The Wisdom of Bartholomew Wolfe Bandy

I was enter­ing some dummy cita­tions into a social net­worked text shar­ing pro­ject on the week­end.
Serendip­it­ously I chose the genre of his­tor­ical fic­tion and ended up reflect­ing on some of the more mem­or­able books I have enjoyed. At the top of that list is the mem­oirs of Bartho­lomew Wolfe Bandy by Don­ald Jack. This multi-volume series was very deservedly awar­ded the Stephen Lea­cock Award for humour on three occa­sions. This is all the more appro­pri­ate given the very Lea­cockian style of the Bandy papers them­selves.
If you have not ever been exposed to Bandy, I can not recom­mend these books enough. They are superb examples of the comedic novelist’s art down the line of P.G Wode­house, Evelyn Waugh and George Mac­don­ald Fraser. Set in early twen­ti­eth cen­tury Ontario, B.W. Bandy, the hero is an Ott­awa val­ley farm boy who heads off to fight in the First World War. He meets real life not­ables along the way, enjoys some of the most bril­liantly told adven­tures and des­pite the comedic deliv­ery actu­ally teaches much about Cana­dian his­tory. These nov­els demon­strate the close con­nec­tion between lit­er­at­ure and his­tory — the endur­ing import­ance and beauty of a tale well told.

As I reflec­ted on the enorm­ous enjoy­ment that these nov­els have brought to me, and many of my com­pat­ri­ots, I remain deeply struck by Don­ald Jack’s tal­ent. He was able to relate very poignant and real events using mirth that ulti­mately cap­tures the human exper­i­ence.
Those that have read these stor­ies I am sure will not eas­ily for­get the muck encrus­ted face that ter­ri­fied Wil­liam Lyon Mack­en­zie King when it appeared in the win­dow of his private rail­car while stran­ded in the fog on Long Island, let alone Bandy hook­ing the Prime Min­is­ter on the pon­toon of the Bandy­plane pro­to­type as he landed on the lake at Kingsmere.
Jack had a unique abil­ity to deliver com­edy in that dead­pan man­ner that raised the level of amuse­ment to a new high. I could go on at length about my recol­lec­tions of Bandy, but instead I would like to end with an excerpt from the first volume of the series, where young Bandy joins the Cana­dian Exped­i­tion­ary Force and heads off to Europe. He is placed in charge of a pla­toon and we find him train­ing a col­our­ful crew on Salis­bury Plain in Eng­land. Bandy assumes his author­ity (des­pite his own exper­i­ence or nat­ural abil­ity with typ­ical offi­cious­ness). By the way, as I typed this pas­sage in, I was typ­ing through tears of amuse­ment des­pite the fact that I have read this pas­sage count­less times over the past couple dec­ades. Cheers.

“One day on the gren­ade range I had a nar­row escape. I was in charge of a small party of bombers. One of them was a thin sal­low man from Toronto called Soapes. I had been a bit uneasy about him from the start, since he had been show­ing signs of fright at the thought of hurl­ing a live bomb.
We were in a small sand­bagged enclos­ure five or so feet below ground level, and well pro­tec­ted from the blasts by a para­pet of more sand­bags. I gave every­one care­ful instruc­tions, repeated them three times slowly, and threw the first bomb myself before hand­ling the the second bomb to Squires.
Squires, in spite of a bad habit of clat­ter­ing his false teeth together like a riv­et­ing gun, had shown him­self to be reli­able. He got rid of the gren­ade with cred­ible alac­rity.
The next sol­dier, Private Bar­bara, began badly by releas­ing the spring clip in the pit before throw­ing the bomb. Unfor­tu­nately, of all per­sons it had to fly at, it chose Private Soapes; and in try­ing to catch it he some­how man­aged to entangle it in his trouser pocket. For some reason Soapes imme­di­ately go the idea that the spring arm was the bomb itself. He gave a ter­ri­fied scream and tried to tear the piece of metal out o his pocket. It caught in the lin­ing of his trousers, and although it tore a large hole, it remained stuck. Whereupon, still scream­ing at the top of his voice, he star­ted to remove his trousers. Under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances I would prob­ably have con­grat­u­lated him on his quick think­ing.
Mean­while, unnerved by the shrieks of Soapes, the rest of the men had made a con­cer­ted rush for the nar­row, double-bagged entrance. But there they had man­aged to wedge them­selves so firmly that not one of them was able to get through. By now they were al shout­ing, as well as kick­ing, bit­ing, scratch­ing, and elbow­ing in their frenzy to get away from the trousers.
In the middle of this, I sud­denly noticed Private Bar­bara star­ing stu­pidly at the antics of Private Soapes, who indeed presen­ted an absurd site, hop­ing around on one leg with hi trousers half off and scream­ing like a stuck pig. Private Bar­bara had not moved a muscle since the spring arm had flown at Soapes. There was a dis­tinctly unpleas­ant sen­sa­tion in my stom­ach when I real­ized that Bar­bara was still hold­ing the bomb, and that it was smoking. When it smokes, its due to go off.
I opened my mouth to shout a warn­ing to Bar­bara, but dis­covered to my sur­prise that my mouth was already open and that I was already shout­ing. Now Bar­bara noticed the smoking gren­ade still in his hand. His expres­sion changed; he could not have looked more sur­prised had he found him­self hold­ing a had­dock.
I snatched the gren­ade from him. Luck­ily his fin­gers were slack — I could not see myself spend­ing half a minute pry­ing the thing loose oth­er­wise — and heaved it over the para­pet. Sim­ul­tan­eously, another object flew up and fol­lowed it over the sand­bags. It was Private Soapes’ trousers.” Don­ald Jack, Three Cheers for Me, McClle­land and Stew­art, 1962, pp.26–7.