Tales of Soldiers 76
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Chapter III Tales of Soldiers 76 Chapter III Tales of Soldiers Rudyard Kipling returned to India in 1882 to work as a journalist In Lahore and later in Allahabad. At that time Britain governed India and what is now Pakistan, and maintained a big army of British and Indian soldiers to defend the frontiers and keep law and order. The British were particularly concerned about the intentions of the Russian Empire to the north, and were suspicious of its interest in Afghanistan, a turbulent buffer state, ruled by an Amir. In the frontier region, then the tribes took little heed of borders unless it suited them, and the British fought a number of small wars and local campaigns to keep order and protect their interests. Young Kipling, deeply curious about the strange new land he found himself in, with a great capacity for getting to know all sorts and conditions of people, made friends with many soldiers, officers in their messes, sergeants and privates wherever he found them, and wrote about their stories, their lives and their concerns, in tales that were first read in newspapers and magazines, and then collected into highly popular books such as Soldiers Three. I. Tales of Three Soldiers In most serious criticism of Kipling's work the soldier stories have been either ignored as of minor importance or praised superficially for their authenticity and vivid reportage, while their literary worth as closely integrated and fully achieved works of art has gone largely unrecognised. Kipling wrote eighteen stories about the adventures of these three private soldiers, some hilariously humorous, others grim and tragic, inspired by his acquaintance with the British regiments in and around Lahore. They were also, of course, celebrated in his Barrack-Room Ballads. Each man speaks in his own dialect, Irish, Yorkshire and Cockney, which some commentators have found irritating while others marvel at his mastery of the language. What is undeniable is that Kipling was the first writer in English to create great literature out of the lives of common soldiers. The 77 situation the British soldier "Tommy Atkins" in Kipling's times can be best described in the following lines. When danger's rife and wars are high God and soldier's all the cry. When wars are oe'r and matters righted; God is forgotten and the soldier slighted (Jamiluddin, Tropic Sun53). Kipling's three soldiers—Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd—are a literary tradition. They are the Horatii and the Curatii, the three Musketeers; Og, Gog and Magog; Captains Fluellin, Macmorris and Jamy; Bardolph, Pistol and Nym. Kipling's soldiers three are the author's achievement in quality and rank. They belong rather to the efficient literary workman who wrote the Simla Tales than to the inspired author of the Jungle Books. Yrom the house of Suddhu to the barrack-yard, Kipling comes forward as a decorator and colourman in words. He is conspicuously at work upon the three soldiers Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd. Kipling had many opportunities of observing and knowing the British soldier in India. At Westward Ho [majority of the boys were the sons of officers, and destined for the army themselves, and this fact must have left its impressions on him. His first real contacts came at an impressionable age because he was not quite 17, when he joined "The Civil and Military Gazette" at Lahore. He found himself in the province popularly known as 'The Sword Arm of the Empire'-Lahore, the land of the militant Sikhs and fanatic Muslims. He got to meet the soldiery of those days in the visits to Fort Lahore and in a less degree, at Mia Mir Cantonment. He notes, I am one of the few civilians who have turned out a quarter guard of her Majesty's troops. It was on a chill winter morn about 2 a.m. At the fort, and though I suppose I had been given the countersigned on my departure, from the mess, I forgot it ere I reached the main Mir guard, and when challenged announced myself spaciously at "visiting rounds". When the men had clattered out I asked the sergeant if he had ever seen a finer collection of scoundrels. That cost me beer by the gallons but it was worth it (55). 78 The army is not easy to get to know, but Kipling managed it well. Apart from private visits, there was much reporting to be done for the paper-regiments coming in and moving out, manoeuvres, special parades. Army functions. Court Martials and the likes. Either as a correspondent or as a friend ,Kipling was there in the barracks, on the parade ground, at manoeuvres, with soldier shooting parties-wherever there was anything to learn or know of the common soldier. His stories make this association plain to the most casual reader. Palmer leaves us guessing when he say "Mr. Kipling's warrior tales, in fact allow us clearly to realise that Mr. Kipling's real inspiration and interest is far away from the battlefield and the barrack."(67) Actually, Kipling's soldier stories and the barrack room verse narratives are the best pieces of observation which went directly into fiction. But all the stories were not inspired by life around Kipling. Most of the soldier tales were related to Kipling by soldiers he knew. In most cases the narrator was the contemporary soldier, eventhough the tales may be of soldiers long dead and past. Kipling's stories give the unmistakable impression that he had seen military life at close quarters in India. In "The Three Musketeers" Kipling proceeds thus; Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd are Privates in B company of a line regiment, and personal friends of mine.Collectively,I think but am not certain ,they are the worst men in the regiment so far as genial blackguardism goes. They told me this story in Umbala Refreshment room while we were waiting for an up-train. I supplied the beer. The tale was cheap at a gallon and a half (Plain Tales69). The story "The taking of Luntungpen" begins thus "My friend Private Mulvaney told me this sitting on the parapet road do Dagshai; when we were hunting butterflies together"(^^«'" TalesUA). In "The God from the Machine" we are told Kipling does not take delight in violence and blood. But he appears to be a man who sits down and conscientiously tries to imagine what it is like to kill people. Kipling talks of men carved in battle to the nasty noise of beef-cutting upon the block, or of men falling over like the rattle of fire-irons in 79 the fender and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. He also writes about a hot encounter between two combatants wherein one of them after feeling for his opponent's eyes finds it necessary to wipe his thumb on his trousers or of gun wheels greasy from contact with a late gunner. When Kipling writes like this, they are deliberate fiction. These things have not been written from inspired impulse, but by taking careful thought. Kipling is a writer who writes of war, because for him war is a good "subject" with opportunities for effective treatment. Kipling had gone to attend an Army Ball, and got the story "The Solid Muldoon" from Mulvaney. In "The Solid Muldoon" there is a passage in which Kipling gives us some idea of how the company of the soldiers begot stories. "Tale provoked tale and each tale more beer. Even dreamy Learoyd's eyes began to brighten, and he unburdened himself of a long history in which a trip to Malham Cove, a girl at Pately Brigg, a ganger himself, and a pair of clogs were mixed in drawling tnang\e''\Soldiers ThreeA2). A passage from Kipling's autobiography finds an echo in "With the Main Guard". "The time was one o'clock of a stifling June night, and the place was the main gate at fort Amara, most desolate and least desirable of all fortresses in India. What I was doing there at that hour is a question which only concerns M'Grath, the sergeant of the Guard, and the men on the gate" {Soldiers Three55).'This shows that Kipling got many of these soldier stories from the soldiers themselves. In "The Courting of Dinah Shaad" Kipling tells us that he had gone as a special correspondent to report army manoevres, he gives a vivid description of these, such as he may have posted to this paper, and then observes "Pleasant is the lot of the correspondent who falls into such hands as those of privates Mulveny, Ortheris and Leoroyd" {Lifa 's HandicapAA). In "Love O' Women" Kipling has to attend High Court to report Army murder case. After the trial is over, and Kipling had sent his report to the paper, he joins the trio Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, and spends afternoon with them in the shade of the verandah, Mulveny telling them the story of Love-0-Women .Kipling's insistence in his stories on his association with the soldiers is not a literary device to impart to them an air 80 of realism. .His acquaintance with the soldiery arose both from the "day's work" and the fascination that military life in India had for him. Kipling's soldiers belonged to the pre-mutiny-days or to the decade immidietely following the Mutiny,and were not the soldiers of the 80s. It is true that since the days of East India Company,army regulations had undergone changes and service terms were different from those of an earlier period.But the character of a soldier and the army life had little altered.This is because the classes from which the recruits came were materially unrevolutionised.Kipling's picture of the contemporary soldier,with his lack of education,his insatiable thirst,his diversions and hobbies,his habh of swearing ,his lapses and crimes,his conditions of living, as also his courage and devotion to duty was closer to the true picture of the times.