Cassian Humphreys offers some excerpts from The Enlightened Gardener.
To Captain Fergus ‘Gus’ Johnstone on Salerno beach on mainland Italy in September 1943, the unquestioning sacrifice of the SAS soldiery was worth far more than gold. Yet, as a gardener at heart, he wondered what that would look like if such sacrifice was made as plantsmen in service to the Earth.
Italian encounter
In the time of boots on the ground during the allied invasions of Sicily, then Italy, during the Italian Campaign, there was only time to fight. Britain’s prime minister was to call Italy ‘the soft underbelly’. That may have been true of Sicily, but the Italian mainland was the muscular, well-armoured abdomen and even harder sternum.
A truly great example of a kick-arse, no-nonsense strong-wrister came from a British commando with whom Fergus would serve first in Sicily, then Italy and Yugoslavia the following year.
Churchill
The major leading No:2 Commando out of a landing craft at Syracuse at the start of the Sicilian invasion got into a spot of bother with an Italian machinegun nest behind the sand dunes. Its fire had the mostly out-of-range major and his men pinned with his kilt in the water. Fortunately, Fergus and his boys of the Special Raiding Squadron were on the headland after hunting and capturing an Italian Colonnello.
Fergus could not help but notice the commando major wearing a Royal Stewart tartan kilt, reserved for pipers and the royal family. The major also carried a basket-hilted Scottish broadsword and a set of bagpipes.
In fact the major had played his troop out of the surf.
Out of respect and utmost amusement, in honour of such behaviour as being the respected norm, Fergus remained silent about the sword and the major’s dramatic piping entrance.
The major introduced himself as Jack Churchill, whom Fergus was to come to know as ‘Mad Jack’.
Major Churchill of course inquired after Captain Fergus’s kilt, especially after seeing his six soldiers all sporting the same desert camouflage material. Fergus explained they were ex-highlanders, then ex-commandoes, currently serving alongside 2SAS, and that they’d lifted the kilts from a blown-up 7th Argyll transporter in Tunisia. To which the Major with a huge grin replied, “Bloody capital, of course that makes complete bloody sense!”
Trees and the mind
The next time they met was two months later on the Italian mainland. Jack Churchill was marching down the hill to Salerno beach with his corporal and 42 captured German soldiers when Fergus and Co had unexpectantly popped their heads up out of the Sloe shrubbery in which they’d been hiding. Fergus had warned the major of their presence with, “In the Prunus spinosa, sir. Salutations, major. Would you care for a tot of Sloe gin?”
With the giant James Macpherson Bren gun over his shoulder standing the tallest, clearing the shrubbery almost to his waist, the sight of the group’s sudden appearance was most incongruous.
Sitting around the campfire after the men had swapped pleasantries and stories of interests before the war, Fergus was to learn Major Churchill had an interest in the study of psychology. With his recent consideration in mind, Gus led Jack onto the topic of shellshock, and inquired on the Major’s take on what it is that enables men to outmanoeuvre their trauma and to be able to deal with war.
“Trauma, Fergus?” pondered Churchill aloud. “Well, my understanding of this presents the tree as the ultimate model to understand the human mind.
“This starts at childhood. It’s adult parents that, through neglect or abuse, create disparity in their children’s minds, though this is actually a co-creation as those young minds comply to the teaching. We all love our parents, regardless how wrong they get it, though such parents never earn our respect, as with wayward children who only get our love.
“The first split in the child’s identity comes from the shock of being taken out of the present, to be taught the ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ of us and them – right or wrong. It’s not those things that cause the split per se: it’s the child’s identification and their embodiment to the emotion behind it, fueling self-blame, that creates the split. The young human mind then, founded on ego, in ‘protective’ layers, stacks everything else on top. Usually by the age of 30 the individual, like their parents, is in the limited container of their own mental creation.
“A limited human mind is identified with its vessel, its body, over the freedom of spirit which is not ours to possess anyway. Possession is a mental construct that blocks us from ascension – from being the best version of ourselves.
“None of us is free of this multilayered hierarchical internal stack of dominoes,” the soldier continued, “though the luckiest of us creates a more malleable form. With renewed mental training we can create a new means to our thinking and embodied response. Hence what some call the ‘Christ’ experience.”
At this Fergus, thinking of his mentors, offered, “As with the ascended Indian masters.” Major Jack nodded, now speaking with a spark in his eye.
“So you’re a plantsman, right? Consider the engineering of wood, the most malleable of large forms on the planet. The fools amongst us obsess over the few trees that fail, but it’s the multitude that stand that show us the way. Timber is the most evolved, massive ‘hard’ structure naturally created on the planet, that’s why it’s our number-one building material.
“Tell me of its make up Captain, then let’s consider how it applies to the human mind, then consider applying that to our ‘craft’: combat.”
Growth and strength
Fergus pondered his hours spent in the library at Kew, applying that knowledge to the experience of observing trees and to their mitigation of storm events, in working on them as a climber and pruner, as well as processing their bodies by saw and axe.
“Well, Major,” he said, “I will use the example of broad-leaved trees, the most common woody-plants on the planet to date, which significantly vary when compared to tree ferns or palms, though less so compared to conifers.”
Major Jack sat poised in the sand, expectant of the engagement, like their connection was a duel with words of wisdom as opposed to swords. Fergus stepped up to the task.
With a stick he made rough illustrations in the hard sand.
“Picture the ‘baby’ tree: from a seed, first there’s the root and shoot,” he said, drawing simple markings in the sand. “The root draws water and, as it matures, elements in solution. The shoot draws energy from light. The plant takes in nutrients straight from the source, via the rhizosphere connected to the substrate it grows on, and the atmosphere it grows in. All new growth is soft and pliable.”
Coughing, he went on.
“With growth it embodies carbon, differentiating, becoming woodier, transitioning into a sapling and beyond. “The young tree as a generating organism lays down increments of sapwood, or new wood laid down over old, like a Russian doll. Every stage of the tree’s life is entombed in its former ‘self’. The new tree growing over the old tree in compartments, or increments of cells separated each growing season by a new boundary formed between new wood and old.
“Although trees are generators we are regenerating organisms growing new tissue in the place of the old as opposed to new tissue on top of old. The outer ring of wood we can call the ‘now’ tree and the older rings the past trees.”
Fergus was drawing a tree cross section of concentric circles.
“As the increments age, the cell walls become rigid, hardened by a compound that turns plant cellulose to wood. Cellulose gives wood flexibility, the compound called lignin in the now-thickened cell wall gives compressive strength. It’s like multitudes of ropes, supported with bricks.”
Looking at the excited Major Fergus he continued.
“Trees, when healthy, self-regulate or optimise structure, growing wood tissues with thicker or thinner lignified cell walls subject to load. The greater the compression the thicker the cell wall, or lignified tissue. The higher the tension the thinner the cell wall and the greater the proportion of cellulose. This is why when cutting a broad-leaf tree a saw gets stuck in compressionwood, yet more easily cuts wood subject to tension or tension-wood. Wood mechanics in living trees are as evolved as in animals with muscle and bone, it just looks very different. Plus it’s all made of the same foundational elements. Elements the plants harvested first. Elements we gain when we eat plants or by eating animals that ate them.
“But l digress. Back to the structure.”
Gus paused and drew a breath.
Components
“Each increment is made up of plant cells stacked end over end,” continued Gus, clearly approaching a critical point. “These pipe the water and elements absorbed from the soil solution via the soil-root-interface – the rhizosphere. Even when the wood differentiates through age or becomes hardwood it continues to be functional, lesser-so biologically, but as much so biomechanically, though in time subject to internal decay.”
Major Jack looked at Fergus and urged him on.
Captain Johnstone and Major Churchill’s story will continue in the July August issue – Ed.