‘Aigh-o, Mary,’ shouted Corporal Gwylt. ‘Have you come to see the foreigners?’
The girls began to giggle purposefully.
‘It’s no brave day ye’ve brought with ye,’ one of them called back.
‘What was that you said, Mary, my love?’
‘Why did ye not bring a braver day with ye, I’m asking. ‘Tis that we’ve been wanting since Sunday, sure.’
‘What kind of a day, Mary, my own?’
‘Why a brave day. ‘Tis prosperous weather we’re needing.’
Corporal Gwylt turned to Sergeant Pendry and made a gesture with his hand to convey absolute incredulity at such misuse of language.
‘Brave day?’ he said. ‘Did you hear what she called it, Sergeant Pendry?’
‘I did that, Corporal Gwylt.’
‘So that’s a funny way to talk.’
‘That it is.’
‘Now you can tell the way people speak we’re far from home.’
‘You’ll be getting many surprises in this country, my lad,’ said Sergeant Pendry. ‘You may be sure of that.’
‘Will some of them be nice surprises, Sergeant?’
‘Ask not that of me.’
‘Oh, don’t you think I’ll be getting some nice surprises, Sergeant Pendry,’ said Corporal Gwylt in a soft wheedling tone, ‘like a plump little girl to keep me warm at night.’
CSM Cadwallader was pottering about nearby, like a conscientious matron at a boys’ school determined to make sure all was well. He had the compact professional feeling of the miner, which he combined with a rather unusual taste for responsibility, so that any company commander was lucky to claim his services.
‘We’ll be keeping you warm, Corporal Gwylt,’ he said. ‘Make no mistake. There’ll be plenty of work for you, I’ll tell you straight. Do not worry about the night-time. Then you will want your rest, not little girls, nor big ones neither.’
‘But a plump little girl, Sergeant-Major? Do not yourself wish to meet a plump little girl?’
‘Put not such ideas into the Sergeant-Major’s head, Corporal Gwylt,’ said Sergeant Pendry. ‘He does not wish your dirty things.’
‘Nor me, the dirty girls,’ said Corporal Gwylt. ‘I never said the dirty ones.’
‘Nor then the clean ones, understand.’
‘Oh, does he not?’ said Corporal Gwylt, in feigned astonishment. ‘Not even the clean ones? Do you think that indeed, Sergeant Pendry?’
‘I do think that, I tell you.’
‘And why, whatever?’
‘The Sergeant-Major is a married man, you must know.’
‘So you think girls are just for young lads like me, Sergeant-Major? That is good for me, I’m sure.’
‘Never mind what I think, Corporal.’
‘He is a lucky man, the Sergeant Major,’ said Sergeant Pendry sententiously. ‘You will be glad when you reach his age, no longer foolish and running after girls.’
‘Oh, dear me, is it true what Sergeant Pendry says, Sergeant-Major, that girls are for you no longer? I am that sorry to hear.’
CSM Cadwallader allowed himself a dry smile.
‘Have you never heard, Corporal Gwylt, there’s those to find many a good tune played on old fiddles?’ he said benevolently.
The Embarkation Staff Officer turned up at that moment with a sheaf of papers. The Battalion was on the move again. Corporal Gwylt had just time to blow a kiss to the girls, who waved frantically, redoubling their gigglings. The Company tramped off towards the train in a siding.
‘Now then, there,’ shouted the Sergeant-Major, ‘pick up the step in the rear files. Left — left — left, right, left …’
We steamed through bare, dismal country, wide fields, white cabins, low walls of piled stones, stretches of heather, more mountains far away on the horizon.
‘This will give us better training areas than back home,’ said Gwatkin.
He had recovered from his sea sickness and the tension brought on by the move. Now he was relatively calm.
‘We shall be more like soldiers here,’ he said with satisfaction.
‘What happens when we arrive, Rowland?’ Breeze asked. ‘I hope there’ll be something to eat.’
Breeze’s questions were usually aimed to score the textbook answer from Gwatkin.
‘The second echelon of the supply column will have preceded us,’ said Gwatkin sharply.
‘And what do they do?’
‘They will have broken bulk and be ready to issue to units. You should spend more time on your Field Service Pocket Book, Yanto.’
We arrived at a small, unalluring industrial town. Once more the Battalion formed up. By now the men were tired. Singing was sombre as we marched in:
‘My lips smile no more, my heart loses its lightness,
No dream of the future my spirit can cheer,
I only would brood on the past and its brightness,
The dead I have mourned are again gathered here.
From every dark nook they press forward to meet me,
I lift up my eyes to the broad leafy dome.
And others are there looking downward to greet me,
The ashgrove, the ashgrove, alone is my home.
Gwatkin was right about being more like soldiers in these new surroundings. Barracks had been created from a disused linen factory, the long narrow sheds in which the flax had formerly been treated offering barrack-rooms stark as a Foreign Legion film set. Officers were billeted in a forlorn villa on the outskirts of the town, a house that had no doubt once belonged to some successful local businessman. It was a mile or more away from the barracks. There, I still shared a room with Kedward, Breeze and Pumphrey, the last of whom had not yet achieved his RAF transfer. Another subaltern, Craddock, was in with us too, brother of the girl to whom Kedward was engaged. Craddock, fat and energetic, was Messing Officer, which meant he returned to billets in the middle of the night several times a week, when he would either turn on the light, or blunder about the room in the dark, falling over other people’s camp-beds in a fruitless effort to find his own. Both methods were disturbing. There was, in any case, not much room to manoeuvre round the beds, even when the light was on. Craddock’s midnight arrivals were not the only inconvenience. Breeze left old razor blades about in profusion, causing Pumphrey to cut his foot one morning. Kedward talked in his sleep throughout the night, shouting commands, as if he were drilling a company: ‘At the halt — on the left — form close column of — platoons …’
Pumphrey, inclined to bicker, would throw towels about and sponges. A window pane was broken, which no one ever seemed responsible for mending, through which the night wind whistled, while cold struck up insistently from the floor, penetrating the canvas of a camp-bed. Snow had returned. I record these conditions not as particularly formidable in the circumstances, but to indicate they were sufficiently far from ideal to encourage a change, when, as it happened, opportunity arose. This came about through Gwatkin in an unexpected manner. During the weeks that followed our arrival in these new surroundings, I began to know him better. He was nearer my own age than the other subalterns, except Bithel. Even the captains tended to be younger than Gwatkin and myself, as time went on, some of the older ones being gradually shifted, as insufficiently proficient at their job, to Holding Battalions or the Infantry Training Centre.