Part 3 (1/2)

With the sun setting, and the tent sides turning pink in the light, I was loaded aboard an ambulance in the top bunk. The top bunk! It all came back to me, the top bunk, that's the one my parents always put me in during those long train journeys across India on the old GIP* Railway...all seemed so long ago...

Great Indian Peninsula. Great Indian Peninsula.

The ambulance b.u.mped and jolted through the narrow mountain roads. I recalled those bright sunlit Indian days, as a boy, where every day was was like a Kipling story... like a Kipling story...

”Like a drink of water, Corporal?”

”Yes.”

The attendant poured water into a tin mug. I gulped down two, it tasted like nectar.

It was four stretchers to an ambulance; in between with his back to the driving cab sat an orderly. The inside was painted white. The vehicle smelt new. A blood plasma bottle was attached to the soldier on the lower bunk, his chest swathed in bandages. The orderly constantly checked the flow of the plasma. The German kept groaning. It all seemed to be coming to me through a heat charged mist. I was hovering twix delirium and reality. I doze off.

The ambulance stops, near-by artillery are banging away, the doors open, it's dark, voices mixed with gunfire, I am being unloaded. I'm on the ground, from there a large munic.i.p.al building with a flat roof is silhouetted against the night sky. Covered with ivy, it looks like the setting for Gormenghast Gormenghast. I am carried up stairs along corridors, more stairs, and finally into a dim-lit ward of about thirty beds, all with mozzy nets down. I am placed on the floor.

”Can you undress yourself?” says an overworked orderly.

Yes, I can.

”The pyjamas are under the pillow,” he points to a bed.

My G.o.d, it looked good, already turned down, white sheets and pillows, TWO PILLOWS, being ill was paying dividends. I pulled on the standard blue pyjamas.

”Where's the karzi?” I said weakly.

He pointed out the door. ”Dead opposite.”

I wasn't quite dead but I went opposite; that journey over, I pulled my body under the sheets. I was desperately tired and feverish, but stayed awake to enjoy the luxury of sheets. Another orderly; they all wear gym shoes so you don't hear them coming, he took my pulse, temperature, entered them on a board that hung on the foot of my bed.

”Like some tea?” He spoke Yorks.h.i.+re.

”Aye,” I said in Yorks.h.i.+re.

”Anything to eat?”

”Yes, anything.”

He came back with a plate of tomato soup and bread. On the tray were four white tablets.

”Take these when you dun, they'll help bring temperature down.”

”I don't want it down, I want it up for the duration.”

I gulped it down. Took the tablets, brought them all up. Who said romance was dead? So much for my first forty-eight hours in Italy.

SEPTEMBER 26, 1943, 0600 HRS.

Awakened by a nurse. A female female nurse, all pink and scrubbed in spotless uniform smelling of Pears soap. nurse, all pink and scrubbed in spotless uniform smelling of Pears soap.

”Darling, I love you, marry me,” I said.

”Good morning,” she said, threw back the mozzy net and before I could answer had stuffed a thermometer in my gob.

”It's down,” she said.

”What's down?” I said.

”You're only a 100.”

She bent over the next bed, and showed two shapely legs, one would have been enough. I felt my temperature go up again. I really was ill. I fell asleep, an orderly woke me up with breakfast. The ward was coming to life, I wasn't; orderlies were taking down the last of the black-outs, those patients who could were putting the mozzy nets up, trailing out to the ablutions, others were swallowing medicines, here comes mine, four white tablets, what are they? The orderly doesn't know.

”I don't have to,” he says, ”then if you die it's not my fault.”

Cheerful b.u.g.g.e.r. For the first two days my temperature goes up and down, and so I'm not alone, I go with it. At night it was worst with delirium and terrible dreams. However, gradually I start to recover. The nurse (I wish I could remember her name) tells me of an incident. In the officers' section there's a Colonel from the RAOC; he's due for a hernia operation, the matron has been given the job of shaving him, she knocks on the door.

”Come in,” says the Colonel.

The matron throws back the bed clothes, lathers all around his 'w.i.l.l.y', shaves him and starts to leave. The Colonel says, ”Pardon me, matron, but why did you bother to knock?”

In the next bed is a Marine Commando, Jamie Notam. He's in with our old friend 'Sh.e.l.l Shock', received during the landings around Marina. He was forty-one, a bit old for a Commando.

”I used to be a Gentleman's Gentleman,” he's speaking with a broad Scots accent.

Jamie is sitting on the edge of his bed, he is in his battle dress, his boots highly polished, a hangover from his gentleman's gentleman days. His bed was immaculate, his eating irons and mess-tins s.h.i.+ne like silver. He basically wanted to do do things; if he folded a newspaper it was always perfectly square, but there the creation stopped. He could never things; if he folded a newspaper it was always perfectly square, but there the creation stopped. He could never make make anything. It was always anything. It was always do do but what he did was perfect. He must have been the ideal servant. It's eleven o'clock of a morning. Outside the sun shone, that autumnal light more silver than gold, it beamed through the windows of our ward, favouring the beds who were on that side. but what he did was perfect. He must have been the ideal servant. It's eleven o'clock of a morning. Outside the sun shone, that autumnal light more silver than gold, it beamed through the windows of our ward, favouring the beds who were on that side.

In the centre of the ward are three trestle tables loaded with books, periodicals and newspapers. On one is an old Italian wireless set plugged up to a ceiling light. From it issues music from Allied Forces Network in Algiers. It's mostly danceband music and singers like Crosby, Sinatra, d.i.c.k Haymes, Vera Lynn, Ann Shelton and Evelyn Dall (who?). The ward is big, high ceiling, plenty of light. All the bedside lockers have a water jug and gla.s.s. If you wished, you could have orange or lemon juice flavouring. In the locker were those tortuous pieces of porcelain, the bed-pan and the pee bottle. The attempt to make the place look homely, small tins with a few wild flowers, was very much appreciated. Since my admission, the sounds of artillery had daily receded. It was now reasonably quiet, save for the sound of planes pa.s.sing overhead.

Some of the patients sat up in bed, some writing letters, some reading newspapers with headlines like: AMBa.s.sADOR KENNEDY TELLS PRESIDENT BRITAIN IS FINISHED AMBa.s.sADOR KENNEDY TELLS PRESIDENT BRITAIN IS FINISHED.

(if he meant after after the war he was spot-on). Some soldiers had donned their dressing-gowns and were seated on other patients' beds, talking, smoking, or playing cards. The sick ones lay still, some asleep, some staring at the ceiling. We aren't a casualty ward so we don't have any blood or bandages. The lad in the bed on my right is very ill and in an oxygen tent; he has pneumonia and looks ghastly. My temperature was down to normal in the day, up to a hundred at night. the war he was spot-on). Some soldiers had donned their dressing-gowns and were seated on other patients' beds, talking, smoking, or playing cards. The sick ones lay still, some asleep, some staring at the ceiling. We aren't a casualty ward so we don't have any blood or bandages. The lad in the bed on my right is very ill and in an oxygen tent; he has pneumonia and looks ghastly. My temperature was down to normal in the day, up to a hundred at night.

”How'd you get into the Commandos at the age of forty-one?”

”I told 'em I was thirty.”

”Why didn't you say thirteen, you'd have got out altogether.”

”I wanted adventure.”

”Call this adventure?”

He shows me photographs of himself outside his master's Manor House somewhere in Scotland.

”You left all that to come here?”

He nodded ruefully. ”I must ha' been b.l.o.o.d.y mad,” he said.