The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [29]
‘This is the new Divisional Commander making himself felt,’ said Kedward. ‘They say he is going to shake us up, right and proper.’
‘What’s he called?’
To those serving with a battalion, even brigadiers seem infinitely illustrious, the Divisional Commander, a remote, godlike figure.
‘Major-General Liddament,’ said Gwatkin. ‘He’s going to ginger things up, I hope.’
It was at the start of this thirty-six-hour exercise – reveille at 4.30 a.m., and the first occasion we were to use the new containers for hot food – that I noticed all was not well with Sergeant Pendry. He did not get the Platoon on parade at the right time. That was very unlike him. Pendry had, in fact, shown no sign of breaking down after a few weeks energetic work, in the manner of Breeze’s warning about NCOs who could not perform their promise. On the contrary, he continued to work hard, and his good temper had something of Corporal Gwylt’s liveliness about it. No one could be expected to look well at that hour of the morning, but Sergeant Pendry’s face was unreasonably greenish at breakfast, like Gwatkin’s after the crossing, something more than could be attributed to early rising. I thought he must have been drinking the night before, a foolish thing to do as he knew the early hour of reveille. On the whole, there was very little drinking throughout the Battalion – indeed, small opportunity for it with the pressure of training – but Pendry had some reputation in the Sergeants’ Mess for capacity in sinking a pint or two. I thought perhaps the moment had come when Breeze’s prediction was now going to be justified, that Pendry had suddenly reached the point when he could no longer sustain an earlier efficiency. The day therefore opened badly, Gwatkin justifiably angry that my Platoon’s unpunctuality left him insufficient time to inspect the Company as thoroughly as he wished, before parading with the rest of the Battalion. We were to travel by bus to an area some way from our base, where the exercise was to take place.
‘Oh, I do like to ride in a smart motor-car,’ said Corporal Gwylt. ‘A real pleasure it is to spin along.’
Sergeant Pendry, usually as noisy as any of them, sat silent at the back of the bus, looking as if he might vomit at any moment. Outside, it was raining as usual. We drove across a desolate plain set against a background of vast grey skies, arriving at our destination an hour or two later. Gwatkin had gone ahead in his Company Commander’s truck. He was waiting impatiently by the road when the platoons arrived.
‘Get the men off the buses at once,’ he said, ‘and on to the other side of the road – and get some ack-ack defence out, and an anti-gas scout – and have the buses facing up the lane towards that tree, with No. 2 Platoon’s vehicle at the head, not where it is now. Do that right away. Then send a runner to B Company to cancel the earlier message that we are going to recce the country on the left flank between us. That order has been changed to the right flank. Now, I want to say a word of warning to all Platoon Commanders before I attend the Commanding Officer’s conference for Company Commanders. I wish to make clear that I am not at all satisfied so far today. You’ve none of you shown any drive up to date. It’s a bad show. You’ve got to do better, or there will be trouble. Understand? Right. You can rejoin your platoons.’
He had draped a rubber groundsheet round him like a cloak, which, with his flattish-brimmed steel helmet, transformed him into a figure from the later Middle Ages, a captain-of-arms of the Hundred Years War, or the guerrilla campaigning of Owen Glendower. I suddenly saw that was where Gwatkin belonged, rather than to the soldiery of modern times, the period which captured his own fancy. Rain had wetted his moustache, causing it to droop over the corners of the mouth, like those belonging to effigies on tombs or church brasses. Persons at odds with their surroundings not infrequently suggest an earlier historical epoch. Gwatkin was not exactly at odds with the rest of the world. In many ways, he was the essence of conventional behaviour. At the same time, he never mixed with others on precisely their own terms. Perhaps people suspected