Coldstream of History

SERGEANT NELSON OF THE GUARDS--Gerald Kersh--John C. Winston ($2.50).

When Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery made a flying trip to England after the Normandy landing, one of the first things he did was to read Faces in a Dusty Picture. This brusque, vivid novel about the Libyan campaign was written by a 35-year-old veteran named Gerald Kersh--in civilian life an author, bouncer, traveling salesman, debt collector and professional wrestler; in World War II a Hemingway-mustached Tommy in Britain's oldest (1650) regiment-of-the-line, the Coldstream Guards. Now Author Kersh has followed up his dusty Faces with a lusty tribute to his famous regiment. The volume combines two books which had been previously published in England. A British critic called the first "one of the best books about soldiering ever written."

Sergeant Nelson of the Guards is part fact, part fiction; part Coldstream history, part Coldstream rag-chewing. It is also the most blood-&-thunder, swashbuckling, superpatriotic book of World War II; an American equivalent might be a history of the U.S. Marine Corps written by General George S. Patton Jr., Margaret Mitchell and Fred Allen. Gerald Kersh's Coldstreamers think they are a match for anything on earth in toughness, discipline and homespun philosophy. Author Kersh thinks so too.

Fontenoy, Waterloo and Dunkirk. The Coldstream Guards were organized by Oliver Cromwell's famed henchman, Colonel Monck, who taught them "to keep a line, stay unbroken, hold [fire] until the word of command." Nearly a century later, at the Battle of Fontenoy, Coldstream muskets wiped out the entire front line of the French Guards in a single volley. The Guards served with distinction at Waterloo, in the Crimea and in the Boer War. In Nieppe Forest in 1918, a handful of Coldstreamers were ordered to stand up to the great German advance at all costs, and were wiped out almost to the last man. At Dunkirk they helped hold back the Nazis during the great evacuation. Most of Author Kersh's book is made up of pen-pictures of the N.C.O.s and men who are now carrying on this stubborn tradition.

Veteran Sergeant Crowne shaves with floor soap ("Cold water, good rough soap and a bluntish blade, and you know you've 'ad a shave"). He calls Sergeant Hands "Ramon Novarro," because Hands uses brushless shaving cream and washes in a bucket. Fatty Teedale is "the only man in the Brigade of Guards who . . . bites his toenails" ("It makes my blood run cold to hear him"), and keeps the most promising growth for "a long bite . . . after Church Parade." Slugging Private Alison dreams of a hand-to-hand fight-to-the-death between Churchill and Hitler ("Old Winnie breathes 'eavy, but 'itler breathes worse").

Wartime rookies in the Coldstream Guards are crushed into shape by kipper-complexioned, one-eyed Sergeant Bill Nelson, whose arms are "gnarled as old salami," whose fists protrude "like mallets of black stinkwood," and who sounds off to new recruits like one of Mark Twain's brawny scrappers in Life on the Mississippi :

"I am Sergeant Nelson! I am Sergeant Nelson! I've got one eye, but both me arms! I died at Trafalgar but they dug me up again, and when I'm mad I'm a one-man wave of destruction! I'm poison! I'm terrible! I kill seven rookies before breakfast! I can spit 50 yards through the eye of a needle! D'you see that dead tree over there? They'll tell you it was struck by lightnin'. Don't believe 'em. I killed it! I slapped it down!"

Under persuasive Sergeant Nelson and a physical instructor with "the face of an executioner who is kind to his children when off duty," rookies learn drill, the Bren gun, spit-&-polish and super-discipline. They also learn such basic etiquette of the Guards:

"You will always be clean, kind, courteous, and what not. If you see an old geezer getting on a bus, give him a shove to help him along. If you see an old girl standing up in a public convenience, you will give her your seat. Conveyance: I always get them two words mixed up."

Unmarried Wife. World War II upset the Guards' traditional routine. Veteran Brand longs for the good old days when parades were really something ("We used to faint in 'caps," he muses nostalgically). But Rooky Bates, whose wife deserted him and who tried to settle down with what he calls an "unmarried wife," feels differently about life in peacetime. Says he:

"Whenever moi unmarried woife went out shopping, moi married woife, who is jealous . . . used to wait for 'er and call 'er names. And moi unmarried woife called moi married woife names back . . . [When] moi unmarried woife made 'erself a new dress, moi married woife waited for 'er and tore it off 'er back . . . moi mates started giving me nicknames, like The Mormon, and Ole King Solomon. Moi unmarried woife's stepmother scratched moi face in the street [and] moi unmarried woife ast me if loove was worth whoile. and 'ad 'ysterics. . . . Then, war was declared. . . . Oi was on the doorstep of the Recruiting Office two hours before it opened. Oi loike war."

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