The Naked Island | Page 4

you can say
Jack Robinson." . * . "Now you boys, get to know one another." . . .
And finally presumably to hasten the process of getting to know one
another "Just come this way and strip off "
So we all went that way and stripped off and for the next three quarters
of an hour remained stripped off, whilst the Army lost all interest in us.
We just stood round surreptitiously comparing sun tans and birth marks,
until finally, six feet of complete disinterest, in the shape of a medical
orderly, emerged from behind a turf guide and summoned us, one by
one, to be weighed and measured. Next, in to the doctors for an
examination.
Doctors were a tribe for whom I had never had much time. The one
before whom I now stood filled me with no confidence at all. He had
the outward appearances of a publican and the delicate hands of a
navvy. He confirmed my worst fears about the profession in general
and himself in particular by thrusting an inquisitive finger against what
is euphemistically termed one's lower abdomen and saying, "Cough."
If that, I thought to myself, is where he imagines I get a sore throat, no
wonder he had to join the Armyl I stood silent and contemptuous.
Irritably he looked up from the inquisitive finger and my lower
abdomen. "I said Cough, " he told me. I nodded. "Well then," he
ordered, very abruptly indeed, "Cough!" With no great conviction, I
coughed.
"Uh-huh," he said, and removed the finger and averted the gaze and
wrote something down on a form which I tried very hard to read but
with no success at all.
"Now," he said in a businesslike manner, "some questions." I prepared
myself for questioning.
"What diseases have you had?" This, I thought, at least displayed a
pleasantly paternal interest in my past, so, even though it appeared

quite irrelevant to the business of killing Germans, I answered him
briskly, saying, "Measles and whooping cough."
He looked most disappointed. "No chicken pox?" he queried. I denied
the chicken pox.
"No mumps?" I denied the mumps. I also denied broken limbs, missing
teeth and interesting scars. The doctor became quite pa tently bored and
attempted a different gambit.
"Do you throw fits?" he asked hopefully. I denied that I threw fits.
"Mother or father throw fits?" he persisted. I said, "No " His face
clouded with despondency but he pressed on: "Any insanity in the
family at all?" he demanded desperately "grandparents or any thing?"
Again I said no: whereupon quite disgruntledhe wrote down on the
form that I didn't throw fits, that my mother and father didn't throw fits
and that my grandparents were sane. Meantime I stood by, still quite
naked, and listened to the other naked recruits also being interrogated
about the state of their grandparents* sanity. I suddenly had a terrible
desire to assure thfa doctor who looked like a publican that actually
both my parents had the D.T.s and that my great-grandmother had been
as mad as a cut snake. These reveries were, however, completely
disrupted by a curt order to bend over. All around the room at that
moment recruits were bending over and very unsightly it was, too.
"Whyr I asked.
"Because," said the publican, with quite unwarranted impatience, "I
want to see if you've got piles."
"I haven't." I told him firmly and remained vertical.
"Bend over," he bellowed. "You can't expect me to take your word for
it got to see for myself."
"You didn't want to see my grandparents," I argued.

"I am not," he hissed, "examining your grandparents for piles, Now
bend over."
"You asked me," I pointed out, "whether my grandparents were cracked.
I said, No. You didn't say, Show me your uncracked grandparents!
Now, you ask, have I got piles and I say, 'No,' and you say, Bend over.
It doesn't make sense."
With a look of undisguised hostility, he straightened up in his chair.
"All right," he capitulated, "you have not got piles. Now, for God's
sake," and he said the words very slowly and with not much good will,
"go away. Go next door," and, dismissing me, he pointed to the far
room. So off I marched in naked dignity, whilst behind me the publican
sat writing furiously all over my medical form.

The next room turned out to be occupied by an orderly, by one of my
fellow recruits a huge, amiable and incredibly sun-tanned Life Saver
who rejoiced in the nickname of Tarzan and finally by a most
impressive array of bottles. There were milk bottles, ink bottles, oyster
bottles, beer bottles bottles of every description.
Pressing an ink bottle into my hand, the orderly said, "Fill this," and, at
the same