Dead in the Dog

‘Peter’s a good-looking chap, pots of money in the family. Bit of a stuffed shirt, but I suppose I could do worse. We’ll see how it pans out.’

A few minutes later, the superintendent was driven back down the road where James Robertson was killed, his mind still filled with the brazen attitude of the voluptuous blonde who seemed impervious to any emotion other than her own gratification.

The eight thirty meeting with the Commanding Officer had been even more fraught than usual, with O’Neill fractious after his night on the train up from Kuala Lumpur. He found fault with everyone, starting with Eddie Rosen, who had been Orderly Medical Officer the previous night.

‘Call that a satisfactory report on the SI list, lieutenant?’ he ranted, after the little doctor had given the usual resume on the three men with Weil’s disease. The CO carried on castigating Eddie for not delivering a blow-by-blow account of their temperature, pulse rates and blood pressures during the previous twenty-four hours, though this was a matter for the ward notes, not needed in a brief reassurance that their condition had not deteriorated.

After abusing Rosen, the colonel’s cold glare went around the room, doing his best to find fault with everyone. Tom Howden sat immobile, hoping that his usual invisibility would continue. Thankfully, O’Neill almost never questioned him, as he seemed neither to know nor care what went on in the laboratory and never visited it, except for the perfunctory walk-through at Tuesday inspections.

Unsurprisingly, the focus of O’Neill’s persecution fell upon the unfortunate quartermaster, Captain Burns. With a ferocity unmatched even by his previous tirades, he goaded Robbie about the state of his Stores records and demanded that a complete set of requisitions and dispensations of all drugs and medical equipment for the past three months be produced by next day. He all but accused the quartermaster of embezzlement and corruption, with veiled references to the ‘medical halls’ in Tanah Timah and Sungei Siput, retail pharmacies where cut-price army medicaments would be welcomed.

Robbie’s normally rough and ruddy face became almost puce with suppressed anger and seemed ready to erupt under the interrogation.

Alfred Morris prodded him covertly with his elbow from the next chair, warning him against any violent reaction which the colonel would undoubtedly welcome as evidence of insubordination and mutiny under Queen’s Regulations.

At the end of this blistering inquisition, the CO rapped on his desk with his cane. ‘You’ll see from today’s Part One Orders that training will begin tomorrow for the PE tests in four weeks’ time,’ he snapped.

These were the annual Physical Efficiency tests that all Service personnel were supposed to pass, otherwise they could have their pay and allowances docked. Percy Loosemore had told Tom that these were something of a farce, held in the garrison athletic ground, where they had to climb a rope, jump over some boxes and perform a few other innocuous feats of strength and ability. In addition, there was a three-mile run part-way up the Kerbau road and back, that had to be completed within a certain time. Percy had alleged that last year, several of the officers had arranged for a taxi from Tanah Timah to pick them up as soon as they were out of sight and take them to The Dog, where they sat drinking beer until it was time for them to jog the few hundred yards back to the garrison. But now their increasingly malignant colonel seemed to have other ideas.

‘You may be doctors, but first and foremost, you are soldiers!’ he barked. ‘You’ve gone soft, lolling about the Mess, drinking and going off on pleasure weekends like a lot of suburban bank clerks!’

Glaring around, he dropped his bombshell. ‘Tomorrow morning and on alternate mornings for a month, you will parade at six thirty in full kit on the hospital car park. I have arranged for a drill sergeant from the garrison to give you an hour’s exercises, which will include three full circuits of the perimeter road.’

With his narrow jaw jutting forward, he delivered his final broadside. ‘This applies to all of you, with no exception unless you have urgent clinical duties. I will be there personally to make sure there are no backsliders. I’ll make soldiers of you yet, even if it kills you!’

Mutiny was in the air that day, as the medical officers digested this latest dictat from their leader.