Reinforcements

THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE was full of men and smoke and the smell of wet uniforms drying. Above each row of seats the space between luggage-rack and ceiling was jammed with packs and equipment. There were more packs piled in the corridor outside, and men squatting on them all along the corridor.

There was the noise of the train and of many men talking and laughing; and in the carriage the noise, wavering and mournful, of a mouthorgan.

‘Put that bloody thing away,’ said the sergeant who was sitting pressed tight against the window by the crush of bodies. He was watching the rain stream down the windowpane and he did not turn his head as he spoke.

There was a growl of assent from some of the other men, and the private who was playing tapped his mouthorgan on his knee and dropped it in his pocket.

‘What’s up, Sergeant?’ he asked. ‘You look pigsick.’

The sergeant turned from the window. ‘I’m pigsick all right,’ he said bitterly. ‘Six years in a regiment, you go abroad with it, you fight with it, you bury your mates, you get stripes in it, you play football for it, you win a bloody boxing championship for it, and what then? One fine morning you wake up, and you find a detail on the board…’ he fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a sheet of paper and, unfolding it, began to read: ‘“Movement order: at oh-eight-thirty hours January fifteenth, nineteen-forty-four, the undermentioned officers and other ranks will parade in Field Service Marching Order, with fifty rounds of ammunition each and the unexpired portion of the day’s rations, for transfer to the Fifth Battalion, Wessex Regiment”.’

He crumpled the paper and smeared it against the windowpane; he swore, repeating one word furiously, again and again.

The men sat jammed shoulder to shoulder, with their hands between their knees, and watched him, silently. They were all cast in the same mould; all hard, all brown-skinned, all grave and composed of countenance, all with desert ribbons on the left breasts of their tunics.

One of the privates, swaying with the motion of the train, steadied himself for a moment to light a cigarette. He spat out a mouthful of smoke. ‘Well, Ah don’t mind tellin’ yer, Sarge,’ he said, ‘’tharrah don’t give a boogger what battalion Ah’m in. Ah never asked ter coom in t’ first place. If Ah were a Regular it might be different, but Ah’m not, and Green ’Owards don’t mean no more t’me than any other regiment.’

‘Not even when you’ve come all the way across the desert with them?’ the sergeant asked him. ‘And through Sicily?’

‘Lewk, Sarge,’ answered the private. ‘Ah’ve got one ambition – ter see our lass an’ the kid again after t’war, an’ what ’appens ter me between now an’ then don’t mean a thing.’