68
PARTISAN REVIEW
it off not too near your head. At Blackwater Dun there was a canal end
with three coal barges and two swans on it, and bullets frequently came
hissing over the canal at night. One came up through the floor of
McGinty's warehouse about two feet away from my bed when I had only
been in the army two days, and the first time little Silverman was on guard
(he is a barber in Hackney E 5, and he sings operatic arias all day long)
he let one off in the guardroom while he was loading and filled Reg Rob·
erts's eyes with plaster and made my right ear deaf for half an hour. My
head was very near the breech, and I went on feeling at my nose and ears
for a long time to see if anything was missing before we saw where the
bullet was, in the wall no more than four inches from where Reg Roberta's
head had been.
Guards are also useful as a means of calming down young officers.
Connie Kendall made himself so unpopular at one time that he could not
be seen around after dusk without somebody letting off a spare round at
him. Eventually, he was sent away for three months until the bad feeling
had died down.
There are also cookhouse duties. Some people think they are worse
than guards. Some say they would do three cookhouses for one guard
any day, and some say the opposite. The two have one thing in common.
They destroy one's sense of time, and this is a source of anxiety. One is
always taken aback, coming off guard or out of the cookhouse, to find
that only a day has passed and that one has missed only one set of battery
orders. Coming out of the cookhouse, one suffers from a combination of
indigestion and nausea. One's
fin ~ers
are spongy, and there is a sore on
the first. finger of one's right hand.
A drill order is sometimes worse than either guards or cookhouses.
One gets up earlier than usual. Sometimes one sleeps out in a draughty
barn or even in the open under only one blanket. The skin is rubbed off
one's bottom unless one rides in a wireless truck. And unless one is lucky
or gifted with foresight, one lives on a single bully-beef sandwich from
six in the morning until ten at night. All the same, drill orders are with·
out monotony. On the last regimental exercise, for instance, a Don
R
1
broke his ribs, two quads
8
were left in a field and forgotten with their
drivers and passengers, and an old woman kept fainting. We were firing
into Lough Neagh. Lough Neagh is one of the sources of the Atlantis
legend. It is an enormous stretch of water so gradual in depth that you
can wade into it for a mile and a half from any point on the periphery.
It contains eels which used to be exported to Manchester and a fish called
'pollan' which is not found elsewhere. The Bad Lands, where political
desperadoes hide out when there are troubles, lie round its southern shore.
'Signaller's code for 'dispatch rider.'
'Semi-armoured vehicles which draw the guns and accommodate their crews.
