18

The choice given to the training sergeants was a hard one. Combat may be the ultimate justification of the soldier’s life, but a vast apparatus must exist to recruit, train, equip, and supply the combat troops. Transport and reinforcements must be ready for the day that they become expendable, and all of this must be administered in every detail. The combat soldier, like a fighter in the ring, is backed by a comet trail of trainers, seconds-in-command, managers, boosters, suppliers, and, ultimately, profiteers that hone his skills and encourage his sacrifice. The combat soldier doesn’t even pick the enemy; that too is done for him. Warring soldiers, facing one another and being willing to die, have more in common than they have in opposition.

That truth is always the nightmare of the leaders, and history shows us many examples of the soldiery realizing their role and reversing it. Therefore, in learning to kill one’s fellow man for reasons beyond the average comprehension, one must learn to hate. Hatred of “the enemy” is instilled by propaganda and the training process. When one is unsure of who exactly the enemy will be, the hatred must be generalized. “Our way of life is being threatened!” they will say. In retrospect, if the young soldier of 1940 was going to die for a “way of life”, it would be any other way of life than the one he was experiencing.

Sergeant Browne had no problem with the decision to remain in Aldershot as a training sergeant. He was planning to marry and hoped to become an acting officer on the camp staff. He had spent years of his time acquiring his present status. He worked hard to improve his capabilities and deliberately ignored the growing resentment of the men under his command. When the war was over he might even continue into the Permanent Force—if the offer was attractive. Why should he lose his rank and travel in hardship to distant lands merely to sacrifice his life for some politician’s hare-brained schemes? He had studied Churchill’s Dardanelles experiment in the first war and was not as enamoured of Old Winnie as everyone else seemed to be. In fact, he regarded this great icon as a garrulous old fraud. He didn’t even spare contempt for Canada’s pious leader.

On the other hand, Training Sergeant Cyples faced this question from a less prosaic angle. He had seen the power structure in miniature, from top to bottom, during his exploits in Central America. Give or take a shading, the picture was identical when blown up to a continental or global scale. He had seen El Presidente appealing to the peasants to sacrifice for the father or motherland. He had seen the spurred old officers leading from the rear while the mercenaries delivered the punch, took their pay, and vanished. The bodies littering the piazza were the believers—revolutionary or counter-revolutionary—and the bodies in the bush were the innocents. The mirrors changed, new faces seemed to appear with the same old promises, but the sceneshifters remained, and profited from all sides.

The sergeant could not visualize this war as being any different, and he correctly tagged Switzerland and Sweden as the havens in Europe. He considered his father’s far-left attitude just as fraudulent as the label of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. And he was still bitter about the abdication of Edward VIII, and felt that he had been betrayed. The sergeant only felt at home among his soldiers, and had he known it, he would have subscribed to the French Foreign Legion’s motto: “The Legion is my Fatherland”. To the sergeant such matters as life and death were not important, and he nursed a constant, banked desire for destruction.

The awkward squad was being reabsorbed into the company, and he would soon be without a platoon. The need for reinforcements in the West Nova Scotia Regiment was, as yet, minimal, and he did not fancy the idea of being stuck in England any more than in Nova Scotia. His desire to be an officer was more to shake off his father’s proletarian roots than any true desire to be a gentleman, although he knew that he would have to perfect the disguise.

Trailing along behind these two more mature figures was Private Patrick MacQueen. A century and a half ago, this young man would have accompanied Napoleon’s Cavalry General Murat anywhere across the face of Europe. He would have strutted in the squares of conquered towns and never flinched when charging the enemy guns. This was the élan of the armies—the old guard plodded to victory and delivered the world on a silver platter to their emperor. Such a world of make-believe cannot be self-sustaining, however, and MacQueen was finding it tough. In Aldershot there was all grime and no glitter. Surely if one is willing to have one’s head blown off they could provide a little more style than this, he thought. The colourful tattoos of Bermuda were far away in time and place.

There is a natural genius in humanity that defeats every effort by authority to level it out. There is always the exception, and thus, there is always hope. Pat MacQueen recalled a couplet that their old Scot housekeeper’s husband had recited:

It’s Tommy this and Tommy that,
and Tommy go away;
But it’s ‘Thank you, Mister Atkins’
when the bands begin to play…

He thought that some of the sergeant’s problem lay in those lines. His father had been a “Tommy” in the British infantry, and he viewed himself as one also. Every class or group must view themselves as the salt of the earth, but the sergeant had not bought into his father’s admiration of proletarian values. He didn’t want to elevate the proletariat; he wanted to join the present ruling class. However much this existed in his imagination, or in actual reality, was a problem too deep for young MacQueen. He saw in his friend a superior soldier who allowed himself to be influenced by a deeply ingrained and highly polished mythology. It was a looking-glass enigma requiring one to rethink attitudes learned in early childhood.

Cricket isn’t the only game the sergeant doesn’t know how to play, MacQueen reflected rather sadly. But reversing his attitudes without insulting him seemed impossible. Why would a shark want to play with other fish anyway, except to devour them? Although he certainly admired their style, MacQueen knew that sharks were dangerous companions. He would think twice about inviting one to join him in the swimming pool. But even sharks have an Achilles heel, he thought with a smile, and it had brought them together. He thought of the crisp naval officers with top-drawer accents and nice white uniforms leaving Bill Cyples behind on a beach in El Salvador, and wondered why he hadn’t joined the Communists instead of aspiring to join their social ranks through the army.

The direction this war was taking would probably blow the whole ruling class to kingdom come anyway.