William Boyd - The New Confessions

I myself was graded as almost educationally subnormal. Minto Academy’s bizarre curriculum let me down again. I lied about my age (nineteen) and had no qualifications. I saw the ferrety sergeant at the recruiting office write “NOM” on my form. Not Officer Material. In fact, it took some convincing for this loathsome man to accept that Minto Academy was even a public school. After he had searched vainly in the Public Schools Yearbook I managed to persuade him that there was a separate Scottish edition in which the Academy was sure to be found.

I was ideal material for the 13th Battalion as it was now composed. Minto refused to allow a corps at the school and so I did not even possess the most rudimentary military skills. Moreover, my mood at the time was extremely depressed and I was generally sullen and unresponsive. It was only through Peter’s recommendation to Colonel O’Dell that I was passed through basic training.

I do not remember much about our camp. That it was near Oswestry is all I can bring to mind. It was a dismal featureless place where, along with a thousand other recruits, I learned to drill, fire a rifle, use a bayonet and gas mask. We spent many days simulating platoon attacks on trenches and strongpoints while instructors threw thunderflashes and shouted at us. I made no great efforts, or friendships, at that stage. I wanted merely to get through and get away, while I nursed my private griefs and shame.

It is hard for me to recall those dreadful hours after Donald Verulam told me the true explanation of those references in my mother’s letters. At such moments of intense despair the brain does not function normally. Just as it is for the benefit of the organism as a whole that our bodies cannot remember physical pains as we have endured, so it is similarly blessed on occasions of grievous mental torment. We can summon up some old griefs, some shames, some envies — but not all. It would be too much to bear. There was nothing about those feverish, crawling, sweaty sensations I underwent then that I would ever want to retain. I became suddenly dull, that day, blandly smiling, making noncommittal remarks when required, while I furiously rejigged my perceptions of myself, rejecting fanciful romance for humdrum disappointing reality. Donald and I walked on, he troubled and concerned, I supplying false, unconvincing reassurances. Somehow I got through the evening. The night was devoted to ruthless self-castigation. The next morning I announced I was going back to Edinburgh. I packed, made my farewells and got on a train to London. I disembarked at Oxford, caught another train to Marlborough, where I presented myself at the recruiting office. Some days later, at Oswestry, I wrote and told everyone where I was and about the change of plan.

My father, my true father, seemed not too perturbed. He wrote to me: “It is not a course of action I would have advised, but if you feel called to serve your country I will not stand in your way. There was no need to flee the Academy to achieve this. You might at least have thought to confide your plans to me. But let us put all this behind us. At the root of this unfortunate business it seems your motives are essentially fine.…” And so on, much in the same vein. I heard nothing from Donald Verulam or Aunt Faye.

Of the batch of new recruits that left Oswestry bound for the 13th (Public School) Service Battalion of the SOLI, three of us found ourselves in the same platoon. We were notionally in the bombing section, 2nd Platoon, D Company. Prior to an attack this section would be issued with a supply of Mills bombs and we would find ourselves in the vanguard of any assault on the enemy lines. None of us was particularly skilled at bomb throwing. At Oswestry we had practiced with potatoes. We had little specialized training apart from that. As I remember, we spent most of our time fitting detonators into Mills bombs.

Our progress to the front was slow. At first the battalion was attached to a Naval Division regiment guarding Dunkirk, where we acted as fatigue parties. Then, after two months, we were marched up the coast to Coxyde-Bains where our fatigue duties continued, this time for the siege batteries of the Royal Marine artillery at La Panne. It was here that we were sent from time to time into the trenches at Nieuport. It was not testing or dangerous. The war here was an affair of long-range artillery duels. We heard the guns and sometimes saw the explosions — distant puffs of smoke — but it took place far above our heads. After a day or two the guns were no more alarming than distant thunder in another country: rain was falling on somebody else.

The 13th was considerably understrength. There were nine of us in the so-called bombing section and at Dunkirk and at Coxyde-Bains we all slept in the same large bell tent. The three new recruits to the bombers were myself, Julian Teague and Howard Pawsey. The fellow bombers we encountered were, clockwise round the tent (we three were on groundsheets near the entrance flap), on my left, Leo Druce, Tim Somerville-Start, Noel Kite, the Honorable Maitland Bookbinder and two others whose names I have forgotten. They made no impression on me. I remember one, I think, a dim fellow, always reading — Floyd, I think. Our company commander was an older man, a lieutenant, called Louis McNiece. He was gray-haired and worried looking and known to everyone as Louise. Louise had had a commission as a major in the Mashonaland Light Horse. He had sailed promptly back from Africa to England at the outbreak of war, but the best position he could obtain was this company commandership in the 13th, with a commensurate drop in rank. He had no hopes of promotion and was maniacally fearful of getting into trouble. His authority over his company was minimal, but he was looked on charitably by Colonel O’Dell, who regarded him, however erroneously, as a regular soldier, as was the colonel himself.

Indeed the battalion owed its very existence to O’Dell and to Noel Kite’s father, Findlay. Both were rich men (Kite had made his fortune in dye) and in 1914 they had paid for the formation and upkeep of the battalion (food, uniforms, transport, pay) out of their own pockets for several months, until the Army Council recognized it officially as a New Army service battalion. Our first uniforms — navy-blue serge — were made up at Selfridge’s. We even had our own pipe band.

Findlay Kite felt strongly that every battalion should have a band and had recruited and paid eight youths from Glasgow to join the battalion. The Army Council refused to take on this expense and it was still borne by the Kite family — much to Noel Kite’s irritation. The pipers were fully cognizant of their privileged position and refused any other duties. They lived apart from the rest of us in well-tended billets (they received an extra allowance for food and clothing when overseas). The sight of the pipers lounging around their braziers in shirtsleeve order was the only thing that seemed to rile Noel, normally placid to the point of inertia. “Work-shy peasants!” he used to call them and regularly wrote to his father encouraging the band’s dissolution. But his father and Colonel O’Dell always vetoed it. They liked the idea of an English battalion with a Scottish band. It gave the 13th a ready-made gloss of tradition, O’Dell argued.

A few days after my arrival at Dunkirk an orderly runner told me that I was wanted by the colonel. I went to battalion HQ worried that my father had changed his mind and was going to demand my return. But not at all. O’Dell was a bald cheerful man with a frizzy blond moustache.

“Welcome aboard, Todd. Peter Hobhouse’s cousin, yes? He wrote to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Todd … Todd … You must have been in Fetter’s, then. George Armitage’s house.”

“Sorry, sir?”