James Delingpole

by Coward on The Beach (epub)

  It's a spine-tingling moment. Quite the second most memorable occasion on which I've ever heard those lines quoted. Which will no doubt make you wonder when the first time was, but that story will have to wait for another day. Suffice to say that it was on the Eastern Front, and that the two men singing it — Metelmann, one of them was called; God knows the name of the other because he was twenty yards away on the Russian side — had the most beautiful tenor and the richest bass it has ever been my privilege to hear.

  Well, as you'll imagine, the moment I hear those lines being quoted by my prisoners I'm no longer on that hillside over­looking Port-en-Bessin. I'm back on the Eastern Front, reliving that Gotterdammerung.The mixture of emotions that comes rushing back is quite overwhelming. Fear, certainly, because all of my Truppe— Metelmann, Heine, Strauss, Ostermeyer, Oberleutnant Kimmelman - were doomed to die horrible deaths, and we knew it; nostalgia, too, for the boys who didn't make it; but, most of all, an intense determination to do what­ever necessary to survive; and not just to survive, either, but to crush the enemy and win.

  As the softening-up barrage builds to a fortissimo and the smell of cordite drifting up from the town grows ever stronger and more intoxicating, so my urge to be part of the action rather than an idle spectator rises to a frenzied pitch.

  There's only a few of us left on the hill now: medics, forward observation officers, sparks, men from HQ troop. Everyone else has moved down to the base, dumped their packs at the Regimental Aid Post (RAP) and passed on, thus unencum­bered, to the start line.

  You can tell it's not going to be long now. Nine rapidly enlarging dots on the horizon reveal themselves as a squadron of Typhoons come to strafe enemy ground targets with their rockets and cannon.

  'Arseholes,' comments Herr Flakship, pointedly not looking up as the squadron overflies our position after its second pass, dipping its wings in acknowledgement as one or two of my comrades rise up and wave their green berets (a self-preservation gesture as much as anything: ground-attack aircraft do have a nasty habit of firing on their own side).

  Next it's the turn of 231 Field Battery to open up, and now the attack really is imminent. It's laying down a smoke screen to cover our advance, though at this point it's scarcely necessary. With the dust and smoke from the naval bombard­ment, and the grey-brown fug from a grass fire which has broken out on the Eastern Feature, the town has already all but disappeared from view.

  And now, piercing the low rumble of shellfire, I can hear the crack and staccato rattle of small-arms Fire from the south­west, as the fighting troops start to engage God knows what. The weapons pits? Wrong direction. More likely that verminous sniper-training school at Fosse Soucy. Oh Christ, this is frus­trating. Why can't I be there?

  'Coward?' It's one of the sergeants from HQ troop. 'We've had three RASC lorries just turn up at the RAP. Get your PWs down there sharpish and you've your ticket home.'

  I need no further prompting. 'OK, you lot. Raus! Schnell! Und Hande hoch!'

  I herd the prisoners from their pen with the barrel of my Schmeisser. None of them tries to escape. Perhaps they have sensed my edginess.

  'Come on! Come on! Schnell! Schnell!' I order as we wind our way down the hill, the Sergeant leading the way, the trou­blemaker Herr Flakship right up close to me where I can see him. The engagement at Fosse Soucy is growing fiercer; and now, by the sounds of it, another skirmish has broken out, this time in the direction of the weapon pits which X troop have been ordered to attack.

  'Imperious bastard, isn't he?' calls Herr Flakship to the pris­oner behind him.

  'Yes. And they're always calling usthe arrogant ones,' says his mate.

  'Well, the worse he treats us, the worse we will treat him when our positions are reversed,' says Herr Flakship with a relish which cries out for a Schmeisser butt in the mouth. Not that I would, obviously: not my style; and besides, he might well give something away.

  'You believe they will be?'

  'Of course. Die Englischen Arschlocher are completely sur­rounded and quite oblivious, it would seem, to the warm reception our dear naval comrades have been preparing for them in the harbour.'

  With a ghastly stab in the pit of my stomach, it hits me: they already have. Of course! That remark the Nazi made when our LCG(L)s opened up on the harbour front. He thought they were Kriegsmarine ships, not British ones. Why? Because Jean Lionnet was right and the gendarme was wrong: there really are Kriegsmarine in the harbour. They're the crew of a flak- ship; a flakship which for some reason has eluded our intelli­gence reports and which could jeopardise the whole mission.

  I'd like to stop my unwitting informant for further ques­tioning, but there isn't time, he wouldn't speak anyway and besides, he's just this second dropped straight to the ground with a large chunk missing from his skull. The bullet was presumably intended for me. Student snipers, eh? God bless their wobbly paws.

  Such is the noise, the prisoners in front haven't even noticed. So I bend down just long enough to be sure that the hole I saw in his head wasn't merely wishful thinking, then step quickly over the body, and catch up with his twenty oblivious comrades.

  The RAP is a large concrete bunker at the foot of Point 72, which until yesterday belonged to the Germans. One of our sergeants stumbled on it by accident last night, capturing two German medical officers and several wounded. This morning, it helped us capture some more: led by a corporal, a party of German soldiers reporting for sick parade wandered in, quite unaware till the last moment that their bunker had changed hands.

  Outside, a trio of three-ton Bedford trucks is being labori­ously unloaded by a human chain of marines and drawn-looking

  Royal Army Service Corpsmen, who've had a tougher job since the landings than almost anyone. So hard do those poor bastards have to work keeping our assault troops in supplies and ammo, it's not unknown for them to drop dead with exhaustion.

  No sign of any wireless operators, but that's what I need. Someone to relay the new information I have to our fighting troops.

  'Ay up,' announces a sweating beefcake, as we arrive. 'The Seventh Cavalry's here!'

  Immediately the prisoners are put to work unloading the trucks. Once they're occupied, I have a quiet word with the Sergeant who led us down the hill.

  'Make it quick, then,' he says. 'I'll be needing you to escort this lot back to the beachhead.'

  'Can't they? I say, jerking my thumb at the RASC boys.

  'Lieutenant Truelove's orders. Says the sooner you get out of the CO's way, the better for everyone. Now, quick, before I change my mind.'

  The interior bunker is gloomy and foetid, the smell of fresh blood and raw meat cut with iodine, surgical spirit and paraffin from the lamps which are the sole source of illumination. Near the entrance, a medical orderly wearing a lance-corporal's stripe is dressing the arm of a young commando.

  'Excuse me, chaps, I'm looking for a sparks.'

  The commando looks up and grins. It's Mayhew.

  'Jack!' I say.

  'Yell -' he begins, then corrects himself to the more friendly 'Dick'.

  'How are we doing?'

  'Better than we could have dreamed,' he gabbles, eyes a- sparkle. 'Soon as X troop charged the weapons pit, the defence just collapsed. We passed through with B troop using the ditches either side. Spot of mortar fire on the way to town, which is where I got hit. I wanted to go on but Corporal Blackwell said I had to report back here. Jolly unfair. Expect they've taken both Features by now.'

  'And the flakship?'

  'Flakship?'

  'Christ, we've got to find a wireless op, quickly.'

  'Think I saw one round the back, trying to get a signal,' says Mayhew.

  Back outside, one of the prisoners is refusing to work. 'Wo ist Hans?' he keeps asking his comrades, looking around fran­tically. 'Hast du Hans gesehen?'

  'You speak the lingo, don't you, Coward?' says the Sergeant.

  'Ah. Es tut mir leid, mein Freund,' I tell the agitated pris­oner. 'Ich glaube, d
ass Ihr Freund Hans gestorben ist,' I say.

  'Sie sprechen Deutsch?' asks the German in some surprise.

  'All Englishmen do,' I say - and I know I shouldn't, but I’m afraid I wasn't a great fan of Hans and besides, there's something about the Germans that always seems to bring out the facetious in me - 'We only pretend not to for fun.'

  The German isn't amused. 'You have murdered Hans!' he says.

  'Not me, I promise. One of your snipers.'

  'He has murdered Hans. Der Englanderhas murdered Hans.'

  From inside the trucks and along the chain of prisoners there are agitated cries.

  'Was sagt er?'

  'Der Englander has murdered Hans!'

  'Nein!'

  "Ere, what's the matter with these buggers? Why've they stopped working?' asks the Sergeant.

  'They think I killed one of their mates, Sarge.'

  'And did you?'

  'No, Sarge. It was one of their snipers.'

  'Well, whether it was or it wasn't, I want this sorted out sharpish.'

  I'm sure there are more tactful methods. Problem is, I just haven't the time to think what they might be. So instead, I pull my grimmest expression, cock my Schmeisser with osten­tatious relish as I've seen my own Nazi guards do on rather too many occasions and shout: 'Silence! German prisoners. Your Fuhrer has told you about the many war crimes committed by English commandos. And for once your Fuhrer is right. I have executed one of your number already. I shall not hesitate to kill the rest of you one by one unless you go back to work, right now!'

  It's a bloody good perf, though I say it myself. Based on a particularly vicious fellow I once knew called Klammer, God rest his rotten soul. After only a very brief exchange of glances, the prisoners resume their unloading.

  'D'ye know, Coward,' says the Sergeant, very impressed. 'You're wasted back here.'

  'Don't I know it. And, Sarge, I still need to find that sparks.'

  'You'd better be off, then. And when you've found him, you mind you don't bugger off and rejoin your troop, or there'll be hell to pay,' says the Sergeant, with an audible wink in his voice.

  'Yes, Sarge. Thank you, Sarge.'

  On the way I pause at the bunker, where the medic has just finished bandaging Mayhew's arm. 'This man fit to show me the way to the wireless op?' I ask the medic.

  'Sure. But nothing more strenuous,' says the medic Lance- Corporal, though he doesn't look as surprised as he might when, as he's leaving, Mayhew reaches with his good arm to pick up his rifle.

  We find the wireless operator where Mayhew last saw him.

  He's still wrestling with his set, badgered by a pair of fidgety runners clutching pencil-scrawled messages which their officers want relayed.

  I nudge my way through. 'We need to get an urgent message to A and B troops.'

  'Join the queue,' sighs the harassed-looking sparks. 'I've been trying for twenty minutes, but this set's knackered and I reckon both theirs must be completely u/s.'

  'Could you have another go?'

  'Oi, hang about. I was first,' says one of the runners.

  'This is from the CO. This has priority,' says the other.

  The sparks rises to his feet and takes off his headphones.

  'Look, lads,' he says, 'if any of you thinks he can do a better job, be my fucking guest. But if you want my advice, I'd say you're better off on Shanks's pony.'

  At this Mayhew gives me an eager look. 'I'm game,' he declares.

  The first part of our journey, conducted at a steady jog, passes without incident. The sniper action at Fosse Soucy has been more or less suppressed by Y troop and, with the weapons pits in the possession of X troop, the main obstacle to the town's southern approach has now been removed. Once we get near the church, though, at the bottom part of the town's outer edge, things start to become much more volatile. From every direction there are shots, and shouts and the rapid tramp of scurrying boots, though whose you're rarely altogether sure. As I try, with some difficulty, to convey to Mayhew - his instinct is simply to trot down the centre of the street blasting away at all comers - in the chaos of urban warfare, discretion is very much the better part of valour.

  'Down, you clot!' I have to hiss at one point, yanking him down by the scruff of his trouser leg. The fool was trying to take a pot shot at a German patrol we only narrowly avoided being spotted by, when at the last moment I managed to get us both behind the cover of a low garden wall.

  You can understand his cockiness though. There are moments, as we make our stealthy advance, when you can look down a street and see nothing but green berets zigzagging from doorway to doorway.

  But look down just the same street not thirty seconds later and all you'll see is field grey. And give it thirty seconds more and it will be empty once more. Empty that is, save for the recumbent old woman with a dark, sticky pool stretching out from her grizzled pate; and the body just beyond of a teenage boy whom you hope you don't recognise but you rather suspect you do by the fact that the ends of his outstretched, lifeless arms have no hands attached, just stumps.

  The church looks a likely meeting place. I noticed some commandos go in a while ago, without apparent trouble, and they've yet to re-emerge. Saint-Andre de Port-en-Bessin its name is and, rather like that battleship of a cathedral they put up to frighten the Cathars at Albi, it's far bigger than you'd expect for such a one-horse town. When you're a fishing community, more vulnerable than most to the vagaries of weather and tide and natural disaster, I suppose you have to work extra hard to keep God onside.

  There's only one way in. A heavy wooden door at the west end. It's shut, of course. 'Forty-seven Commando, coming through,' I bellow at the thick oak.

  A scraping of bars from within, then the door swings open and a marine, B troop I'd guess, beckons me and Mayhew swiftly inside.

  Like many soldiers, I often find myself drawn to a church during a battle. There's the obvious tactical point, of course, that it's invariably solid, in a prominent position, with crypts to shelter in and tall towers invaluable for observation and sniping. But then there's the numinous side of things. This belief it gives you - wholly misplaced, of course, because church spires are a priority target for artillery — that, being in God's house, you must somehow be that little bit more protected.

  As we pass into the nave, the two marines guarding the entrance lower their Sten guns. Either side of the transept, beneath a dangling model of a sailing ship, wounded marines are slumped against the chapel walls, being tended by order­lies. The commander of B troop - bookish fellow, schoolmaster in civilian life, named Capt. Hobbes — emerges from the vestry.

  'Coward? Aren't you supposed to be back at HQ?'

  'Change of plan, sir. New intelligence about the harbour defences, which needs relaying to the forward troops.'

  'What kind of intelligence?'

  'We think there's a flakship moored in the harbour.'

  'Hell's bells, you might be too late. Last I saw of A troop, they were readying a Bangalore to blow the wire blocking the road to the Western Feature.'

  'Can you remember where, sir?'

  'Rue du Phare. Steep road on the corner, about a hundred yards back from the western seafront. You'll have a job reaching it. We've had some luck on this side of the basin, but the far side's still in their hands. They've got mortars and MGs covering all the main approaches and their patrols are everywhere.'

  'I'm not sure we have much choice, sir.'

  'Well, good luck. And Coward, you're a cultured fellow I should imagine?'

  'I hope so, sir.'

  'Then just before you leave, do stop to look at the statues on the right. Medieval, I should say. Not the best of their kind, but there's a rough-hewn naivety about them you might find affords the cheer a chap needs at times like this.'

  On the way out, I do as Capt. Hobbes suggests. There's a carving of a Virgin with sculpted crescent eyebrows and a broad, benign peasant's face, carrying a pudgy little Jesus with curly, close-fitting hair, like a Rom
an emperor's. The one that tickles me, though, and I'm sure is what Capt. Hobbes meant, is the one of an archbishop with his crook and a comically lost expression, as if he's looked at the state of man's affairs and found them a total mystery. 'Oh, dear me! We're buggered, the whole ruddy lot of us,' he seems to be saying to the onlooker. Amen to that, I think. And after a quick final prayer for God's protection in this hour of dire need, I pass through the door that leads from ecclesiastical calm to the stench, heat and noise of bloody battle.

  Rather than take the most direct route to the port, which would leave us too exposed to fire from the far side of the basin, we skirt further west, taking advantage as before of the rear gardens belonging to the houses lining the road. It's rela­tively safe, but our progress is slow. Too slow.

  In my more melancholy moments since, I've often looked back on that day in Port-en-Bessin and berated myself for not having moved more swiftly. If only I'd been quicker to twig what Herr Flakship was on about. If only we'd ushered those prisoners faster down the hillside. If only we'd sprinted instead of jogged from Rear HQ. If only I'd lingered less in the church. If only . . . But whenever I've done so, I've always reached the same conclusion: however many minutes I might have shaved off with more impatience here and by running faster there, they would never have been quite enough to avert the disaster that befell A troop. It was one of those terrible things that happen in war, that's all.

  The first I hear of it is the rapid firing of heavy-calibre guns, coming from the direction of the port. It could be ours but I very much doubt it, because our troops are only carrying small arms, and they're unlikely to have called in artillery support when their comrades are so widely dispersed. Which more likely makes it the thing I've been most dreading. A flakship carries guns designed for shooting down aircraft. You can imagine the damage they can inflict on infantry, at a range of barely 1,000 yards.

  I certainly can, which is why I've abandoned the cover of those back gardens now and, with Mayhew hot on my heels, I'm running hell for leather down one side of the road leading to the Rue du Phare and the base of the Western Feature. The way may be crawling with Germans or there may be none. We'll just have to take our chances.