walls seemed to billow like a marquee in a high wind. Despite the fact that the bar looked like the Charge of the Light Brigade they’d gone quietly enough, forming up by the lorries to be transported back to camp. From behind her desk, Madame had shouted in an excess of emotion, ‘God bless you, boys, I love you all’-- ‘She’ll have her work cut out,’ Sergeant Bunch observed - and they were taken away, bouncing about in the backs of the lorries like corks on a rough sea. Except for the difficult few like Private Fidge, who at that precise moment in time was rolling in a bed that stank like a dog’s basket with a half-caste Arab girl wearing only a white blouse. When the patrols arrived he managed to dive through the window while the girl swore blind she’d been alone.
With the bored and the penniless in camp there should have been no problem. But there was, of course. There always was.
The Naafi was full of men trying to forget they were a long way from wives, girlfriends, children and good English bitter by trying to suck down the frothy swill that in Egypt went by the name of beer. The Scots were sitting in suspicious little groups muttering about clans despite the fact that most of them came from Lowland cities. The cavalry were calling the infantry mud-crushers and the infantry were calling the cavalry horse-shit collectors. The Hostilities Onlys were jeering at the Regulars who, they claimed, had only joined the army because they were too dim to earn a living as civilians, while the Regulars were calling the Hostilities Onlys rotten skiving bastards who’d sat smugly on their fat backsides and let the Germans chuck the BEF out of France. They were as friendly as a lot of cats in a sack. The British Army off duty.
It should have tailed off into the usual sullen fed-up sort of evening, everybody going quietly to bed and only the diehards determined to show they were drunk when they weren’t by bawling a few dreary songs, but instead Herbert Kitchener Waterhouse, a lunatic if ever there were one, discovered Sugar-white’s first names and started doing what Sugarwhite found all ill-mannered bastards always did in those circumstances.
Because Sugarwhite carried a burden which would have made the Garden of Eden turn sour. Not only was he called Sugarwhite, which was bad enough in anybody’s language, but he also bore the Christian names of Lancelot Harold. He’d often wondered what his mother and father had been at when they’d chosen them. ‘Lancelot Harold’ he might just have got away with, but ‘Lancelot Harold Sugarwhite’ was enough to make a man worry rats. Still a virgin despite his ambitions to the contrary, Sugar-white blamed even that on his name. For God’s sake, any girl looking bright-eyed across the pillow, all rumpled, flushed and pleased with herself, to ask ‘Well, it’s about time I got to know your name, isn’t it?’ and getting ‘Lancelot Harold Sugarwhite’ as a reply, would more than likely fall out of bed laughing.
So when Waterhouse gave his great adenoidal yell of glee and slapped his thighs - ‘Lancelot Harold Sugarwhite, for Christ’s sake! Oh, sweetheart, where have you beed all by life?’- Sugarwhite didn’t hesitate. He simply threw his beer at him.
Unfortunately, Waterhouse ducked and the beer went over a Royal Sussex who promptly lashed out and in a moment the canteen was a mass of brawling figures, with the elderly Egyptian who ran it down on his knees behind the counter praying to Allah to take the infidels out of his beloved country and sink them in the slime of the Nile delta.
Not far from where the main struggle was going on, Private By was sitting at a table which looked more like a tea-tray under his vast fist. It took a lot to rouse Ed By but when he was roused, he was capable of taking on a whole army corps, and when someone landed a backhander on his nose that made his eyes water, he swung a haymaker that caught Waterhouse on the jaw and lifted
With the bored and the penniless in camp there should have been no problem. But there was, of course. There always was.
The Naafi was full of men trying to forget they were a long way from wives, girlfriends, children and good English bitter by trying to suck down the frothy swill that in Egypt went by the name of beer. The Scots were sitting in suspicious little groups muttering about clans despite the fact that most of them came from Lowland cities. The cavalry were calling the infantry mud-crushers and the infantry were calling the cavalry horse-shit collectors. The Hostilities Onlys were jeering at the Regulars who, they claimed, had only joined the army because they were too dim to earn a living as civilians, while the Regulars were calling the Hostilities Onlys rotten skiving bastards who’d sat smugly on their fat backsides and let the Germans chuck the BEF out of France. They were as friendly as a lot of cats in a sack. The British Army off duty.
It should have tailed off into the usual sullen fed-up sort of evening, everybody going quietly to bed and only the diehards determined to show they were drunk when they weren’t by bawling a few dreary songs, but instead Herbert Kitchener Waterhouse, a lunatic if ever there were one, discovered Sugar-white’s first names and started doing what Sugarwhite found all ill-mannered bastards always did in those circumstances.
Because Sugarwhite carried a burden which would have made the Garden of Eden turn sour. Not only was he called Sugarwhite, which was bad enough in anybody’s language, but he also bore the Christian names of Lancelot Harold. He’d often wondered what his mother and father had been at when they’d chosen them. ‘Lancelot Harold’ he might just have got away with, but ‘Lancelot Harold Sugarwhite’ was enough to make a man worry rats. Still a virgin despite his ambitions to the contrary, Sugar-white blamed even that on his name. For God’s sake, any girl looking bright-eyed across the pillow, all rumpled, flushed and pleased with herself, to ask ‘Well, it’s about time I got to know your name, isn’t it?’ and getting ‘Lancelot Harold Sugarwhite’ as a reply, would more than likely fall out of bed laughing.
So when Waterhouse gave his great adenoidal yell of glee and slapped his thighs - ‘Lancelot Harold Sugarwhite, for Christ’s sake! Oh, sweetheart, where have you beed all by life?’- Sugarwhite didn’t hesitate. He simply threw his beer at him.
Unfortunately, Waterhouse ducked and the beer went over a Royal Sussex who promptly lashed out and in a moment the canteen was a mass of brawling figures, with the elderly Egyptian who ran it down on his knees behind the counter praying to Allah to take the infidels out of his beloved country and sink them in the slime of the Nile delta.
Not far from where the main struggle was going on, Private By was sitting at a table which looked more like a tea-tray under his vast fist. It took a lot to rouse Ed By but when he was roused, he was capable of taking on a whole army corps, and when someone landed a backhander on his nose that made his eyes water, he swung a haymaker that caught Waterhouse on the jaw and lifted
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