大象传媒

The suit

This is the third story in a series of six short stories written by my father AEG Allsop. He was born in Cromford, Derbyshire, in 1918.

I am about to be deprived of my suit. It is not really a suit, but a sort of jacket and trousers. It is certainly designed to last. It is of a rough heavy coarse material, hairy in fact, in colour not to be discovered in any made to measure pattern book. I have become very attached to these garments; in fact for the last several months they have fufilled my every need. I have walked in them, run in them, got wet in them and dried off in them. I have eaten, drunk in them, slept occasionally.

The trousers have taken on a baggy appearance, the jacket too has no particular shape; it did not really fit me when I first stepped into it, but it is comfortable now. I have moulded it to me myself. Some of the meals I have eaten have left their traces, a little darkness here, an indescribable patch of something there. As I have said before I have become attached to it as a man may have for an old sports coat that hangs behind the kitchen door; an old friend that he slips on when on his way to the garden shed to potter and to enjoy a pipe of his favourite baccy; a coat that his wife dreams of giving to the ragman. If truth be known this happy match of garment smells have long been accepted by my companions - yes, I have companions similarly equipped; there is nothing unusual about it.

The officer, without preamble, has paraded and inspected us. "Is that the only uniform you have, Allsop?" "Yes, sir", I reply and he orders me to report to the quartermaster- sergeant for a new battle dress.

As it happens I am in full marching order, backpack, respirator, helmet, ammunition pouches, waterbottle and more, all hitched to or dangling from an array of straps and webbing suitable for the occasion and to crown it all a green gas cape fastened at the back of my neck with a little string to pull when hopefully I will be completely enveloped and safe from a gas attack.

I hand my billet-doux to the QMS who says, "You come in here dressed up like a bloody Christmas tree and expect me to fit you with new battle-dress?" And so, there was I standing waiting as the QMS sorted through his bales of clothing. I had divested myself of my accoutrements leaving only my shirt, shorts and my boots. Boots were listed in the language of the war department as "boots, ammunition, leather, black, nailed, size nine, troops for the use of "! Every item of equipment and accessory was recorded in this fashion, even down to the "Army Forms Blank" hanging up in the latrines. But boots, ammunition? Were we to understand that the last round having been fired, as a last show of defiance, we should load our boots into the cannon ? In due course I presented myself to the officer ready and willing to be transported to London to be billeted with the Guards.

As it happened when I was shovelled off into the army I left behind a girl friend whose brother had joined up long before the outbreak of war. He was a big blond lad, finely built and well over six feet tall, whose ambition had been to get into the police force when he was old enough. He had applied, passed all the physical fitness tests and intellectual requirements. Believe it or not he was turned down because, when standing to attention stripped, there was a small gap between his knees !

It was by some strange coincidence that as we stepped on to the parade ground of Wellington Barracks he should be passing by, he now an Acting Sergeant of the Guards, towering above me, his uniform pressed and brushed, his boots shining to that degree of perfection that only hours of spit and polish can bring, his buttons glittering in the spring sunshine; truly a non-commissioned officer who exuded confidence and authority. And I fresh from a muddy encampment on Salisbury Plain in my new only this morning suit. (To his sister he referred to me as "little titch".)

I should explain that in early 1940 regular troops on Home Service still wore service dress that had changed little since the end of World War 1. I am sure Sergeant Bishop had seen battle dress somewhere, but never in his experience had he seen a creature standing on the holy parade ground in such disarray as I must have appeared. He walked all round me poking and pulling at the dangling straps and empty deflated ammunition pouches, whilst I stood trying to smile and appear to be in control of the situation and hoping not to be invited to double around the huge square.

All did end happily, not forever perhaps, but for one day my girlfriend joined me. The Sergeant and his girlfriend and we two all went to see the penguins in Regents Park and after to see some of the sights of London.

I was eventually issued with another suit, not because what I had was worn out. This time the garments had been treated for gas warfare. They were stiff with some compound that smelled of bleach and when shaken produced a dandruff of white dust. What the chemicals were was known only to the government scientists, the "boffins" as we had learned to call them. Some of our individualists were so disgusted that they took them home for Mam to wash. Not, definitely not, a suit to become attached to.

That first suit in its way was symbolic of the process of transmutation that over took hundreds of thousands, millions of young men and young women from all walks of life to newly emerge as small elements of a huge military machine that was built to engage in a dreadful conflict, the outcome of which we could not know.

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