How I Won the War Read online

  GEN. SIR LESLIE HOLLIS War at the Top

  I SPENT MY EARLY childhood cowering before that poster of Kitchener’s demanding finger and accusative moustache. The outbreak of war brought me nightmares in which beautiful young women handed me white feathers in the street. I was single and unattached and my country needed me. And there seemed little likelihood that corn-chandler’s chief clerk would become a reserved occupation.

  So, on the last Friday in October 1939, I balanced the lentil ledger, initialled the stock totals and informed Mr. Cawberry that I was rallying to the flag. I must say he took it very well.

  “Cawberry and Company have had you for six years, my boy,” he said. “It seems only fair that someone else should have a turn. I trust and hope that in these dark days Cawberry’s loss will be the Army’s gain.”

  The drill hall was dim with cold fog and spectrums glowed about the gas lights. Icy-fingered doctors did things to me which I would rather not discuss in mixed company. The clerk at the final table booked me in for posting.

  “You are free to choose any arm of the Service you wish,” he said, “and provided there are vacancies in that arm and your qualifications are suitable, you will be posted there.”

  “I’ve always fancied the Secret Service. M.I.5, you know. Military Intelligence.”

  “Military Intelligence, eh?” He read aloud as he wrote. “Arm of Service preferred … M. I…. Right you are. Next please.”

  I spent the next three days at the library reading up on Mata Hari and on the Monday morning received my orders to report to Burrapore Barracks, the training depot for Motorized Infantry. After counting us all five times, they found they had exactly five barrack rooms full and one man over. I was the odd man out and was marched away to Number Seventeen by Corporal Maloney and Lance Corporal Dodds.

  “He’s scrawny,” said Maloney, eyeing me distastefully, “and dead windy-looking.”

  “He’s all we got,” said Dodds, “until the other thirty-nine arrive tomorrow. I hope to Gawd Hitler don’t strike tonight.”

  They instructed me in the art of polishing coal, appointed me fire picket and left me in charge of the barrack room. Sitting there on my first night in the Army, coal in hand and unheroic, looking down a bleak vista of naked bedsteads, I felt lone, lorn, and very Dickensian.

  The corporals returned soon after ten, both with a skinful and a quart bottle of the same again, and settled before the fireplace to reminisce. I listened in disciplined silence and gathered that while the chunky corporal was a regular soldier of twenty-four years’ unbroken service, his willowy lance jack was a reservist who had been called back to the Colours after five years of civilian life.

  Their exchanges developed into a debate about the relative merits of Army and civilian life. Maloney proclaimed his absolute conviction that the Army gave a man the best bargain.

  “Free grub, free travel, a place to kip, and the best clobber that money can buy. You don’t get no civvy trash in the Army, my boy.”

  Dodds, speaking from experience of both worlds, was equally convinced that in all things the civilian was superior to the military.

  “You just don’t know, Paddy,” he said. “You ain’t sampled civvy stuff like I have.”

  For answer, Maloney took off his ammunition boots and put them proudly on the table.

  “Look at them. Strong as houses, soft as bosoms, and eight years on my feet already. You don’t get boots like that in civvy street.”

  Dodds lugged off his black shoes and planted them beside the boots. He unbuttoned his jacket for comfort and I saw that, underneath his battle dress, his evening wear was civilian throughout.

  “Box calf, those are. Six years I’ve worn them and they’re as good as the day I bought them in Leather Lane. You get nothing like them in the Army.”

  Maloney brushed the shoes contemptuously aside.

  “Cardboard and brown paper! A shower of rain and you’ll be barefoot.” He stripped off his grey socks. “Feel those. Pure wool, they are. There’s body in them …”

  “Pure wool is it you’re after? Then read what that label says.”

  Dodds was off with his lovat-mixture civvy socks and stretching them across the table.

  “Thin as bloody cobwebs and about as hard wearing.” Maloney was already wrestling with his jacket. “Let’s see your shirt.”

  He pulled his khaki shirt over his head and fell down twice before he got out of it.

  “Flannel, that’s what that is, solid flannel.” He cracked his shirt like a stock whip. “What doctors prescribe for the rheumatics and the Army gives it to you free.”

  “And it scrapes the skin off your shoulders in the first week,” countered Dodds, holding out his striped poplin. “Now, there’s a shirt for you. A decent civilized piece of clothing for a human being …”

  And they went on with their partisan strip poker, comparing braces, buttons, handkerchiefs, brushes, combs, vests and pants until, finally, all their belongings were piled on the table and they were standing naked before me.

  “Rotten, threadbare, civvy street muck,” jeered Maloney. “Puff o’ wind … and where are you?”

  “Clogs and canvas and crummy great shirts they don’t even give to convicts …”

  Each took a long swig to ease his flow. They gurgled and swayed in the firelight, rosy and paunchy enough for any bacchanal. Given a bunch of grapes and a satyr or two and they’d have had Rubens reaching for his roller. Maloney suddenly slammed down the bottle.

  “Teeth!” he yelled. “You can’t beat Army teeth.”

  His hand went up to his mouth and he pulled out a complete top set and laid them glistening on the table.

  “Look at those beauties. Made for me by an Army dentist in Quetta. Fitted like a glove, the day I got them. That’s quality for you, Dodds … quality you’ll never get from any civilian …”

  “Oh! No? … Just take a look at these.” The lance corporal whipped out his own top set and laid them down for inspection. “Hand made those were by Mr. Gravel, the finest dentist in the whole Seven Sisters Road. Pure ivory, them teeth are, not bone and bakelite like those crunchers of yours …”

  “I’ll show you bone and bakelite, I will.” Maloney bashed his teeth madly on the edge of the table.

  “Hard as iron. Tough as teak. You bash your tombstones like that!”

  Dodds crashed his dentures down.

  “There you are … teethmarks in the wood and not a chip out of them anywhere. That’s civvy workmanship for you, Paddy, and they’re built to last…”

  Maloney solemnly picked up his teeth and hurled them against the wooden wall of the barrack room. They bounced down and scuttered back across the floor like a racing crab.

  Dodds slung his teeth overarm and they ricocheted back to him off the beading.

  “Not a scratch on mine anywhere,” he proclaimed.

  “Not a mark on mine neither. That’s Army gear for you.”

  Maloney hurled his set again, Dodds took up the challenge and they settled to a regular fusillade of teeth following teeth in rapid fire against the woodwork. This tattoo, however, brought no decision.

  “You ain’t throwing yours as hard as me, Dodds.”

  “I’m throwing flat out. You’re pulling your punches because you’re afraid of busting your load of plastic. You’re just lobbing them up like Granny …”

  “Am I, indeed? Let me tell you …” Maloney stopped suddenly in mid-tirade and looked at me. “That’s it, Dodds … him. He’s neutral…. Hut! Shun! … Quick march! … Jump to it, boy! … Halt!”

  I was in my black and red pyjamas with the Russian eagle on the pocket. I forgot I was barefoot and slammed down a halt that sent me hammer-toed.

  “Gawd!” said the naked Dodds. “Rudolph Valentino. All done up for the old business.”

  “He’s neutral,” said Maloney. “We’ll have him throw both lots at once. That’s fair, ain’t it?”

  He handed me both sets of teeth.

  “
Throw them false teeth against that wall. Hard as you can.”

  I freely confess that I was unprepared for this situation. I had braced myself to meet the hardship, horror, and sacrifice of total war, but I had not anticipated that the Army’s first direct order to me would be, “Throw them false teeth against that wall.” I realized that military orders must be obeyed without question, but some civilian atavism warned me that this way I would make enemies, and I hesitated. What greater insult can you pay a man than to throw his false teeth against a wall?

  “Come on, now,” growled Maloney. “Get on with it or I’ll have you down the guard room for insubordination.”

  “You sling them teeth when you’re told,” said Dodds, “or I’ll have you up for court-martial.”

  I reflected that they could shoot you in wartime for refusing to obey an order. I drew back my arm and hurled the two sets of teeth at the wall. Unfortunately, I missed the woodwork and hit the granite surround of the fireplace. The dentures shattered to pieces … hailstones of ivory and pellets of coral scattered the barrack room floor, and the holystoned hearth was like the bottom of a dentist’s dustbin.

  “Me teeth!” moaned Maloney. “You’ve smashed me beautiful teeth.”

  “You’ve broke them,” cried Dodds, kneeling down and fingering the rubble. “You bloody Cossack, you … you Sheikh of Araby, you’ve broke my top set completely.”

  In a smart and soldierlike manner, I stood to attention after my throw, awaiting the next order.

  “I’m very sorry,” I said. “But you told me to. I was only obeying your orders.”

  Maloney was all for beating my teeth out there and then to join his own on the floor. But Dodds, a true barrack room lawyer, restrained him.

  “We’ll have him up in the morning, Paddy,” he said. “He’ll get the glasshouse for this. But if you mark him now, he’ll plead provocation.”

  They retired to their cubicles, swearing flabbily and calling down curses on my military career. I was very unhappy and the only consolation I could draw from the situation was that they couldn’t bite me.

  I was up next day on company orders charged with “Conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline in that he deliberately smashed the false teeth of his corporals.” Maloney and Dodds said that without even a by-your-leave I took their teeth from the table and hurled them against the fireplace. It took me about twenty minutes to go through the true sequence of events and to explain to the company commander that I had been a neutral tooth-thrower, a pressed arbitrator acting under strict orders.

  When I had finished he was clearly uncertain whether I was drunk or barmy. He finally wrote all over my records in red ink, notched me seven days’ C.B. (confined to barracks) for luck, told the sergeant major to watch out for me as a potential troublemaker and booked me for an early visit to the psychiatrist.

  Chapter Three

  Our new armies are to be officered by classes of society who are new to the job. The middle, lower and working classes are now receiving the King’s Commission. These classes, unlike the old aristocratic and feudal (almost) classes who led the old army, have never had “their people” to consider …

  LETTER TO THE TIMES FROM AN O.C.T.U. Commandant

  WITH THE BUGLE CALLING me at inconvenient hours, Sergeant Major Grope beady-eyeing me at every turn and two gummy corporals chasing me from pillar to post mumbling toothless, incomprehensible orders, my opening week in the Army did nothing to confirm that a field marshal’s baton was hidden in my knapsack. But I did not allow this first misfortune to deter me. I applied myself to my duties with zest, smiling as I polished dustbins, whistling as I whitewashed coal bunkers, laughing aloud as I lathered latrines.

  “If yow down’t pack up acting so bleeding happy on jankers,” said Private Calendar, my fellow prisoner, “so help me God I’ll lob yow one up your crutch wit’ sharp end of this bloody broom.”

  Calendar had come straight to the depot from Walton Jail and was suffering punishment for having hit the provost sergeant with the door torn from his locker. His outlook was understandably jaundiced. I recommended to him many of the precepts of Dale Carnegie and spent a lot of time during our penal periods together explaining that only by taking a positive approach to adversity can we lead the Full Life, Win Friends, and Influence People. I continued throughout the week to exemplify my points in my own behaviour, and it came as a sad disappointment when on the last day of my sentence he caught me bending over a bucket and lobbed me the threatened one up the crutch. To avoid getting him into further trouble I told the medical orderly that I had fallen astride when vaulting a five-barred gate.

  “Looks to me,” he said, as he painted everything in reach with gentian violet, “as if you was vaulting astride some biddy when she belted you one with her brolly.”

  I did my best to please Corporal Maloney, borrowing the Weapon Training Manuals from the depot library so that I could study beforehand each lesson in our training programme. I was thus able to prompt to corporal whenever he forgot any of his lines and to remind him of the correct Manual wording on the odd occasion when he made mistakes. Although he never directly thanked me—he was having trouble breaking in his new teeth at the time—I am sure he was grateful for these little services.

  Our relations on drill parades were not as amicable as I would have wished. The root cause of dissension was my distinctive walk of the Goodbody family in which the same arm and leg swing forward together. The Army gait requires, unfortunately, the opposite routine. While a Goodbody swings left arm forward with left foot stepping out, the Army prefers that the right arm go forward as the left steps out.

  By careful concentration and counting aloud I could meet the Army rhythm for the first few paces but then heredity would assert itself, the reflexes of my ancestors would regain control and my limbs slip steadily back to their natural unison, left going with left and right going with right. Another twenty yards and the counter-swinging arms of the men about me would begin to falter and join in half-heartedly with mine. By the time we’d been twice up and down the square the rhythmic uncertainty would spread throughout the squad and arms would be going all ways like insane semaphores before the gibbering Maloney called a halt. At first he thought the Goodbody gait was a deliberate act of sabotage and hauled me out in front of the squad.

  “So you’re not satisfied, boyo, with smashing my dentures and visiting the pains of purgatory on my suffering gums. You want to put me in the ruddy loony-bin by playing Joe Cripple on drill parade, don’t you?”

  “No, Corporal. I always walk this way.”

  “Nobody walks that way. It’s against human nature…. Quick march! … Halt! … About turn! … Quick march!”

  He kept me jumping around with sudden orders for ten minutes in the hope that I would convict myself of mickey-taking by dropping into the Army rhythm. But, in the end, he had to concede my sincerity.

  “What have I ever done,” he asked, “that God Almighty should lumber me with you? You ought to be in a bloody circus, you did. Or hop-stepping up behind Groucho Marx. You’re a horrible sight creeping around the square like a wooden-legged hunchback. Get off down behind the cookhouse where nobody can see you and practise walking like a human being.”

  He came down to give me personal instruction, insisting that we walk together like a three-legged race. At the end of the session I hadn’t made any notable progress, but Maloney was definitely picking up the Goodbody polka.

  “You’ve got me doing it now, and I’m supposed to be the flaming drill instructor. Another six weeks of you and the whole depot’ll have the cack-handed St. Virus’s Dance.”

  It was that evening that Calendar jabbed me so ungratefully with the broom handle. On parade next day I was forced to walk with legs held carefully apart, bandy as a cow-punching coot. This refinement of my normal style was just too much for Maloney.

  “Jesus wept!” he groaned. “And all because he laid eyes on you. Half man, half ruptured crab. And me on 7-
4 in quid notes that our squad wins the Drill Competition. Take him away, Dodds. Get him excused drill and see if the orderly room can’t use him till he can at least get his spavined hocks together again.”

  They sent me in to Sergeant Major Grope.

  “I see from your records you claim to have been a chief clerk and accountant in civvy street. Does that mean you can read and write?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you can start copying up the names on the acquittance rolls for next month. And don’t think I won’t be watching you …”

  They gave me last week’s carbons, a foot high stack of pay sheets, and I set to work writing in the names of the twelve hundred-odd inhabitants of the depot. The last scribe had been in a hurry and some of his entries could have been more legible. The orderly room corporal showed me where I could check any doubtful names against the nominal rolls and personal records. It seemed an excellent opportunity to display to the sergeant major my powers of application, so I diligently cross-checked and struck balances at every possible point. My industry was rewarded when he came into the office after nine o’clock on my fourth evening and saw me still at work.

  “Haven’t you finished those sheets yet?” he said. “There shouldn’t be any need to work till this time of night.”

  “I have completed the sheets, sir, and am now engaged in checking the accuracy of my entries. There are a number of discrepancies between the various records which I feel you should know about and I have, therefore, prepared a report for your consideration.”