AN ARMY BRAT GETS HIS DESERTS
When Col. Monteith and Maj. Sanders had entered the Municipal Building, they were accompanied by a nervous-looking, but very attractive teenaged boy. Sturdy and well-developed, his light brown hair was neatly combed and his clear, sun-bronzed skin glowed with health and youthful vitality.
However, when the trio, all in their formal semi-dress uniforms, emerged, some forty minutes later, the lad, especially, had a decidedly worried look on his pleasant, open face and it was obvious that they had encountered a serious problem. This had arisen some 24 hours earlier when 14-year-old Frank Roberts, Maj. Sanders' newly appointed batman, had been arrested and summarily locked up for the night on a charge of robbery, involving the home of one of the sitting members of the Town Council. This had been the reason for the officers' having sought a personal meeting with the Ayatollah and other members of the Governing Body of the small, but prosperous Iraqi town of Aslamabhad, where the 2nd Regiment of the Armoured Division of the British Expeditionary Force was stationed to supervise the implementation of the tenuous cease-fire which centred on the town itself.
Knowing the boy, both officers had initially been inclined to dismiss the incident as one of mistaken identity, but enquiries quickly revealed that there was no mistake and that young Frank had, in fact, been found inside the premises with some of its owner's property in a sack in his possession. Frank, himself, had steadfastly refused to give any explanation of his conduct, even after his release into military custody, pending his trial on various criminal charges, but, once his predicanent had become known throughout the small community which constituted the British Military Garrison of the hotly-disputed border town, certain of the other young soldiers had come forward, of their own accord and the puzzle had been solved.
It was a tradition in that regiment that if a cadet or young enlisted soldier was appointed as Batman to one of the Field Officers, his peers imposed some penalty, or forfeit, on him, not only as a type of rite of passage, but also to pay him out for the easy, luxurious lifestyle which he could expect to enjoy, compared with theirs at any rate, for the foreseeable future. Some of these impositions were harsh, even cruel and taxed the recipients' stamina and resourcefulness to their limits. On this occasion, the boy had been ordered to 'raid' the homes of any two of the City Fathers and to bring back, as trophies, identifiable articles of value from each, which, he was assured, would then be returned to their owners forthwith, whereupon the incident would be closed. However, the unsuspecting victim was NOT told that the staffs of the houses of all the Councillors who lived in the vicinity of the camp were to be notified, anonymously, of the impending 'raid', but without mentioning to them that it was, in fact, a mere prank, not that that would have helped, in the face of an intrusion by an infidel and a shod one at that, into the dwelling of a Holy One. The result was that, having carefully selected his first target, entered it and collected his booty, the betrayed boy had been apprehended, quite roughly manhandled and turned over to the city police, who had cuffed and knocked him about, painfully rather than injuriously, before locking him up, in chains, with some dire predictions as to his immediate prospects. A measure of physical abuse had been foreseen and intended by the older soldiers, but they had not anticipated the more serious consequences, such as his overnight imprisonment and the threat of criminal charges. To their credit, once these had become known, they had lost no time about making a clean breast of the entire matter and requesting their officers to do whatever was necessary to procure Frank's release and free pardon, even if it involved themselves in the sorry mess.
It had been for that purpose that the two officers, accompanied by the main culprit, had called at the Municipal Kouba and had been most courteously received by the Ayatollah and his Council. However, once they had stated their business, they had encountered a decided chill in attitude and eventually the Councilors had adjourned to confer, returning to state that, while the truth of what they had been told was not being questioned, the Heads of the Garrison had to understand that the Council could not allow a precedent to be set for the wanton flouting of their laws and violation of their customs, by permitting a foreign youth, ignorant though he might be, to escape unpunished after such as escapade.
They were, however, prepared to drop all criminal charges against the boy, which would protect him against the risk of the amputation of a hand, which was the normal penalty for first offence robbery and his compulsory deportation as an undesirable foreigner, if he and his superior officers were prepared for him to accept a Municipal punishment, which would not be recorded, nor be held against him in any way thereafter. The obvious enquiry produced the reply that, although the full Council would have to decide on the matter, the likelihood was that the boy would be soundly and publicly flogged by the Town's permanent, professional executioner.
It was at that point that the trio had taken their leave to consider the options and to come to some form of decision. Maj. Sanders's initial reaction had been to spirit young Frank, of who he was genuinely very fond, out of the country immediately, but Col. Monteith had pointed out, rather acidly, that, while feasible, such an action would have far-reaching repercussions on the already fragile relationship between the Expeditionary Garrison and its host town, making the proposal quite untenable.
After a good deal of further discussion, also involving the other soldiers concerned, Frank, himself, had solved the problem by saying that, as he should have known better and should have refused to do anything so stupid, even at the risk of being branded a coward or a 'ninny', he was prepared to accept whatever punishment the Council might have in store for him, if that would close the incident.
Maj. Sanders, however, was so disturbed by the use of the word "flogged" that he had left to obtain more details as to the entire procedure that was to be followed and, when he returned about an hour later, had called all the soldiers concerned into the Officers' Mess to tell them what he had found out.
This was that the Full Council had met and had unanimously resolved that Frank should, indeed, be punished with a public flogging in the Town's main square. This would be inflicted at 10 o'clock in the morning on the third day, so as to give enough time for the preparations to be completed and for the erection of stands to accommodate those from outlying areas who might wish to bring their own sons to see for themselves what the consequences of crime could be.
The flogging, itself, was to consist of 12 strokes of a whip, (Maj. Sanders avoided the use of the word 'lashes' deliberately), across Frank's bare bottom. However, the Executioner was to be told that, on this occasion, the usual result of a boy's skin being broken during punishment, namely his being excused the rest of his whipping, would not apply.
Maj. Sanders did also not find it necessary to pass this refinement of cruelty on to the already very worried boys, as doing so could have served no purpose but would merely have increased Frank's anxiety immensely. Nevertheless, it was a very subdued and, in the case of one of its members, frightened, group of young soldiers that made their way back to their quarters.
Frank spent two almost sleepless nights with a miserable day between them and it came almost as a relief when, at about 9 o'clock on the third morning, he was driven by a grim-faced Major Sanders to the Municipal Offices and was formally and reluctantly handed over to the officials there, who were clearly ready and waiting for him.
Frank was immediately taken to a spotless clinic in the building, where he was made to strip completely and was given a full physical examination, aimed at establishing whether he was able to bear the severe application of the whip to his naked hindquarters. As this was not really in doubt, he was then given a thorough and by his own admission, not altogether unpleasant enema and the opportunity to empty his bladder 'just in case of accidents', before being taken to a big room, from which he could see the makeshift stands, which were rapidly filling up with spectators of all ages and both _s_e_x_es, all coming to see 'the infidel brat' having his bare backside soundly whipped. Alarmed at this sadistic interest, Frank had hardly noticed the sturdy wooden contraption standing in the room, until he was led to it and told to mount it so that it could be adjusted to his size. Essentially it enabled him to be strapped in a position in which he was standing on his toes, and leaning forward with his bare bottom drawn taut and thrust out, while his thighs and thus, his buttocks, were spread well apart, providing the lash with full access to the tender areas between his cheeks.
Frank then also obtained his first sight of the executioner, a huge man who, stripped to the waist, was lovingly soaking a long whip with a viciously tapering lash, in a tub of liquid. He also saw several of his fellow soldiers among the spectators, this at his own request, as he believed that their presence would help him to take his flogging with at least some fortitude.
At that moment, though, the pain of the whipping was the least of Frank's problems, the most pressing being that he had developed a full erection and was dreading the long, naked walk to the platform in the middle of the square.
Because of the unusual nature of the incident, Frank was the only boy to be flogged that day, so he had no precedents to guide him as to the procedure to be followed and was greatly relieved when he was handed an ordinary grain sack with three holes cut in its closed end and was told to put it on. This makeshift garment covered him to mid-thigh and spared him the first part of his ordeal, as he was sent on his way with a gentle, but firm, push through the door.
The crowd grew still as the slight, fair-haired figure stepped into view and started its resolute journey across the square. Always an attractive boy, Frank won many admirers with his clear-cut, sun-tanned features, unbowed head and keen blue eyes fixed on the ominous platform ahead of him; there were no dragging feet or desperate sideways glances and only the slightest puffs of dust rising between his bare toes marked his firm, even strides across the square. When he reached the platform, he did not hesitate, but climbed its few steps quickly, to meet the massive bulk of Farouk al Hassaid, the town's executioner, who had just finished removing his whip from its tub of brine and drying it off.
Frank had been told that, because of the language problem, he would not have to ask for his punishment, as boys being whipped usually had to do and Farouk simply took him by the hand and turned him round to face the main stand. Farouk, standing behind him, then took hold of the hem of his single 'garment' and pulled it off, inside out, over his head, leaving him stark naked in front of everyone. His hands flew to his crotch to cover his unruly genitals, but were arrested by Farouk, who slid his own hands up the boy's arms, lifted him effortlessly by his armpits and carried him over to the waiting apparatus. Realising that it would be useless to resist and would merely draw attention to his still erect penis, Frank hung quietly from the big hands and, knowing what was required of him, straddled the base of the contraption and allowed an assistant to cuff his wrists and ankles to the uprights. He was acutely aware of the warm sunlight on his naked rear, the gaze of thousands of eyes on his bare backside and the fact that his spreadeagled position was leaving nothing to the imagination of many of the crowd.
Farouk, to do him justice, did not prolong the agony. He was a true expert with all the tools of his grisly trade, from the thin, wire-like garrotte which was used for executions, the cleavers, bone saws, pincers and searing irons employed to amputate hands or feet or lop off a couple of fingers or toes, through the range of whips and rods with which corporal punishment was inflicted on the bare backs or buttocks of usually, but not exclusively, male, offenders of differing ages and degrees of seriousness, down to the thin, light switches which were applied, sometimes by the hour, to the soles of the bare feet of would-be fugitives from justice and he lost no time, on this occasion, about getting on with the punishment which he was employed to inflict. He was, obviously, a cruel man, but not actually a sadist; it was his pleasure to hurt his victims, but in a physical sense only - he derived no satisfaction from their mental anguish or the agony of their anticipation, but from actually seeing their bodies writhe or, in the present case, the boy's small, firm tail clench and glow in response to the agonising cuts which he intended to lay across it. So, once he was satisfied with the position of Frank's naked bottom and that his well-spread legs would allow the tip of the whip to search out all his softest spots, he laid the heavy, wet lash gently, almost caressingly across the middle of the two taut, round orbs of flesh, balanced himself on the balls of his feet, judged his distance and the length of lash which he would need to fulfil his specific purpose, flexed his powerful right arm, drew the whip off the boy's bare tail and swung it round behind him in a flashing arc before bringing it forward with a vicious, sibilant hiss, towards its tightly braced and quivering target.
Any hard stroke of such a lash on naked skin would be acutely painful and very damaging, but Farouk wielded his lash on that occasion with even more refined cruelty and with a savage expertise which was lost on the spectators and even on Frank, until several strokes had scored the boy's bare backside. The technique, which called for split-second timing and perfect hand-eye co-ordination, involved Farouk's checking the downward sweep of the lash when it was about a foot off its target, causing its last 15 inches or so to double back on itself and then to snap forward with tremendous acceleration, landing flat and squarely across both naked cheeks in a single biting line of fire. The first stroke struck the waiting backside full across the fleshiest part of both cheeks, printing a bright red, white-edged stripe, longer on the right than on the left buttock, across them. The two officers watched in horror as the blood, which had been forced out of the tissue by the force of the blow, came rushing back and not only suffused the entire and rapidly swelling weal, but began to ooze through the edges of the stripe, which were turning an angry purple and were obviously cuts in the boy's naked skin. As the vicious sting and burn registered and surged through his tortured tail, Frank's whole body seemed to jerk into rigidity, his legs straining against their restraints and his bare back cording as if to dislocate his shoulders themselves. However, as he fought his way through the blinding pain, not a sound passed his lips and as the convulsion passed, he seemed to burrow down into the trestle, ready for the next cut.
This, when it came, was even more of a tour de force than the first one, as Farouk not only repeated the first procedure, but also inverted his wrist, making the supple tip of the lash reverse its direction, landing first on Frank's right cheek, about an inch below the first stripe and flexing over towards the left one, producing an even sharper reaction from the suffering boy, as his bare tail was emblazoned with a second welt, exactly matching the first. There was hardly a spectator and not a single one of the boys who had, themselves, felt that same lash on their own bare bottoms, who did not flinch and wince for Frank's sake as the flogging continued. As mentioned, Farouk was a cruel man and, although he was usually unable to break his young victims' skins without letting them off the balance of their whippings, he overcame this difficulty routinely, by using that same, snapping stroke for the last, usually diagonal, cut of most thrashings, so that almost every whipped boy knew, from his own experience, what Frank must be going through, but could not even begin to imagine what twelve, not merely one, of those cutting strokes would be doing to his unprotected rump.
When, by the fourth stroke, Farouk had still not succeeded in wringing a sound from Frank, he was on the point of allowing the wicked tip of the lash to start exploring the tender, virgin inner curves of the boy's bare buttocks and to bite into his anus and his still slightly distended perineum and to flick the back of his scrotum, which, he knew, would cause almost unbearable agony. But then, a strange, novel feeling of respect for the slim naked body stretched out before him, overwhelmed Farouk. This mere child, steeped in his own foreign culture, had steeled himself for as severe a thrashing as could be inflicted on the bare backside of one so young, and was enduring it in a manner that would put most grown men to shame; it was then not for him, Farouk, to take the whipping beyond the limits of the actual sentence and into the realms of pure torture, by applying the lashes other than to the bare, boyish bum which had been ordered to receive them and so, with almost unprecedented restraint, Farouk set about giving young Frank's naked tail a whipping which neither the boy nor any of the spectators would ever forget, but without taking advantage of his vulnerability to hurt him more than his sentence dictated.
Already confronted with a fairly small, naked bottom, which bore four, thick, raised, open welts crossing both cheeks evenly and horizontally so as to create a broad band of reddish-purple, ridged flesh, divided by thin white stripes, Farouk set about extending its width by laying the successive lashes on, alternately above and below the existing stripes until a total of eight livid welts disfigured the smooth white curves of the half-grown young backside. The eighth cut, landing, as it did, almost in the crease where Frank's bum met his legs, broke his resolve and drew a harsh yelp of agony from him. None of the watching boys could believe that someone no different from themselves could have taken so many strokes across his bare bum in silence and were almost relieved to hear that this strange, pale-skinned boy was human after all and had a backside that did react to the whip in the same way, if rather later, as their own.
Farouk, encouraged by the success of his previous stroke and having four in hand, proceeded to ensure that each one would count and cause his helpless victim, to whom, by his lights, excessive mercy had already been shown, as much immediate and long-term pain as possible. He accordingly laid the ninth cut squarely into Frank's crease, the supple tip of the lash biting savagely into the point where his right cheek and thigh met and where, as every boy who has been thrashed will know, his hindquarters were at their most sensitive. Frank howled in shameless agony at this new assault and Farouk, taking advantage of the momentarily unclenched and fully exposed underbum, brought the whip down again, quickly snapping it in the opposite direction, so that the tethered boy suffered a repetition of the same agony before he was even able to absorb that which had gone before. With tears streaming down his face, Frank screamed his protest but, realising that nothing could save him from two more cuts across his tortured and, he was sure, skinned, rear end, he braced himself for the last two lashes, gritted his teeth and tried to pretend that it was not HIS bum that was being cut to pieces. Determined to make those last two cuts the most agonizing of all, Farouk shifted his position slightly, before snapping the lash diagonally across both welted cheeks, the body of the lash biting into each of the existing welts and drawing a further bead of bright red blood at each intersection, while the fearsome tip ripped into the upper curve of Frank's right buttock with a crack so loud that it almost drowned the boy's howl of mortal anguish. Not even Farouk could duplicate that stroke in the opposite direction without changing sides, but the alternative was, if anything, even worse from Frank's point of view. Moving up to level with Frank's ribs, Farouk brought the whip down again, hard and accurately, across the two flinching, squirming cheeks so that the new diagonal stripe formed a flaming cross with its predecessor, the tip of the lash finding its way into the very end of the tender right crease, where the soft skin offered no resistance, but split open as the pain surged through the slight, spent body and Frank, in spite of trying not to do so, screamed his tribute to Farouk's expertise.
Suddenly, it was all over and an almost deathly silence settled on the square while everyone present came to terms, each in his or her own way, with what had just happened.
Farouk looked down with satisfaction at the results of a job well done; a pair of small, bare buttocks criss-crossed with ten perfectly even, horizontal welts, standing out finger thick from their background of firm, muscular flesh, each one shaded from crimson to a deep, angry purple and running back and forth in a continuous, serpentine pattern across the full, still convulsed cheeks and all crossed by the pair of long, perfect, diagonal weals which seemed to bind the entire whipping together. He had admired Frank's lean, lithe body when it had first stood, naked, before him and now took pleasure in looking at the flawless, suntanned bare back and sturdy thighs which framed the boy's glowing, corrugated backside. In a land where boys, if they swam at all, did so either naked or fully dressed, Frank's pale loins, always protected from the sun, appeared strange, but, Farouk mused, their startling whiteness had certainly presented a perfect target for the whip and the present contrast between smooth, brown skin and the redness of the flogged haunches was no less pleasing. He felt neither remorse nor compassion; the boy had sinned and had deserved to be whipped; his flesh was young and healthy and would soon heal and the scars which would probably mark his bottom for life were not dishonourable ones and would, in any event, be seen, he incorrectly supposed, by a chosen few, only.
Frank, on the other hand, was experiencing a mixture of blinding agony and overwhelming relief. He was aware more of the heat than the pain in his battered tail and, as it mounted steadily for several minutes after the whip had completed its work, it felt to him as if his entire rear end had been dipped in boiling oil. However, since he had first been secured to the whipping frame in the room above the square and had realised how exposed to the lash he would be, Frank had half expected to have his arsehole and his balls whipped as well as his bum and he was more than thankful that that, at least, had not happened to him and that the entire ordeal was now, literally, behind him.
The most spirited reaction came, however, from the large contingent of brown-skinned, barefoot urchins of varying ages, who formed a large part of the gathering. They had come, one and all, with ghoulish glee, to watch one of their own, albeit a foreigner, suffer the same sort of punishment as was regularly inflicted on their own naked haunches and with the malicious hope that he would not be able to bear it as well as most of them managed to do. They had been rather taken aback by the sheer magnitude of Frank's whipping, as none of them had ever received more than six strokes of the whip or eight of the cane and, of course, only one of those vicious, snapping lashes, of which a full twelve had slammed into Frank's bare backside. Now the silence was broken by the sound of views being exchanged and admiration expressed for the way in which this infidel had taken the most severe thrashing that any of them had ever seen. In addition, most of them were cheerfully looking forward to having a close-up view of the damage and, with luck, getting to run a finger along one of the thick, red ridges which decorated Frank's swollen tail.
The two officers sat, mute and horror-stricken at the sheer brutality of what they had seen. They had known that the child was to be severely beaten, but had expected it to be done much in the manner of a Public School flogging. Each man had half risen from his seat to intercede for Frank as the whip had snapped down across his unprotected bottom, but, realising that protest was useless, had subsided again. Now, both wondered, privately, if their passivity had not been due more to cowardice than prudence and blamed themselves bitterly for the havoc which was evidenced by the bruised and bloody backside in the middle of the square.
Finally, Frank's fellow soldiers, especially those who were directly responsible for his predicament, had virtually suffered his entire flogging with him. Most of them were no strangers to the sting of cane or birch on bare rumps, but few had felt the bite of a whiplash, so the dread of the unknown was added to their guilt as their young colleague bucked and squirmed under the lash and they all felt for him and resolved to make it up to him, as Farouk's assistants gently swabbed most of the blood from the raw and welted cheeks and prepared Frank for the last and, perhaps, most humiliating, part of his entire punishment.
Once rudimentary first aid had been given to the boy's ravaged tail, he was released from the frame and was gathered up gently into Farouk's brawny arms. Traditionally, every boy who was thrashed or flogged in that square was carried round its perimeter after his whipping, with his bare, welted tail on display, for everyone and especially the other boys of the town to see and be warned by what had happened to him. Usally, the victim was mounted on Farouk's back, as if being horsed for a birching, but on this occasion, the boy was so exhausted by his ordeal that Farouk draped his limp body over one shoulder and enjoying the pressure of the solid young thighs and hot, sweat-slicked genitals against his bare chest, carried him slowly round the square, giving the jostling, interested pack of youngsters ample time to gawk their fill at and to stroke and be impressed by the flaming, open welts, which were, by then, turning from crimson to almost black, across the two bare cheeks, each of which had swollen up until it resembled a dark, ripe melon. To his surprise, Farouk felt, as a series of, often none too clean, fingers and palms stroked and caressed Frank's welted bum, an increasing pressure against his left nipple, as the boy's lusty young _c_o_c_k_ swelled towards erection. Farouk released his hold on the naked thighs for just long enough to allow the slim, supple loins to lift off his shoulder and free the straining shaft, which snapped up against Frank's belly, before being trapped again, but more comfortably, between it and the man's shoulder.
Most of those present had seen many bare bottoms being similarly displayed after a whipping, but never before had there been one which had been so comprehensively flogged that the individual welts virtually merged into a single broad band of raw, bleeding flesh which covered both cheeks from the top of the cleft between them down to the lowest point, where they merged into the boy's thighs. There was much speculation as to when Frank would be able to walk, let alone sit, again and some of the boys cheerfully prophesied that he wouldn't even be able to wear anything over his bum for a week.
At last the ordeal was finally over and Frank, with the resilience of youth, by then virtually recovered, was lowered to the ground. Farouk had expected the boy to show resentment, even hatred, towards the man who had just thrashed him so soundly and was most surprised, when the boy, by then quite unconcerned by his nakedness or the condition of his bare rump, had come up to him, offered his hand and thanked him for not "hurting him 'down there'". It took Farouk, whose English was poor, a minute or two to comprehend what Frank meant, but, having grasped it, he returned the handshake and felt, for the first time in his life, pleased at having shown mercy, even if to a small extent, only and warmed to this attractive, guileless lad, who was not, he realised, a criminal at all, but just a victim of an error of judgment.
Soon afterwards Frank, his still naked body modestly covered by Major Sanders's dressing gown, was driven off to camp, lying face down on the back seat of Col. Monteith's official car. AS they passed between rows of friendly, waving boys, Frank managed to half sit up and give a fairly convincing grin as he swept past. For the next few days he was to be excused duty, but by the second, boredom had routed discomfort and he reported as usual on the third morning. His well-striped and corrugated tail remained a talking point for quite a while, with the other soldiers watching with interest how the cuts and wales, which had originally seemed to cover his entire bum, had progressively separated until the individual weals could again be identified and their tramline edges began to scab, eventually leaving his bottom and, particularly, the outer curves of both cheeks, marked with a series of thin, purple scars, which remained tender for so long that when Frank, together with two other cadets, earned a caning from his Platoon Commander some nine months later, the new stripes immediately re-ignited the old and sent him hopping round the officers' mess, where the thrashings had been administered, frantically rubbing at his stinging, although that time, underpants-clad, seat, as if it had been attacked by a whole swarm of wasps.
Years later, Major-General Frank Roberts, D. S.O., M. B.E., was to recall, ruefully, his bare-tailed ordeal in the town square, but to add that the events of that day had probably laid the foundation for his brilliant military career, as they had brought him so clearly to the attention of the officers, that it would have taken a major disaster to dislodge him from favour thereafter.