Open Writing

Arithmetic has never been my strong point. I managed to keep off the bottom of the achievement list following annual examinations at Spring Grove School because Mary Appleyard invariably scored nil and I sailed in with two more marks than she did. It wasn't until I was almost eighteen and in the Army that I learned how to do long division, and that was thanks to the Army Education Corps.

A year and a half later, serving in Cyprus, I was still making use of the Army's Education programmes to advance my limping edification to a standard that would let me compete in life on a more or less even playing field.

The woolly-haired young sergeant-teacher became gently frustrated when attempting to indoctrinate me in the lesser points of trigonometry, and eventually reached the point where gentleness no longer served to describe his rising irritation.

It was when blue smoke began curling upwards from his thatch, during a moment of histrionic over-emphasis, he aimed to bang on his desk, missed, and was next seen climbing back into a standing position with air of complete and utter resignation not usually seen on the face of one so young.

Even though I could not grasp or remember any of the simple formulae that some very young children are so adept at internalising and using as common language, there were some numerical things I know about, and the "three-halves-rule " is one of them. Of course, it might never have come up had I not been a highly visible and vocal Mormon when all that was known of them was that they had been targeted by their neighbours over differences in religious, political, social, and matrimonial customs in Nineteenth-Century America, some of which found their way into Britain under the ægis of exceptional missionaries.

But come up it did, and the event taught me what I had long suspected, namely, that the British Army has a language all its own. It is not amenable to analysis, it defies description, and you have to be a British soldier to understand the mind-set that generated and perpetuates it.

During my first year as an untidy and often inept soldier, I still had some way to go to appreciate the military mind and its place in guarantee the security of Britain and, thereby, the safety and continuance of Western civilisation. However, I gained an important insight into that mind-set one cool Saturday morning on the parade ground under the tutelage of one of the bastions of the Armed Forces of the Crown, the Regimental Sergeant Major.

This warrant officer, the highest non-commissioned rank in the British Army, wields more power than any other officer with the exception of the Battalion's Colonel. Junior subalterns are subject to his discipline and woe betide any young officer who ignore him or his regulations, every one of them out of the Manual of Army Discipline, or the book of Queens' Rules and Regulations. Each publication has extremely strict rules of conduct, the maintenance of which determines the force and direction of discipline meticulously interpreted and applied by the RSM. Sensible soldiers respect and fear their RSM, taking care to avoid his disapproval.

It was, therefore, with some difficulty that I managed to refrain from laughing out loud that Saturday morning after we had been assembled, inspected, and drilled by the RSM at Sudbury in Staffordshire, when he announced that the company would dismiss to that ailing institution of military life, Padre's Hour.

This was the time, usually on Saturday mornings, when more important duties were done with for a period and attendance at a religious meeting with either the battalion's chaplain or a visiting priest was all that stood between the soldier and escape for the weekend on a thirty-six hour pass.

Thus it was that we dutifully assembled on the parade ground. I still had not overcome my antipathy to the square of asphalt that formed the centre lot of Army camps. Our RSM, a dear man who troubled us very little, except that he insisted that if we wore wellington boots on parade, they must be polished to a high gloss.

We stood freezing to death in serried ranks on what was, according to the RSM, Holy Ground, except for those who were excused boots and those excused marching. These formed a significant majority of our ranks, because many cerebrally gifted people are lacking in physical aptitude.

The brilliant, but infirm, whose skills the Army could not afford to do without, lined the top edge of the square. The RSM, looking every inch a soldier, marched on and took his position front and centre, scanning the battalion with the slits he used for eyes, his face set as fierce as it is possible to get it without being certifiably insane.

After his customary harangue - part of the normative ritual of military life - he turned his attention to Padre's Hour, barking in his basso profundo,

"Roman Catholics fall out on the left. Anglicans fall out to the rear. Other denominations fall out to the right."

They fell out, moving this way and that to attain their appointed divisions until from out the confusion three orderly platoons formed around the sides of the square. But wait! A solitary figure remained in the centre of the parade ground, that is apart from the RSM who appeared to be at least nine feet tall, and me, feeling about four feet tall, standing facing him.

It is difficult to describe the look on his face to anyone unfamiliar with the slow burn of Edgar Kennedy and the evil leer of Vincent Price. He approached me purposefully shaking his massive pace stick to assist him with emphasis as the spiny ends of his waxed moustache described little circles in the air as his head moved in an indescribable motion. He bellowed at me, "What are you, Laddie?"

Although I felt that his addressing me as "Laddie" was hardly showing respect for one of England's warriors and an heroic, underpaid soldier of Queen Elizabeth II, I decided not to raise that point with him at that tense moment.

However, I assumed an air of military importance, knowing that demonstrating a military bearing would persuade him that he was in the company of an equal and make him think twice before treating me as he had done to a full corporal earlier in the parade, dismissing him with the charge,

"Take yourself down to the guardroom, corporal, and chain yourself to the wall!"

The RSM moved in on me, getting close enough to whisper, but whispering was against his religion. "And what are you?" he bellowed, repeating himself.

"A Mormon, sir," I repeated, in a suitable military tone.

"You are a what!" It was not a question, rather declaration of war.

"I am a Mormon, sir!" I said with tangible conviction and looking him straight in the eyes, remembering a book I had read about lions, hoping that he also had read the book.

"A Mormon, Laddie?" he thundered back, apparently not intimidated, but he could have been cleverly hiding his fear.

"Are they Roamin Catherlics"?

"No, sir!"

"Are they Church of Hingland?"

"No, sir!"

"Then they must be 'Other Denurminashns,' Laddie!"

"No, sir!" I repeated, resolutely but softly now, still not wishing to antagonise him.

He stepped forward three paces, which, considering that there had only been two paces between us to start with, brought us very close. His eyes, though a good foot and a half above mine seemed to meet, as with lowered voice he entreated,

"Listen, Laddie! The British Harmy is made up of three 'alves: Church of Hingland, Roamin Catherlics, and Huther Denurminashns! Now then, Laddie, which are you?"

"Neither, sir. I'm a Mormon."

He had neither the capacity nor the inclination to prolong the exchange. It probably mattered very little to him who went where or whether anyone went anywhere at all. Total resignation and indifference spread across his face in the way melting butter runs down a slope. He had had enough. He was, after all, a soldier, not a theologian.

The word came down from Mount Olympus, but quieter and more measured, perhaps with a touch of sympathy in his tone, such as one might adopt when addressing an idiot.

"Right, Laddie. Present yourself at the cookhouse for fatigues."

I turned to the right, counted 'two, three' barely concealing a chuckle rising that was ingenuously constructing itself near the region of my knees, as I completed my 'fall out' manoeuvre. Fortunately, remnants of cold dissolved it before it reached my face.

Marching off the parade ground, that now seemed ten miles wide, I marched steadfastly to the cookhouse, not daring to glance behind, lest I was observed in my now evident mirth.

The cook sergeant was highly amused when I reported my errand and my reason for being there. He laughed and told me to go and wait for dinnertime in my barrack room. I went and lay on my bed to mull over the happening and to ponder what I had learned that morning.

The main lesson was that it was right and proper to speak up about personal beliefs, and that justice was secured by way of principled stands.

I also learned something that neither Spring Grove School nor the British Army Education Corps had taught me, and that was that despite Pythagorus, Euclid, and others of their ilk, it was, according to British Army Rules and Regulation, mathematically to divide a whole into "Three 'Alves!"