THE STRAGGLER
By J. L. BREWER
PTE. WINDSOR, F. R., will not quit India. I thought about him the other day, when I was turning out my steel trunk and came across some letters and my diary for 1942. In the autumn of that year I became the mortar platoon officer. We had seven carriers, and they were called after well-known pubs in the regi- ment's county town. To see them go by, in the red dust of Southern India, was enough to make a man homesick as well as thirsty ; the White Hart, the Mitre, the Red Lion, the Elephant, the Merry Maidens, the Wheatsheaf and the Trout. We wore the Dagger Division sign, but it was a new divisio`a then ; we were training very hard indeed. In the early morning we were out with the carriers before the sun was up and made their metal too hot to touch, running between the paddy-fields, along the tops of the great irrigation-banks, and stirring up the historic dust of Arcot. We were very happy. It was cool, and the village children came out to wave to us. Even the white oxen, Alpine in their bumpiness, stared at us in kindly tolerance as we clattered by.
One morning—one of those early mornings when all the children smiled and everyone we met on the road seemed handsome and happy —I received a message saying that the Merry Maidens had over- turned. A difficult corner, near a bridge. One man was killed, that was certain, and the sergeant badly injured in the legs. The M.O. was with them. I saw Windsor dead in the ambulance. He was a regular, a quiet country lad who then (in 1942) had been out of England for four years. As so often happens when someone dies, I found it hard to remember much about him. I couldn't recall any conversations ; I could find only one picture of him in my mind, sitting patiently and uncomfortably in the rear of a carrier, his topee pushed back, his rifle between his knees. Windsor was not one of the drivers of this world ; he was content to go where he was taken. The Doc moved aside the coarse grey blanket for me to have a last look at him. I remember most the bathing-girl tattooed on his thigh. These girls were fashionable ; by moving the muscles they could be made to undulate. She was dead, too.
Windsor had only one letter in his pocket, an airgraph, which he had received that morning. It went something like this:
"My own dear son,—I have received another of your letters and am pleased about this, you bet I am, and to know you are safe and well. We are both well at home, also all the animals, chicks, rabbits, cats and dog. So you give it three years before we see you home. Well, darling, whenever that may be, it is going to he the happiest day of my life, and somehow, dear, I don't think it's likely to be that long, things may not be looking too rosy but when once we can get things moving they will soon be going with a rush believe me and Please God, we shall yet be able to spend a fes years of our life together. I have always thought you and I have missed such a lot in life, being so long apart ; still sweetheart . . . until th- big day, God Bless you.—Mum."
We buried Windsor the next day from Fort Sr. George, Madras. Against the background of Clive's house, among the ancient cannon and neat pyramids of cannon-balls, the gun-carriage, the bearers, the firing-party in well-creased drill, all looked diminutive and un- real, like tin-soldiers in some elaborate toyshop fort.
It was my first military funeral, and I had gone to some trouble to see that it went smoothly. I had calculated, very precisely, the time necessary to march from the Fort to the old, the oldest, Garrison Cemetery. The Army (as ever true to form) was not going to let Pte. Windsor, F. R., go, however, without just one last bit of messing him about. The cortege was just going to move off from the Fort, the Padre was waiting at the Garrison Cemetery, everything planned to the minute, when I saw our Adjutant drive up. He affected large, wicked whiskers, and looked like Jaspar come, in the nick of time, to forbid the wedding.
"Terribly sorry, old man," he said to me. "There's got to be an inquest. Afraid I slipped up rather. Won't take a minute."
With him was an Anglo-Indian police official. So, on the tail- board of the Adjutant's truck, there and then, some sort of a formality took place. Two men were called who had seen the body. The Anglo-Indian was apologetic. "Merely a matter of form. Shan't keep you a minute, sir." He took out a pad, sucked his indelible pencil (leaving a stain on his lower lip) and began to ask questions and write. I looked over his shoulder at a printed form, and read: " Name : Windsor, Frederick Raymond. Offence: Death."
Only two minutes late, we set off at last from the Fort. The Garrison Cemetery is a large and ancient place ; slowly we turned the difficult gun-carriage in at the great gates. First, we passed through eighteenth-century tombs, elegant urns, noble slabs, an moss and scrolls, where lay the British bones of old nabobs, young ensigns, adventurers, girl-brides and governesses, young John Com- pany clerks who declined into their graves after only a few months away from home, and the two or three stragglers every regiment left behind, the lusty corporal killed in a brawl, the suicide with • musket-ball in his brain . . . the accumulated British bones which have paid such a rich dividend over the years. We took Pte. Windsor past them and through the nineteenth century—less elegant tombs now, more parsons, more civil servants, but still the soldiers from the English counties. And there, against the wall at the back, was our century, five small white wooden crosses and an open grave waiting for Windsor.
I've thought about him and the other stragglers several times recently, reading of mobs surging up and down the Mount Road and over the maidan, opposite the cemetery, crying, "Quit India! "
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