The Sheik and the Dustbin

Captain Errol

Whenever I see television newsreels of police or troops facing mobs of rioting demonstrators, standing fast under a hail of rocks, bottles, and petrol bombs, my mind goes back forty years to India, when I was understudying John Gielgud and first heard the pregnant phrase “Aid to the civil power”. And from that my thoughts inevitably travel on to Captain Errol, and the Brigadier’s pet hawks, and the great rabble of chanting Arab rioters advancing down the Kantara causeway towards the thin khaki line of 12 Platoon, and my own voice sounding unnaturally loud and hoarse: “Right, Sarn’t Telfer - fix bayonets.”

Aid to the civil power, you see, is what the British Army used to give when called on to deal with disorder, tumult, and breach of the peace which the police could no longer control. The native constabulary of our former Italian colony being what they were - prone to panic if a drunken bazaar-wallah broke a window - aid to the civil power often amounted to no more than sending Wee Wullie out with a pick handle to shout “Imshi!”; on the other hand, when real political mayhem broke loose, and a raging horde of fellaheen several thousand strong appeared bent on setting the town ablaze and massacring the European population, sterner measures were called for, and unhappy subalterns found themselves faced with the kind of decision which Home Secretaries and Cabinets agonise over for hours, the difference being that the subaltern had thirty seconds, with luck, in which to consider the safety of his men, the defenceless town at his back, and the likelihood that if he gave the order to fire and some agitator caught a bullet, he, the subaltern, would go down in history as the Butcher of Puggle Bazaar, or wherever it happened to be.

That, as I say, was in the imperial twilight of forty years.ago, long before the days of walkie-talkies, C.S. gas, riot shields, water cannon, and similar modern defences of the public weal - not that they seem to make riot control any easier nowadays, especially when the cameras are present. We didn’t have to worry about television, and our options for dealing with infuriated rioters were limited: do nothing and get murdered, fire over their heads, or let fly in earnest. There are easier decisions, believe me, for a youth not old enough to vote.

The Army recognised this, and was at pains to instruct its fledgling officers in the techniques of containing civil commotion, so far as it knew how, which wasn’t far, even in India, with three centuries of experience to draw on. Those were the postwar months before independence, when demonstrators were chanting: “Jai Hind!” and “Pakistan zindabad!”, and the Indian police were laying about them with lathis (you really don’t know what police brutality is until you’ve seen a lathi charge going in), while the troops stood by and their officers hoped to God they wouldn’t have to intervene. Quetta and Amritsar were ugly memories of what happened when someone opened fire at the wrong time.

Bangalore, where I was completing my officers’ training course, was one of the quiet spots, which may have been why the authorities took the eccentric view that instruction in riot control could be imparted through the medium of the theatre. If that sounds unlikely, well, that’s the Army for you. Some genius (and it wasn’t Richard Brinsley Sheridan) had written a play about aid to the civil power, showing the right and wrong ways of coping with unrest; it was to be enacted at the garrison theatre, and I found myself dragooned into taking part.

That’s what comes of understudying Gielgud, which is what I like to think I had been doing, although he didn’t know it. In the last relaxed weeks of our officers’ training, a few of us cadets had been taking part in a production of The Harbour Called Mulberry for India Radio, with Cadet MacNeill as the Prussian general riveting the audience with his impersonation of Conrad Veidt; it was natural that when Gielgud’s touring company arrived in town with a double bill of Hamlet and Blithe Spirit, and some of his cast went down with Bangalore Belly, our amatuer group should be asked to provide replacements in case they needed a couple of extra spear-carriers. I was fool enough to volunteer, and while we were never required even to change into costume, let alone go on stage, we convinced ourselves that we were, technically, understudying the lead players - I mean to say, Bangalore Belly can go through unacclimatised systems like wildfire, and in our backstage dreams we could imagine being out there tearing the Soliloquy to shreds while Gielgud was carted off to the sick-bay. He wasn’t, as it happened, but no doubt he would have been reassured if he’d known that we were ready to step in.

That by the way; the upshot was that, having drawn attention to ourselves, my associates and I were prime targets when it came to choosing the cast for the aid-to-the-civil-power play, a knavish piece of work entitled Nowall and Chancit. I played Colonel Nowall, an elderly and incompetent garrison commander, which meant that I had to wear a white wig and whiskers and make like a doddering Aubrey Smith in front of a military audience whose behaviour would have disgraced the Circus Maximus. The script was abysmal, my moustache kept coming loose, the prop telephone didn’t ring on cue, one of the cast who took acting seriously dried up and fainted, and in the last act I had to order my troops to open fire on a rioting crowd played by a platoon of Indian sepoys in loin-cloths who giggled throughout and went right over the top when shot with blank cartridges. The entire theatre was dense with cordite smoke, there seemed to be about seven hundred people on stage, and when I stood knee-deep in hysterical corpses and spoke my deathless closing line: “Well, that’s that!” it stopped the show. I have not trod the boards since, and it can stay that way.

My excuse for that reminiscence is that it describes the only instruction we ever got in dealing with civil disorder. Considering that we were destined, as young second-lieutenants, to lead troops in various parts of the Far and Middle East when empires were breaking up and independence movements were in full spate, with accompanying bloodshed, it was barely adequate. Not that any amount of training, including my months as an infantry section leader in Burma, could have prepared me for the Palestine troubles of ‘46, when Arab and Jew were at each other’s throats with the British caught in the middle, as usual; the Irgun and Stern Gang were waging their campaign of terror (or freedom-fighting, depending on your point of view), raid, ambush, murder, and explosion were commonplace, the Argyll and Sutherlands had barbed wire strung across the inside corridors of their Jerusalem barracks, and you took your revolver into the shower. It was a nerve-racked, bloody business which you learned as you went along; commanding the Cairo-Jerusalem night train and conducting a security stake-out at the Armistice Day service on the Mount of Olives added years to my education in a matter of days, and by the time I was posted back to my Highland battalion far away along the North African coast I felt I knew something about lending aid to the civil power. Of course, I didn’t know the half of it - but then, I hadn’t met Captain Errol.

That wasn’t his real name, but it was what the Jocks called him because of his resemblance to Flynn, the well-known actor and bon viveur. And it wasn’t just that he was six feet two, lightly moustached, and strikingly handsome; he had the same casual, self-assured swagger of the man who is well content with himself and doesn’t give a dam whether anyone knows it or not; when you have two strings of ribbons, starting with the M.C. and M.M. and including the Croix de Guerre and a couple of exotic Balkan gongs at the end, you don’t need to put on side. Which was just as well, for Errol had evidently been born with a double helping of self-esteem, advertised in the amused half-smile and lifted eyebrow with which he surveyed the world in general - and me in particular on the day he joined the battalion.

I was bringing my platoon in from a ten-mile route march, which they had done in the cracking time of two and a half hours, and was calling them to march to attention for the last fifty yards to the main gate, exhorting McAuslan for the umpteenth time to get his pack off his backside and up to his shoulders, and pretending not to hear Private Fletcher’s sotto voce explanation that McAuslan couldn’t march upright because he was expecting, and might, indeed, go into labour shortly. Sergeant Telfer barked them to silence and quickened the step, and I turned aside to watch them swing past - it was a moment I took care never to miss, for the pride of it warms me still: my platoon going by, forty hard young Jocks in battle order, rifles sloped and bonnets pulled down, slightly dusty but hardly even breaking sweat as Telfer wheeled them under the archway with its faded golden standard. Eat your heart out, Bonaparte.

It was as I was turning to follow that I became aware of an elegant figure seated in a horse-ghari which had just drawn up at the gate. He was a Highlander, but his red tartan and white cockade were not of our regiment; then I noticed the three pips and threw him a salute, which he acknowledged with a nonchalant forefinger and a remarkable request spoken in the airy affected drawl which in Glasgow is called “Kelvinsaid”.

“Hullo, laddie,” said he. “Your platoon? You might get a couple of them to give me a hand with my kit, will you?”

It was said so affably that the effrontery of it didn’t dawn for a second - you don’t ask a perfect stranger to detach two of his marching men to be your porters, not without preamble or introduction. I stared at the man, taking in the splendid bearing, the medal ribbons, and the pleasant expectant smile while he put a fresh cigarette in his holder.

“Eh? I beg your pardon,” I said stiffly, “but they’re on parade at the moment.” For some reason I didn’t add “sir”.

It didn’t faze him a bit. “Oh, that’s a shame. Still, not to panic. We ought to be able to manage between us. All right, Abdul,” he addressed the Arab coachman, “let’s get the cargo on the dock.”

He swung lightly down from the ghari - not the easiest thing to do, with decorum, in a kilt - and it was typical of the man that I found myself with a valise in one hand and a set of golf-clubs in the other before I realised that he was evidently expecting me to tote his damned dunnage for him. My platoon had vanished from sight, fortunately, but Sergeant Telfer had stopped and was staring back, goggle-eyed. Before I could speak the newcomer was addressing me again:

“Got fifty lire, old man? ‘Fraid all I have is Egyptian ackers, and the Fairy Coachman won’t look at them. See him right, will you, and we’ll settle up anon. Okay?”

That, as they say, did it. “Laddie” I could just about absorb (since he must have been all of twenty-seven and therefore practically senile), and even his outrageous assumption that my private and personal platoon were his to flunkify, and that I would caddy for him and pay his blasted transport bills - but not that careless “Okay?” and the easy, patronising air which was all the worse for being so infernally amiable. Captain or no captain, I put his clubs and valise carefully back in the ghari and spoke, with masterly restraint:

“I’m afraid I haven’t fifty lire on me, sir, but if you care to climb back in, the ghari can take you to the Paymaster’s Office in HQ Company; they’ll change your ackers and see to your kit.” And just to round off the civilities I added: “My name’s MacNeill, by the way, and I’m a platoon commander, not a bloody dragoman.”

Which was insubordination, but if you’d seen that sardonic eyebrow and God-like profile you’d have said it too. Again, it didn’t faze him; he actually chuckled.

“I stand rebuked. MacNeill, eh?” He glanced at my campaign ribbon. “What were you in Burma?”

“Other rank.”

“Well, obviously, since you’re only a second-lieutenant now. What kind of other rank?”

“Well … sniper-scout, Black Cat Division. Later on I was a section leader. Why … sir?”

“Black Cats, eh? God Almighty’s Own. Were you at Imphal?”

“Not in the Boxes. Irrawaddy Crossing, Meiktila, Sittang Bend—”

“And you haven’t got a measly fifty lire for a poor broken-down old soldier? Well, the hell with you, young MacNeill,” said this astonishing fellow, and seated himself in the ghari again. “I’d heap coals of fire on you by offering you a lift, but your platoon are probably waiting for you to stop their motor. Bash on, MacNeill, before they seize up! Officers’ mess, Abdul!” And he drove off with an airy wave.

“Hadn’t you better report to H.Q.?” I called after him, but he was through the gate by then, leaving me nonplussed but not a little relieved; giving lip to captains wasn’t my usual line, but he hadn’t turned regimental, fortunately.

“Whit the hell was yon?” demanded Sergeant Telfer, who had been an entranced spectator.

“You tell me,” I said. “Ballater Bertie, by the look of him.” For he had, indeed, the air of those who command the guard at Ballater Station, conducting Royalty with drawn broadsword and white spats. And yet he’d been wearing an M.M. ribbon, which signified service in the ranks. I remarked on this to Telfer, who sniffed as only a Glaswegian can, and observed that whoever the newcomer might be, he was a heid-case - which means an eccentric.

That was the battalion’s opinion, formed before Captain Errol had been with us twenty-four hours. He had driven straight to the mess, which was empty of customers at that time of day, smooth-talked the mess sergeant into paying the ghari out of bar receipts, made free with the Tallisker unofficially reserved for the Medical Officer, parked himself unerringly in the second-in-command’s favourite chair, and whiled away the golden afternoon with the Scottish Field. Discovered and gently rebuked by the Adjutant for not reporting his arrival in the proper form, he had laughed apologetically and asked what time dinner was, and before the Adjutant, an earnest young Englishman, could wax properly indignant he had found himself, by some inexplicable process, buying Errol a gin and tonic.

“I can’t fathom it,” he told me, with the pained expression he usually reserved for descriptions of his putting. “One minute I was tearing small strips off the chap, and the next you know I was saying ‘What’s yours?’ and filling him in on the social scene. Extraordinary.”

Having found myself within an ace of bell-hopping for Captain Errol by the same mysterious magic, I sympathised. Who was he, anyway, I asked, and the Adjutant frowned.

“Dunno, exactly. Nor why we’ve got him. He’s been up in Palestine lately, and just from something the Colonel said I have the impression he’s been in some sort of turmoil - Errol, I mean. That type always is,” said the Adjutant, like a dowager discussing a fallen woman. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he was an I-man.”

“I” is Intelligence, and the general feeling in line regiments is that you can keep it; I-men are disturbing influences best confined to the higher echelons, where they can pursue their clandestine careers and leave honest soldiers in peace. Attached to a battalion, they can be unsettling.

And Captain Errol was all of that. As he had begun, with the Adjutant and me, so he went on, causing ripples on our placid regimental surface which eventually turned into larger waves. One of the former, for example, occurred on his first night in the mess when, within half an hour of their first acquaintance, he addressed the Colonel as “skipper”. It caused a brief silence which Errol himself didn’t seem to notice; officially, you see, there are no ranks in the mess, but junior officers (of whom captains are only the most senior) normally call the head man “sir”, especially when he is such a redoubtable bald eagle as our Colonel was. “Skipper” was close to the edge of impertinence - but it was said so easily and naturally that he got away with it. In fact, I think the Colonel rather liked it.

That, it soon became plain, was Errorl’s secret. Like his notorious namesake, he had great charm and immense style; partly it was his appearance, which was commanding, and his war record - the family of Highland regiments is a tight little news network, and many of the older men had heard of him as a fighting soldier - but most of it was just personality. He was casual, cocky, even insolent, but with a gift of disarmament, and even those who found his conceit and familiarity irritating (as the older men did) seemed almost flattered when he gave them his attention - I’ve seen the Senior Major, a grizzled veteran with the disposition of a liverish rhino, grinning sourly as Errol teased him. When he was snubbed, he didn’t seem to notice; the eyebrow would give an amused flicker, no more.

The youngest subalterns thought him a hell of a fellow, of course, not least because he had no side with them; rank meant nothing to Errol, up or down. The Jocks, being canny judges, were rather wary of him, while taking advantage of his informality so far as they thought it safe; their word for him was “gallus”, that curious Scots adjective which means a mixture of reckless, extrovert, and indifferent. On balance, he was not over-popular with Jocks or officers, especially among the elders, but even they held him in a certain grudging respect. None of which seemed to matter to Errol in the least.

I heard various verdicts on him in the first couple of weeks.

“I think he’s a Bad News Type,” said the Adjutant judicially, “but there’s no doubt he’s a character.”

“Insufferable young pup,” was the Senior Major’s verdict. “Why the devil must he use that blasted cigarette holder, like a damned actor?” When it was pointed out that most of us used them, to keep the sweat off our cigarettes, the Major remarked unreasonably: “Not the way he does. Damned affectation.”

“I like him,” said plump and genial Major Bakie. “He can be dashed funny when he wants. Breath of fresh air. My wife likes him, too.”

“Captain Errol,” observed the Padre, who was the most charitable of men, “is a very interesting chentleman. What d’ye say, Lachlan?”

“Like enough,” said the M.O. “I wouldnae let him near my malt, my money, or my maidservant.”

“See him, he’s sand-happy. No’ a’ there,” I heard Private McAuslan informing his comrades. “See when he wis Captain o’ the Week, an’ had tae inspect ma rifle on guard? He looks doon the barrel, and says: ‘I seem to see through a glass darkly.’ Whit kind o’ patter’s that, Fletcher? Mind you, he didnae pit me on a charge, an’ me wi’ a live round up the spout. Darkie woulda nailed me tae the wall.” (So I would, McAuslan.)

“Errol? A chanty-wrastler,” said Fletcher-which, from that crafty young soldier, was interesting. A chanty-wrastler is a poseur, and unreliable.

“Too dam’ sure of himself by half,” was the judgment of the second-in-command. “We can do without his sort.”

The Colonel rubbed tobacco between his palms in his thoughtful way, and said nothing.

Personally, I’d met plenty I liked better, but it seemed to me there was a deeper prejudice against Errol than he deserved, bouncy tigger though he was. Some of it might be explained by his service record which, it emerged, was sensational, and not all on the credit side. According to the Adjutant’s researches, he had been commissioned in the Territorials in ‘39, and had escaped mysteriously from St Valéry, where the rest of his unit had gone into the P.O.W. bag (“there were a few heads wagged about that, apparently”). Later he had fought with distinction in the Far East, acquiring a Military Cross (“a real one, not one of your up-with-the-rations jobs”) with the Chindits.

“And then,” said the Adjutant impressively, “he got himself cashiered. Yes, busted - all the way down. It seems he was in charge of a train-load of wounded, somewhere in Bengal, and there was some foul-up and they were shunted into a siding. Some of the chaps were in a bad way, and Errol raised hell with the local R.T.O., who got stroppy with him, and Errol hauled out his revolver and shot the inkpot off the R.T.O.’s desk, and threatened to put the next one between his eyes. Well, you can’t do that, can you? So it was a court-martial, and march out Private Errol.”

“But he’s a captain now,” I said. “How on earth—?”

“Chubbarao, and listen to this,” said the Adjutant. “He finished up late in the war with those special service johnnies who were turned loose in the Balkans - you know, helping the partisans, blowing up bridges and things and slaughtering Huns with cheese-wire by night. Big cloak-and-dagger stuff, and he did hell of a well at it, and Tito kissed him on both cheeks and said he’d never seen the like—”

“So that’s where he got the M.M.”

“And the Balkan gongs, and the upshot of it was that he was re-commissioned. It happens, now and then. And of late he’s been undercover in Palestine.” The Adjutant scratched his fair head. “Something odd there - rumours about terrorist suspects being knocked about pretty badly, and one hanging himself in his cell. Nasty business. Anyway, friend Errol was shipped out, p.d.q., and now we’re landed with him. Oh, and another thing-he’s to be Intelligence Officer, as if we needed one. Didn’t I say he was the type?” The Adjutant sniffed. “Well, at least it should keep him out of everyone’s hair.”

The disclosures of Errol’s irregular past were not altogether surprising, and they helped to explain his alakeefik attitude and brass neck. Plainly he was capable of anything, and having hit both the heights and the depths was not to be judged as ordinary mortals are.

His duties as I-man were vague, and kept him out of the main stream of battalion life, which may have been as well, for as a soldier he was a contradictory mixture. In some things he was expert: a splendid shot, superb athlete, and organised to the hilt in the field. On parade, saving his immaculate turn-out, he was a disaster: when he was Captain of the Week and had to mount the guard, I suffered agonies at his elbow in my capacity as orderly officer, whispering commands and telling him what to do next while he turned the ceremony into a shambles. Admittedly, since McAuslan was in the guard, we were handicapped from the start, but I believe Errol could have reduced the Household Cavalry to chaos - and been utterly indifferent about it. Doing well or doing badly, it was all one to him; he walked off that guard-mounting humming and swinging his walking-stick, debonair as be-damned, and advising the outraged Regimental Sergeant-Major that the drill needed tightening up a bit. (He actually addressed him as “Major”, which is one of the things that are never done. An R.S.M. is “Mr So-and-so”.)

Being casual in all things, he was naturally accident-prone, but even that did nothing to deflate him, since the victim was invariably someone else. He wrecked the Hudson Terraplane belonging to Lieutenant Grant, and walked away without a scratch; Grant escaped with a broken wrist, but there was no restoring the car which had been its owner’s pride.