The Soldier's Art (8 page)

At the same
time, to be unjustly hauled over the coals about such a matter is in the nature
of things, certainly military things. Incidents like this must take place all
the time in the army. In due course, I was to witness generals holding impressive
appointments receiving a telling-off in the briskest manner imaginable, from
generals of even greater eminence, all concerned astronomically removed from
the humble world of Hogbourne-Johnson and Widmerpool. All the same, it was true
Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson had been violent in his denunciation, conveying
strictures on what he believed to be inefficiency with a kind of personal
contempt that was unfitting, something over and above an official reprimand for
supposed administrative mishandling. In addition, Hogbourne-Johnson, as a rule,
seemed thoroughly satisfied with Widmerpool, as Widmerpool himself had often
pointed out.

Whatever the
rights and wrongs of the case, Widmerpool was very sore about it. He took it as
badly as my former Company Commander, Rowland Gwatkin, used to take his
tickings-off from the adjutant, Maelgwyn-Jones. In fact this comparatively
trivial exchange between them transformed Widmerpool from an adherent of
Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson – even if, in private, a condescending one – to
becoming the Colonel’s most implacable enemy. As it turned out, opportunity to
make himself awkward arose the day we returned from the exercise. In fact,
revenge was handed to Widmerpool, as it were, on a plate. This came about in
connection with Mr. Diplock, Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson’s chief clerk.

“Diplock may
be an old rascal,” Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson himself had once commented, “but
he knows his job backwards.”

Repeating the
remark later, Widmerpool had indulged in one of his rare excursions into
sarcasm.

“We all know
Diplock’s a rascal,” he had remarked, “and also knows his job backwards. The
question is – does he know it forwards? In my own view, Diplock is one of the
major impediments to the dynamic improvement of this formation.”

Mr. Diplock (so
styled from holding the rank of Warrant Officer, Class One) was a Regular Army
Reservist, recalled to the colours at the outbreak of war. As indicating status
bordering on the brink of a commissioned officer’s (more highly paid than a
subaltern), he was entitled to service dress of officer-type cloth (though
high-collared) and shoes instead of boots. His woolly grey hair, short thick
body, air of perpetual busyness, suggested an industrious gnome conscripted
into the service of the army; a gnome who also liked to practise considerable
malice against the race of men with whom he mingled, by making as complicated
as possible every transaction they had to execute through himself. Diplock was
totally encased in military obscurantism. Barker-Shaw, the F.S.O. – as Bithel
mentioned, a don in civil life – had cried out, in a moment of exasperation,
that Diplock, with education behind him, could have taken on the whole of the
Civil Service, collectively and individually, in manipulation of red tape; and
emerged victorious. He would have outdone them all, Barker-Shaw said, in
pedantic observance of regulation for its own sake to the detriment of
practical requirement. Diplock’s answer to such criticism was always the same:
that no other way of handling the matter existed. Filling in forms, rendering “states,”
the whole process of documentation, seemed to take the place of religion in his
inner life. The skill he possessed in wielding army lore reached a pitch at
which he could sabotage, or at least indefinitely protract, almost any matter
that might have earned the disapproval of himself or any superior of whom he
happened to be the partisan – in practice, Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson – while at
the same time, if something administratively unusual had to be arranged, Diplock always said
he knew how to arrange it.
This self-confidence,
on the
whole justified, was perhaps the main reason why Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson was so
well affected
towards his chief clerk. The other was no doubt the parade of deference
– of a deeper, better understood sort than Cocksidge’s – that Diplock,
in
return, offered to Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson.
Diplock’s methods had always irritated Widmerpool, although himself
no enemy to formal routine as a rule.

“I told
Hogbourne-Johnson in so many words this morning that we should never get
anything done here so long as we had a chief clerk who was such an old woman.
Do you know what he said?”

Although
Widmerpool prided himself on his own grasp of army life, he had not been able
wholly to jettison the more civilian approach, that you are paid to give advice
to your superiors in whatever happens to be a specialised aspect of your
particular job; that such advice should be presented in the plainest, most
forceful terms. He never quite became accustomed to a tradition that aims at
total self-effacement in the subordinate, more especially when his professional
recommendations are controversial.

“What was the
answer?”

“‘Diplock wasn’t
an old woman when he won the Military Medal’.”

“How does he
know? – some old women are very tough.”

“I replied in
the most respectful manner that Diplock won the M.M. a long time ago,” said
Widmerpool, ignoring this facetiousness. “That I was only referring to his
present fumbling about with A.C.I.s, Ten-Ninety-Eights, every other bit of
bumph he can lay his hands on, especially when something is needed in a hurry.
I suppose Hogbourne-Johnson thought he was snubbing me. He gave that curious
snarling laugh of his.”

This slight
brush had taken place before Widmerpool’s more disastrous encounter with the
Colonel. It illustrated not only Widmerpool’s retention, in certain respects,
of civilian values, but also his occasional lack of grasp of some quite obvious
matter. Even in civilian life, a frontal attack would have been ill-judged in
approaching a relationship in a business firm such as Hogbourne-Johnson’s with
Diplock. It was not going to alter the stranglehold Diplock enjoyed on
Hogbourne-Johnson. At the same time, the fact that Widmerpool felt it possible
to offer that remark about Diplock at all, absolved him from any suggestion of
later deliberately assailing the Colonel through insidious attack by way of his
own chief clerk. Widmerpool had already decided Diplock was unsatisfactory.
When the time came, of course, he was not blind to pleasure derived from that
method, but he did not contrive it of sheer malice. Once the ball was rolling,
as D.A.A.G., he had no alternative but to follow up suspicions aroused.

That even the
lightest of such suspicions should have come into being on the subject of Mr.
Diplock behaving in an irregular manner might seem out of the question; far
less, that there should be indications he was embezzling government funds.
However, that was how things began to look. Possibly so much rectitude in
observing the letter of the law in matters of daily routine required,
psychologically speaking, release in another direction. General Conyers had
been fond of expatiating on something of the sort. Anyway, the affair opened by
Widmerpool saying one day, soon after the three-day exercise, that he was not
satisfied with the financial administration of the H.Q. Sergeants’ Mess.

“Something
funny is going on there,” he said. “Diplock is at the bottom of it, I’m sure. I’ve
told those Mess treasurers time and again to take the bottle from the cellar
account and charge it to the bar account. They never seem to understand. In
Diplock’s case, it looks to me as if he
won’t
understand.”

These doubts were not set at rest as the
weeks passed. Not long after
Widmerpool made this comment, several small sums of money disappeared from places
where they had been deposited.

“I’ve
recommended that cash-boxes be screwed to the floor,” said Widmerpool. “At
least you know then where they’ve
been left. Diplock put all sorts of difficulties in the way, but I insisted.”

“Have you
mentioned these losses higher up?”

“I had a word
with Pedlar, who didn’t at all agree with what I am beginning to wonder – I try
to have as few direct dealings as possible now with Hogbourne-Johnson. I am
well aware I should not receive a sympathetic hearing there. It will be a smack
in the eye for him if my suspicions turn out to be correct.”

Then it
appeared, in addition to the Sergeants’ Mess, something unsatisfactory was
afoot in connection with the Commuted Ration Allowance.

“Mark my
words,” said Widmerpool. “This is all going to link up. What I require is
evidence. As a start, you will go out to the Supply Column tomorrow and make a
few enquiries. I must have facts and figures. As you are to be travelling in
that direction, it will be a good opportunity to explain those instructions I
have here just issued to RA.S.C. sub-units. You can go on to the Ammunition
Company and the Petrol Company, after you’ve gathered the other information.
Take haversack rations, as they’re some distance apart, and the other thing
will need some little time to extract. There may be lack of co-operation.
C.R.A.S.C. has been difficult ever since the business of those trucks, which I
was, in fact, putting to a perfectly legitimate use.”

At one time or
another, Widmerpool had quarrelled with most of the officers at Divisional
Headquarters. The row with C.R.A.S.C. – Commanding Royal Army Service Corps at
H.Q., a lieutenant-colonel – had been about employment of government transport
on some occasion when interpretation of regulations was in doubt. It had been a
drawn battle, like that with Sunny Farebrother. Widmerpool’s taste for conflict
seemed to put him less at a disadvantage than might be supposed. His undoubted
reputation for efficiency had indeed been to some extent built up on being
regarded as a difficult man to deal with; rather than on much more deserved
respect for the plodding away at unspectacular work to which he used to devote
himself every night in his own office. Personal popularity is an asset easy to
exaggerate in the transaction of practical affairs. Possibly it can even be a
handicap. The fact that Widmerpool was brusque with everyone he met, even
actively disobliging to most, never seemed in the last resort to weaken his
position. However the Diplock affair was rather a different matter.

Enquiries at
the quarters of the Supply Column indicated that, as Widmerpool supposed, all
was not well. His feud with C.R.A.S.C. had certainly penetrated there, if
unwillingness to spare time to impart information was anything to judge by. I
left the place with a clearer understanding of my father’s strictures, in the
distant past, regarding Uncle Giles’s transference to the Army Service Corps.
However, certain essential details were now to some extent available. There
could be no doubt that, at best, existing arrangements, so far as the Sergeants’
Mess was concerned, were in disorder; at worst, something more serious was
taking place in which Diplock might be involved. I brought back the material
required by Widmerpool that evening.

“Just as I
thought,” he said, “I’ll go and have a word with A. & Q. right away.”

Widmerpool
stayed a long time with Colonel Pedlar. He had told me to
wait until his return, in case further information collected
during the day might be needed. When he came back to the room his expression
immediately showed that he regarded the interview to have been unsatisfactory.

“Things will have to be looked into further,” he said. “Pedlar’s still
unwilling to believe anything criminal is taking place. I don’t agree with him. Just run through what they told you again.”

It was nearly
dinner time when I arrived back that night at F Mess. I went to the bedroom to
change into service dress. When I came down the stairs, the rest of them were
going into the room where we ate*

“Buck up,
Jenkins,” said Biggs, “or you’ll miss all the lovely bits of gristle Sopey’s
been collecting from the swill tubs all the afternoon for us to gnaw. Wonder he
has the cheek to put the stuff he does in front of a man.”

He was in one
of his noisy moods that night. When Biggs felt cheerful – which was not often –
he liked to shout and indulge in horseplay. This usually took the form of
ragging Soper, the Divisional Catering Officer. Soper, also a captain with
’14-’18 ribbons, was short and bandy-legged, which, with heavy eyebrows and
deep-set shifty eyes, gave him a simian appearance that for some reason
suggested a professional comedian. In civil life one of the managers, on the
supply side, of a chain of provincial restaurants, he was immersed in his work
as D.C.O., never in fact making a remark that in the least fitted in with his
promisingly slapstick appearance, or even one to be classed as a joke. Off-duty
he talked of scarcely any subject but army allowances. Biggs and Soper to some
extent reproduced, at their lower level, the relationship of Colonel
Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar in the General’s Mess; that is to say they
grated on each other’s nerves, but, as twin veterans of the earlier war,
maintained some sort of uneasy alliance. This bond was strengthened by a fellow
feeling engendered by the relatively unexalted nature of their own
appointments, both being much on their dignity where the “G” staff – ”operational”
in duties – was concerned. There was, however, this important deviation in
their reflection of the two colonels’ relationship, for, although Biggs,
aggressive and strident, so to speak bullied Soper (like Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson
oppressing Colonel Pedlar), it was Soper who, vis-à-vis Biggs, enjoyed the role
of man of the world, pundit of a wider sophistication. For example, Soper’s
knowingness about food – albeit army food – impressed Biggs, however
unwillingly.

“How are the
diet sheets, Sopey?” said Biggs, belching as he sat down. “When are you going
to give us a decent bit of beefsteak for a change? Can you tell me that?”

Soper showed
little or no interest in this enquiry, certainly predominantly rhetorical in
character. He had picked up a fork, from which he was removing with his
thumbnail a speck of dried vegetable matter that adhered to the handle.