Salah

In the same platoon as me in Her Majesty's forces was a young man named Salah. He was from Kuwait. I have just seen Jon Snow and his son's documentary about the first Gulf War in which Iraq invaded Kuwait, tortured and killed many Kuwaities and set fire to their oil fields before they were beaten by a UN force of Americans, British and many other world forces. I couldn't help wondering if he had suffered at the hands of the Iraqies or maybe he was killed by them.
But probably not because he was one of the "royals" of Kuwait. He was, I was told, "the son of the sheik of Kuwait"; if he was he was probably one of the ruling family who, at the commencement of the war, fled the country (lucky them). I wonder if they took their wives with them. Would have been big party since I heard that the sheiks had many wives. And there were a good few shieks.
Auberon Waugh, writing in the Telegraph at the time, cynically expressed the view that we were fighting to protect the 57 wives of the sheik (or sheiks?).
Salah was a nice fellow but not in any way a soldier. For a start he didn't know how to march. There were in the army after WW2 some few soldiers who just could not march. They could walk alright but when it came to marching something in their brains told them that it was totally different from walking. So occasionally you'd see corporals and sergeants trying to train them how to march. "You don't move your right arm forward when you put your right foot forward." That's what they'd do since they believed marching to be different from walking. So there'd be a corporal holding the man's right arm and another holding the man's left arm, and every time the man put a foot forward, say his right, they would try to push his left arm forward and his right arm backward. It was hilariously funny to watch. They never to my knowledge succeeded; indeed, they probabaly gave the man such a feeling of uselessness that he'd never walk (or think) properly again.
Salah could't march but, since he was a sheik's son, he never had to suffer that sort of indignity. He just slouched about the place.
One day he was late for parade and the fiercely crazy Sergeant Major saw him as he got in line. He marched over to him and stared at him. A lesser NCO whispered to the S'arnt Major that "he's the son of the sheik of Kuwait sir." "I don't care who's son he is," roared the S'arnt Major. "Let me tell you, you little piece of shite," he said, "the way you're going you'll never grow up to be a good Shah."
I wonder if Salah, when he got out of the madhouse and went back home, did become a good Shah after all and settle down to domestic bliss with forty or fifty wives.