Corporal Cotton's Little War by John Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

those things,’ he said.
    But, with the wheels wobbling and screeching on the axles, the minute beast tottered off, its hoofs click-clacking on the cobbles.
    ‘The bloody thing’ll have a heart attack,’ Gully said.
    Duff took the rifle from Coward and handed it to Cotton. ‘Stay here, Cotton,’ he said. ‘You, too, Gully. Keep an eye on this place. I’ll go back with Coward and turn the stuff over and then come back.’
    Cotton and Gully watched them disappear behind the houses towards the bay. Gully took his cigarette end from behind his ear and lit it. After a couple of puffs, he passed it to Cotton, who also took a couple of puffs and handed it back to Gully to finish.
    ‘What you make of this bleedin’ lot?’ Gully asked.
    ‘Which bleeding lot?’
    ‘Us. You and me. Where we’re goin’. It’s a right carry-on, innit?’
    Cotton shrugged. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder. Having been recruited into the enterprise, he had accepted it with his usual unflappable logic. A Marine didn’t ask questions. He got on with it.
    Gully studied Cotton for a while, puzzled by his silence. Gully was a man who liked noise and believed in making plenty. He’d grown up in a house full of people and was uncomfortable when everything was quiet.
    He spat. ‘How long you been in?’ he asked.
    Cotton’s head turned. ‘Nearly four,’ he said.
    ‘Poor bugger!’ Gully grinned. ‘I could never ‘ave joined the navy. I like to be free to ‘op it when I feel like it. “Just let me shake the dust of this old cow off me feet,” I always used to say when I was at sea. But then I’d come ashore and get into the first bar I saw and, afore I knew what had happened, I was spent up -- even me railway fare ‘ome -- and I was back aboard the bleeder again, flat broke.’ He gave a boozy cackle. ‘I was never one for discipline though. I mean - ‘ he ran a hand over his greying, grubby-looking thatch and looked hard at Cotton’s neat haircut ‘ -- they ought to give you gas for a haircut like you’ve got. After all, a feller’s got to have enough left to brush and comb, ain’t ‘e? Give me a haircut like you got and I’d have broke down and cried like a child. I pride myself on a nice eddervair.’
    Cotton thought it might have been an even nicer ‘eddervair’ if he’d bothered to wash it occasionally but he said nothing and Gully went on cheerfully.
    ‘You look like the sort of chap who’d capture a battleship with a jack-knife,’ he said.
    ‘I might.’ Cotton didn’t smile. He wasn’t given to smiling much. He was a slow-speaking, slow-moving man not willing to quarrel. ‘The Marines have been around a bit.’
    ‘Why’d you join?’
    Cotton considered. For a long time as a youth he’d wondered what he was going to do with his life because he’d never intended to spend the rest of his life writing down in ledgers the petrol consumption of London Transport buses.
    ‘Fancied it,’ he said.
    ‘But why the Marines?’
    Cotton shrugged. In fact, he’d seen a poster of a Marine corporal, smart in his best blues and white helmet, talking to a blonde in a bathing costume with palms and a foreign blue sea behind him, and his mind had been made up at once. It hadn’t turned out quite as the poster showed, of course. He hadn’t noticed, for instance, such a fat lot of blondes -- they seemed to be reserved for the officers; the other ranks got the brunettes with a touch of the tarbrush who didn’t make the wardroom dances -- but he’d been to Bermuda and Jamaica when Caernarvon had shown the flag in the Caribbean before the war, and he supposed he had to take what came. After all, Per Mare, Per Terram. That was the Royal Marines’ motto. By horse, by tram. You didn’t argue about it.
    ‘Bit of excitement,’ he said.
    ‘Get any?’
    ‘Here and there.’
    ‘What did you do before you joined?’
    ‘I dunno.’ Cotton was not one to encourage discussion of his private affairs.’ I’ve been in so