“They’re not all Krauts,” said Boxer, modestly. “Some of ’em are Russians, and lots of ’em are just kids!”
“I don’t get it, Captain,” said the American, bluntly.
“Well, there’s not all that to it,” said Boxer, patiently. “They were wandering all over the auction, and they just moved in on me! You give me the word and I’ll fetch ’em over. They’ll be eating out of your hand, the lot of ’em!”
“I can’t take over two hundred prisoners,” protested the American, “this is a combat unit!” Then, doubtfully. “Where d’you say these Krauts are located, Captain?”
“I can take you there,” said Boxer, “but I’m not really a Captain, I just borrowed this kit! It’s like this see; Old Jerry, he always goes for officer’s tabs, and I might have had trouble with ’em if they’d known I was just an O.R.”
The officer sighed at this additional complication. “Well, I guess I’d better send someone along to collect ’em,” he said. “This goddamned war don’t go by the books any more! I guess I’d better put through a call to Corps H.Q. ’bout this, Captain!”
“Yes, sir, you do that,” said Boxer, “but don’t forget to put ’em wise about my real rank. You can collect a packet of trouble for impersonating an officer in my outfit!”
“You can in any outfit,” said the Major, grimly.
A sergeant and ten men accompanied Boxer to the clearing and in the early afternoon the exodus began.
Boxer and Olga led the column and the G.I.s watched in astonishment as it emerged from the woods into the April twilight beside the river.
The officer counted them in and ordered up extra rations. He seemed to have shed his initial bewilderment and welcomed Boxer with far more cordiality than he had shown earlier in the day. He had made arrangements, he said, to convey Boxer to the nearest British unit that very night, in accordance with a special drill laid down for freed prisoners of war, but before Boxer parted from him he made a confession over a generous tot of whiskey.
“You know something, feller? I didn’t believe you, not until I actually set eyes on this rabble!”
“No,” said Boxer philosophically, “and I don’t reckon anyone else is going to believe me back home!”
He finished his drink, shook hands with the Major, and climbed into the jeep that was awaiting him at the end of the patched-up bridge.
Olga must have been watching, for she hurriedly detached herself from the group of women standing beside the road and ran towards him, shouting something that he could not understand. He realised then that he would never see Olga again and the thought tempered his pleasure at the prospect of meeting British troops again.
“So long, Olga!” he said gently, “I’m going to miss you, sister!”
She caught and kissed his hand but he hastily withdrew it when he saw the jeep driver’s knowing grin.
“Looks like you bin frattin’ in them woods, Limey,” he said.
“It wasn’t like that, chum,” insisted Boxer, as the jeep sped across the bridge, “believe it or not, it wasn’t that way at all!”
He pondered a moment, then added: “Queer that! Don’t ask me why it wasn’t, but it wasn’t!”
CHAPTER XXXIX
The Squib
JIM HAD EXPECTED the end to arrive with an explosion that would echo round the world.
Just as he had begun this war with notions based on the last, and had imagined that the winter of 1939 would find millions of men facing one another from a network of ditches, so he had taken it for granted that VE day (or, as he preferred to think of it, “Armistice Day”) would be a repetition of November 11th, 1918, with hysterical mobs thronging the West End, and soldiers riding on the bonnets of taxis.
Up to 10 a.m. on May 8th nothing like this had taken place in or around the Avenue. In some, unlooked-for fashion the end seemed to have stolen up on them, and tapped them on the shoulder. Announcements prophesying the total collapse of Germany had been dribbling out of the radio throughout the preceding week, and the most sensational event of this season of victory so far had been the spectacular end of Mussolini, upside down on a Milan lamp-bracket, his mistress beside him, displaying voluminous underpants.
These pictures had caused a mild sensation in the Avenue but after all, nobody had ever taken Mussolini very seriously, and what happened to him was irrelevant now that Italy had been out of the war for almost two years!
There had been news of exciting advances of the Russians on all sectors, and not long ago a statement about “the Battle of Berlin”, but there was nothing unexpected about this either. The Russians had been making dramatic advances ever since Stalingrad, and even a Russophile as ardent as Jim thought that it was high time they hoisted the red flag on the Chancellery!
All the capital cities had been liberated, and everywhere the hated Gestapo was being hunted down by blood-thirsty partisans. In spite of all this, however, the war continued, and there had been a good deal of gloomy talk of a last-ditch resistance in the Dolomites, the Hartz Mountains, and even Berchtesgaden! There was also much speculation on the probable flight of Hitler, Himmler, Goering and Goebbels to the Argentine, by U-Boat.
Then came the more heartening reports of Hitler’s suicide in the Bunker and of his replacement, as supreme Commander of the armed forces, by Admiral Doenitz, whose name meant very little in the Avenue. Jim found it very muddling and, in many ways, rather disappointing. More than ever he missed old Harold, and the discussions they might have had over the morning and evening news bulletins.
On the night of May 7th, when it was officially announced that the war might be considered as won, he went to bed with a feeling that he had been cheated of something, and when he took a stroll as far as the Rec’ after breakfast, and saw no flags displayed in the Avenue, he returned to Edith in a bewildered and slightly tetchy frame of mind.
“I’m hanged if I know what to make of it all!” he told his wife, when she asked him if the jollifications had begun. “It might be an ordinary Sunday in peace-time! There’s a kind of Bank Holiday air about the streets, as though everyone was lying in and taking tea up to bed! How would you like to go up West, Edith? After all, we must do something to celebrate!”
But Edith did not want to go up West. She was frightened of crowds and if she trod pavements for any length of time her feet began to give her trouble.
“I’d be a terrible drag on you, Jim dear,” she said. “You go by yourself and then come home and tell me all about it tonight! I’d much sooner slip down and do what I’ve got to do at the Granada. Then I can slip in and watch the second half of ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’. It’s such a nice film, and I’ve only seen the first half, because we were so busy all day yesterday!”
Jim could not help smiling. Here, at least, was total victory! Dictators everywhere were dead, or in hiding. Whole populations had been freed from under the iron heel of Fascism. There would be no more bombs, no more rockets, no more casualties. Yet all Edith wanted to do was to see the second half of ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ at a suburban cinema!
He was grateful, nonetheless, for her decision meant that he would see more, and be free to explore further afield. He went upstairs and put on his best navy-blue suit and his strongest and most comfortable pair of boots. As an afterthought he pinned his medal ribbons on his jacket. He did not often wear medal ribbons, and they were usually aired but once a year, at the Legion Armistice Day service, but today seemed a fitting occasion to display them. He selected a favourite walking-stick from the up-ended drainpipe in the hall, kissed Edith and set out along the Avenue, his eye cocked for any sign that today was the greatest day in recorded history.
He found the same Bank Holiday air at the station. Everyone, it seemed, was taking advantage of the public holiday and lazing about the house. It was not until he arrived at Charing Cross that he found indications that others, besides himself, expected something of the occasion. The streets were filling rapidly, and crowds were converging on Whitehall. He
followed their drift and accosted a man of about his own age, who was also displaying the 1914 star.
“What’s happening? Is it anything special?”
The man was friendly. “They say Winnie’s going to announce the victory officially,” he said.
“Where from?” said Jim, eagerly.
“From the Air Ministry, so I hear,” said the veteran.
“Why not from the Palace balcony I wonder?” said Jim. “That’s where all the hoo-hah began last time! Were you lucky enough to be on leave?”
“No,” said the man. “I was in France. I’d just gone back after a long spell in hospital. Whiff of gas on the Albert Sector, and it still bothers me a bit. I see you had a good innings out there. Were you at First Wypers?”
“Not exactly,” Jim told him, “I was over there in November ’14, but I didn’t go up the line until Neuve Chappelle!”
“Ah, that was a real bloody shambles!” said the man. “I copped my first packet there. A sniper got me in the backside! I lost a lot of good pals in that show.”
“Me, too,” said Jim.
They moved along Whitehall and the crowd was denser here. Soon a surge of people forced them apart and Jim made his way through the close ranks that were massed opposite Richmond Terrace, flattening himself against the wall as police began to clear a passage for a car that was moving out of Downing Street.
“Is that Winnie?” he demanded of a sailor, close by.
“No chum, it’s Smuts!”
Smuts, thought Jim! The little chap who had given everybody so much trouble at the end of the Boer War, now the war before last! The crowd began to cheer and Jim smiled, grimly. Who would have supposed that a London crowd would one day cheer a Boer irregular in Whitehall? It looked as though, years hence, Field Marshal Rommel would get an ovation as he passed the Cenotaph!
Then he remembered that Rommel was dead, along with Hitler, Mussolini, Goebbels and most of the other villains in the piece! Not only the principals either! Dear old Louise and Jack Strawbridge were dead, so were two of the Friths, most of the Crispins, young Albert Dodge, young Hooper of Number Six, Mrs. Westerman, Mrs. Baskerville, and dozens of others who had been minding their own business in the Avenue when Chamberlain came home from Berchtesgaden with his little piece of paper!
Well, at least that bunch hadn’t died in vain! At least they had helped to show the world that people who lived in terraced houses in British suburbs would not tolerate gangster diplomacy and mass murder indefinitely, and if the politicians did not bungle this peace, as they had bungled the last, then the survivors might hope to profit from the sacrifices of the last six years. In that case Old Harold’s shattered health and Bernard’s empty sleeve could be regarded as small investments in democracy!
His thoughts were interrupted by a vast heave of the crowd that now surrounded two sides of the Air Ministry building. At the same time a rushing sound, like a huge sigh, issued from Parliament Square, and as it swept past Jim it was taken up by the masses thronging Whitehall as far as Nelson’s column, where it seemed to burst into a roar the like of which Jim had never before heard.
He stood on his toes and looked up at the first floor windows opposite, seeing a group of people moving out on the balcony and waving at the sea of faces below them. Excitement gripped him as he recognised the thick-set figure of Churchill, standing slightly in advance of the group, one hand raised and fluttering.
The shout that accompanied his recognition sounded like the crash of a tidal wave on a reef. It rocked the buildings and bounced back, reverberating in every direction. Jim saw men and women beside him with their mouths wide open but he was unable to hear any sounds that emerged from their throats; each individual shout was lost in that vast avalanche of sound, directed up at the figure on the balcony.
Suddenly there was silence, almost complete silence, as though someone had slammed a sound-proof door on the ovation. In the two-second pause that followed it was even possible to hear a woman in front of him hiss: “Shush-shush!” as though there had been need for shushing.
Jim remembered only the first four words of the Premier’s announcement and he never afterwards forgot them, for to him they emphasised the genius of a man who had shown himself superior to every other politician in history at the art of gauging the temper of British people.
“This is your victory…!” began Churchill and the statement proved too much for the hushed crowds, for once more the wall of sound rushed down Whitehall, and was taken up by thousands too far away to see the balcony, or to know what was happening there.
After that VE Day seemed to change into top gear and Jim was able to sense relief and gladness in the people about him. For an hour or so everybody shed their inhibitions, and it looked, for a while, as if the Armistice Day scenes were about to be repeated. Jim saw a soldier embrace a W.A.A.F. underneath the commemorative plaque to Charles I’s execution outside the banqueting hall of Whitehall Palace. He saw half a dozen G.I.s jiving in the middle of Charing Cross Road. He saw an A.T.C. girl shin up a lamp-post in Westminster Bridge Road, and he saw a smiling, well-dressed Mr. Aneurin Bevan patted on the back, as he walked sedately past the statue of Abraham Lincoln in Parliament Square.
He ate his sandwiches in St. James’s Gardens and when he had rested a little made his way to Westminster Hospital, tocall on Harold.
Harold was almost well now, as well as he ever would be, but he had stayed on an extra week or so in order to avail himself of a second and more advanced course of physiotherapy.
Jim found him dressed and hobbling up and down the ward with the aid of two, rubber-tipped sticks. His face lit up when Jim called to him from the door and he came bustling over looking more cheerful and considerably more animated than Jim recalled him looking since August.
“I knew you’d come, I knew it!” he exclaimed. “I said to Mr. Crutchley here, as soon as I heard the news last night, I said: ‘You see, old Jim Carver’ll show up tomorrow, you see if he doesn’t!” Didn’t I say that, Mr. Crutchley? Didn’t I? And here you are, fresh from seeing the sights, I’ll be bound! Now sit down, Jim, sit down and tell we old crocks all about it!”
Jim sat on one of the beds and described Churchill’s announcement of the victory, and the wonderful ovation he had been given by the crowds in Whitehall. He soon saw, however, that Harold was not really interested in the VE Day celebrations. Hospital life had narrowed his outlook and both he and Mr. Crutchley would have much preferred to have discussed their injuries and courses of treatment.
Despite the occasion, and despite the warmth of his welcome in the ward, Jim was unable to rid himself of a conviction that the gaiety of these men was brittle and had been assumed partly for his benefit and partly because all the healthy people with whom they came into contact expected cheerfulness from them.
Harold, he thought, was spry enough, but perhaps a little too spry, too prone to express himself extravagantly, and altogether too eager to demonstrate how active he had become under his last course of treatment.
“He’s changed,” Jim told himself, sadly, as Harold joked and laughed with the legless Mr. Crutchley, who lay in the bed opposite. “He’s not the same fussy and straitlaced old Harold any more, since they began messing about with his arms and legs and ribs! They’ve taken some of the starchiness out of him it’s true, but damn it, I’d grown to love the starchiness because it was part of Harold, a far more endearing part of him than all this perkiness they’ve stuffed in its place!”
He made a determined effort to rediscover the old Harold by trying to open a discussion on the probable fate of the surviving Nazi leaders.
“They’ll probably put ’em all on trial and hang the whole bunch,” he said, though he did not for one moment believe this, having once fallen victim to the “Hang the Kaiser” election slogan.
“Not them,” growled Mr. Crutchley, from across the ward. “They’ll more likely make ’em Knights of the Bloody Garter!” and at once switched the conversation back to a patie
nt who had gone off his head and been taken away to the asylum the night before last.
Suddenly Jim felt an urge to return to the streets. The air of 1939 cynicism and “littleness” was poisoning the ward, and he wanted to be among people who had ceased to doubt and who believed, as he did, in the splendour of the British victory.
As he shook hands with Harold, however, a flash of their old comradeship showed in Harold’s smile.
“Well, Jim,” he said, “so it did happen after all! We finally beat the bastards, didn’t we?”
Jim looked at him, noting his sunken cheeks, his stoop, and the transparency of the veins on the back of his hands, and suddenly Harold seemed to symbolise everything that the Avenue had sold, pawned and sacrificed to prevent the Fascists from moving in, and disposing of their futures and their children’s futures.
He put his arms round Harold and held him so tightly that Harold suddenly went limp and dropped one of his sticks to the floor.
“Yes, Harold old chap, we certainly did beat the bastards, and don’t let anyone ever tell you in years to come that we didn’t!”
He bought himself some tea in a Lyons’ and then decided to have a last look around the West End, before making his way back to Charing Cross.
All the outward signs of another Mafeking night were manifest but somehow they failed to convince him. It was like some of the English carnivals he had attended as a young man, in towns like Bognor, and Southend. People thronged the streets and smiled as the tableaux trundled by, but none wore paper hats as though they enjoyed wearing them. There was extravagance and forced gaiety in the air, but it was impossible to rid oneself of the feeling that everybody had come out of doors to watch somebody else play the fool, and that each of the impromptu side-shows that offered itself as a diversion, was stage-managed by a few lucky people who had found something alcoholic to drink.
In Trafalgar Square Jim watched a party of sailors fall in and out of the fountains. They were not nearly so intoxicated as they pretended to be and their movements were deliberately unsteady, like those of a music-hall comedian performing an act.
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