A light
sprinkle of snow was falling on a January afternoon when I entered the officers’
mess for the first time. Inside, a man in uniform sat alone, as close as he
could get to the black iron stove. He was reading a newspaper, and there was a
tumbler of Scotch on the table beside him.
At first he didn’t see me in the doorway, but
then he looked up, eased himself out of his armchair, and came toward me
smiling, his arm outstretched.
“You’ll be
one of our new boys. Good to see you. I’m Richard Lindsay.”
We shook
hands, and I introduced myself. He was a tall, elegant man, with a bronzed,
aristocratic face, and his voice was pure BBC. I’d done my homework, and had
read about Lindsay who, a few years earlier, had single-handedly halted a column
of German Tiger tanks on a street at Nijmegen. He’d run ahead of his men,
dodging a barrage of automatic fire, and wedged a grenade in the tracks of the
leading tank, blowing them apart. For this and other exploits at the battle of
Arnhem, he’d been awarded the Military Cross. I noted the MC’s distinctive blue
on white stripe among the medal ribbons on his tunic.
“They’ve
put you in my company, Delta. You’ve only got a one-man reception committee,
young man, but don’t take it personally.” He smiled again.“The whole damn
unit’s been on leave ever since we came home from Hong Kong last month, but
they’ll all be back tonight.” Lindsay
was a major in his late thirties. I was a few months short of twenty-one, and a
subaltern. After years of training I was a second lieutenant joining my first infantry
regiment. Subalterns, newly commissioned career officers straight from the
Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, were jokingly known as the lowest form of
Army life. Eager and smooth-cheeked, not yet tanned by the sun that was already
setting on the British Empire, with our new uniforms innocent of medals, we
stood out as the virgin soldiers we were among the leathery faces of the
regiment’s post-World War II battle-tried veterans.
Lindsay
offered me a chair by the stove, the top of which, behind a safety rail, glowed
red-hot. He reached for a small brass bell on the table and rang it, and a
white-jacketed steward appeared in the doorway.
“Rogers,”
Lindsay said to the mess barman, “This is Mr. Edwards, and he’s just joined
us.” He turned to me. “What would you like to drink?”
I
wasn’t used to drinking in the afternoon, and I’d hardly ever tasted whiskeya.
“A beer would be fine, sir.” I said.
The
barman returned with a tankard of bitter on a tray and, I noted, another whiskey
for Lindsay, who raised his glass to me.
“Welcome
to the regiment, Edwards. It’s a pity you’re seeing us for the first time in
this bloody awful place, but we’ll be in decent quarters in Northern Ireland in
a few weeks. You’ll soon settle down there.”
It
was indeed an awful place. Fresh from several years in Hong Kong, the Regiment
was temporarily based in this condemned Royal Navy air station on a flat,
snow-swept plain near the Lancashire town of Ormskirk, a few miles from
Liverpool. Our parade ground was the camp’s abandoned airstrip, and the
buildings were rusting Quonset huts. Normally, an officers’ mess resembles a
London gentleman’s club, decorated with oil portraits of long-dead generals,
engravings of battle scenes, and priceless antique silver. But our mess in this
temporary base had the air of a long-neglected airport lounge, with boxy chairs
arranged round the stove.
In
the hour that followed I warmed quickly to my first company commander. He
seemed shrewd, witty and warm-hearted. He spoke modestly of his war experience,
talking more about his wife and children and his days at Oxford where, when the
war broke out in 1939, he’d just graduated with a degree in PPE -- politics,
philosophy and economics. He inquired with what seemed to be genuine interest
about my family and home, my school days and years of army training. I couldn’t
help noticing that, without being asked, the barman seemed to bring Lindsay a
fresh drink as soon as his glass was empty. But he remained lucid, though maybe
a little more voluble.
Back in the
mess that evening, more officers, returning from leave, had drifted into the
room. By then, Lindsay, like the others, was dressed in the off-duty rig of the
day, a regimental blazer, Tattersall check shirt with the green-and red-striped
regimental tie, fawn cavalry twill trousers, and suede desert boots. Among the
new arrivals were five other subalterns who, like me, were still in uniform.
Four were career soldiers from Sandhurst, and the fifth was a newly
commissioned National Serviceman, drafted into the service for eighteen months like
the rest of his generation at that time. We newcomers were introduced with
playful banter to everyone who entered, and made welcome. Naturally enough, we
gravitated to our own little group of newcomers for much of the evening. Chris
Stapleton, who’d been a friend of mine at the academy, and who’d arrived a day
or two earlier, spoke to me in a quiet aside.
“See
this chap Lindsay?”
“Yes,”
I said. “He’s my new company commander. I met him this afternoon. What about
him?”
“Everyone’s
waiting to see how he gets on with Fred Creech, the new colonel. Seems Creech
was in the ranks, a non-commissioned officer of some sort near the end of the War
when Lindsay was a captain. Seems they just couldn’t get on for some reason. Hated
each other’s guts. Creech had been commissioned in the field, and he’s been
away in a staff job for the past few years. When they were both captains in
Aden or somewhere they had some kind of brawl, and they haven’t spoken to each
other since.”
“How
do you know this?” I asked.
“A
couple of platoon commanders from Delta Company took me out on a pub-crawl last
night, and they told me. Apparently some of Creech’s former mates in the
sergeants’ mess are laying bets on how long they’ll manage to serve together
this time without some sort of dust-up.”
“Why
don’t they get on?” I asked.
“Well,
it’s probably a class thing. They say Creech is a good soldier, but a crude
bugger. Rough as guts. Drinks a lot and uses dirty language. Gutsy as hell, of
course, and got himself a Military Medal in Normandy. Dick Lindsay comes from money. Big, county
family, Eton, Oxford and all that. They’re as different as chalk is from
cheese.”
Just
before dinner, Colonel Creech arrived in the mess, followed by his
second-in-command and the adjutant, Mike Watson. Those who were seated stood up
when he entered, and everyone turned toward the door. Creech filled the
doorway, a burly man, tall, maybe forty, with a Rugby front row forward’s shoulders
and a bent, boxer’s nose that, with his brush-cut red hair, made him look the
fighter he was. Watson led him round the room introducing him. Only a few of
the more senior men, including the rifle company commanders, majors, seemed to
have met Creech. He paused with them first, and I couldn’t help noticing, as
must everyone else, that while he chatted and joked with two of them, but said
nothing at all to Lindsay.
When
he reached me, Creech shook my hand warmly. “Pleased to meet you, laddie. I knew
your cousin, Dennis Edwards. Served with ‘im in Europe. Fuckin’ good officer.
If you’re ‘alf as good as ‘im you’ll do all right.” He gave me a playful poke in the ribs that
made me step back a pace.
Dinner
was informal on that Sunday night. Everyone sat where they chose except the new
subalterns, who were allotted seats next to a veteran major.
After the meal, Chris Stapleton came over to
me. “We’re going to look around the town. Someone’s going to organize a car.
Want to come?”
Ormskirk
seemed a depressing place. Its narrow streets were under an inch of gray snow,
and every other building seemed to be a pub. Since officers were discouraged
from frequenting bars used by the troops, we toured the marginally classier
places that called themselves hotels, where a pint of bitter cost a few pennies
more. We talked with the affable locals
and played a game of darts and, shortly before ten the barmaid called for last
orders. She pulled us a final pint for
the road, and signaled the closure of the bar by throwing a wet cloth over the
beer handles, and turning out some of the lights.
We
gathered in the street outside. “It’s too early to go to bed,” someone said.
“Tell
you what, then,” Chris said. “The bar will still be open at the mess. Let’s go home and have a beer and a game of
snooker.”
It
was pleasantly warm back in the mess. When we trooped through the lounge to the
billiards room, the colonel, Mike Watson, Dick Lindsay and two or three other senior
officers were talking animatedly around the stove.
It was
around eleven when I first heard a raised, angry voice through the open door.
Creech’s voice. The four of us stopped playing and listened. Watson was saying
to his superiors, “Enough of this. Now cut it out, both of you!”
Stapleton
and I stood in the doorway. The veterans around the stove were too engrossed to
notice us there. Creech rose unsteadily to his feet, grasping the black iron
rail around the stove, and with his back to us, leaned down and pressed his
face close to Lindsay, shouting something unintelligible that sounded belligerent.
But
I did hear Lindsay’s reply. “Come outside and repeat that, you mean-minded oaf.”
The
two men lumbered out of the room, leaving the others silent in their chairs. One
of the majors turned to Watson, “Mike, you’d better go out and keep an eye on
those two.”
Watson,
a captain, followed them out into the dark. A minute or two later, dumfounded by
how this day had turned out, we agreed this was the right moment to leave. We’d
expected that joining our regiment would be a proud climax to the years of
training. I happened to be the first to go through the door as we filed through
it into the cold air outside.
As I led
the way onto the icy steps outside the mess, I witnessed a violent sequence
that has been etched into my memory for the past sixty-five years. Lindsay,
crouched in a defensive stance in front of Creech, suddenly straightened up
and, with a grunt like a tennis champion making a punishing serve, put all his
weight behind a massive blow to the side of his commanding officer’s head. Momentarily, Creech lost his balance,
slipped, and fell heavily on the ice. No one moved for a few seconds. Creech
made a vain attempt to scramble to his feet, and I remember this big, ungainly
man, suddenly sober, saying in an unexpectedly pained, aggrieved voice “You’ve
broken my leg!”
Lindsay
said nothing. He stood, swaying a little, his arms now at his sides, looking
down at Creech while adjutant Mike Watson took charge. We should probably have
left Creech where he was until an ambulance arrived but, eager to keep the
incident out of sight, Watson recruited my help in hauling the colonel back
into the mess, and called the battalion’s medical officer.
A
while later, when an ambulance had taken Creech to the local hospital, Watson, one
of the majors who was Creech’s second-in-command and I met back in the mess
alone. By then Lindsay was under escort in his quarters with the regulation two
officers of equal rank, and had been charged with striking a superior officer.
Watson
turned to me. “You and I will have to give evidence, Edwards. We’re the only
people who actually saw him do it.”
“What’ll
happen to Major Lindsay?” I asked.
“He’ll
be court-marshaled and cashiered,” Watson said. “It’ll be an open and shut
case, no doubt about it.”
I had some
sleepless nights after that evening. Under oath, I gave a truthful account of
what I’d witnessed. Lindsay’s self-destructive act had taken only a few
impetuous seconds, and it took me fewer than five minutes at the initial summary
of evidence, and later at the court marshal in Liverpool, to tell the story
that, together with Watson’s evidence, brought Lindsay’s distinguished career
to an abrupt end.
Lindsay
looked me in the eye as I stepped down from the witness stand, but there was no
hint of malice or reproach.
* * *
Ten years
later, bored with the emptiness of peacetime life in the Army, I’d left the
service as a captain, and was moving up the ladder in the London office of an Australian
public relations firm. I’d begun to realize that, while I was strong enough on
leadership and administration, I needed to know more about managing money. As a first step, I signed up for a course in
economics.
I
was sitting a few rows from the front of the auditorium on the first night of the
course when the lecturer entered, a professor from the University of London. He
held up his hand to quieten his audience, and began by defining an economist as
‘someone who doesn’t have enough personality to become an accountant,’ which
relaxed the audience and made them smile.
“Let me introduce myself, he said. “My name’s
Dick Lindsay.”
The wit and
warmth were still there, but he was much thinner; even gaunt, and looked more
than a decade older. He took a few minutes to recognize me, and when he did he
paused momentarily, smiled and raised his hand in recognition without losing
the pace of his presentation.
But I found
it hard to concentrate, wondering what we could possibly say to each other when
we spoke later, as we inevitably would. It was a reasonable concern. I was,
after all, an unwilling, unwitting catalyst in his dishonorable discharge.
I needn’t
have been anxious. During a brief coffee break Lindsay came over and shook my
hand warmly.
“I’d
heard you left the service,” he said. “How’s life treating you?”
“Pretty
good,” I said, “and you?”
“It
was hard at first.” Lindsay said, “But a lot tougher for Angela and the kids.
Families get the sticky end of the spoon when something like that happens.”
He
put his hand on my shoulder. “You know, I always hoped we’d run into each other
again. Where are you going when this is over?”
I
shrugged. “Nowhere special.”
“Then
let’s have a drink later. I know a place not far from here.”
The
rest of Lindsay’s lecture went well. He was entertaining and authoritative, and
the class quickly warmed to him. This was clearly something at which he
excelled, and which he enjoyed.
The wine
bar, in the Strand just off Trafalgar Square, was almost deserted.
“What
can I get you?” I asked.
“Just
a dry ginger for me,” he said. “But you go ahead.”
When
I returned from the bar with our drinks there was an awkward pause.
“There’s .
. . there’s something I want to say --” I said.
But he stopped me. “I know what you’re going
to say. Listen, you did what you had to do. You were under oath, and had no
choice. I’d have done the same thing. Actually, I’ve got something to tell you. It’s I who want to thank you.”
“Thank me. Why?”
“Don’t
you see? You’re the person who changed my life. The truth is that, though I
didn’t realize it at the time, I was in a nose-dive. I’d had a good war – if
there is such a thing. I’d been decorated. But after the war there was nothing
left for me. I was drinking too much, and Angela hated being an army wife. In a
year or two my girls would have been off to a boarding school while Angela and
I trailed from one dreary overseas posting to the next. Long before now I’d
have been divorced, and a lonely drunk. So, thank you.”
Was there
any point in laboring this?
We clinked
glasses.
Dick
Lindsay died a decade or two ago at his home in Staffordshire. He was 83. A month or so later I received a parcel in
the mail, with a hand-written note from his wife:
“Dear Nigel: Dick died on Thursday
27th August. He always told me he wanted you to have this. I know you’ll
take good care of it.
With best wishes, Angela Lindsay.”
Inside was
a small dark blue leather-bound book. At first I thought it was a bible, but it
was a day-by-day guide published by Alcoholics Anonymous, entitled ‘One Day At A Time.’
On the flysheet
Lindsay had written a note:
“To Nigel
Edwards:
I want you to have this little book. It’s something to
live by, and has helped me live the rest of my life. Read it. It will dissuade
you from dwelling on past errors and regrets, and help you visualize the future
as no more than a series of new days, each offering fresh opportunities for
self-realization and growth.
Remember this. Today is just a small, manageable
segment of time during which your difficulties don’t have to overwhelm you.
Knowing this will lift the heavy weight of the past from your heart and mind,
and show you how to face the uncertainties of the future.
Affectionately,
Richard Lindsay.”
End
