Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

  I said to Les, ‘When I’m an old man, and telling stories to my grandchildren, do you think I can say I fought my way across Europe with you and the Major?’

  Les flicked his fag-end into the field. I could smell the brandy in the tea.

  ‘Not much fighting so far, but yeah, why not? You could say that. Why?’

  ‘Because the only people I’ve helped kill so far are three Yanks. People may not want to hear about that.’

  ‘Yeah. I can see that, but the bastards deserved it.’

  ‘Yes, they did. But you do see what I mean?’

  ‘I do, mate . . . but what’s worrying you then?’

  ‘All these bloody coppers, I expect. Wherever I’ve gone since I left the squadron I’ve had coppers of some sort at my heels. It started when I saw Pete shoot a copper while I was still on the squadron, and helped him to get rid of the body. There was also another body he’d brought back to the squadron with him from London. There was another one: a bastard of a catering officer on our station, who was knocking about the kids who worked for him.’

  ‘So that’s another three, as well. Do things in threes do they, your lot? You killed ’im too, did you?’

  ‘No. I didn’t kill any of them. Pete shot the copper because he was going to shoot me: I’d caught him rummaging through Pete’s gear. It was to do with the death of some Polish general in an air crash.’

  ‘Sikorsky, that would be.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I think you’ll find it was in the papers. You didn’t kill this . . . catering officer, then?’

  ‘No. By then Pete was in the black market, and so was he. I don’t think Pete did it. I think he probably asked someone else on the squadron to do it. They drowned him in an old field latrine.’

  Les fished a cigarette out of his beret and lit up.

  ‘You really don’t let up once you start telling it, do you, Charlie?’

  ‘I was just worried about the coppers. I’m worried that they are still trying to rope me into this.’

  ‘Anyone else know about this?’

  ‘Mr Clifford. And anyone he’s chosen to tell.’

  ‘Do you think that you’ve killed any Krauts in the course of your private little wars?’

  ‘Bloody hundreds I expect. I dropped bombs all over them, remember?’

  ‘You got nothing to worry about then, ’ave you? You scored more goals than own goals.’

  ‘It’s not a bloody game.’

  Pete was beaten to the draw by a jeep and an ambulance, which came from the Bremen road. That surprised me; they must have been better organized up there than I thought. The jeep slithered into the courtyard, and disgorged its driver – a stylishly dressed Major. He saluted by waving a leather-covered swagger stick at his cap, which had a leather peak. Les took no chances, and gave him something like a salute. So did I. He said, ‘Major Hendriks. Ira. South African Military Police, but don’t get in a lather . . .’ He had that nasal SA drawl I’ve always liked, ‘. . . I’m not a proper policeman. I do the science.’ He said African as if it was spelled Efrican.

  ‘Like Sir Sydney Smith in England, sir?’ Les.

  ‘Yes, Private. Well done. You’ve got some bodies, and burned-out lorries for me, I understand.’

  I was tongue-tied, so it was Les again.

  ‘Our Major’s inside, sir,’ he nodded to the dairy office. ‘And the tea he’s drinking’s not too old.’

  ‘Thenk you, Private. What’s the matter with your Captain? Don’t he speak?’ I think that he was just trying to break the ice.

  ‘He’s just a Chaplain, sir. Only talks to God these days.’

  ‘Oh, I see. One of those. Carry on.’

  After he sloped off I told Les, ‘Supercilious bastard.’

  ‘I would agree with you, sir, if I knew what it meant.’

  There was a driver and three SBAs in the ambulance; a neat little Austin job. The SBAs climbed out of the back with spades at the ready. Les showed them where the graves were, and watched them get to work while he smoked fags with the driver. That is to say he listened. He never passed up the opportunity to find out what was what in the other people’s war.

  Soon after that a small Yank communications aircraft, still covered in black and white Normandy stripes, landed on the road outside. Pete was keeping his word; it had taken him less than fifty. His uniform had silver tabs added to its shoulder boards, red flashes to the collars, and he wore a flash black-peaked cap with some silver braid around it. Like the SS. Both James and the South African who went out to meet him paused, and saluted. After a few words with them that I failed to catch he walked slowly over to me. I asked him, ‘What the fuck have they done to you, Pete?’

  ‘Colonel Pete. They made me a Colonel.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Polish government. They want their soldiers to have some clout at the conference tables of the victorious.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  ‘I told you: the Reds are going to be in charge for a long time. I go home in this uniform they sling me in a camp. I go home dressed as a miner, or a welder in the shipyard – maybe I’ll stay safe, an’ make trouble for them.’

  ‘Why go home at all? Why not stay in England?’

  ‘Not a focking chance, Charlie. Can’t you see the way the wind is blowing? The English won’t let Polish soldiers stay, the Reds will say Please send our gallant heroes home, so we can lock them up in the empty concentration camps, and the Brits will only be too glad to get shot of us.’

  ‘Why do you think we’ll betray you?’

  ‘You betrayed everyone else for hundreds of years. Am I so different?’

  ‘Somebody told me you were a policeman back in Poland. Was that true?’

  I suppose he took a few seconds to think about it. Then he said, ‘Yes. That was true. Are you happy now?’

  The wind got up from somewhere: it blew the smell of burned rubber from the lorries around us. The sky was leaden. Les was watching murdered men being exhumed without turning a hair, and James was off fretting because Pete had ignored him, Major or no Major. I said, ‘This is a stupid conversation, Pete. Go and talk to James; he’ll only take it out on me and Les if you piss him off.’

  ‘OK. Thanks for telling me you’d found the lorries. People don’t tell the cops nothing these days.’

  ‘Anything. They don’t tell the police anything . . .’

  ‘Nothing,’ Pete insisted. ‘They tell cops nothing . . .’

  ‘Nor would you,’ I told him. ‘Not when you were on the other side.’ Then reality checked in, and I added, ‘. . . only you were never really on the other side.’

  Bugger him. Bugger the lot of them. I wanted to find Grace and say my piece; make sure that she was all right, and then go home. For the first time in my life, I thought, I had a decent plan. When we gathered up, and went out to Kate we had to skate close to the American plane. I think that we called the type a Cricket. The pilot grinned, and raised a hand to me as I moved past. It was Tommo. He was in a flying jacket. He looked shagged out. I thought briefly about Cliff; how come so many of these types had learned to fly? The Cutter was commandeered by the SA Major, who wanted to do a quick and dirty autopsy on the bodies. Hendriks promised him a lift into Bremen as a reward. The black man looked very unhappy as we drove away and left him.

  The Cricket zoomed low over Kate an hour later. They would be in Bremen before us.

  Twenty-Six

  ‘You forgot those two Jerries on the BMW, didn’t you?’ Kate was labouring up a long twisted hill. The Major had assured us that we would be able to see Bremen from the other side. I’d already worked out that what I had originally thought were thick cumulus storm clouds was in fact a broad column of smoke.

  James asked, ‘What?’ and sniffed the air like a gun dog. He must have been dozing.

  A jeep pissed past us as if Kate had been standing still. Mud splashed back from it. Les cursed, because since we’d changed Kate’
s windscreen the wipers didn’t work.

  Les again: ‘He was worried about not having killed enough Jerries before the great reckoning up began. He doesn’t want to face the Great Architect in the sky with all his pluses in the wrong column. He’d forgotten those bastards on the motorbike, and is still worried about the Yanks we had put down.’

  James asked, ‘What Yanks? Can’t seem to remember any.’

  ‘Nor can I, sir.’

  We ran without speaking for thirty minutes or so. Kate sounded sweet. We crested the hill, and saw the southern suburb of Bremen for the first time. It was about fifteen miles away. Les said, ‘Journey’s end, Charlie.’

  A few miles on, in a small hamlet the size of Korne, we were pulled up at a roadblock manned by bored-looking squaddies. There were half a dozen vehicles parked up off the thoroughfare, waiting to be passed through. James got out for a look-see. A squaddy saluted. One other started to, and then bent over and vomited. James raised an eyebrow and waited. It was the first time I’d seen him do either. The saluter apologized.

  ‘Sorry, sir. He’s got some sort of stomach problem.’

  ‘I can smell it from here, Bombardier’ – he was good at unit flashes – ‘I’d say his stomach problem came in tall brown glass bottles labelled Wein.’

  The saluter straightened. His face wore a game’s up expression.

  ‘Sir.’

  But James ignored the vomiter.

  ‘So what’s the hold-up?’

  ‘I think that things are a bit chaotic down there, sir, so they want everyone held back until the MPs have got control again. There are three armies loose in there at the moment.’

  ‘Brits and Canadians, and . . .?’

  ‘I understand that an American tank unit got in there somehow, sir.’

  ‘Are there any exceptions to your instructions? We really do have pressing business . . .’

  ‘They left me a list, sir.’

  ‘Could you check it for a Major England, Mr Finnigan – my driver – and er . . . Pilot Officer Bassett? He’s my passenger.’

  ‘I could, sir, but . . .’

  His eyes flicked sideways to his drunken companion, who was sitting on the ground by now, hunched over a .303, cradled in his lap. James leaned over and lifted the rifle away. He said, ‘We’ll hold the fort for you.’

  The gunner nodded. He stepped sideways through the hole they’d knocked in a cottage wall. It was their makeshift guard house. I got out to stretch my legs. I’d already filled my pipe with sweet nutty tobacco. Now I lit it. I asked James, ‘What’s afoot, sir?’

  ‘I don’t think they want us to see what our brave soldiery are doing to the citizens of Bremen. Matey is off to check his list of bodies who may be passed through. I said that I’d man his post.’

  ‘We could just sod off.’

  ‘That would be unsoldierly.’

  ‘I think that you make those words up, sir.’

  ‘Sometimes. But I always write them down afterwards.’

  Kate had once been identical to the staff car which drew up. Unlike Kate it still had all the right windows, was unbattered, and it had obviously had a wash that morning. Its driver, when he hopped out, was immaculate. He went to attention in front of James, who put him at ease. James appeared to be enjoying himself. The new driver must have at-eased in a particularly soggy spot. I could see that he was slowly sinking into it. The new Humber suddenly swayed as somebody heavy shifted inside. A rear passenger door opened, and a portly Colonel stepped out. He had a nicotine-stained moustache the size of a small broom. He said, ‘Sod it man, he’s only a Major, just shove him out of the road!’

  The Corporal turned white, but he didn’t move: James had the gun. James looked at the fat man, who said, ‘Hello James.’

  James said, ‘Hello Freddy.’

  ‘Still causing trouble?’

  ‘Still bumming your fags?’

  ‘No. Grew out of it. Got married. Three children, one grandchild. You?’

  ‘No. Didn’t get round to it. Do I have to call you sir?’

  ‘If you like. In front of the oiks. Didn’t you have an exceptionally pretty sister?’

  ‘I still have. She’s worn quite well, sir.’

  ‘Your man’s got his mouth open. Gaping.’

  ‘I’ve told him about that before. He’s a parson and a grammar school boy.’

  ‘Explains it.’

  ‘That’s what I think, too.’ James turned to me and offered, ‘This is Colonel Sir Frederick Hastings. He was a consultant surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital before the war. Before that he accompanied the Royal Veterinary Corps into Afghanistan in the Twenties and Thirties. He is probably the world’s most knowledgeable living expert on battlefield injuries. Sir Frederick is on the Surgeon General’s staff.’

  I saluted, and stepped forward – careful to stay clear of the soft stuff.

  ‘We were at school together. Freddy was in the Upper School when I was still a nymph.’

  The Colonel took out a huge pocket handkerchief, and emptied the contents of his nostrils into it. The bogies seemed to flow on for minutes. After a flamboyant wipe he asked James, ‘What is the hold-up?’

  ‘Bremen hasn’t been pacified yet.’

  ‘Balls. Any fighting Germans are miles away. It’s all over bar the weeping.’

  ‘I don’t think that the Germans are the problem, sir. It’s the Canadian Army fighting the British, and both of them are fighting off some Americans.’

  ‘Can my man move yet? His boots have disappeared.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I feel like Horatius at the bridge.’

  ‘Would it make any difference if I gave you an order?’

  ‘No, sir: I know my duty.’

  ‘Thought so. You always were a silly beggar . . . Harrington?’

  The driver said, ‘Yessir?’ He tried to come to attention in the mud, but it didn’t work. His feet wouldn’t obey his head, and he swayed alarmingly. I thought that he was going to fall.

  ‘You’ll just have to stay there until this is sorted out. Don’t upset the Major. He was a crack shot in the ATC.’

  The guard slipped back out through the wall. He saluted the Colonel and James. Both responded. He told James, ‘None of you were on the list to be passed through, begging your pardon, sir, but I’ve spoken to a Major Hendriks, who vouched for you, sir. You’re free to proceed.’

  ‘What about Hastings and Harrington?’ The Colonel asked reasonably. ‘We on your bally list?’

  ‘ ’fraid not, sir.’

  ‘Thought not. Who is on it?’

  ‘There’s a Bernard Montgomery and a Brian Horrocks on it, sir. It doesn’t say their rank.’

  ‘No. Of course not. Silly bally names. Wonder who they are.’ He seemed to notice the squaddy sprawled on the ground for the first time, and asked, ‘Well: seeing as I’m staying, apparently, I suppose that you’ll want me to look at that fellah. He’ll die if we don’t do something for him.’

  The soldier was breathing in slow rattly draughts, each further apart than the last. The Bombardier responded with, ‘That would be very kind, sir. I’ll get someone to move him inside.’

  ‘Don’t bother. My Corporal will do it. What’s he standing in, by the way?’

  ‘Road drain, sir. Caught a couple of the lads out before we realized that it was full of mud and shit. Sir.’

  The Colonel touched his sinking driver on the shoulder.

  ‘All right, Harrington. Carry on.’

  After we moved off downhill Les told James, ‘If he was an old school chum you could have used your influence with Mr Hendriks to get him cleared through as well.’

  James didn’t reply for a six-beat: he was sprawled across Kate’s rear seat with his hat tipped over his eyes. Then he said, ‘I told you. He’s on the Surgeon General’s staff. He’ll be heading for the same hospital as McKechnie and Charlie, and taking over. I thought that Charlie could use a few hours’ grace. Pardon the pun.’

  Twenty-Se
ven

  Bremen was very odd. Right from the start. Some parts of the suburbs were almost untouched by war. We had driven through a large park where people were strolling. Three drunken sailors were trailed by a tail of inquisitive children and acquisitive young women – all out in Number Ones and Sunday-best dresses, despite the chill wind that came from the north-east. That was a metaphor for Germany that year: a chill wind from the north-east full of Russians. It was one of the things for which I was unprepared: the chill wind, I mean – I’d had plenty of time to think about the Russians. Then there were bits of the city simply missing. Whole blocks a half mile by a mile. The roads were still there – cratered, but cleared by the methodical Kraut – but where blocks of flats and tenements had stood, there were pyramids of stone and brick. Some of the pyramids had narrow paths cleared through them: they would have followed narrow streets and paths before the war, I’d guess. Where leafless trees or wooden posts remained – and there weren’t many – they were covered in tiny, handwritten notices . . . Ilse is now with her parents in Baden . . . Madelaine and Freya have moved to Bassum, Uncle Otto was killed in March.

  I noticed one of those cellar doors in the pavement, open alongside a mountain of rubble. People moved in and out of it, blinking as they came into the light; moving slowly. None of us in the car spoke much. I had come looking for a city, but parts were only a red desert. A rusty mist of brick dust danced in the air like a dust storm, and blanketed everything. A woman pushed an old high pram. She had waved to the car as we cruised past. She was wearing a fashionable dress with a short fur jacket, and a jaunty black pillbox hat. And a surgical face mask. The baby in the pram wore one too. It didn’t wave as we cruised past. And there was that smell, of course: it even got inside Kate.

  Les broke the spell.

  ‘Crossroads. Scotch soldiers over there. Which way do we go?’