Join me in a rousing chorus of “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier,” if you like. Then we’ll jump right in.
Summary
Polly Perks cuts her hair, escapes her home out the back door, and goes to enlist in the army. She lives in Borogravia, where the watchful eye of the Duchess is always on citizens, and her family owns a bar in her name. She means to enlist after her brother left to do the same and never returned home. She meets Sergeant Jackrum and Corporal Strappi, who sign her up along with a few new, eager recruits. Sam Vimes is sitting in a castle on the border between Borogravia and Zlobenia—Borogravia destroyed its clacks towers on account of the war but also their religion, which follows the god Nuggan, who bans… pretty much everything in the form of “Abominations.” The Duchess is a figurehead who hasn’t been seen in decades, but people pray to her because she’s more reasonable than their god, but the Prince of Zlobenia is her nephew and clearly trying to move things along. Vimes is talking to the Zlobenian attaché Clarence Chinny, who will be advising him on how to continue, though Vimes has noted that Borogravia is likely to starve before anything comes to a head. Polly meets several new recruits, including an Igor, a black ribboner vampire named Maladict, and a troll named Carborundum.
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The new team sleeps in the shed with the rest of the group: “Tonker” Halter, “Shufti” Manickle, “Wazzer” Groom, and “Lofty” Tewt. She wakes in the wee hours and goes to pee, managing to do so standing up. Someone in the next stall hands over a pair of socks and tells her to shove it down her trousers—she doesn’t bulge where she should and people are bound to notice. They ask for paper in return, and Polly gives them a propaganda pamphlet from “the Mothers of Borogravia” to entice men to head to war (it had worked on her brother), and rushes out of the privy. Corporal Strappi calls out Polly for shaving with an officer’s mug that she shouldn’t have, and she has to explain that she got it from a soldier who died at her inn (which is all true, she just didn’t know it was a special piece of equipment). She hands over her dulled razor and mug to Tinker, who wants to have a go at it despite having no hair on his chin. They are lined up and asked who has experience with weapons, which Polly admits to. Strap insists on her demonstrating the skill and she headbutts him at the end, telling Jackrum that she learned it from Gummy Abbens, who Jackrum knows. Carborundum wakes and remembers he’s joined the army, and after they leave for the next town, the shed they slept in burns down.
Strappi tells the group that they’re fighting Zlobenia for attacking Lipz (which they might have attacked first), and the group go to sleep that night after arguing about who they were fighting for and what the point was. Polly remembers getting paints for her brother, who was interested in birds, and how he painted a picture of a wren that they both got in trouble for because pictures of living creatures were another Abomination under Nuggan. The group sets out again the next day and comes across a group of wounded soldiers, which Igor asks to see to. Polly goes to adjust her sock in the bushes and comes across Lofty—who also turns out to be a woman. Putting two and two together, Polly realizes that Lofty is always by Tonker and assumes she’s followed her man off to war. They march on and come across a group of refugees heading in the opposite direction. A copy of the Ankh-Morpork Times blows their way, and Polly gets a glimpse of a shredded article that seems to indicate they’re losing. When they arrive at the next town to get their uniforms and weapons, they are informed that they will head to the frontline without training and the lieutenant gives Jackrum his honorable discharge papers. Polly becomes the lieutenant’s batman. The group go to get their uniforms and weapons and find Corporal Threeparts Scallot, who has done the best he could with the kit, but there’s not much left on offer.
Scallot gives them advice, as Polly goes to talk to Lieutenant Blouse, who has been reading books and is determined to eat what the men are eating. She has a perilous (flirtatious) encounter with the maid Molly, then heads back to find Shufti sautéing the horse meat and teaching Scallot how to get more flavor out of the food they’ve got. Maladict calls Polly over, noting that he’s fairly sure Shufti and Lofty are women, and suggests Polly have a word with Shufti so he knows he’s not being subtle. The group tells Scallot that Jackrum was discharged, which is hilarious to him because Jackrum has been around forever and they’ve never been able to get him out. Jackrum comes in, says they’re setting out tomorrow and they all note Strappi is missing. Polly tells Shufti to be more careful and learns that she’s pregnant and following the father of her child. Then she notes Wazzer curtsies to his picture of the Duchess when he thinks no one is looking. Polly finds a letter Blouse wrote home and finds that he’s essentially an office worker promoted to command. The support group flee, knowing an invasion is coming and Jackrum leaves Polly to distract armed Zlobenians; she pretends to be the barmaid and knocks two out. Maladict tells her that Tonker took care of one too—he’s also a woman. They capture the group of invaders, and Jackrum begins interrogating them.
Commentary
So… we’ve got to start with the title, of course.
The title is a reference to The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, a pamphlet written by John Knox in the 16th century, decrying the appearance of so many women monarchs, who were obviously destroying the natural hierarchy of men in authority. Using it to create the title of this book does two things—it gives you an idea of the themes the story means to tackle (namely dealing with gender roles and how people believe they play into leadership and authority), but it also says very plainly “this has been something folks have complained about for at least several centuries, and we’re clearly not stopping any time soon.”
There are excellent little threads out there online that will attest to this phenomenon around any number of subjects, among them; kids these days just don’t respect their elders; new technologies are the doom of us all; no one wants to work anymore and it’s a tragedy. Sharp folks with an interest in history will put together a sequence of headlines going back at least a century, but much often further, proving that this is a Thing that humans like to wring their hands over, whilst pointing out without having to say a word that… well, we’re still here, so it can’t be all that disastrous. There’s an excellent one on gender roles, in fact, where a plethora of headlines and articles panic over “masculine” women and “feminized” men ruining everything somehow.
Point being, this is a silly thing to fret over, but oh, do we tend to go on about the binary of gender and its immobility—or at least, that it should be immobile if everything was good and right in the world. Dogs and cats. Sun and moon. Logic and emotion. His and hers.
What we have instead is a nation in poverty, being lied to about what, who, and why they’re fighting, and the relative strictness of their gender roles leading to the only thing it can ever lead to: mass disobedience. And this is even with religion tossed into the mix (it’s relevant that Wazzer is incredibly religious here) because no human-based system of order can actually contain our uniqueness and difference. Gender is only one avenue in that, but it’s a good one to consider from that angle because it’s the most obviously awkward in our species’ collective attempts to control it.
Alongside that we’re dealing with the ways in which war breaks everything down to waste and leaves nothing behind, and how nationalism is promoted in order to convince the poor to die for people who care nothing for what happens to them. Vimes sees it. Polly is trying not to, but can’t really help it. Tonker sees it: “It’s only your country when they want you to get killed!”
But we’ve only just touched the outer edges of that image. And we’ve obviously got a lot more to learn about these young “lads” and their reasons for enlisting in an army that doesn’t want them.
Asides and little thoughts:
- Wild to find a “don’t ask, don’t tell” joke because it was, of course, still in place when this was written. Ouch.
- Thinking about Vimes being known as “Vimes the Butcher” outside Ankh-Morpork, which is a common epithet, though it’s usually attached to a place i.e. “The Butcher of [location].” Plenty of people have earned the epithet across the political spectrum throughout history, including Oliver Cromwell (who Vimes frequently has elements in common with), Che Guevara, King Leopold II of Belgium, and Saddam Hussein. However, the way it’s used with Vimes’s name is more in keeping with someone like William “Bill the Butcher” Poole, who led the Bowery Boys gang in New York City.
- Atmospherically, this book does an excellent job of making you feel as unwashed and underfed as its characters. I finished this section and immediately wanted a snack and a shower.
Pratchettisms:
With just a hint of ceremony, like a cocktail waiter dropping the little umbrella into a Double Entendre, Eyebrow let the copper fall.
She located the men’s privy, which, indeed, stank of inaccuracy.
She’d done Blouse’s laundry, and of course you went through the pockets before you washed things, because anyone who’d ever tried to unroll a soggy, bleached sausage that’d once been a banknote never wanted to do it twice.
He gave her what is known as an old-fashioned look; this one had dinosaurs in it.
Next week we’ll read up to:
Otto shrugged. “Find someone who vill.”
