The Day Gone By (62 page)

‘Well,' I said, pulling the open exercise book across between us, ‘let's start by making one up and I'll try to explain. “All these things having been narrated, Caesar decided nevertheless to press on.” That's the sort of stuff you're apt to get. Now, “Omnibus narratis”, you see, is what's called a subordinate clause -'

 

C Platoon,
250 Light Company R.A.S.C. (Airborne) in 1944

No. 1 Section Corporal Bater

No. 2 Section Corporal Pickering

No. 3 Section Corporal Hollis

No. 4 Section Corporal Rawlings

No. 5 Section Corporal West

No. 6 Section Corporal Simmons

No. 7 Section Corporal Herdman

¹
Cecil Sharp, No. 341. Captain Lewis, 1909.

²
* ‘Popeye the Sailorman' was the hero of a pre-war strip-cartoon (published in this country by the Daily Mirror), who acquired enormous physical strength by the internal application of canned spinach. He was accompanied by a female, named Olive Oyl, of dubious charm but indisputable fidelity. He had a friend, a smoothly self-possessed scrounger and rascal named J. Wellington Wimpy, who lived on hamburgers for which he never paid. This is why hamburgers became popularly known as ‘Wimpys'. It is also why Wellington bombers became known as ‘Wimpys'.

Popeye had another loyal follower called the Jeep, a little creature about the size of a cat, which could presage the future, if asked, by sticking up his behind to indicate ‘yes' and squeaking ‘Jeep, jeep'. This is why, later on in the war, when the American troops began arriving in numbers, their light, open-sided vehicles became known as ‘jeeps'.

Popeye suffered intermittently from the hostile attentions of ‘goons', whom he always thrashed, of course: these were great, clumping, stupid, malicious creatures, rather like Norwegian trolls. This is why German soldiers were called ‘goons'.

*
Fifth columnist. During the Spanish Civil War, the Fascist General Franco said that he had four columns advancing on Madrid and a fifth column inside the city. The term became proverbial for a spy or traitor.