Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone,
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow …’
Outside the high windows, snow was falling still, in huge heavy flakes, steadily and persistently. Beneath it, in the quiet fields, the guns were wearing white shrouds, waiting; tanks stood in line, wearing their new white camouflage, waiting; TCV’s were in position like huge white boxes, waiting; the only colour in that white landscape was the blood red of the crosses on the ambulances, waiting. One last push.
In King’s Lynn, Victor Castlemain was in the Three Tuns drinking with his cronies. They’d been at it for over an hour and in the last ten minutes they’d moved from beer to whisky and from reminiscence to confusion.
Spikey was lugubrious with self-pity. Christmas was the last thing he was thinking about. ‘Call-up papers, bor!’ he said to Victor. ‘I ask you.’
‘You knew they were coming,’ Vic told him reasonably. ‘You should have got out the way.’
‘Thass a bit late now,’ Spikey sighed. ‘They come. I got ’em. Report in six weeks.’
‘That could all be over on six weeks, bor,’ Tubby tried to comfort.
‘With my luck?’ Spikey gloomed. ‘You’ll be next, Victor.’
‘Not me,’ Vic said happily. ‘Any why? I’ll tell you why. They don’t know where I am.’
‘Your ma’ll forward it, bor.’
‘She don’t know where I am neither,’ Vic said and when his friends looked at him with drunken admiration, ‘No flies on me, bor.’
‘You’re a one, Victor!’ Tubby said.
Spikey was feeling disgruntled and decided to change the subject. ‘See anything of Spitfire these days, do you, bor?’ That wouldn’t hurt to remind him he’d lost his girl. Take the wind out of his sails. Cut him down to size.
But Victor was looking smug. ‘Spitfire?’ he said, leaning back in his chair and grinning at them. ‘Oh yes. I see her. Quite often actually.’
‘Lucky beggar!’ Tubby said enviously. ‘How d’you swing that then?’
‘Charm,’ Victor told him and laughed. ‘No, between you an’ me, I think she’s bit lonely up there in London. They’re a funny lot. Not like us. So I take her out, show her a bit of life, dancing, the flicks, that sort of thing.’
They were drunkenly impressed, Tubby openly, Spikey despite his annoyance.
‘What about that ol’ soldier?’ Spikey wanted to know.
‘While the cat’s away,’ Vic said, gazing at his image in the pub mirror. He was really rather pleased with himself. The good food of the past six months had put flesh on his bones and made him look older and more mature. More than a match for a stupid soldier. They think I’m having an affair, he thought, enjoying the grudging admiration of his cronies. Well let them. If I play my cards right, it could be an affair. Plenty of women take lovers while their husbands are abroad. In fact, if I could get a flat or a house or something, I reckon I could tease her away from him really easily. After all, she’s only known him a couple of months and I’ve known her for years. And he’s been away a good long time now. When he comes back he’ll be a stranger. When you think about it, I hold all the best cards and I’ve run a brilliant campaign so far. Now it just needs one last push. That’s all. One last push.
Chapter Twenty-Four
January is a bad time of year to embark on a new endeavour. Darkness glooms away the warmth of celebration, snow hunkers over our hopes, ice stops the breath of our dreams. It takes a strong will simply to get on with our everyday work and the effort required to wage war is superhuman. Steve and Dusty grumbled that they could quite understand why soldiers in earlier generations simply packed up and went home at the first sign of bad weather. ‘They’d got their heads screwed on!’ But a world war continues no matter what the weather. Armies simply have to adapt to it. And at least the BLA was well equipped, even if it couldn’t match the careless abundance of the Americans.
By the beginning of the year, every bit of military equipment had been painted white, including their rifles, and they and the tankies had been issued with new winter uniforms which turned out to be padded white snow suits that made them look like amiable snowmen as they plodded between their vehicles. For most of the time the infantry wore their usual motley collection of clothing, issued and scrounged, layers and layers of it, topped by leather jerkins and heavy greatcoats, but when they were out on patrol they were glad to be camouflaged, even if their special clothing was bulky, for underneath the padding they were still sweating with fear. Blood runs crimson in a field of snow.
The new campaign began with the usual massive bombardment. After seven months of more or less incessant fighting, Steve could hear it without a tremor, thankful for its power and relieved that the enemy would be thoroughly softened up before the brigade was ordered in to push them to retreat.
They moved off in the usual way too, in the early morning, before first light and under cover of a creeping barrage. It was bitterly cold and the snow was thick underfoot, which made the going heavy, and to make matters worse their smokescreen had frozen in the air so that they were surrounded by fog. The whole battalion was on the move but Steve could only see the handful of men immediately around him. And at that point things went wrong. The barrage crept too slowly and the shells fell short and began to explode among the brigade.
There was an outburst of violent swearing. ‘Fucking hell, corp! Now what?’
The only possible place to take cover was a dyke which Steve could see a hundred yards ahead of them. It was about six feet wide and was probably six feet deep too and half full of freezing water but it was better than standing out in the open waiting to be killed by friendly fire. ‘Make for the dyke!’ he yelled, waving them on, and he bellowed at their signaller as he ran, ‘Tell ’em – lift the stonk one hundred, for Christ’s sake!’
The water in the dyke was covered by a sheet of ice. It broke as they jumped in and then they were up to their waists in freezing water and gasping with the cold of it.
‘Bloody hell fire!’ Dusty shivered. ‘We’ll get fucking frost bite.’
But Steve’s message had got through and presently the shells began falling further ahead so they were able to scramble out of the water and press on, as well as their wet legs would allow them.
‘Bad enough we got to fight the bleedin’ Jerries’, Dusty grumbled, ‘without fighting the bleedin’ weather an all.’
‘No choice,’ Steve said succinctly. ‘We can bellyache all we like, it won’t stop the weather.’
But in fact, the next stage of the operation had already been postponed for twelve hours because of the fog which was thickening by the minute. Steve and Dusty weren’t the only ones to recognise that the weather was a second enemy to be watched as closely as the Germans. The brigade needed at least partial visibility if they were to advance without taking too many casualties, and the state of the ground required careful observation too, for tanks could only be used if the going was firm enough. After their long hard slog from Normandy, they’d all learned to be resourceful, to cope with changes of plan, and not to take any risks that could be avoided.
The brigade’s first task that day was to bridge the Vloed Beek, which was a twenty-foot stream which was now blocking their advance. When they reached it, they found, as they expected, that the original bridges had all been blown, but they managed to get across by using specially constructed ladders, grappled together across the width of water. Not an easy job because they were very exposed, even with the continuing fog as cover, and they came under heavy enemy shelling and some small arms fire and took too many casualties. But it was done, and the foothold was enough.
The fog thickened during the day and was made worse by the smoke from their twenty-five pounders. By afternoon, vision was reduced to a few yards. Then, as if that wasn’t enough to contend with, there was a partial thaw which left the snow thick in the fields but filled the roads with half frozen mud. The Gebroek road to their supplies in the west was soon
impassable even to tracks and it wasn’t long before they heard that the supply lorries were bogged down.
‘What fucking next?’ Dusty growled.
‘Night,’ Steve told him.
‘Smashing!’ Dusty said sarcastically. ‘Ain’t we the lucky ones!’
That night was pitch dark and it was snowing as they set off, but the advance continued nevertheless. Each company could only take one Jeep and a carrier with them for essential stores and ammunition, it was impossible to manhandle the six-pounder anti-tank guns across the dykes in the dark and, naturally, they had to cope with a counter-attack. It came from the direction of Susteren, and began just as the leading Company and Battalion HQ were crossing the stream and at their most vulnerable. The column dropped off Bren gun teams at once to return fire and after a while the 3rd Royal Horse Artillery joined in with a heavy bombardment on the flank of the leading company. Their fire was so massive and so accurate that the attack petered out. But presently it began to snow again, this time heavily. By the time morning came, they were chilled and irritable and wearily apprehensive about what they would have to cope with next. Or as Dusty put it, ‘bitched, buggered and bewildered’.
It was a sharp cold morning and surprisingly quiet, the landscape shrouded with drifting fog, the fields freshly covered with snow. They were rested and fed and, towards afternoon, advanced to the next dyke, watching out for snipers and holding themselves ready for another counter-attack. But none came. The dyke was crossed without a shot being fired and the field before them was empty.
They advanced with caution, line abreast, rifles cocked, breath streaming before them, boots leaving deep pits in the snow, one yard, two, three …
The first mine exploded with a crack that made them all jump. There was a man down – Percy was it? – both feet gone, blood spurting into the snow. But before Steve could open his mouth to call a halt, there were two more explosions and two more down.
‘Stand still, for Christ’s sake,’ he yelled. ‘Don’t move!’ And when they’d all stopped and there were no more explosions, ‘Follow your footsteps back.’
So they retreated by way of their own footprints, carrying their mangled casualties with them. The mines had been a matter of inches underneath the snow.
‘Crafty sods!’ Steve said to Dusty as they regrouped to await orders. ‘They’ve just laid the fucking things down and buggered off and let the next fall cover them up. They must’ve done it last night when it was heavy.’
Dusty was thinking about their casualties. ‘Was it both feet?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘Poor old Percy.’
‘Yep.’
‘That’s him out of it then.’
And we’re still here, Steve thought as the stretcher bearers carried their wounded away, and apart from the odd flesh wound now and then, we’re in one piece. He’d been shaking with fear and fury as the mines exploded but now he was too tired to feel glad about their escape. It was a fact, that was all, like coming under fire as you crossed a stream, and being shelled by your own side, and watching your mates die, and everything else in this god-forsaken war.
It was deceptively peaceful out there in the snow for there was still no sight or sound of the Germans. As they waited, a sharp wind began to blow. It stung their unprotected faces and swept the newly fallen snow into drifts against every obstacle, from tree stumps to the wreckage of the exploded mines. But at least it blew away the fog. Now they could see that the sky was that peculiarly colourless white that follows heavy snowfall. What trees there were stood gaunt and black against the horizon, some shattered by shells, some bearing crows like burdens. And about a mile to the east, there was a lone farmhouse, crouched under its roof of snow, the brown smoke from its chimney smudging the empty sky. For the first time since his arrival Steve thought about the local inhabitants and what the war was doing to them.
‘It must be hell for people living here,’ he said.
Dusty was lighting a cigarette. ‘It’s hell, full stop,’ he said, drawing in the first sharp drag. The smoke was hot in his throat and made him cough. He turned his head and spat into the snow. ‘That to war!’
Steve was still thinking about the locals. Left alone to lead their lives in peace, they would have drowsed out the winter, quietly indoors. Now everything they knew was being smashed, their houses gutted, their livestock killed, their fields littered with the debris of war, the burnt-out tanks, broken vehicles, smashed guns, empty tins and bottles, spent cartridge cases, fag-ends, used dressings, vomit and shit and every conceivable kind of filth, miles and miles of it strewn across the countryside. He was drawn with pity for them. Even when the war’s over, their lives will never be the same again. Any more than ours will.
Orders were coming through. ‘Corporal Wilkins, take six men …’
The atrocious weather had frozen the British Isles as well as Europe, and according to the papers, London was the coldest place in the country. On January 6th, the Mirror reported that it had been 18 degrees below freezing at Kew overnight, and by the end of the month there were rumours that down in Dover the sea had frozen over.
‘Great sheets of ice, it says here,’ Joyce told her family, reading the paper avidly. ‘I wouldn’t half like to go there an’ see it.’
‘With your chilblains!’ her mother laughed at her. ‘You’d be hobbling for months.’
‘At least it’s put paid to the rockets,’ Sis said. ‘We ain’t had nowhere near so many a’ the beggars these last few days. An’ they’ve lifted the blackout. It ain’t all bad.’ It was a relief to her to be able to walk to work or to go visiting without having to carry a torch.
Heather was more interested in the war reports. The only way she could cope with the winter was to ignore it – snow, icy roads, burst pipes, the dilapidated state of the town, standing in a biting wind in those endless back-breaking queues, Barbara’s perpetual gadding about, which was a weekly source of nagging irritation, even though she knew she was only going to the pictures with her friends from work. As the cold days passed, she buoyed herself up with the thought that spring was coming and that the war would soon be over, no matter how hard life might be at the moment. And it was hard. Food had never been in such short supply nor such poor quality, potatoes so full of eyes they were no bigger than marbles once they’d been peeled, bread grey and much adulterated, bacon limited, eggs a thing of the past.
As Victor was told by one of his farming friends. ‘No good asking fer eggs,’ he said, a bit too cheerfully. ‘Hens won’t come into lay till the spring. Tell ’em they’ll have to make do with powdered.’
Victor didn’t think much of that for an answer. ‘Might as well be eating rubber,’ he said.
‘It’s rubber or nothing!’ the farmer told him. ‘Roll on peacetime, eh?’
It was galling to have customers waiting and no goods to sell them, especially as the Skibbereen had just talked his way into opening the gate on a consignment of tinned peaches and had then sold them on himself without offering anyone else so much as a single tin. From time to time he called on the entire gang to assist, including Victor and Phossie, so they were obviously still in his employ – but he did them no favours.
‘We can go hang, you notice,’ Phossie grumbled, as they mooched round the corner to the pub. ‘He don’t care. No skin off his nose.’ Then his tone changed abruptly. ‘Oh Christ!’
‘What?’ Vic asked, following his friend’s frightened gaze. ‘What is it?’
It was two military policemen, red caps bold in the light from the pub windows, striding along the road in their menacingly purposeful way.
‘I’m off!’ Phossie said, and disappeared into the darkness of the nearest alley.
Now who’s going to pay for the beer? Vic thought crossly. With few goods of his own to sell and the Skibbereen providing fewer opportunities, he was rather short of cash at the moment and he needed every penny he could scrape together now that he was taking Spitfire out. The final push he’d pro
mised himself at Christmas was still eluding him, although they went to the pictures at least once a week. We’re all grinding to a halt, he thought as he walked on to the pub, and that’s bad for trade. People won’t buy things when they’re feeling low. What we need is something to give us a lift. A victory or something. In the meantime, he’d have to find someone else to stand the round that evening.
But the lift they needed didn’t come until the beginning of March, when the snow had thawed and spring had finally arrived. Then and at last, the news they all wanted to hear was blazed across the front page. The US 3rd Army had crossed the Rhine. Now, with the Russians over the River Oder and within forty miles of Berlin, the Allied trap was closing around the hated Third Reich at last.
‘Great stuff!’ Bob said, when he’d read it. ‘The beginning of the end.’
‘Can’t be more than a few months now,’ Sis agreed. ‘We could have our general election by the summer.’
And Steve will be home for it, Barbara thought. Oh it was good news. Just keep him safe till it’s all over, she prayed. Thass all I want.
Even Heather raised a smile.
And in his dark kitchen in the Isle of Dogs, Victor was delighted. But once he’d scanned the headlines, he went on to read an article lower down the page, his attention caught by the new and exciting word ‘prefabricated’.
We have a chance to rebuild 1,000,000 damaged homes, or to replace them with new pre-fabricated houses. Now what about these emergency houses? What are they like? Work will start on them as soon as the war is over and there are plans to build more than a million. I have seen the fullsized model myself and steps are being taken to make sure that a good number of housewives have a chance of expressing their views about them. Currently on view at the following sites …’
This is it! he thought. This is the push I need. I’ll promise her a home of her own. She’ll never be able to resist that. Not after living in the North End. That’s a clincher. More than that stupid soldier will ever be able to offer her.
Avalanche of Daisies Page 30