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Authors: Tom Galvin
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ranks of civil service or even the unemployed. It is the duty of a soldier to carry out a variety of local tasks that seem designed to make them feel worthless.
These tasks range from acting as doormen at the local hop to keeping the garden of an officer. Every year there is also the town clean-up, where students and their teachers traipse through the streets, across train tracks and into the woods with bags to collect rubbish. At various points around the town, soldiers serve pea soup from the backs of jeeps to give the cleanersenergy. I went on this escapade one year, and while the clean-up was a bit grim, the steaming bowl of pea soup and bread in the cold afternoon was a joy.
On any day of national celebration â and there are many in Poland â the army is there for support and to serve up this pea soup. The soldiers, however, are a morose bunch who look seriously underfunded and often malnourished. They form a part of the general populace of a town, ambling about the streets aimlessly like stray pigeons. Brawls and loud swearing in the middle of the night can usually be put down to a drunken soldier, and you soon learn where the phrase âsmoke like a trooperâ comes from. Ditto âswearâ and âdrinkâ.
Although the barracks eventually proved a better option than the internat for lunch, I was never able to thank this teacher for her tip. The following year she arrived on the first day to be told that she had no lessons. The poor woman was devastated. They never informed her that she was officially let go and she turned up for the opening ceremony, as she had done for God knows how many years, to find that this time her name was missing from the roster. I met her once after that and promised Iâd visit her, but I never did. I never even saw her again before I left for good. It is easy to convince yourself that it was the fault of time, that you had gone too far to go back. When Iâm old and grey, and forced to retire from whatever the hell Iâmdoing, Iâm sure Iâll remember that.
Skinned and Boned
I was getting thin. In fact, the pounds were falling off me like leaves in autumn. I hated taking a bath, because a glance in the bathroom mirror revealed a ribcage like the bellows on an accordion. There were also queries from the cooks as to why I wasnât coming down for dinner and tea every day, communicated to me via the director, via one of the other English teachers. They were concerned for my well-being, as was anyone else who caught a glance at me. I told them that I had different eating habits, preferring a big dinner in the evening and a light lunch in the afternoon. They didnât really buy it, so I went for the odd dinner on a Thursday when I figured out it was âmeatâ day.
I had got that information from some of the kids in school. I began to notice that the boarding students in the 12.30 class on Thursdays were always itching to leave early. They would look at their watches constantly and whisper to each other in the last quarter of the class. This was one of the âpost maturityâ classes, so I wasnât all that surprised. But one day, with a badly planned lesson and twenty minutes left over at the end, I began to chat idly with them about the school, theinternat and the general trials of life around the town.
They had all kinds of complaints, most of which had never occurred to me â curfews, cleaning duties, cold rooms, cockroaches, irregular hot water and skimpy bedclothes. It was some eye-opener, and I think they detected my fear when the cockroaches were mentioned. I can tolerate many things, but not insects, and especially not cockroaches.
I knew it was only a matter of time before the inevitable occurred. One evening, I came into my kitchen and turned on the light, to see scores of insects tearing across the floor like a scatter of marbles. I didnât get a wink of sleep, but spent the night flicking the light on and
These tasks range from acting as doormen at the local hop to keeping the garden of an officer. Every year there is also the town clean-up, where students and their teachers traipse through the streets, across train tracks and into the woods with bags to collect rubbish. At various points around the town, soldiers serve pea soup from the backs of jeeps to give the cleanersenergy. I went on this escapade one year, and while the clean-up was a bit grim, the steaming bowl of pea soup and bread in the cold afternoon was a joy.
On any day of national celebration â and there are many in Poland â the army is there for support and to serve up this pea soup. The soldiers, however, are a morose bunch who look seriously underfunded and often malnourished. They form a part of the general populace of a town, ambling about the streets aimlessly like stray pigeons. Brawls and loud swearing in the middle of the night can usually be put down to a drunken soldier, and you soon learn where the phrase âsmoke like a trooperâ comes from. Ditto âswearâ and âdrinkâ.
Although the barracks eventually proved a better option than the internat for lunch, I was never able to thank this teacher for her tip. The following year she arrived on the first day to be told that she had no lessons. The poor woman was devastated. They never informed her that she was officially let go and she turned up for the opening ceremony, as she had done for God knows how many years, to find that this time her name was missing from the roster. I met her once after that and promised Iâd visit her, but I never did. I never even saw her again before I left for good. It is easy to convince yourself that it was the fault of time, that you had gone too far to go back. When Iâm old and grey, and forced to retire from whatever the hell Iâmdoing, Iâm sure Iâll remember that.
Skinned and Boned
I was getting thin. In fact, the pounds were falling off me like leaves in autumn. I hated taking a bath, because a glance in the bathroom mirror revealed a ribcage like the bellows on an accordion. There were also queries from the cooks as to why I wasnât coming down for dinner and tea every day, communicated to me via the director, via one of the other English teachers. They were concerned for my well-being, as was anyone else who caught a glance at me. I told them that I had different eating habits, preferring a big dinner in the evening and a light lunch in the afternoon. They didnât really buy it, so I went for the odd dinner on a Thursday when I figured out it was âmeatâ day.
I had got that information from some of the kids in school. I began to notice that the boarding students in the 12.30 class on Thursdays were always itching to leave early. They would look at their watches constantly and whisper to each other in the last quarter of the class. This was one of the âpost maturityâ classes, so I wasnât all that surprised. But one day, with a badly planned lesson and twenty minutes left over at the end, I began to chat idly with them about the school, theinternat and the general trials of life around the town.
They had all kinds of complaints, most of which had never occurred to me â curfews, cleaning duties, cold rooms, cockroaches, irregular hot water and skimpy bedclothes. It was some eye-opener, and I think they detected my fear when the cockroaches were mentioned. I can tolerate many things, but not insects, and especially not cockroaches.
I knew it was only a matter of time before the inevitable occurred. One evening, I came into my kitchen and turned on the light, to see scores of insects tearing across the floor like a scatter of marbles. I didnât get a wink of sleep, but spent the night flicking the light on and
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