From Johnnie Cope in the Morning | |
When
I was a very young soldier, doing my recruit training in a snowbound wartime
camp in Durham, there a villainous orderly sergeant who used to get us
up in the mornings. He would sneak silently into our hut at 5.30 a.m.,
where we were frowsting in our coarse blankets against the bitter cold
of the room, suddenly snap on all the lights, and start beating the coal-bucket
with the poker. At the same time two of his minions would rush from bunk
to bunk screaming: |
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..."Wake-aye!
Wake-eye! I can see yer! Gerrup! Gerrup! Gerrup!" |
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...And
the orderly sergeant, a creature devoid of pity and any decent feeling,
would continue his hellish metallic hammering while he shouted: |
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..."Getcher
cold feet on the warm floor! Har-har!" and sundry obscenties of his
own invention. Then all three would retire, rejoicing coursely, leaving
behind them thirty-six recruits suffering from nervous prostration, to
say nothing of ringing in the ears. |
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...But
it certainly woke us up, and as I did my first early morning fatigue,
which consisted of dragging a six-foot wooden table-top down to the ablutions
and scrubbing it with cold water, I used to contrast my own miserable
lot with that of his late majesty Louis XIV of France, whose attendants
used a very different technique to dig him out of his scratcher. As I
recalled, a valet in velvet-soled shoes used to creep into the royal bedchamber
at a fairly civilised hour, softly draw back the curtains a little way,
and then whisper: "It is my humble duty and profound honour to inform
your majesty that it is eight-thirty of the clock." That, now, is
the way to break the bad news, and afterwards the body of majesty was
more or less lifted out of bed by a posse of princes of the blood who
washed, fed, watered and dressed him in front of the fire. No wooden tables
to scrub for young Louis. |
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...And
as I wrestled with my brush
in the freezing water, barking my knuckles and turning blue all over,
I used to have daydreams in which that fiend of an orderly sergeant was
transported back in time to old Versailles, where he would clump into
the Sun-King's bedroom in tackety boots at 5.30, guffawing obscenely,
thrashing the fire-irons against the fender, and bawling: |
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..."Levez-vous
donc, Jean Crapaud! Wake-eye, wake-eye! Getcher froid pieds on the chaud
terre! I can see yer, you frog-eating chancer! Har-har!" |
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...While
I concede that this kind of awakening could have done Louis XIV nothing
but good, and possibly averted the French Revolution, the whole point
of the daydream was that the orderly sergeant would undoubtedly be flung
into an oubliette in the Bastille for lèse majesté, there to rot with
his red sash and copy of King's Regulations, while virtuous recruits in
the twentieth century drowsed on until the late forenoon. |
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...And
while I stood mentally picturing this happy state of affairs, and sponging
the icy water off the table-top with the flat of my hand, the sadistic
brute would sneak into the ablutions and turn the cold hose on us, screaming: |
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..."Two
minutes to gerron rifle parade, you 'orrible shower! Har-har! Mooo-ve
or I'll blitz yer!" |
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...d. |
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...r. |
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...r. |
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By
George MacDonald Fraser.. |
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...r. |
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Comment: |
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For the things that some of us have shared, and for the scrubbing out of classroom desks on Cambrai parade square in the rain (in 1989). Your orderly sergeant and Captain R*****k could have swapped ideas on disciplinary torture. At least Corporal P. was human (though he was always tried to hide it). | |