The men trooped off as though they had just been sentenced to the gallows.
‘Will we have tents?’ enquired Chalkie.
‘No,’ said Taffy. ‘That’s old-fashioned. You sleep in a ditch.’
‘What! With my chest?’ exclaimed Jock. ‘It’ll kill me.’
‘You won’t be missed,’ said Alf. ‘You’re a miserable bastard anyway.’
‘If you were in Germany,’ said Jock, ‘they’d cut your bollocks off and feed them to the pigs.’
Alf was stunned at this vicious display of ingrained anti-Semitism. ‘Fuck off, you Scotch nit,’ he said lamely.
The next morning there was a long queue outside Captain Martin’s surgery. It seemed that apart from Jimmy, Daft Charlie and Harry Boy Fortune, everybody else was reporting sick. Martin looked out of his office window and poured himself a second whisky. He noticed that his hand was shaking again. It was over three years ago, but the scene where he ran about on the beach, at a loss how to cope with so many casualties, was still vivid in his mind. He was five years in the army and had been on various sorties, but nothing had prepared him for this. He felt completely useless. There were men bleeding, moaning, shouting to him, pleading, swearing. He could hardly cope with his own fear. German planes were still swooping low, firing machine-guns. He prayed he would catch a lucky bullet. Not to get killed but just to incapacitate him, enough to relieve him of his responsibilities. He was attached to the Paras. He proudly wore the red beret and felt special when he was out. Girls stared at him and sometimes made pretty frank overtures. After the massacre at Dunkirk he was put up for a medical. He joked about the ‘noises in my head’, but he knew it was serious. He could have been invalided out, but he was graded CI, getting postings around the country but never free of the frantic scenes when he failed to cope with an emergency. When he got out of bed in the morning he was faced with a whole panorama of agonized faces. The eyes of the dead and the dying. Their voices cursing him. He had to sit still until it settled down. The eyes still followed him, even when they’d stopped seeing.
And now he had been put into this preposterous position. He was responsible for these men’s welfare. He knew they were lead-swingers, but there was always the doubt that one of them might have a critical malady, a sudden upsurge of something nasty, which it was his job to spot. He called to the orderly. ‘Tell them to go away.’
‘Right, sir,’ said the orderly and then, ‘You sure?’
‘They all want to get out of this exercise business. Not bad judges,’ said the Medical Officer. ‘It’ll be a bloody shambles. Go on. Tell them to dismiss.’
There was shouted indignation from outside the window. Nobody moved. The men reporting sick expected some form of examination, to be able to plead their case. To threaten the Captain with their death if he didn’t deal with them properly.
Captain Martin took another swig and opened the door. A small cheer arose at his appearance. After all he was a doctor. A doctor first and an army officer second. He had taken an oath not to let sick people die in the snow. He would protect them from the mad Major and his bloody box of soldiers.
Captain Martin, MO, stepped outside and faced the men, who looked at him as though he had suddenly sprouted a halo.
‘Now look,’ he began diffidently. ‘I don’t like this business any more than you do. But the fact is that whatever ails you, and I have all your medical records, it couldn’t have come to a critical stage overnight. Certainly not for all of you.’
The men looked at him, puzzled. Once again he had been found wanting. Letting people down.
‘You’re supposed to examine us,’ came a voice from the ranks, followed by a chorus of agreement.
‘I’m giving you all M and D,’ he said. ‘My advice to you is to soldier on. A few nights out won’t do you any harm.’
M and D – medicine and duty – was a term used to cover general malingering.
If you got M and D you had been rumbled.
‘Dismiss!’
‘I’m going to report him,’ said Chalkie.
‘Who to?’ asked Taffy.
‘I don’t know,’ said Chalkie belligerently. ‘But I’ll find out.’
All the evening, and the next day, the platoon was packing. Unfamiliar implements such as mess tins had to be cleaned and polished. It was like being back in the army.
Daft Charlie was working overtime on the Major’s kit. There was a camp bed, which would be carried in the Major’s truck. The old man couldn’t be expected to rough it in the open air.
Harry Boy brought up a problem which nearly stumped the Major. ‘What about the prisoner, sir?’
‘Eh?’ responded the Major irritably.
‘The German. From the hospital.’
‘Oh yes. I was thinking about him. He’ll have to come with us of course. But under special armed guard.’
‘I don’t think he wants to run away, sir. He thinks he’s on our side.’
The Major had one of his flashes of mad brilliance. ‘That lad, with the bayonet. He’ll be in charge of him.’
Harry was shocked. To put the crafty Mayer in the hands of young Jimmy Fossett, nearly a raw recruit, was like shoving Albert into the lion’s cage.
‘Do you think so, sir?’
‘Yes, I do. Give him a chance to win his spurs back, eh?’
Harry had long suspected that the old man was losing his grip on reality, but this proved it. Harry could manage him on a day-to-day basis, but on this mad escapade anything could happen.
The platoon squeezed into six trucks, and nobody cheered as they set off. They soon deduced that they were going north. They went through Wigan and Preston and out on to an open road. All the signposts had been removed to make things harder for any enemy parachutist that might drop in. The trouble with this scheme was that nobody else knew where they were either.
The Major had a big map case. He had been given a map reference, but he had no idea how far away it was. The convoy came to a small town, and he got out of his truck, carrying his case, to consult a small boy delivering newspapers, who was the only human around at the time.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said, climbing back in. ‘I thought so. Nowhere near yet.’
They seemed to be in wide open country. Trees and gorse bushes and sometimes sheep formed a rural landscape, with streams trickling alongside the narrow road.
‘There should be a wood around here somewhere,’ said the Major.
‘Is it time for a toilet stop, sir?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Five minutes.’
The platoon jumped out of the trucks and stood in a line, peeing into a hedge.
A car went by, and several of the men turned waving their penises, while the rest cheered.
‘Stop that!’ the Major shouted.
‘Can’t take them anywhere, can you?’ observed Harry.
The men started to light up. They weren’t allowed to smoke on the trucks.
Harry addressed the driver. ‘Where are we?’
‘Fuck knows,’ he replied.
‘Where’s that map reference?’
‘Here. I think we’re on our way to Windermere – you know, the lake.’
‘Look at this,’ said Harry. ‘As far as I can see we should be in north Wales.’
‘He said right, when we started off.’
‘He always says right. Doesn’t mean turn right. It’s just something he says. Should have been left!’
‘Well, he said right,’ said the driver doggedly.
Harry approached his superior who was impatiently waiting for the platoon to finish smoking.
‘Just looked at the map, sir. I don’t think we’re on the right course.’
The Major looked blank. ‘What’s that? What d’you mean?’
‘We’re too high up.’ Harry hitched the map up for him to see.
The old man fumbled for his spectacles. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I think so, sir. Of course I may have got it wrong.’
The Major p
eered at the map. The lance-corporal could see the nerves tighten in his face and neck. ‘I don’t know,’ said the Major thoughtfully. ‘No. You could be right, Harry. Wasn’t clear, was it?’
‘No,’ said Harry stoutly. ‘Misleading.’
‘I suppose we’d better go back. Put us a bit behind time. Has anything come over the wire?’ One of the trucks had a Morse code receiver.
‘Nobody has said anything.’
The Major’s truck backed across the road and set off on the way it had arrived.
There were cheers from the men when they realized they were retracing their steps.
‘Blind leading the blind,’ said Taffy.
‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers,’ said Alf.
‘It might be a manoeuvre,’ said Corporal Gross. ‘Leading them up the garden path.’
‘It’s us that’s up the garden path,’ said Jock. ‘Silly old cunt couldn’t run an ice-cream van.’
By now it was getting towards midday, and Harry knew that the men would be expecting something to eat and drink. ‘Where are you going to stop for lunch, sir?’
The Major was sweating. ‘Place along here I think,’ he said firmly, as though everything was in hand.
A truck from the rear overtook the Major’s vehicle and stopped in front. The bulky figure of Captain Martin, MO, descended and marched back. ‘The men need feeding. At least a drink.’
‘Of course,’ said the Major. ‘I’m just looking for a suitable place.’
‘Been going nearly six hours,’ Martin pointed out.
‘I know, Captain. I know. We’ll stop when I can see an opening. To get off the road.’
In the next-to-last truck Mayer, the German prisoner, said, ‘Tommy …’
Jimmy Fossett, fed up, cold and miserable, responded, ‘It’s Jimmy. Not Tommy.’
‘Gut. Timmy. Are we getting anything?’ Mayer put his fingers in his mouth. ‘Essen?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jimmy. ‘Nobody tells me anything.’ He sat with his rifle between his legs. It wasn’t loaded. He had no intention of using it. If the bloody stupid German wanted to make a run for it he could go. He was at the end of his tether. What the hell were they doing? Dragging around the country in a truck that registered every pothole and lurched at every corner. And making him guard this mad German who thought he was in the British Army.
‘Gott say the Kink!’ he said frequently.
If he wanted to be in the British Army he would have to learn not to be so patriotic.
‘We turn back,’ said Mayer. ‘Are we in retreat?’
Eventually the Major spotted a clearing. He directed the driver to leave the road. He had chosen a marshy patch, and the wheels started spinning. The other trucks followed, spurting mud up the sides. The men began to tumble out.
‘Fall the men in, Sergeant-Major,’ the Major said.
The slommocky crew tried to assemble some sort of order in the mud.
‘The first thing we have to do is camouflage the trucks. Each of you collect some tree branches, leaves, anything you can. We don’t want to be spotted. Cooks, brew up. The rest of you get at it. In ten minutes I don’t want to see these vehicles.’
The medley of malcontents started ripping branches off trees.
‘He thinks he’s bloody Robin Hood,’ said Taffy.
‘I wish I could find Maid Marian,’ responded Chalkie. ‘I had a screw lined up for tonight. Lovely girl. Can’t do enough for you.’
By degrees the trucks were covered in foliage to the Major’s satisfaction. ‘Good work. Now then, how’s that char coming on?’
The tea was dispensed, and the men started to relax, sitting around the fire.
‘Ought to put the old fool on top and set fire to him,’ said Jock.
‘Here,’ said Chalkie. ‘Ain’t that a pub over there?’
All eyes scouted the horizon.
‘It won’t be open.’
‘No, but it will be later.’
‘Depends how long we’re here, don’t it?’
Huge sandwiches containing cheese or bully beef were being handed round.
‘Is this what we’re getting? Need something hot.’
‘The old man says that smoke would give our position away.’
‘I wish we could give him away. Stupid old cunt.’
The Major was in earnest discussion with his faithful batman. ‘What d’you make of this, Harry?’ He had spread the map over one of the bonnets of the vehicles.
‘We’re here,’ Harry pointed. ‘We’ve got about another fifty miles to do.’
‘We must be in position before nightfall,’ said the Major. He was beginning to get irritable. About this time he should have been imbibing a brandy and soda and looking forward to his dinner.
Harry knew the signs. ‘Been a hard day,’ he said. ‘Would it matter if we stayed here tonight and set off at the crack of dawn? I’m sure the men would appreciate the break.’
So this was how the quiet country pub, the Valley Arms, had an unexpected influx of trade on a September evening. It didn’t normally open until seven, but at six o’clock there were people banging on the door and windows demanding entry.
The hostelry didn’t open before seven because there was a shortage of beer. Six barrels was all they could get for the week. The locals who drank it were just going through the motions. The beer was so weak that one customer would need to drink the whole six barrels before he felt even slightly tipsy, although many of the regulars, after three pints, would assume that they were floating, just a bit, out of force of habit.
If the platoon were in London, or any big city, they wouldn’t expect to pay for drinks. Nothing was too good for ‘our boys’. As soon as they got to the bar a voice would shout, ‘I’ll pay for that’, the owner assuming that these were fighting soldiers on leave, and no one in the platoon ever disabused them of this notion.
It was Harry Boy who negotiated the deal for them to visit the pub.
‘They need a bit of recreation, sir. After all, what can they do here all night?’
‘Of course. As a matter of fact I might pop over myself.’ The day had not worn well for the Major. He knew that the cock-up was his fault and reminded himself that it was a long time since he’d had his eyes tested.
The cooks had made an improvised stove and were cooking in a big iron pot.
‘Keep the smoke down,’ said the Major. ‘Don’t want to give our position away.’
As they were about fifty miles off course this instruction puzzled them. Harry shrugged his shoulders. He was a good officer. Gave him leave when he wanted it. Never knew whether he had signed a pass, especially when Harry had forged it himself. What did it matter if he was a bit barmy? You couldn’t have everything.
The platoon played a desultory game of football outside the pub while they waited for it to open, during which Chalkie seemed to be the target as much as the ball. He got rolled in the mud until his face was plastered. ‘Good camouflage, that man,’ said the Major when he saw him.
Reluctantly the landlord opened the doors, and the troop muddied in. The Major went into the private bar and the rest into the public. The regulars in the public bar soon joined the Major in the private, alarmed at the ramshackle appearance of the invaders.
The publican looked alarmed when he saw a dozen muddy figures at the bar. ‘What will it be, boys?’ he enquired.
‘Mild and bitter,’ they chorused. ‘Got anything to eat?’
The landlord flinched and shouted for the barman. He could see his normally quiet little hostelry turned into a Wild West saloon.
The barman emerged from the cellar and set up the glasses. The soldiers had sprawled all over the bar. Some had taken off their boots and were picking off the caked mud. Some had taken their tunics off and were scratching madly under their shirts. One had taken off his socks and was picking at some hard skin off the soles of his feet. A group were playing a complicated betting game which involved spinning a tin helmet on the floor. The inevita
ble brag school had started, with players getting the nod from mates positioned to see the other players’ hands.
The landlord was amazed at the soldiers’ rate of consumption. He was used to his regulars drooling over a pint for three-quarters of an hour or so, but this crew were back at the bar within five minutes of being served. He would be out of beer long before time at this rate.
In the private bar the Major had got into conversation with two land girls. Nice types. One was from Storrington, a small town quite near to Chichester, so they had some geography in common. The other, rather haughty, was from London. She didn’t like the countryside at all. ‘Smelly,’ she said. ‘Everything reeks.’
He could hear the noise from the adjoining bar. He hoped that no one was helpless yet. Captain Martin came in, and the Major offered to buy him a drink, but the taciturn Captain wanted to buy his own.
‘How long is this nonsense going on?’ he demanded.
‘Don’t know that,’ said the Major. ‘Awaiting instructions. If we get rumbled we have to wear a blue armband.’
‘We won’t be rumbled,’ said the Captain. ‘We won’t get near enough.’
At nine o’clock the landlord put towels over the pumps. ‘Sorry, lads. No more beer.’
‘What! It’s not on ration.’
‘It is. I only get four barrels a week,’ he lied. ‘It usually just about goes, but when you get a mob in like this …’
‘We’ll go on shorts,’ Jock shouted. ‘Get out the whisky. Same price, mind you. It’s not our fault you’ve run out of beer.’
Not everybody was at the party. Harry Fortune thought it inadvisable to take a German prisoner under armed guard into a public house. It might cause a panic. The shock could cause members of the public to have a go. The general frustrations of the war might boil over to a lynching or something.
So Jimmy Fossett and his prisoner were left sitting in the back of a truck. Jimmy didn’t care much about missing the outing. He was in the depths of misery. It was dense dark. He was cold and hungry. His feet were like blocks of ice, and the stupid German kept asking him silly questions.
‘Timmy. Do you like being a soldier?’
‘No. I was called up.’
‘Timmy. Are you cold?’
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