‘’Ere, boy,’ he said to the sick man, ‘drink this up.’ He reached for his greatcoat and tucked it across the foot of Bailey’s bed. ‘’Ave a good sweat, Bailey boy. You’ll be all right in the morning.’

CHAPTER FIVE

A courtship

A LIEUTENANT-COLONEL rules an infantry battalion: majors and captains sit frowning behind tables, award minor punishments and sign their company orders: but the regimental sergeant-major is the First Soldier of the battalion. His is an authority more sternly defended than any other’s; his dignity more jealously guarded. The colonel may unbend, may appear in his shirtsleeves, may ostentatiously fraternise with other ranks; but never the R.S.M.

Every Saturday morning for one hour the Fifth Battalion of the Wessex Regiment acknowledged this fact. The colonel, his company commanders and their subalterns lurked in their offices or retired to the warmth and comfort of the mess; and on the parade ground that looked out over the mist-veiled Channel Regimental Sergeant-Major McBean drilled an officerless battalion.

Six hundred riflemen stood stiffly to attention, silent and alert, the bitter wind stabbing at their faces. A hundred yards away from the nearest rank stood the R.S.M., arms locked at his sides, his body erect and tall as a lance, his chin up, his voice carrying against the sobbing March wind with the harsh, unanswerable authority of a bugle-call. This lean, brown man from the Hebrides with the impassive face and the soft, musical accents of the islands never shouted. When he uttered his commands he did not strain, his cheeks did not grow red, his chest did not swell. He just stood there, his lips rolled back from his teeth, with the harsh, echoing, triumphant commands ripping from him; and ploughmen working behind their steaming horses in the fields far below, looked up as they heard the distant voice echoing faintly but clearly on the wind.

And the men loved it. They prepared for this parade as if for their own weddings, blancoing, and cleaning boots, brasses and weapons with furious zeal. They stood tensely, grinning with their eyes from rigid faces while the R.S.M., who did not spare his n.c.o.s, shouted, ‘Come on, you sergeant-majors, get a hold of those slopes!’ or ’Set an example, you n.c.o.s! You’re leading soldiers on parade, not a rabble of wee weans coming home from school!’

They loved it because, marching in perfect order, in beautifully-spaced ranks, with all the arms coming up together and all the boots crashing down together and the bayonets glinting together away along in front as far as the eye could see, all the slog and mud and freezing rain of the past week came to make sense; Number One Platoon and Number Nine Platoon, ‘A’ Company and ‘B’ Company and ‘C’ Company, desert-ribboned Geordies, quiet country boys and salty Cockneys all became the single entity, The Battalion; and they were full of pride.