with neither a light heart nor a happy band of underlings.

It was black as pitch and drizzling steadily. We had four hours in which to reach the assembly point, Copse 483102. No. 18 Section was assigned as Fire Support Group and my nine men carried between them two Bren guns, two two-inch mortars, one antitank rifle and supplies of blank ammunition for all arms.

“They picked us for this,” said Cromer, the barrister, as we waded uphill through the bracken, “because they couldn’t find mules mug enough.”

Going up against the skyline wasn’t too bad, but I couldn’t pick up a thing when we went down into the gulley beyond. I had to send Sir Rudolph out in front as guide-marker and take bearings on him every ten yards. At the bottom of the slope we ran into swamp. The guide-marker went in thigh-deep and we had to lifeline him out. We trekked north and we trekked south but everywhere before us spread the morass. When I tried to go back the way we’d come that, too, turned to peatbog. The night grew blacker and wetter and each boot was a club-footed hundredweight of mud. My nine subordinates floundered along under their loads and I could see at the end of an hour that their morale was getting low. It was my duty as commander to raise their spirits.

“Keep it up chaps,” I cried. “Not much farther now. What about a jolly old sing-song? Let’s have a rousing go at ‘Ten Green Bottles’!”

“If anybody sings a blasted note,” said Lord George Huby, “I’ll beat his bloody brains out with these mortar bombs.”

I struck up the song myself and I’m sure that my own cheerfulness would have spread to the others if, just when I
was down to four green bottles hanging on the wall, Lord George had not slung a case of mortar bombs overarm and hit me square in the small of my back. I slithered forward under the force of the blow and, as I sat down in the mud, the compass shot from my hands and fell into an outcrop of reeds.

I prised myself out of the glue. This was my testing time. Now was the moment to exert my powers of command. If I let this indiscipline pass the whole section might become a disorderly rabble.

“Number 18 Section,” I commanded. “Halt! Cadet Huby, did you throw those bombs at me?” His lordship was sitting on a rock in the rain.

“I’m bloody stacking,” he said. “Two hours wading knee-deep behind you and we’re not half a mile on our way.”

“Cadet Huby,” I ordered sharply. “Pick up your mortar bombs and fall in.”

“Sam! Sam!” said Brechin. “Pick up tha musket.”

“I’ve fallen in, mate,” said Lord George. “Three times already. Up to my perishing waist.”

“Are you refusing to obey an order of your section
commander
?” I asked calmly.

“I’m fed up with you as section commander, Corny-boy. All you’re after is getting us drowned.”

“This is mutiny,” I said.

“By God! Mr. Christian,” intoned Brechin. “This is
mutiny
. I’ll see you hang from the highest yardarm on Plymouth Hoe!”

“Cadet Huby,” I said. “You are under arrest for mutiny in that you have refused to obey a lawful order of your section commander.”

Cromer the barrister came out of the darkness.

“Under arrest, eh? What sort of arrest?”

“Close arrest.”

“Close arrest? Then he’ll need an escort. Laid down in
King’s
Regulations
that an officer under close arrest must be escorted at all times by an officer of equivalent rank.”

“All right then. You’re his escort.”

Nobody was going to out-face me on military law. Cromer put down his Bren and unslung his clutch of magazines.

“Then I can’t carry these. The first duty of an escort is to secure his prisoner. If Huby runs away I’ll never catch him carrying that lot. And
K.
Rs.
state plainly that prisoners under close arrest must be disarmed. So he can’t carry that two-inch mortar. He might turn it on me.”