With thoughts of old sergeants in my head, this is a fun little piece from "Quartered Safe Out Here"-GMF's memoir of the war in Burma in 1945.
His folks had sent him a couple of books and he was somewhat surprised when his platoon sergeant had taken Henry V to read. If you can make your way throught the Cumbrian dialect it is kind of fun.
The final paragraph of the piece as a pull quote is:
>>>He went off, leaving me to reflect that I had learned something more about Henry V, and Shakespeare. In his own way Hutton was as expert a commentator as Dover Wilson or Peter Alexander; he was a lot closer to Bates and Court and Williams (and Captains Jamy and Fluellen) than they could ever hope to be. And I still wonder if Shakespeare was in the Army."<<<<
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>>>>when Hutton loafed up and tossed Henry V down beside me and seated himself on the section grub-box. A silence followed, and I asked if he had liked it. He indicated the book.
“Was Shekspeer ivver in th’Army?” I said that most scholars thought not, but that there were blanks in his life, so it was possible that, like his friend Ben Jonson, he had served in the Low Countries, or even in Italy. Hutton shook his head.
“If ’e wesn’t in th’Army, Ah’ll stand tapping’. ’E knaws too bloody much aboot it, man.”
This was fascinating. Hutton was a military hard case who had probably left school long before 14, and his speech and manner suggested that his normal and infrequent reading consisted of company orders and the sports headlines. But Shakespeare had talked to him across the centuries – admittedly on his own subject. I suggested hesitantly that the Bard might have picked up a good deal just from talking to military men;Hutton brushed the notion aside.
“Nivver! Ye knaw them three – Bates, an’ them, talkin’ afore the battle? Ye doan’t git that frae lissenin’ in pubs, son. Naw, ’e’s bin theer.” He gave me the hard, aggressive stare of the Cumbrian who is not to be contradicted. “That’s my opinion, any roads. An’ them oothers — the Frenchmen, the nawblemen, tryin’ to kid on that they couldn’t care less, w’en they’re shittin’ blue lights? Girraway! An’ the Constable tekkin’ the piss oot o’ watsisname —”
“The Dauphin.”
“Aye.” He shook his head in admiration. “Naw, ye’ve ’eerd it a’ afore – in different wurrds, like. Them fower officers, the Englishman an’ the Scotsman an’ the Irishman an’ the Welshman – Ah mean, ’e’s got their chat off, ’esn’t ’e? Ye could tell w’ich wez w’ich, widoot bein’ told. That Welsh booger!” He laughed aloud, a thing he rarely did. “Talk till the bloody coos coom yam, the Taffies!” He frowned. “Naw, Ah nivver rid owt be Shekspeer afore – Ah mean, ye ’ear the name, like . . .” He shrugged eloquently. “Mind, there’s times Ah doan’t knaw w’at th’ ’ell ’e’s talkin’ aboot —”
“You and me both,” I said, wondering uneasily if there were more passages obscure to me than there were to him. He sat for a moment and then misquoted (and I’m not sure that Shakespeare’s version is better):
“There’s nut many dies weel that dies in a battle. By Christ, ’e’s reet theer. It’s a good bit, that.” He got up. “Thanks for the lend on’t, Jock.”
I said that if he’d liked it, he would like Henry IV, too. “Falstaff’s bloody funny, and you’d like Hotspur —”
“ ’Ev ye got it?” I apologised that I hadn’t, and promised to write for it. By way of a trailer I told him as much as I remembered of Hotspur’s “When the fight was done” speech, but I’m no Sean Connery, and although he nodded politely I could see I was a poor substitute for the written word.
He went off, leaving me to reflect that I had learned something more about Henry V, and Shakespeare. In his own way Hutton was as expert a commentator as Dover Wilson or Peter Alexander; he was a lot closer to Bates and Court and Williams (and Captains Jamy and Fluellen) than they could ever hope to be. And I still wonder if Shakespeare was in the Army."
Fraser, George MacDonald. Quartered Safe Out Here: A Harrowing Tale of World War II (p. 130). Skyhorse Publishing. Kindle Edition.