The Soldier's Art (3 page)

The raid in
progress at that moment was, as Bithel had indicated, more spectacular than
alarming, even a trifle stimulating now one was fully awake and dressed; so
long as the mind did not dwell on the tedium of a three-day exercise the
following day, undertaken after a missed night’s sleep. On the other hand, if
bombs began to fall in the sports field, such light-hearted impressions might
easily deteriorate, especially if the bren were knocked out, removing chance of
retaliation. (It might be added that all sense of excitement was to evaporate
from air-raids three or four years later.) However, Bithel had ceased to
require comment on his own meditations about “baptism of fire.” He now returned
to those personal worries, predominantly financial, which were never far from
his mind.

“I do hope
things will be O.K. about that cheque,” he said. “It all started with the Pay
Department being late that month in paying Field Allowance into my banking
account.”

This situation
did, indeed, arise from time to time, owing to absence of method, possibly
downright incompetence, on the part of the Financial Branch of the War Office
concerned; possibly due to economic ineptitudes, or ingrained malice, of what
Pennistone used later to call the “cluster of highly educated apes” ultimately
in charge of such matters at the Treasury. Whatever the cause, the army from
time to time had to forego its wages; sometimes such individual disasters as
Bithel’s resulting.

“I can see
there’ll be a fuss,” he said, “but with any luck it won’t come to a
court-martial.”

Two or three
lesser reports, each thunderous enough, had followed the last big explosion.
Now noise was diminishing, the barrage gradually, though appreciably, reducing
its volume. Quite suddenly the guns fell entirely silent, like dogs in the
night, which, after keeping you awake for hours by their barking, suddenly
decide to fall asleep instead. There was a second or two of absolute stillness.
Then in the far distance the bell of a fire-engine or ambulance clanged
desperately for a time, until the echoes died sadly away on the wind. This
discordant ringing was followed by a great clamour, shouts, starting-up of
trucks, hooting …
the sound of
horns and motors, which shall, bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring
….
Huge smuts, like giant moths exploring the night air, pervaded its twilight.
The smell of burning rubber veered towards a scent more specifically chemical
in character, in which the fumes of acetylene seemed recognisable. The
consolatory, long-drawn out-drone came at last. At its first note, as if thus
signalled, large drops of rain began to fall. In a minute or two the shower was
coming down in buckets, the freshness of the newly wet grass soon obtruding on
the other scents.

“Buck up and
get that bren covered, Corporal.”

“Shall we pack
it in now, sir?”

“Go ahead.”

“Think I’ll
return to bed too,” said Bithel. “Doubt if I’ll get much sleep. Glad I brought
a mac with me now. Need it more than a helmet really. Awful climate over here.
Makes you swill down too much of that porter, as they call it. More than you
can afford. Just to keep the damp out of your bones. Come and see us in G Mess
some time. You’d like Barker-Shaw, the Field Security Officer. He’s a professor
– philosophy, I think – at one of the ’varsities. Can’t remember which. Clever
face. The bloke in charge of the Hygiene Section is a bright lad too. You
should hear him chaffing the Dental Officer about sterility.”

Our several
ways parted. Corporal Mantle marched off his men to the barrack-room. I
completed the rounds of the other bren sections, dismissed them, made for bed.

F Mess was
only a few minutes’ walk from the last of these posts. The Mess was situated in
a redbrick, semi-detached villa, one of the houses of a side-street sloping
away towards the perimeter of the town. Entering the front door, you were at
once assailed by a nightmare of cheerlessness and squalor, all the sordid
melancholy, at its worst, of any nest of bedrooms where only men sleep; a
prescript of nature unviolated by the character of solely male-infested
sleeping quarters established even in buildings hallowed by age and historical
association. F Mess was far from such; at least any history to be claimed was
in the making. From its windows in daytime, beyond the suburbs, grey, stony
hills could be seen, almost mountains; in another direction, that of the docks
over which the blitz had been recently concentrating, rose cranes and factory
chimneys beyond which inland waters broadened out towards the sea – ”the
unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.” About half a mile away from the Mess, though
still in the same predominantly residential area, two or three tallish houses
accommodated all but the ancillary services of Divisional Headquarters. A few
scattered university buildings in the same neighbourhood failed to impart any
hint of academic flavour.

“No room in
this bloody Mess as it is,” said Biggs, Staff Officer Physical Training,
expressing this opinion when I first turned up there. “Now you come along and
add to the crowd, Jenkins, making an extra place at that wretched rickety table
we’ve been issued with to eat off, and another body to occupy the tin sink on
the top floor they call a bath – no shaving in the bathroom, remember,
absolutely
verboten
.
What are you supposed to be doing at Div. anyway?”

A captain with
’14-’18 ribbons, bald as an egg, he had perhaps been good-looking in a heavy
classical manner when younger; anyway, had himself so supposed. Now, with
chronically flushed cheeks, he was putting on flesh, his large bulbous nose set
between fierce frightened eyes and a small cupid’s bow mouth that kept
twitching open and shut like a rubber valve. Muscular over-development of
chest, shoulder and buttock gave him the air of a strong man at a circus – a
strong woman almost – or professional weight-lifter about to present an
open-air act to a theatre queue. His voice, harsh and unsure, registered the
persecution mania that beset him, that condition, not uncommon in the army, of
for ever expecting a superior to appear – bursting like the Demon King out of a
trapdoor in the floor – and find fault. In civilian life sports organiser at a
sea-side resort, Biggs, so I learnt later, was in process of divorcing his
wife, a prolonged undertaking, troublesome and expensive, of which he would
often complain.

“I’m attached
to the D.A.A.G.’s office.”

“How long for?”

“Don’t know.”

“How’s Major
Widmerpool got authority for an assistant,
I should like to know?”

“War Office
Letter.”

“Go on.”

“It’s to help
clear up a lot of outstanding stuff like court-martial proceedings and
requisition claims.”

“I’ve got a
lot of outstanding stuff too,” said Biggs. “A bloody lot. I’m not given an
assistant. Well, I don’t envy you, Jenkins. It’s a dog’s life. And don’t forget
this. Don’t forget it. There’s nothing lower in the whole bloody army than a
second-lieutenant. Other Ranks have got their rights, a one-pipper’s none. That
goes especially for a Div. H.Q., and what’s more Major Widmerpool is a stickler
for having things done the right way. He’s been on my own track before now, I
can tell you, about procedure he didn’t consider correct. He’s a devil for
procedure.”

After that
Biggs lost interest in what was not, indeed, a very interesting subject, except
in the light indicated, that to acquire an understrapper at all was, on
Widmerpool’s part, an achievement worthy of respect. No one but a tireless
creator of work for its own sake would have found an assistant necessary in his
job, nor, it could be added, in the ordinary course of things been allowed one,
even if required. Widmerpool had brought that off. As it happened, a junior
officer surplus to establishment was to some extent justified additionally, not
long before my arrival at Division, by Prothero, commanding the Defence
Platoon, falling from his motor-bicycle and breaking his leg. While he was in
hospital I was allotted some of Prothero’s duties as well as those delegated by
Widmerpool.

“You’ll find
there’s a lot of work to do here,” said Widmerpool, on my first morning. “A
great deal. We shall be at it to a late hour most nights.”

This warning
turned out to be justified. There were, as it happened, several courts-martial
pending, and another, convened in the past, the findings of which Widmerpool
considered unsatisfactory in law. A soldier, who had temporarily gone off his
head and assaulted two civilians, had been acquitted at his trial. Widmerpool
was engaged in a complicated correspondence on this matter with the Judge
Advocate General’s Department. Such things took up time, as most of the week
was spent out of doors on exercises. Although, since days when we had been at
school together, I had been seeing him on and off – very much on and off – for
more than twenty years by this time, I found when I worked under him there were
still comparatively unfamiliar sides to Widmerpool. Like most persons viewed
through the eyes of a subordinate, his nature was to be appreciated with keener
insight from below. This new angle of observation revealed, for example, how
difficult he was to work with, particularly on account of a secretiveness that
derived from perpetual fear, almost obsession, that tasks completed by himself
might be attributed to the work of someone else.

On that first
morning at Division, Widmerpool spoke at length of his own methods. He was
already sitting at his table when I arrived in the room. Removing his
spectacles, he began to polish them vigorously, assuming at the same time a
manner of hearty military geniality.

“No excuses
required,” he said, before I could speak. “Your master is always the first
staff officer to arrive at these Headquarters in the morning, and, apart from
those on night duty, the last to leave after the sun has gone down. Now I want
to explain certain matters before I go off to attend A. & Q.’s morning
conference. The first thing is that I never turn work away, neither in the army
nor anywhere else. To turn work away is always an error. Never let me find you
doing that – unless, of course, it is work another branch is wrongly trying to
foist on us, for which they themselves will ultimately reap the credit. A man
fond of stealing credit for other people’s work is Farebrother, my opposite
number at Command. I do not care for Farebrother. He is too smooth. Besides, he
is always trying to get even with me about a certain board-meeting in the City
we both once attended.”

“I met
Farebrother years ago.”

“So you keep
on telling me. You mentioned the fact at least once last night. Twice, I think.”

“Sorry.”

“I hope
previous acquaintance will prevent you being taken in by his so-called charm,
should you have dealings with him as my representative.”

Widmerpool’s
feud with Sunny Farebrother, so I found, was of old standing, dating back to
long before this, though, militarily speaking, in especial to the period when
Farebrother had been brigade-major to Widmerpool’s Territorials soon after the
outbreak of war. The work of the “A” staff, which Widmerpool (under “A. &
Q.”, Colonel Pedlar) represented at Division, comprised administration of “personnel”
and “interior enonomy,” spheres in which, so it appeared,
Farebrother had more than once thwarted Widmerpool, especially in such matters
as transfers from one unit to another, candidates for courses and the routine
of disciplinary cases. Farebrother was, for example, creating difficulties
about Widmerpool’s correspondence with the Judge Advocate’s Department. There
were all kinds of ways in which an “opposite number” at Corps or Command could
make things awkward for a staff officer at Division. As Command Headquarters
were established in one of the blocks of regular army barracks on the other
side of the town, I had no contact with Farebrother in the flesh, only an occasional
word on the telephone when the D.A.A.G. was not available; so the matter of our
having met before had never arisen. It was hard to estimate how justly, or
otherwise, Widmerpool regarded this mutual relationship. Farebrother’s voice on
the line never showed the least trace of irritation, even when in warm conflict
as to how some order should be interpreted. That quiet demeanour was an
outstanding feature of Sunny Farebrother’s tactic. On the whole, honours
appeared fairly evenly divided between the two of them where practical results
were concerned.

“Right, Sunny,
right,” Widmerpool would mutter, gritting his teeth when he had sustained a
defeat.

“It’s gone the
way Kenneth wants,” was Farebrother’s formula for accepting the reverse
situation.

Then there were
my own hopes and fears. Though by now reduced to the simplest terms, these were
not without complication. In the first place, I desired to separate myself from
Widmerpool; at the same time, if possible, achieve material improvement in my
own military condition. However, as the months went by, no prospect appeared of
liberation from Widmerpool’s bottle-washing, still less of promotion. After
all, I used to reflect, the army was what you wanted, the army
is what you’ve got – in terms of Molière,
le sous-lieutenant Georges Dandin
. No use to
grumble, not to mention the fact that a great many people, far worse off, would
have been glad of the job. This was a change, of course, from taking pride in
the thought that only luck and good management had brought a commission at all
at a moment when so many of my contemporaries were
still failing to achieve that. However, to think one thing at one moment,
another at the next, is the prescriptive
right of every human being. Besides, I
recognised the fact that those who desire to share the faint but perceptible
inner satisfaction of being included, however obscurely, within the armed
forces in time of war, must, if in their middle thirties and without any
particular qualifications for practising its arts, pay for that luxury,
so far as employment is concerned, by taking what comes. Consolation was to
be
found, if at all, in Vigny’s views (quoted that time in the train by David
Pennistone) on the theme of the soldier’s “abnegation of thought and action.”