The Naked Island | Page 8

what this
R.T.O. was except the Ratty Digger. He wasn't going to tell us unless
we asked him, and we had no intention of gratifying him by asking.
Swinging packs onto shoulders, we pre pared to depart.
* Then at the last momentto our unqualified joythe Ratty Digger was

withdrawn from the party. The remaining four of us made our way
alone and with great nonchalance to Central. There, adopting a tone of
complete familiarity, I demanded the R.T.O. It was only with difficulty
that I concealed my surprise when the R.T.Q. turned out to be merely a
nondescript little man with some pips on his shoulders who gave you
railway tickets if you had enough forms signed by sufficient people.
Armed with the little man's tickets, we boarded the electric train to
Liverpool and arrived there forty-five minutes later. We found the town
swarming with both militiamen and Free French troops and with ladies
anxious to pick up either but no one at all con cerned with us. We were,
by that time, however, developing con siderable initiative in these
matters. We knew that we had to get to the camp of the 2,'15th Field
Regiment at Holdsworthy. We therefore walked the town till we found
one of the regiment's trucks and then clambered aboard. We sat in it for
an hour till its crew returned, then we drove out with them to
Holdsworthy, having re fused to be evicted by them.
In a surprisingly short time, although no one in the regiment had
expected us or been warned of our arrival, we were given a meal (in
which good Australian beef had miraculously been transformed into the
most noisome stew), a cup of hot cocoa, a palliasse on which to lie, and
a tent in which to sleep. For the first time I felt that I was really in the
Army and wondered what the subsequent days of training would bring.

Very quickly I found out. They brought weeks of rookie training from
an N.C.O. whose knowledge of textbook soldiering was as inti mate as
his language was bawdy. There were endless lectures on the art of
stripping down both rifles and machine guns. The same N.C.O. could
strip and remount a Lewis machine gun blindfold and with heavy
gloves on. He could also play the piano blindfold and with heavy
gloves on. He would do either at the drop of a hat and of the two
operations he was proudest of the latter, though the former was
Infinitely the more artistic.
The weeks drew on. At the behest each dawn of a redheaded sergeant

major whom I detested, I peeled about one million pounds of potatoes
and disposed of about one million gallons of urine which was collected
in latrine pans outside each hut each night and was especially prolific
on beer nights*
I got lumps under my arms from my vaccination and lumps in the groin
from my inoculations, I learnt that a Short Arm Parade had nothing to
do with small arms, side arms or shouldering arms and that, at its best,
it could only be described as Presenting Arms. I learnt how to hoolc up
all the pieces of webbing with which we had been issued till they
formed the one uncomfortable harness, and I learnt how to crawl out
the back fence of the camp so that I could go absent without leave till
my pay expired under the strain.
I heard sufficient foul language in five days to deter me from ever using
anything but the King's English for the next five years (though not
enough to blind me to the fact that on occasions the Australian uses his
"bloodies" and "bastards" with a rhythmic grace of which I in my more
orthodox style could never be capable). I absorbed the principles and
practice of field gunnery almost with pleasure, although I never ceased
to be irritated by the instructor's maxim (which he repeated with
infantile pleasure) that "A gunner doesn't walk: he doesn't run he
FLIES," And I never learnt to salute officers whom I regarded as dopes
with the smallest degree of conviction. Moreover one day I was paid.
The possibility of being paid in the Army had frankly never occurred to
me. Five shillings a day it was. 1 I was most surprised.
Finally I learnt to keep quite level an eyebrow which had a de plorable
tendency to rise most noticeably whenever I observed any of the
innumerable follies of Army administration and which had already,
after only two months service, earned me three charges for "dumb
insolence,"
The last of these occasions had been when a gun crew, of which I was a
member, practised gun drill round a non-existent gun. We
"This amount earned us the title