James Delingpole

by Coward on The Beach (epub)

'Welcome back, sir. We was worried you wouldn't make it,' says Cpl. Blackwell, eyes still fixed firmly on the view outside. His next remark is addressed to the pint-sized Bren gunner lying prone next to him. I recognise him as the Geordie, Dinning, who made the joke on the crossing about the Flying Scotsman.'See her? She's up to no good again.'

  'What's the trouble, Corporal?' asks Capt. Dangerfield, pushing aside a slate so as to enlarge his viewing hole.

  'See up there, sir. Girl in the red dress. Reckon she must be sweet on one of them Germans. She's been standing there, pointing out our positions.'

  I can see her, too, now. Pretty thing. Damned shame.

  'You know what to do, Corporal.'

  'Sir. McMahon, drop 'er!'

  A crack of a sniper rifle. The girl crumples.

  Almost immediately the room is alive with ricochets and splinters, flying chips of tile and brickwork and sparks, as the positions on the hill return fire.

  'Eleven o'clock, Dinning,' says Cpl. Blackwell, calmly noting one of the positions, oblivious to the bits of masonry tumbling near his head.

  'Got it.'

  A burst of Dinning's Bren.

  The German fire temporarily ceases. Only to open up again from a different angle.

  'We're not going anywhere till we've taken that Feature. Acting-Lieutenant Coward, your informant was right about the flakship. Do you think he was right about the pathway too?'

  'Acting-Lieutenant Coward?'

  'I doubt the Colonel will ratify it but yes, as long as this action lasts. Now, this zigzag pathway?'

  'There's only one way to be certain. If you'll allow me four men —'

  'Four men, you'll have. Corporal Blackwell, I need you here covering.'

  'Sir.'

  'You too, Dinning. And Simpson, I need you sniping. Anyone else who cares to volunteer to go with Lieutenant Coward, please do so now.'

  There's an awkward pause. Then, to my eternal gratitude, one by one, the hands of the remaining five marines are raised.

  'There's your command, then, Lieutenant Coward. Off you go. Nothing too ambitious, mind you. This is just a recce. When we make the final assault, I intend to lead it myself.'

  Before we set off, the marines who are to remain in the house pool what ammo they can spare. The one guarding the ground floor furnishes me with more captured 9-mm. for my Schmeisser and a pocketful of grenades. 'Don't use 'em all at once, mind,' he chides.

  "Ere, Yeller,' calls a Northern voice from a dingy corner.

  'That'll be Lieutenant Coward to you, Wragg,' I reply.

  'What do you do to deserve that, then, you daft booger? Nothing too dangerous, I hope.'

  'This is very unlike you, Oily. Why the concern?'

  'Oh, it's not you I mind about, it's just I never got to hear how the story ends.'

  'Which story?'

  'This girl the Captain marries. We never did hear her name, did we?'

  'Good God, man, were you listening all that time?'

  'There were fook-all else to do, were there, with the two of you blethering away in my lughole. You're never serious though, are you. You never really coom all this way joost because of some bint you met in 'ospital?'

  'Age of chivalry bypass Yorkshire, did it?'

  'Us Yorkshiremen have got more sense than to make tits of ourselves, just on the off chance of getting our ends away. Specially when the bint's already spoken for.'

  'And what exactly is that supposed to mean?'

  'Well, that's why I'm so keen to find out, Yeller. Is she or isn't she the same one?'

  'Who?'

  'This girl you're sweet on. The one who made you come all this way. I'm laying money on her being Captain Dangerfield's new missus.'

  Chapter 17

  The Assault

  'Dick, if anything should happen to me, I should like you to give her this,' says Capt. Dangerfield, sotto voce, as he hands me an envelope. I don't want to look at the name on it, I really don't. Problem is, if I don't look, I'll never know, will I? So, heart clenched, I lower my eyes inch by surreptitious inch.

  Gina Dangerfield.

  Around me, the surface of the world begins to craze like a dried-out lake, then crack like the shell of an enormous egg, then shatter into a million pieces which tumble into the void, leaving me stranded in the vastness of a black, pitiless universe, alone on my tiny island of misery.

  I want to die.

  'Not wishing to tempt fate,' says Capt. Dangerfield, with a nervous laugh, 'but did you have any personal letters you'd like me to take care of?'

  'Thanks,' I say, quite taken aback by the calm, icy resigna­tion in my voice. 'But there's no one.'

  He looks at me curiously for a moment, passing a tongue over his dry lips. 'Well, good luck,' he says, at last, turning away to join Q troop's commander, Capt. Gough, against the far wall of the shattered Cafe Terminus, where we've gathered for our final briefing.

  Together with the remnants of Q troop (which bore the brunt of the casualties during the landings), our troop has been granted the honour of taking the Eastern Feature. I use the term honour in its original Wellingtonian sense of' 'total bloody suicide mission'.

  Not only are the enemy deeply emplaced and more heavily armed but, so far as we can gather, they outnumber us by roughly three to one. About the only thing we have going in our favour is that they won't be expecting us to do something quite so stupid. Under cover of smoke, we plan to take a detachment of thirty men up the zigzag path to the Eastern Feature. Near the top we'll split into two groups, we'll charge, and that's as far as the plan goes, I’m afraid. The rest is in the hands of God.

  Mind you, I’ve only myself to blame, as Capt. Dangerfield is now explaining to the roomful of filthy, jittery, weary, excited commandos.

  'Thanks to Lieutenant Coward's recce mission of earlier this afternoon

  A whispering across the room. Not everyone has yet heard mention of my unorthodox battlefield commission.

  '. . . we now know that the path is clear of mines and rela­tively ill-defended. Lieutenant Coward, would you care to tell us a little more about what you found?'

  'Orchids,' I hear myself, say, light-headedly, to much general amusement. God, it's good to be an officer again. And if this really is the day I am to die, I'll at least do so in the company of men who have finally chosen to like and respect me; well, laugh politely at my jokes at least.

  'Lots of orchids,' I continue, milking the laughter. 'At least five varieties including a very lovely bee, so if there's enough light and the smoke barrage permits, do keep an eye open. You should have plenty of opportunities as the first 200 yards or so are clear of defences. It's only round the third bend that the trouble starts. There's a pillbox immediately on the right and, behind it, a network of trenches and further pillboxes, which unfortunately we were unable to investigate owing to an inclement shower of stick grenades.'

  'Thank you, Lieutenant Coward, for that expert botanical assessment. Now, once we're past those obstacles we should by my reckoning be within ten yards of the crest, at which point I shall fire the signal for A troop to deploy left while Captain Gough leads Q troop right. After that, it's up to you. These are good soldiers we're facing but they're by no means the best. They've taken a hell of a pasting from our artillery and it's my firm belief that the moment we push hard enough, they'll fold like deckchairs. I need scarcely remind you how important this mission is. Any questions before I hand over to Captain Gough? Yes, Dinning?'

  'It's them bees Lieutenant Coward mentioned,' says Dinning, to laughter and applause. 'Do they sting real bad, like? Only, the bullets I can handle, but if it's bees, if it's all the same, sir, I'll sit this one out. I'm allergic, see. Brings me out in the most terrible lumps.'

  Capt. Dangerfield has scheduled the assault to begin at dusk, 2200 hours. Very sensible, I'm thinking. With luck there'll be just enough light for us to see where we're going, while not quite enough for defenders to pick us off. But it turns out there's another, more pressing reason
why we need to get in there soon. Our position, it would seem, has grown more precar­ious than at any time since the landing.

  We discover the latest bad news on the march to our start line, when Hordern spots a runner from HQ troop panting back down our line, having just delivered a message to the troop commanders.

  "Ang on, mate. What's the 'urry?' says Hordern, holding him fast by his elbow.

  'The hurry, mate, is that 'less you lot get a move on, we've all had it,' says the runner, trying to wrest himself from Hordern's grasp.

  Coffin, McMahon and I gather round to block his exit. We've formed quite a tight little unit since our successful recce mission.

  'Meaning what, exactly?' says Hordern, steering the runner round so that he's moving in the same direction we are.

  'We think Point 72's been overrun. Last we heard from Rear HQ, they were under attack by at least sixty Germans. That was half an hour ago. We've heard nothing since.'

  'There's our main supply line fucked, then,' says Coffin.

  'There's always Uncle Sam next door,' says Hordern.

  'No, mate. He's fucked, too,' says the runner.

  'What?'

  'Yeah, Jerry's been giving him such a hammering on the beach, he was lucky to get off at all.'

  'And the good news?' says Coffin.

  'Good news is that, soon as you let go of me, I'm fucking off back to Forward HQ,' says the runner. He eyes me up and down. 'You're Coward, ain't you?'

  'Lieutenant Coward to you,' says Hordern.

  'Field promotion? The CO's going to love that. He's been talking about having you court-martialled for going AWOL — um, sir.'

  But I can't say I'm much bothered by this. Nor by the fact that our commando is now completely cut off from the rest of the Allied invasion force. All I can think about is that the beautiful, adorable girl with whom I was half certain I'd be spending the rest of my life has given herself to another.

  Looking back, the wise old boy I am now would very much like to give the callow imbecile I was then a good slap. Then a vigorous shake. And perhaps after that, a few more slaps, just for the pure hell of it. I mean, really.

  But which of our youthful antics does stand up to the scrutiny of sixty years' hindsight? You may say - I would - that I was a damned fool ever to have set so much store by Gina's affections on so little evidence. And an even more damnable fool to have got so carried away as to take seriously the lunatic task she set me on what I now realise was just another of her idle, spoilt-girl's whims. And an outright, cream- faced loon for not having twigged earlier that the object of my affections and Capt. Dangerfield's new wife were one and the same.

  To which I can only reply: 'I was young!' You're young your­self. You know what it's like. If you want to believe some­thing, you're not about to let a bit of inconvenient reality get in the way of your desires. You go on wishing. Anything seems possible. And if you go on wishing hard enough, you fervently tell yourself, then one day your dreams will come true.

  And there's another thing you need to remember about my generation. Though in many ways war had made us older than our years - you'd see 24-year-olds commanding companies; and 30-year-olds in charge of divisions, which would never happen now - there were others in which we remained rather naive. We could read terrain, strip a rifle, devise a battle plan, shackle a prisoner, kill our enemy silently with a knife and a thousand and one more ways besides. But show us a woman who wasn't a sister, mother or aunt, and we scarcely know where to begin.

  Either she was a slut who, if you played your cards right, might vouchsafe you a quick knee-trembler in a back alley.

  Or she was one of those remote visions of perfection whom you hoped one day you might be lucky enough to marry.

  Gina I put very much in the latter category. If you'd told me she shat I'd never have believed you. In fact, I'm not sure I would have believed you if you'd told me she wasn't a virgin, despite all that she had told me on our walks to the cave. That was the root of my problem with Gina. It was never the person she was. It was the angel I had invented in my adolescent imagination.

  But just you try telling all this to the pallid 26-year-old Dick Coward as, jaw set, eyes ablaze with thwarted passion, bitterness, self-hatred and despair, he sets off to battle for what he petulantly hopes will be his last time. Not a prayer. His mind is made up. He is resolved to die.

  Not pointlessly, though, I reassure myself as we advance towards the start line. When I go, I will go heroically at the head of my troop, preferably in a way which changes the course of the battle — which, as I'm sure you know, is one of the tech­nical prerequisites for gaining a VC.

  A posthumous VC. Won't that just show 'em? My ingrate father. My poltroon of a brother! Gina! The CO. The whole bloody world!

  Up until the third bend on the zigzag path, our advance on the Eastern Feature goes well. Our three Bren Carriers, which have somehow managed to escape the debacle at Point 72, are keeping the opposition's heads down with suppressing MG fire. And our progress up the hill is being masked by clouds of smoke, laid down by our one remaining two-inch mortar.

  But then, just when we need it most, the ruddy mortar decides to run out of smoke bombs. One minute we're trip­ping up that hill, as safe as Sunday ramblers, secure in the comfort of our puffy white blanket. The next we're thinking, 'Aye aye. This can't be right. How come I can now make out the fellow in front? And the one in front of him . . .' And suddenly, there we are, all thirty of us, as pitifully exposed as sleepwalkers who've just awoken to find themselves stark bollock-naked in the middle of the wicket in the First Test at Lord's.

  From a bunker ahead a machine gun stutters, the lead man drops and so, in an instant, do the rest of us.

  'Seventy-seven grenades!' a voice bellows. Lt. Truelove's. And almost simultaneously, five men rise up just long enough to free their grenades from their webbing and hurl them ahead of us. Four of them succeed. One doesn't, reminding all of us why it is you want to rid yourself of your 77 just as soon as you can.

  Hideously effective, of course, your 77 grenades. I dare say you'd know them as White Phosphorus grenades — Willy Peter, as the Americans call them — and they're used for two main purposes. The first is the fairly innocuous one of laying down cover: when the phosphorus is exposed to air it burns to produce thick white smoke, such as the stuff now smothering our advance. The second - and this is why you hear the bleeding hearts get so uppity when it's used in places like Iraq - is for transforming your enemy into marshmallow toast. Soon as it sticks to your skin, white phosphorus, you've more or less had it. Impossible to extinguish it, you see. It just goes on burning: through leather, through cloth, through skin, flesh and bone, and short of cutting it out with your bayonet there's really nothing you can do.

  This, I'm afraid, is what is now happening to the poor fellow who tried and failed to throw his grenade. Somehow - a bullet possibly - it has been detonated while still attached to his belt, and where this chap's stomach used to be is now an unat­tractive mess of charring, smoking intestines, cauterised flesh, and white-hot burning metal. He half-turns towards me, looking down, aghast, as if scarcely able to conceive that some­thing so dreadful could possibly be happening to him and it's at this moment that I recognise him as Dent.

  His screams of agony. Such screams.

  He comes staggering down the hill towards me, his gaping midriff smoking like a bonfire.

  'Shoot me,' he begs. 'Shoot me.'

  I would, I want to, I'm trying but my trigger finger just won't respond. I'm thinking 'Dear God, this is awful. Somebody do something!' and I know it should be me, but I've become so involved with the ugliness of that wound, I can't seem to think straight.

  Then Lt. Truelove is on him with his Colt .45 pressed against Dent's temple.

  'Good lad!' he says with the warmest smile, and in his very last split second alive, Dent manages to return his saviour a semblance of a grin. Then his head evaporates in a mist of grey and red and white. And we're moving on, al
l of us, into the smoke, as if Dent had never been.

  It must be around 2220 hours now. Darkness has descended on the hillside and we have reached the top of the zigzag path, the point at which Q and A troops are to split. Up until this stage, enemy resistance has proved surprisingly light. Indeed, apart from poor Dent, we've yet to lose a man. But from here on in, we can expect the going to get stickier. There are block­houses and machine-gun nests at every turn, surrounded by minefields and coils of wire designed to funnel anyone trying to approach them straight into prepared fields of fire. It's too late to call in artillery or rocket support; we've no mortars; and we simply haven't the latitude to arrange for enfilading fire from our Brens. This is going to be a frontal assault in its purest and most brutal form: we shall split into groups and charge each individual position, guns blazing; and either the enemy will wipe us off the hill, or we shall prevail.

  Everyone knows how fragile our position is, as we hit the ground and, crawling, deploy left or right in readiness for Capt. Dangerfield's signal. I don't recall being scared. More exhilarated than anything, and I'm sure it's the same for the others. Exhilaration, plus a hint of frustration. You're keyed up; you're in position; you know that the next minute is going to decide whether you live, die or, worse, get hit in some unmentionable part of your body, and you just want to get the damned business over with.

  And there it is. A red flare in the sky, now parachuting downwards. You're cheering, bellowing your lungs out. The men either side of you are raising their battle-cry too, as their forebears would have done at Maldon and Hastings and Agincourt and Waterloo.

  Up. Not as fast as you'd like. Nothing is. It's all in slow motion now. Unreal almost, pumped up as you are with anaes­thetising adrenalin. Your senses are alive. You smell cordite and burnt grass; you smell sea tang and sweat. The noise is unimaginable. Red tracer cutting through the night. Into the inferno you advance, yelling, screaming; surrounded by your comrades yet eerily alone.

  Occasionally, you'll see a khaki form in front of you, some­times even a face you recognise, or a coil of wire to be cut or circumnavigated, or a machine-gun slit into which you can pop a grenade. From inside the bunker, a shout, then screams. Field-grey forms running; falling.