The Complete McAuslan Read Free

Martin-Duggan and Hayhurst so.
    And we passed, I suppose because we showed grit, determination, endurance, and all the rest of it. Although with Selection Boards you never could tell. Only the three of us know that what got us through was the loss of my pants, and military history has been made out of stranger things than that.

Silence in the Ranks

    The life of the very young officer is full of surprises, and perhaps the most shaking is the moment when he comes face to face with his men for the first time. His new sergeant stamps to a halt in front of him, salutes, and barks: ‘Platoon-presnready-frinspeckshun-sah! ’, and as he clears his throat and regards the thirty still figures, each looking to its front with frozen intensity, the young subaltern realises that this is it, at last; this is what he is drawing his meagre pay for.
    In later years he may command armies or govern great territories, but he will never feel again the same power-drunk humility of the moment when he takes over his platoon. It is elating and terrifying – mostly terrifying. These thirty men are his responsibility, to look after, to supervise, to lead (whatever that means). Of course, they will do what he tells them – or he hopes they will, anyway. Suppose they don’t? Suppose that ugly one in the front rank suddenly says ‘No, I will not slope arms for you, or shave in the morning, or die for king and country’? The subaltern feels panic stealing over him, until he remembers that at his elbow there is a sergeant, who is wise in dealing with these matters, and he feels better.
    There are young officers, of course, who seem to regard themselves as born to the job, and who cruise through their first platoon inspection with nonchalant interest, conversing airily with the sergeant as they go; possibly Hannibal and Napoleon were like that. But I doubt it. A man would have to be curiously insensitive not to realise that for the first time in his life thirty total strangers are regarding him with interest and suspicion and anxiety, wondering if he is a soft mark or a complete pig, or worse still, some kind of nut. When he realises this he feels like telling them that he is, really, all right and on their side, but of course he can’t. If he did, they would know for certain he was some kind of nut. They will just have to find out about each other gradually, and it can be a trying process.
    I have only a hazy impression of inspecting my platoon for the first time. They were drawn up in the sunlight with their backs to the white barrack wall, against which an Arab tea-vendor was squatting, waiting for the ten-minute break. But all I can remember is the brown young faces staring earnestly to their front, with here and there a trickle of sweat or a limb shaking with the strain of standing still. I remember telling one that he was smartly turned-out, and he gave a controlled shudder, like a galvanised frog, and licked his lips nervously. I asked another whether he had volunteered for this particular regiment, and he stammered: ‘Nossir, I wanted to go intae the coal-mines.’
    Perhaps I was over-sensitive because I had been more than two years in the ranks myself, and had stood sweating while pinkish young men with one painfully new pip on their shoulders had looked at me. I remembered what I had thought about them, and how we had discussed them afterwards. We had noted their peculiarities, and now I wondered what mine were – what foibles and mannerisms were being observed and docketed, and what they would say about me later.
    I don’t know what I expected from that first inspection – a rapturous welcome, three cheers, or an outbreak of mutiny – but what I got was nothing at all. It was a bit damping; they didn’t seem to react to me one way or the other. Maybe I should have made a speech, or at least said a few introductory words, but all that I could think of was Charles Laughton’s address to the crew of the Bounty, which ran: ‘You