'Sergeant O.K.'

 

'Sergeant O.K.'

Let me tell you the story as old Thompson told it, for he was present and I was not.

When the 'Westminsters' went up to the front line in January, 1918, they had with them in No, 2 Company a great, big, red-headed fellow called Sergeant O.K. His name was not really O.K., but Smithies, but he was known as Sergeant O.K. by everyone for miles around, from the Colonel down to passing units who had lost the way.

Some said that the Germans opposite were aware of his nickname, and that one of them, coming face to face with him on a night raid, had at once shouted “O.K.”, and put up his hands.

For Sergeant Smithies said O.K. to everyone and everything: it was “O.K. Chief”, or “O.K. by me”, or “O.K. to you”, or just “O.K.” when he was in a hurry. Jenkinson asserted that he answered O.K. on his wedding day, when asked if he would take Elizabeth Anne for his wedded wife.

Be that as it may, O.K. was his one expression, and by the amazing variation of tone and stress he could put into it, he made these two humble letters of the alphabet as expressive as twenty good lines from Hamlet. Scrambling in over the parapet after a wire cutting expedition, he would hiss O.K. in such a way that the second letter cocked itself up into a question mark. An answering grunt would bring another O.K. as eloquent as Deo Gratias. In a word it was his signature tune.

Sergeant O.K. was the life and soul of the entire Company. Everyone trusted him. When one of us was seized with a fit of panic he relied on Sergeant O.K. to put him right. He would come scrambling along the duck-boards, smiling and dishing out O.K.s on every side, and the shivering men about him at once felt a sense of rest. Sergeant O.K. was so robust and generous in his outlook. I remember once when young Jackson said something about trying to get resigned to the noise and the dirt and the fear of wounds, how Sergeant O.K. ticked him off for it.

“Not so much of your resignation here, lads,” he said, “What we want is cheerful acquiescence.”

“Gosh, what swell words you do use, Sergeant,” chipped in Williamson, from the door of the dug-out, “do tell us what they mean.”

Sergeant O.K. blew out his lips.

“Mean?” he asked. “O.K., I'll tell you what they mean. They mean that you must go out to meet your troubles, and not just sit down with them all heaped on top of you. Pagans do that, pagans are resigned. But you are Christians, aren't you? Well, put your backs into whatever comes, unless it's a shell; co-operate with God as you might say. After all He loves you, doesn't He?”

Some of the men used to envy Sergeant O.K.

“It's all right for blokes like him to talk about acquiescence, he hasn't got a nerve in his body; he hasn't got a wife and kids at home to dream about; he hasn't got sore feet. It's alright for him to jaw away about God, just because he's a blooming Papist and believes in God, but what do we know about God?”

Sergeant O.K. was always roused to eloquence when he heard such remarks.

“O.K.,” he'd say, pulling at his eyebrows, “just you listen to me. I've got as pretty a wife as any of you, and two little girls and a motor bike as well, and I dream of them all. And if I have not got sore feet, I've got a mighty tired jaw from arguing with you blancmanges; forgive my accent. As to God, I'm not for monopolising Him, for He made and loves you all, though why He did the one and still does the other beats me. But I'll say this, that to my mind it is a proof that there is a God, that those who trust in Him can go through this beastly war without sulking, as you pagan chappies do. Bless you, many a time I've felt like running away or pretending illness; many a time I've had twinges of pain in my tummy, which were not caused by bully beef. But I say to myself: 'Smithies, if God wants you, He'll find you even if you are under twelve layers of sandbags, and if He does not want you then the Bosch will miss you point blank with an 18-pounder.' You and I do not judge this war so very differently, save that you can't see the love for all the hate. For you we are slaves of a hard fate, but I remember something about Christ not calling us servants but friends.

Besides you are not so certain that you aren't wrong, whereas I know I'm O.K.”

I have no doubt now, looking back after thirty years, that Sergeant O.K. was the greatest influence for good that I have ever seen. We Catholics felt his faith driving out our fear as we watched him going about the lines. He was just normal, not foolhardy not strung up, but a little piece of normal civilisation introduced into the chaos of Flanders. Even the pagan fellows all around us began to wonder if there was not a God of love after all. A man does not laugh and joke and carry the fears of grown men for them unless he is pretty sure that all is O.K.

Well, the day came when we had to fall back before the great German offensive, and in the bustle of the retreat with its panic and heroism, explosions and groans, no one noticed that Sergeant O.K. had been hit. He'd been seen at noon by Corporal Wilson, carrying a wounded Tommy to shelter, but, since then, no-one had laid eyes on him. Only in the evening, when we were resting wearily in our new positions, did we see a stretcher being carried back through our lines. The Padre went to see him as he passed his old Company, and we all saw him too with the blood soaking through his uniform, and the shadow of death upon his face.

“Am I going to die, Father?” he muttered in his agony, and when the priest did not reply at once he smiled feebly and said:

“It's O.K. by me, Father, but Lord, how I do love my wife.”

We never saw Sergeant O.K. again, for he died outside the dressing station, being too ill to make the journey to the base. The stretcher-bearers told us that he never regained consciousness after his arrival there, but this is not quite true, for the Padre who went back to see him, had another tale to tell. After he had lain delirious for some time, talking to his wife, and saying O.K. to imaginary officers, he suddenly became very quiet, and his poor haggard face lit up with a wonderful smile of recognition. He gazed thus smilingly before him for nearly a minute, then pulled himself half up on his stretcher with a last great effort, raised his trembling hand to his forehead in salute, and said quite audibly: “O.K., Lord.”

On Armistice Day each year, when everyone is silent, I always say a De Profundis for Sergeant O.K., and many a time in the face of difficulties I have remembered the cheerful acquiescence he so eloquently preached. I am sure that few of us who were privileged to meet him in the trenches will ever forget his example and his last “O.K., Lord”; for in it he translated the message of Gethsemane into the humble language of the Sergeant's Mess.

( Taken from 'The Seven Deadly Virtues and Other Stories' by Bernard Bassett S.J, published by Sands & Co.. These stories appeared first in Stella Maris and in the Southwark Record)