Free How I Won the War by Patrick Ryan Page B

office with the maturity of a second pip shining on either shoulder.
    “Your services have been requested as defending officer,” said Captain Tablet, “by Private Juniper of B Company who is at present in the cells awaiting court-martial for being absent without leave for sixty-seven days. Have you any reason to advance why you should not accept?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Then here is a copy of the summary of evidence and the rest of the papers. The court sits in a fortnight’s time. And with Goodbody for the defence may the Lord have mercy on Juniper’s misguided soul.”
    I was very pleased with my assignment. There had been noopportunity for me to practise in Military Law since I left the O. C. T. U. Fortunately my legal studies were recorded in the second volume of my notebook which had been saved from Major Arkdust and the deep, blue sea. Armed with my notes, the Manual of Military Law and King’s Regulations, I went to see my client in the cells.
    He was a little, world-worn nut of a man, a recalled reservist who had seen fifteen years’ service and possessed five sheets to his conduct record.
    “Tell me, Juniper,” I opened, “how did you come to choose me?”
    “With a pin, sir. It don’t make no difference who I have for prisoner’s friend. With that summary and my record, Norman Birkett couldn’t get me off the hook.”
    I had hoped that he had heard of the forensic skill I had shown in dealing with such Twelve Platoon problems as Clapper’s insurance difficulty, but resolved not to allow the manner of my selection to deflect me from my duty.
    “That’s no way to look at it, Juniper. Must keep our pecker up, you know. All prisoners are innocent until proven guilty.”
    “Not in the Army, they ain’t.”
    “Indeed they are, I assure you. It says so right here in the Manual of Military Law. Now what would be our best line of defence?”
    “What about suicide?”
    “I see you are charged with being absent without leave in Runcorn for sixty-seven days. Why did you go there?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Your record shows you’ve been guilty of absence without leave on eleven other occasions in the last two and a half years, and always in Runcorn. Why do you keep going back to Runcorn?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You must know. Does your wife live there?”
    “I’m not married.”
    “Your girl friend?”
    “Haven’t got one.”
    “Then what on earth keeps calling you back to Runcorn? Is there something wrong with you?”
    Juniper peered apprehensively at me like a man being followed, gazed up at the whitewashed ceiling, then down at his own reflection in the bottom of the bucket he was burnishing.
    “It’s me head, sir!”
    “Your head?”
    “Yes, sir. Inside the skull, like. Blackouts, that’s what I get, blackouts.” He banged his temples with a tortured palm. “Horrible…. I’m sitting down somewhere, just like I’m sitting down here with you, sir, when suddenly all the inside of me head goes black. I get this feeling that I got to get out of the barrack room. I got to roam, if you know what I mean. I feel all sort of … sort of …”
    “Nomadic?” I suggested.
    “That’s it, sir. I come all over sort of nomadic.” The traumatic barrier having been broken, he opened his heart to me. “Plop! Something goes plop between me ears and I’m all blacked-out and nomadic. Everything seems to close in around me. The barrack blocks, the cookhouse, the windows and the walls, they all come marching in on me and I just got to get out in the fresh air …” His black button eyes popped hysterically and his arms flailed about like a man locked in a submarine. “I just got to go off travelling…. I don’t know what I’m doing…. I don’t know where I’m going…. I just wander in a trance, helpless as a sleepwalker, maybe for hours, maybe for days, until the attack wears off and I wake up in Runcorn.”
    “Always in Runcorn?”
    “Yes.” He spread his hands in resignation.