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1. Saharanpur: Our First Mess

Get it wrong here, and you’re a flop.
This is the one thing you’ve been trained for.
This, you could say, is going over the top.

One false move, and never again
will you be anything. Do’s and don’ts
are endemic to gentlemen.

For Mencken, a gentleman’s
easily defined: he never strikes a woman
without provocation.

At grammar-school we
defined a gentleman as one who
got out of his bath to have a pee.

While I treat my knife and fork with exquisite care,
a delicate hand on my shoulder makes me turn:
I meet a simian stare:

sultana eyes, vampire canines, wide agape,
hairy arms stretched out for crucifixion.
It’s Albert, our female gibbon ape.

2. Ringworm

Here, in our jungle muddle, we’ve the monsoon.
In the pouring rain, booted and gaitered,

in jungle-green trousers and Garhwali hat,
bare-chested and festooned with ringworm, I look,

in my violet medicament, like a balloon.
I stand in line for the visiting brass

who invariably fail to pass. All the generals,
not unkindly, look me up and down and frown.

3. Albert

Albert knows she’s the natural mistress
of soldiers famished for womanflesh.

On the ground her fingers dangle.
Best she likes to be sailing through the air.

We grab her hands and send her flying
over the Mess to another lover.

A drink too many, she misses a hold —
and smiles her single grimace:

bared teeth and raisin eyes.
Funny, those female arms around your neck.

4. Military Exercises

Our schemes are schemes
of discomfort, doused by
power-showers of lukewarm rain.

Cutting our dripping way through jungle,
mucking along, and scoffing cold damp
curried spuds from a plantain leaf,

we sleep in wet beneath our bivouacs —
groundsheets strung like tents between two trees.
Pointless they are: they keep us watered.

A captain seemed to think that,
fresh from OTS, we’d be teaching
the latest gen on jungle bivouacs.

Studying my groundsheet on its string,
swelling the raindrops even larger,
I try to invent a better tent but can't.

5. Horses

The battalion’s three retired chargers
go for stately walks with a gaggle of mules.

The days of ha ha among the trumpets are gone by,
but a ride’ll trim his figure, I propose.

He doesn’t agree, liking his grub and club.
Astride him, my legs spread like on a hippo’s back.

Getting him out is the hard bit — he
strains his big neck backward, knowing better.

I show the beast who’s boss, and
more or less haul him with muscle out of camp.

Then I turn, and he’s off. I ought to be
the boss, but, hunched like a cowboy,

I duck the jungle branches,
evade the flying tomahawks and the arrows.

Days later I’ve got him trotting,
when a lightweight lorry flashes from behind.

The fool panics, skips onto the road,
slides on the wet tarmac, falls

and galls himself. I'm thrown.
I reflect, as I ride him back

to his scandalized groom that
horses are beasts of action.

Cows are intelligent: slow
contemplatives, curious to know.

6. Ralph

Ralph got ratty on leave in Gulmarg,
and one evening I fought with him.

Now he squats barefoot,
in underpants and shirt,

chatting up the dhobi.
He gives a sunshine grin.

They ship him back to England.
Is he really round the bend,

says Len, or is it a con?
Who knows, the lucky bugger!

7. September 1945

Six weeks in the rain, and I’m posted to Burma.
Next day the news comes: it’s This Bomb.

If what they say is true, I scoff,
the war’s over...

That week we're summoned before
the little major-general with the big map.

I suppose, he clips from his foxy face,
you chaps think you’re in for a cushy time.

Well, you're not. The next war's
with Russia, and we start training for that now.

The map unrolls on the wall, and we see:
Russia’s almost poking Waziristan.

My ringworm’s livid, but then
they change my posting, to Razmak, in Waziristan.

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