How I Won the War Read online

  I handed him the top copy.

  “As I have indicated, sir, at paragraph one, there are one thousand one hundred seventy-two other ranks on the present strength of the depot and one thousand one hundred eighty-four names on the pay sheets. One thousand one hundred eighty-four signatures appeared last week and therefore cash has been drawn and paid out in respect of twelve soldiers who are not on the strength. My analysis at paragraph two indicates that six of these extra names are those of recruits who have been discharged from the depot back to civilian status during the past year, three others are named J. Smith, two W. Robinson, and one E. Jones. While the appearance on the paysheets of the extra twelve names and the regular debiting of pay against their signatures may be due to some errors in the records I have examined so far, it may well suggest, as you will be aware, sir, that someone is engaged in embezzlement of Army funds. I was wondering, sir, who actually controls the drawing of cash and the balancing of the pay sheets.”

  “I do.”

  “Oh!”

  “What I mean,” said the sergeant major hastily, “is that I’m in control of the work, but there’s all sorts of people have to help me. Officers write the cheques and give out the money, the clerks add up the pay sheets. Could be any of ’em.” He sat down beside me and put a fatherly hand on my shoulder.

  “Now, my boy, I think it would be best if we kept this entirely to ourselves. There may be some mistake in the records you don’t know about. And anyway, if there is a villain about we don’t want him to know we’re on to him, do we?”

  “No, sir. I have completed my duty in reporting to you.”

  “That’s right. And you leave the rest to me.” He tapped my report. “Have you by any chance got a copy of this?”

  “Yes, sir. I thought I would keep one as a sample of my Army work. It might be useful if I get to any interviews.”

  He sucked his teeth judicially.

  “I think it might be as well if you gave it to me. You can’t be too careful about security.”

  I handed him the carbon.

  “As you wish, sir. I’m sure I could remember the details if ever I should need them.”

  “You can, can you?” He looked at me keenly. “And about these interviews. Is there any particular line you’d like to get transferred to?”

  “No, sir. I am anxious only to do my duty.”

  “I see. Well, you get off now. And remember, not a word to anybody about this.”

  “I’ll remember, sir.”

  “And it’ll perhaps be best if you don’t work here no more. Just in case anybody’s watching. Tomorrow morning, you report to the R.Q.M.S. for duty in the stores.”

  R.Q.M.S. Dibson was busy stock-taking and he set me to measuring flannelette, counting button sticks, pairing boots, and bundling blankets. In the process I was able to compare the Army stock records with those of Cawberry and Company and to suggest one or two improvements in his arrangements. He was not, unfortunately, very appreciative.

  “Don’t fink, son,” he said. “Just count the fings I tell you to count and write down how many. That’s all you got to do. Leave the brainwork to the Secretary of State for War, eh? All he pays you for is to do or die, not to reason why. Now get off with the truck party and help pick up the rations.”

  We had to wait a long time at the ration dumps and while the others played pontoon I had ample opportunity to study the system of issue. Corporal Maloney didn’t seem anxious to have me back on normal duties and I was left for a most informative week in the stores. Despite R. Q. M. S. Dibson’s strictures about thinking, I wrote out some observations for his consideration. It seemed only fair that he should have the same benefit of my experience as Sergeant Major Grope. I took my paper into his office during tea break.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said, “but I have a short report on certain store-keeping points to submit for your consideration.”

  “I don’t want no report. And you’re on a charge for disobeying an order. I said no finking.”

  “The first point, sir, refers to our ration figures. While in the orderly room I established that there are one thousand one hundred seventy-two other ranks on the strength. Yet the figure on our indents used for meat, sugar, tinned fruit, bacon, and the other foodstuffs on the civilian ration list, is one thousand two hundred seventy-two. For these items we are thus receiving issues for one hundred people in error.”

  The R. Q. M. S. got up and bolted his office door.

  “Go on,” he said. “Tell me more.”

  “Fortunately, this error of one hundred is not repeated in the cookhouse figures. The actual rations issued to the cook sergeant are based on the correct strength of one thousand one hundred seventy-two. The one hundred surplus rations should therefore accumulate each day in your main store.”

  “Should they, indeed?”

  “In theory, they should. And assuming the error has persisted for, say, one month, there should now be two Nissen huts full of surplus rations. In practice, however, except for the emergency forty-eight hour stock of corned beef and biscuits there is no accumulation whatever of civilian rationed foodstuffs anywhere in the store.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “I don’t know, sir. It would appear that the surplus one hundred rations are being removed daily elsewhere so that no accumulation arises.”

  “And do you know who’s doing the removing?”

  “No, sir. But I thought I should report the facts to you.”

  Dibson fanned himself with his hat.

  “Phew! … But you have been a busy little bee, haven’t you.”

  “I try to improve my knowledge all the time, sir.”

  “Very commendable, I’m sure.” He sat me down and put his arm around my shoulder in just the way Sergeant Major Grope had done. “Now you ain’t told nobody about your figures, have you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Then we’d better just keep this to ourselves until I can get my arrangements made for a proper investigation. If you should breathe one word of this to anybody else and jeopardize those investigations you’d be up for court-martial and in the glasshouse pronto. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I’ll keep in touch with you. But I don’t think it would be wise for you to work in my stores no more. You report up at the officers’ mess tomorrow and tell the corporal I sent you to help him with his books.”

  “Yes, sir. And there’s just one other point I think you ought to know. While I was dusting the gallon rum jars one of them fell over and the cork came out.”

  “Oh! Did any rum get spilt?”

  “No, sir. The jar was full of cold tea. I thought you’d like to know.”

  He unbolted the door for me.

  “You ain’t after a transfer somewhere else are you, son? Wanting to better yourself maybe?”

  “No, sir. Not at the moment, anyway.”

  At first the mess corporal was most grateful for my assistance, but his attitude towards me became strangely cooler on the third day when I showed him my poultry and egg analysis which proved that the bills from his supplier must have been wrongly made out. To have consumed all the poultry items charged for in the past quarter the twenty-two officers would have had to have eaten two chickens and eight eggs each per day. It was while I was explaining my figures to the corporal that a message came for me to dress up and report to the commanding officer.

  “As you probably know, Goodbody,” said the colonel, rubbing his white moustache and muttering behind the active hand, “the country needs officers. One of my jobs is to find ’em. There’s a draft of fifteen recruits selected from previous intakes due to go to 212 O. C. T. U. in two days’ time. One of them has been careless and unpatriotic enough to get German measles. We’ve got to fill his vacancy on the course at short notice. Although you’ve only been with us barely a month you have been strongly recommended for the vacancy.” He riffled through the papers on his desk. “Sergeant Major Grope and R. Q. M. S. Dibso
n both give you most exemplary recommendations for the earliest possible posting to O. C. T. U. and Corporal Maloney indicates that your abilities are such that you would not profit greatly by any longer period at his depot. The mess corporal also spoke to me at lunch in glowing terms about your work with him…. What about you? Do you think you could make an officer?

  “I am prepared to do my best, sir, in any station to which my King and Country may see fit to call me.”

  “Are you a horseman?”

  “Yes, sir.” I had frequently ridden the puller of Cawberry and Company’s delivery dray.

  “Good show, I see you were a chief clerk and accountant. Who with?”

  “Cawberry and Company, sir…. Corn-chandlers, sir.”

  “Know a bit about victualling horses, then, eh?”

  We spent a jolly half hour discussing fodder in all its forms and the intricacies of the equine digestion. The colonel shook me by the hand at the end, wished me the best of luck at 212 O. C. T. U. and expressed his assurance that I would not let down the Old Depot.

  As I packed my kit next day and drew my warrant I reflected how unfortunate had been my start in the Army and how unwise I would have been to have let it discourage me. If you persevere in the face of adversity and do your best at all times, your true worth will eventually be recognized by your superiors. It was undoubtedly the hard work which I had done for Sergeant Major Grope and the R. Q. M. S. which had earned me such approbation. And if I had not tried to explain Dale Carnegie to Private Calendar I would never have got the chance to work in either the orderly room or the stores. Everything happens for the best in the end, of course, but I did not appreciate at the moment of Calendar’s impact that my first impetus towards becoming an officer and a gentleman had arrived in the form of a jab up the crutch with the sharp end of a broom.

  Chapter Four

  Generals have often been reproached with preparing for the last war instead of the next—an easy gibe when their fellow-countrymen and their political leaders, too frequently, have prepared for no war at all.

  F.-M. SIR WILLIAM SLIM Defeat Into Victory

  Gort spoke much of the war in 1914–18 in which he was very well read. He criticized the handling of the British troops in 1914 at Le Cateau, on the Marne, and at the crossing of the Aisne…. On our way we crossed the Vimy Ridge. Gort got us out of our cars when we reached it. He made Hore-Belisha climb a very muddy bank and kept him shivering in the howling gale, while he explained the battle fought there in the 1914–18 war…. We. stopped again, a few miles further on, to hear Pownall describe an attack on Auber’s Ridge … twenty-odd years before …

  MAJ. GEN. SIR JOHN KENNEDY The Business of War

  THE ACCENT AROUND ME changed from Enoch and Eli to best “cut glass.” My new comrades seemed all aristocrats, juvenile stockbrokers, dons, undergraduates, and sons of tycoons. Plums grew in every throat and I took particular care to talk as far back in the mouth as possible and with every aspirate at my command.

  “Welcome to 212 O. C. T. U.,” barked Colonel Grapple, the C. O., baring his teeth and thrashing his leg with a riding whip. “Straight from the shoulder. That’s m’way. Simple soldier-man. Cavalry fashion. All over the world. M’job now to make officers. Make ’em or break ’em, by gad! Silk purses out of sow’s ears. Some of you’ll make silk purses. Some’ll never be anything but sow’s ears. Get rid of them. R. T. U.—Returned to Unit. Never mind. This is war. Damned hard times. Got to be ruthless. Only way to beat the Hun …”

  I was most impressed by the staff of instructors. All were seasoned warriors who had spent a lifetime in the Army. Many were such valuable instructors that they could never be spared for actual righting and had devoted the whole of their careers to lecturing about it.

  Our days and nights were loaded with work and we learnt how to inspect feet, salute when riding a bicycle, break step on bridges, build a World War I trench system, and outwit the wily Pathan. Major Hopfire, who wore spurs on his boots and honey-coloured puttees, was the ultimate authority on all things Pathan and advised us every Wednesday how hostilities were conducted on the Northwest Frontier.

  “Never underrate the Pathan,” he would stress. “Damned wily chap, Johnny Pathan. When you’re under canvas always keep the rifles chained to the tent pole. Otherwise, he’ll have ’em. Strip himself mother-naked, greased all over and slippery as an eel, he’ll slide under the brailings like a snake. And if he can’t get a rifle, he’ll take the bolt. Wonderful craftsmen, the Pathan. Make a barrel and stock as well as anybody in Brummagem, but he can’t make a bolt. You can’t temper steel on a cow-dung fire, can you? So always take the bolt out, lock ’em in a box and chain that to the pole too…. Any questions, so far?”

  I had always made a point of asking at least one question at every lecture. It showed the instructor that you were keen on the ball.

  “Please, sir,” I said, “have the Pathans gone over to Hitler?”

  “No, they haven’t. Too damned wily for that.”

  “Then shall we be fighting them in this war, sir?”

  “Of course you will, lad. British Army’s always been fighting the Pathans.”

  “What about, sir?”

  “What about? … Well … about all sorts of things. Always trouble up on the Northwest Frontier. Army’s job to fight, my boy, not keeping asking why, why, why all the blasted time.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I just wondered why it was always the Pathans.”

  “Because, my lad, the Pathans are just like you are. Damned troublemakers. What’s your name?”

  He wrote my name in his little black book, muttering through his moustache that there were some right sow’s ears in this latest lot. I had plainly slipped one rung down the R. T. U. ladder and I’m afraid that a later misunderstanding during Chemical Warfare brought further descent.

  Sergeant Hoop, the Anti-Gas Instructor, suffered, unfortunately, from educational insecurity. He feared the superior intellects of the dons, barristers, and public school wanderers in his audience and was ever suspicious that they were trying to come it over him.

  “What we are going on with now,” he said from his platform, one drowsy afternoon, “is the use and handling of Anti-Gas Carpet. Now one roll of anti-gas carpet is proper to be held in each company stores. Anti-gas carpet is made of a number of laminated layers of heavy gauge paper specially coated with a chemical preparation which renders it resistant to liquid mustard gas. Anti-gas carpet is strong enough to support on normal ground the weight of troops in Full Service Marching Order. On encountering an area of liquid mustard gas advancing infantry should be given the command ‘Halt!’ and the anti-gas carpet should immediately be brought up. The standard roll of carpet is four feet six inches wide and twenty-five yards long. It should be laid on the ground six feet from the contaminated area and the securing tapes released. Two men should then be detailed to advance on the carpet unrolling it before them as they go. When the carpet has been laid completely across the contaminated area the remaining troops should proceed smartly across it. The anti-gas carpet is an expendable item of stores and should be left in situ and no attempt made to salvage any part of it…. Any questions?”

  I stood up.

  “Did you say, Sergeant, there was twenty-five yards in a roll?”

  “That is correct.”

  “What do you do then, if having unrolled the anti-gas carpet and marched all your troops on to it, you find that the area of liquid mustard gas is fifty yards wide?”

  Sergeant Hoop looked at me silently for a long time.

  “What’s your name?” he asked at last.

  “Goodbody, Sergeant.”

  “Mr. Goodbody,” he said precisely. “You want bull-f——ing.”

  He wrote my name in his little black book, too, and went straight on with “Decontamination of Motorcycles.” I have never to this day had a proper answer to my question. And somewhere, troops could still be stranded in the middle of a fifty-yard gas patch on a twenty-five yard carp
et.

  In view of these failures to impress at Pathans and Chemical Warfare, it was fortunate for me that the War Office considered the most important subject in the training of an officer for World War II was the Design, Construction, and Furnishing of a Trench System for World War I. Half our waking hours were spent with pick and shovel excavating a second Ypres on Parsley Common. We built a labyrinth of trenches, six-feet across, sandbagged, loop-holed, revetted, fire-stepped, and duck-boarded throughout. Signposts with jocular names pointed the way through the warren, and we made vast dugouts equipped with bunks, candles in bottles, pinups on the walls, and allmod-con. Night after night we practiced trench reliefs, singing “Mademoiselle from Armentieres” and going over the top by numbers. I have always liked gardening and I really put my back into Trench Warfare. I was twice complimented verbally by Colonel Grapple himself; once on the smoothness of my spade backswing when digging in the crouch position, and again for the real 212 spirit I put into the second chorus of “Tipperary.”

  The climax of our training, the final arbiter which sorted the field marshals from the R. T. U., was the series of Leadership Tests. We took turns at commanding our own sections on these exercises and were marked upon our control and initiative. It was a difficult task enforcing obedience from fellow cadets, and I had much trouble in dominating by personality Number 18 Section which included among its ten members one Lord, one Sir, an actor, two barristers, and a don. For men of their background and intellect I must say that they behaved at times with an immaturity which led me to doubt whether they would ever make responsible officers. I endeavoured to influence them by my own example of unfailing obedience when they were taking their turns of command. But my efforts made little impression on their irresponsibility and merely resulted in my time being wasted in carrying requisitions to Sergeant Hoop for twenty-six and a half yards of anti-gas carpet and decking myself in foliage as a mobile observation tree.