Drums Along the Khyber Page 3

  “A word in your ear, James,” Captain Black said on the Saturday morning before the departure from Invermore. He had come out on to the square while Ogilvie had been drilling his squad, and having spoken had turned away from the men, waiting for Ogilvie to fall in beside him. Thereafter they marched in step, kilts swinging, up and down the square, and it seemed to Ogilvie that the adjutant might well have kept his voice down a little. “Rumour has it,” Black said, “that you didn’t exactly impress your betters at Sandhurst. And in any case Sandhurst’s one thing, my lad. The 114th’s another. I’m not taking the regiment to India to be made a laughing-stock of. It’s very important the drill standard is high. The natives expect that. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Clear enough,” Ogilvie answered shortly, “except for one thing.”

  “Well?”

  “What have I done wrong?”

  “In precise terms, you have done nothing wrong. Only, what you have done right has not been done right enough, James. You’re not making the men move smartly enough, with enough spirit and alertness. Do you understand?”

  Ogilvie nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good! Then you and I will get along together well enough,” Black said with a tight smile, looking Ogilvie up and down as they marched. “Now go back to your squad, James, and put them through it. Never be afraid to use your voice, James. These men are not Gentlemen Cadets, they are raw soldiers—peasants, farmers’ sons, tinkers, loafers. Some of them are the same sort of scum the army put up with at the Crimea. They enlisted for the glamour of the uniform and the pipes and to cut a dash with their women in the kilt of the Royal Strathspeys. They have to be made to realize they have to work as well, that they must become a credit to the regiment so that others may enlist after them because of the pride that is felt in the Royal Strathspeys in our recruiting area. Any slackness will lead to a dilution of that pride, James. So they must be driven, here on the square, as later they must be driven into action when we reach India. You are one of the drivers, James, so start driving right away. Please carry on.”

  He stopped suddenly, stock still. Ogilvie moved away, his face burning. The adjutant’s voice almost screamed at him. “Mr. Ogilvie—if you please!”

  Ogilvie halted, turned. He looked at the adjutant; the man’s normally rather cadaver-like face was working with fury. “Yes?”

  “I have given you an order, Mr. Ogilvie, and we are on the barrack square.” Captain Black’s eyes were hard and bright, as hard and bright as the great silver badge on his glengarry. A light wind gently swirled the kilt around spindly, hairy legs. “Have you learned nothing at Sandhurst?”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Ogilvie slammed to attention, his right hand flew to the salute. “Permission to carry on, sir?”

  Black smiled, thinly; it was more a grin, a sadistic one. “I have already granted that, Mr. Ogilvie. What I am still awaiting is the proper acknowledgement in accordance with the Queen’s Regulations.”

  Once again Ogilvie saluted. Black returned the salute and Ogilvie about-turned smartly and marched back to his squad, his face flaming now, conscious that he had undoubtedly and appallingly slipped up in terms of military etiquette. Shame and anger at what the men had overheard about his time at Sandhurst sharpened his voice and after that he put the recruits through the hoop and left them breathless. By the time the drill was over there was anger in their faces too, and he was conscious of the dark backward looks at him across the square after they had been dismissed. He was sorry; and he felt the whole thing had been unfair. He had been made to appear in their eyes what he was not. Disliking being driven himself, he disliked driving others. Perhaps, after all, he would never make an officer of the standard required of the Royal Strathspeys. If the adjutant was right, he was expected to treat the men more or less as superior animals, pawns to be used to enhance regimental pride; that had undoubtedly been Black’s personal attitude. Regimental pride, to Ogilvie, was something real, something to be safeguarded certainly, but it was not an end in itself and human considerations, he felt, could be disregarded only, in the last resort, at the peril of that very pride they all sought to instil. But later that day he was able to see matters in perspective and to realize he had perhaps over-dramatized himself.

  *

  At 5.30 on the Monday morning the barracks came alive under the notes of the bugle sounding reveille. There was the almost immediate noise of orders, the rattle of equipment and neighing of horses; and then at 7.30 the battalion formed up on the square and, after the muster by roll-call, was reported correct to Lord Dornoch. The order was given to move to the right in fours and advance in column of route. With the Colonel riding ahead, the pipes and drums under Pipe-Major Ross, the depot brass in support, led the column out. It seemed as though the whole of Invermore had come to cheer and wave goodbye to their own regiment as it started out on its seven and a half thousand mile sea and land journey to the remoteness of the North-West Frontier. Ogilvie, ahead of his half-company, his broadsword bumping his thigh, felt a lump come into his throat as the savagery of the pipes echoed out along the grey streets of the little Scots town and out into the wild Monadliath Mountains behind. Women were crying as the men marched by to the tunes of Highland Laddie and Will Ye No Come Back Again. As the head of the column reached the station yard where the wives and families were waiting to entrain, the pipes and drums broke off and marched to form up on one side with the depot band; and as the regiment marched past towards the platform the brass burst with an intensity of sheer emotion into Auld Lang Syne. Last of all to entrain before the Colonel were the pipers, led by Pipe-Major Ross in his own tune, Farewell to Invermore. Two minutes after this the train was chuffing out leaving behind it a feeling of emptiness, a vacuum that would not wholly be filled until the Royal Strathspeys came home again to Invermore. Ogilvie had read in the faces of the women left behind, that they would live now in dread that their own men would not be coming home with the regiment; and their faces were much on his mind as the train drew those men away from the heart of Scotland, towards a Sassenach land where the inhabitants were wont to liken the sound of their beloved pipes to the squeals of dying pigs...

  At Portsmouth the following evening, just as the sun went down, the regiment, along with the Connaught Rangers from the Curragh, was marched up the gangways of H.M. Troopship Malabar lying at the South Railway jetty, which had been cleared for her by the departure of the flagship of the Channel Fleet. Once again the pipes and drums beat out, playing them aboard section by section, company by company. It was the same as yesterday but different; here in Portsmouth town there was no feeling of home, the regiment was not native here—except that Southerners were apt to regard all kilted Scots as ‘natives’ in a different sense—but the moment of leaving was one of even greater poignancy, for now the last land links were being cut with friends and families and soon they would be away, out at sea, remote, untouchable, on their own until the first coaling port, Gibraltar, was reached. That would not be for four, maybe five, days. Just before a harbour tug edged alongside with its paddles churning up the water, and as the last lines fell slack and were hauled aboard by the seamen, Ogilvie witnessed a scene that shocked and upset him. A young woman ran to the quayside, pursued by three of the Metropolitan policemen responsible for dockyard security. She was calling out, “Jamie, oh Jamie, come back to me! Jamie, I’ll not let them have you, I’ll die if you’ll no’ come back to me, Jamie!”

  As the constables reached her and seized her, a kilted soldier leapt up on to the guardrail, shouting down to her. He jumped from the rail, landed badly on the stone jetty, cried out that his leg was broken. Men rushed to him and Black’s voice rang out from the troopship’s boat deck: “Down there—down there, I say! Have that man sent aboard on the end of a rope and look sharp about it.”

  So the young woman—God alone knew how she’d come from Invermore, she must presumably have stowed away aboard the train with the authorized wives—wasn’t allowed to keep her Jamie, who in pain a
nd anger was secured with a heavy rope cast down from the deck and hauled, shouting obscenities, up the side of the departing troopship.

  They left to the sound of the Pipe-Major’s music and steamed out from the harbour mouth, past Point Battery and Fort Blockhouse, on between the channel buoys and past the old sea-forts built by Lord Palmerston as a precaution against invasion by the French, forts manned by the Royal Garrison Artillery. As the Malabar steamed past, beneath a great cloud of smoke discharging from her funnel, men waved from the forts and then the ship was heading out to turn south around the Isle of Wight and start her long haul through the English Channel and past Ushant into the Bay of Biscay for Cape St Vincent and the Gibraltar Strait.

  Two days out from Portsmouth Ogilvie happened to be walking past the cabin that had been allocated as a regimental office to the Royal Strathspeys when he heard Black call his name. He turned and went into the office. “You called?” he asked.

  “Yes, James.” Black was seated behind a littered table, rolling a heavy walking-stick between his hands. “I believe I gave you the job of assistant troopdeck officer under Captain Graham—am I not right?”

  Ogilvie nodded warily. “Quite right,” he said.

  “I’ve just had word this moment that Captain Graham’s reported sick with a fever, and there’s some sort of trouble down on C Company’s section of the deck,” the adjutant said carefully. “Get down there at once, James, find out what’s happening, put a stop to it, and report to me.”

  “Do you know what sort of trouble?”

  Black stared at him coldly. “The devil I do! I’ve told you to find that out, have I not?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?” Black’s pale, corpse-like face seemed to bulge, to grow larger, to move closer, to deepen in pallor. “Are you trying to tell me you’re afraid you’ll not be able to deal with it?”

  “No—not that—”

  “I’m very relieved to hear it, James. Very relieved indeed. Now go about your duties, if you please.”

  Ogilvie turned away and went along an alleyway towards the companion leading down to the troopdecks. He wasn’t entirely sure Black had been entitled to give him the order. Whatever was going on along the troopdeck, it was surely a company matter and should have been referred to C Company commander. The adjutant’s job was generally to assist the Commanding Officer in his administrative duties, and certainly it was his job to issue all regimental orders and keep the roster for duties, as well as to superintend the drilling and musketry instruction of young officers and recruits, and to keep an eye on the way all military duties were performed. But captains of companies were wholly responsible for the discipline and administration of their own commands, and the adjutant’s duties in that respect were merely to ensure uniformity along the lines laid down by the Colonel. However, in the circumstances an order was an order and had better be obeyed.

  It was sheer good fortune that, on his way down to the troopdeck, Ogilvie happened to meet the Regimental Sergeant-Major, Mr. Cunningham, a real old soldier, a warrant officer with a bulbous nose, a waxed grey moustache, and a magnificently out-thrust chest that had earned him the nickname of Bosom. Bosom slammed to the salute. “Sir! Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Ogilvie?”

  “I understand there’s some trouble—”

  “Aye, sir. I’m on my way down now to sort it out. You’ll not need to worry.”

  Ogilvie said hesitantly, “I’ll come with you, Sarn’t-Major.”

  The R.S.M. stood in front of him like a rock, a rock that rolled a little with the ship’s motion. “You’ll pardon me saying so, sir, but there are occasions when Her Majesty’s Commission is better out o’ the way. If you take my meaning. When there’s trouble, an officer can be struck. That aggravates the charge against the man concerned. Striking an officer is a court martial offence. Sir.”

  “I’ve been ordered to go down, Sarn’t-Major, by the adjutant.”

  Bosom’s lips framed a silent whistle. “I see, sir. So that’s the way of it, is it? I think, in that case, the thing’s maybe different.” He hesitated a moment then said, “You’ll allow me to lead the way, Mr. Ogilvie,” and turned about smartly, marched along the alleyways and down another companion, his boots banging on the steel. He was thinking: why you ghoulish-looking bastard’s always got it in for the young officers I’ll never know, but sure as fate he has...Young gentleman’s no more notion in his skull of how to handle a troopdeck brawl than I would have of how to talk to a duchess at a tea-party. As they neared the troopdeck Ogilvie caught the animal smell of it, the sweaty smell of hundreds of men living in close proximity, of damp serge, of sea-sickness, of overcrowded ablutions and urinals. There was a sudden scamper, a wild rush of feet as the R.S.M.’s approach was seen, and then his voice bellowed out: “Silence along the troopdeck! Silence there, all! Shut your bloody din. Stand still!”

  Men obeyed on the instant, stood rigid at attention as R.S.M. and subaltern moved along the narrow space between the mess tables. Right down here the smell was almost overpowering and Ogilvie wondered, as he had wondered on previous visits of inspection, how the men could put up with it without vomiting. It would, he knew, increase a hundredfold once the Malabar moved through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, down towards the Strait of Bab el Mandeb—the Gates of Hell as seamen called it. This sort of atmosphere, this sort of living, must lead inevitably to tensions, and ahead of him, as he went along behind Cunningham’s thick back, he witnessed the first of them. There was a free fight going on. Authority’s approach had not yet been marked here. Belts were swinging viciously, their solid brass buckles biting hard into flesh and bone, and the air was blue with profane and filthy language.

  Two men lay on the deck, which was slippery with blood.

  Cunningham stopped some feet clear of the mêlée and drew a deep breath. Already men on the fringes were coming to attention, dissociating themselves from what was happening. “You, you and you,” Cunningham rapped out. “Go in and put a stop to that.” The men he had addressed were all privates; no N.C.O.’s. The men moved to obey, shouting out that the R.S.M. was present with an officer. The air became, for a space, bluer; but the fighting stopped. One big private, a trouble-maker whom Ogilvie recognized as a man named McFee, who came from a family of tinkers, looked at him with red-eyed hatred and made a move in his direction till he was stopped by two of the men the R.S.M. had sent in. Cunningham had stepped back, almost on Ogilvie’s foot. To strike the R.S.M. would be serious too. Ogilvie recognized that McFee would undoubtedly have struck him if he’d come down on his own.

  “Get yourselves to the ablutions,” the R.S.M. said stonily, “and get cleaned up. Where’s the corporal in charge of this section?”

  “Sar-Major!” A man in shirt sleeves came forward.

  “A nice mess, Corporal Morrison, that’ll maybe lose you your stripes. See that these men clean themselves and the troopdeck. I want all blood shifted, and quickly. When that’s done, Corporal Morrison, you’ll pass the word that I want to see all the N.C.O.’s of this troopdeck in my cabin in half an hour. If there’s any repetition of this there’ll be some of you broken and I’ll have every man on double drill and fatigues right the way through the voyage to Bombay and after.”

  He turned about, caught Ogilvie’s eye and gave a fractional jerk of his head. “All’s well, sir,” he said, and marched stolidly away behind Ogilvie. When they were out of sight and hearing of the troops the R.S.M. stopped and said, “You did fine, sir. All that was required of an officer at that stage. Next time, you’ll know more what to do yourself. Now I’m coming with you to report to the adjutant.”

  In Black’s office the R.S.M. said briskly, “I had reached the scene before Mr. Ogilvie, sir, and the matter was settled. I shall deal with the N.C.O.’s myself, sir. With your permission.”

  “Oh, that’s granted all right, Sarn’t-Major,” Black said, his eyes glinting. “What about the men involved?”

  “I’d not press it, si
r. Conditions are far from ideal along the troopdeck.” There was gravity, and a warning, in the R.S.M.’s voice. “We have the hot weather to come, sir.”

  “I’m aware of that, Mr. Cunningham, thank you.”

  “Sir! My view is, a little blood-letting doesn’t do any real harm. A slow build-up, now, would be far worse. Punishments now would do more harm than good in my opinion, sir. You have my word I’ll shake up the N.C.O.’s and leave them in no doubt as to what their duties are in anticipating trouble. Sir!”

  Black drummed his fingers on the table. “Very well, Sarn’t-Major,” he said abruptly. He nodded, “That’s all.”

  “Sir!” Cunningham gave a swinging salute, turned about and left the office.

  Black stared at Ogilvie and gave a thin, acid smile. “So the R.S.M. beat you to it,” he said softly. “Yes—or no, James?”

  Ogilvie hesitated for a second then said, “Yes.” In a sense it was true enough; Cunningham had been first into the troopdeck.