‘You think that’s why they didn’t try?’ said Eisenhower. ‘They knew the score?’
‘Oh, Hitler knew well enough. Ample men, plenty of weapons, they were winning everything. My God, if they’d played us at cricket just then, I think they would have won. But they couldn’t get to us. That strip of water was, not for the first time, our salvation. They got together a mad sort of armada, coal barges, tugs, motor boats, paddle steamers.’ He snorted: ‘Ha! It would have been like Dunkirk in reverse. They even had a sort of concrete submarine, for God’s sake. Even if they’d managed to get ashore, which is doubtful, the Royal Navy would have simply cut them off. In the end they realized the thing was a non-starter.’
‘They thought Russia was a better bet,’ said Eisenhower.
‘It was easier. They didn’t have to cross the water. Just rivers. Military men know all about rivers. They don’t know how to cross the sea. Never have done.’
‘We’ve got to learn everything new,’ cautioned Eisenhower. ‘It’s okay having the landing craft, if we get enough of them, that is, but getting them ashore in the right places at the right time on the right side, in the right weather conditions. That’s going to be the crunch. This length of beach, and the ocean here, are going to be pretty important to us. If we don’t get it right here, we’re never going to get it right on the other side when the real party begins.’ He asked for a map and Scarlett handed one to him. Curiously, instead of looking at it immediately he covered the sea with his field glasses. Montgomery pointed out the headlands at either flank of the horizon, his hand and finger stretching out dramatically. Once more Bryant, standing at the rear of the group, had a mental picture of ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’.
‘Start Bay,’ muttered Eisenhower eventually, looking down at the map. ‘Well, it couldn’t have a better name than that.’
A British Army look-out, Private Walt Walters, posted at the apex of the steep street of Wilcoombe and equipped with a lady’s bicycle (all that was available and serviceable on the gun-site at that time), spotted the white helmets of the American escort when they were still more than a mile distant. Mounting his machine he clattered down the hill, curling along the quayside at its foot, and eventually arriving with some spectacle into the small camp.
Sergeant Bullivant was waiting. ‘They’re coming, sarge,’ reported Walters, pulling the bicycle from between his legs. ‘They’ll be here in two wobbles of a duck’s arse.’
Bullivant mistook his excitement for panic. ‘Calm!’ he bellowed with the entire force of his fat voice. ‘Keep calm, lad.’
Walters blinked and picked up his bicycle. ‘I am calm as calm, sarge,’ he complained. A grin began. ‘But I reckon you’d better get moving.’
The bulky Bullivant moved. He charged across the small parade ground, picking up his rattling stick as he did so and running it along the corrugated exteriors of the nissen huts. ‘Out!’ he howled. ‘Everybody out! Come on, moooooooove!’ His thick khaki thighs now thrust like pistons as he sprinted towards the orderly room. Captain Westerman was already looking from his window with doleful apprehension. Bullivant made signs through the glass. Westerman reacted as he might have reacted had a strong enemy force been sighted, rushing around the orderly room trying to locate his cap, which, having been found, he rammed upon his head like some sort of protective lid. He leaped from the office steps as the soldiers of the sparse unit were forming up on the miniature barrack square. God, he thought again, why weren’t there more of them?
Sergeant Bullivant was already bellowing orders, confusing the troops and attracting curious civilian bystanders to the perimeter wire of the small camp. Westerman felt himself break into springs of sweat beneath his battledress. He marched to Bullivant as correctly as he could contrive and whispered, ‘Calm, sergeant. Very calm.’
Bullivant looked surprised and annoyed and for a moment Westerman had an unpleasant feeling he was going to make a disparaging reply. He swallowed it, however, with a tight sucking-in of his reddened cheeks. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said instead. ‘Very calm, sir.’
Within himself he thought: ‘I hope the bloody gun works, mate, for your sake.’ They had been having trouble elevating the gun due to a faulty valve.
Westerman looked distraughtly at Bullivant. ‘I hope to God the gun works, sergeant. Just this once.’
‘So do I, sir,’ replied Bullivant woodenly.
Westerman threw a look at him. ‘Oh, come on,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t let’s fall out now. Not you and I. Not with Monty and this blessed Yank coming.’ He thought about it, then thrust out his hand. ‘Still friends?’ he said. Bullivant, surprised, shook it. ‘All right, sir. You’ll get all the usual co-operation from me, sir.’
The exchange was missed by the troops and the spectators, who, without exception, were now looking expectantly towards the foot of the hill. The growl of the motorcycles became loud, their note changing as they made the steep descent. ‘Ready, sergeant?’ whispered Westerman, almost pleading. ‘Are we ready?’
‘Ready as we’ll ever be,’ answered Bullivant from the edge of his mouth.
‘Who be coming?’ shouted a woman called Fat Meg from the growing group of spectators at the gate. ‘Be it the King?’
‘Christ,’ muttered Westerman, realizing, not for the first time, the implications of having a military boundary with a parade ground on one side and a public street on the other. ‘I hope they’re not going to start.’ He turned to Bullivant. ‘Ask that mob to keep quiet will you, sergeant.’ He added: ‘I’ll watch the men,’ as if he thought his troops might at any moment turn and run.
Bullivant saluted, sulkily again. He sighed as he marched towards the gate. ‘Now, everybody, move on, if you please,’ he said to the crowd which now numbered about thirty. Children were being pushed to the fore so that they could better observe whatever there was to observe. The West Country faces contemplated the sergeant solidly. ‘Move on, if you please,’ he repeated. ‘It’s nothing to get excited about. It’s not the King, I promise you. It’s definitely not the King.’
‘I bain’t movin’,’ said the formidable Meg. She was uncouth and grey as an old woman, which she was not, hairs growing from her heavy face. Her cherry red coat was fastened at her throat with a huge safety pin, as a cloak might be. ‘I bain’t movin’ until I seed what I come to see,’ she added emphatically.
There was a general grumble of approval from the crowd. ‘I’m telling you to move on,’ repeated Bullivant, his voice edged with desperation.
‘You an’ whose army?’ demanded the gross woman in the red coat. The simple aptness of the remark brought a collective chortle from the crowd. More people arrived, demanding to know what was going to happen. Bullivant felt like a beleaguered commissionaire. He sensed more than saw Westerman’s approach. Breathing patience, the officer, cane fixed like a seat across his backside, strode to the fence. ‘They won’t move, sir,’ muttered the sergeant miserably. He heard the officer’s exhaled frustration.
‘Now listen you people,’ Westerman said patiently. ‘We’d really be terribly grateful if you cleared off. This is purely a military matter.’
There was a mildly impressed silence and for a moment Westerman believed he had triumphed. But the motorcycles were sounding as they came down the village hill, their note again changing. ‘I be stayin’ for one,’ announced Meg. ‘They throw’d me out of my ’ouse last week, the so-called bloody military. I reckon I got a right to see what be going on.’
‘Quite right you ’ave,’ bawled a man. ‘You got the right, Meg!’
Westerman latched with desperate archness on to the name. ‘Meg,’ he pleaded. ‘Be a good girl and move on.’
She fixed his weak blue eyes with her full hairy stare. ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘I be staying ’ere.’ She thought of something funny. ‘My feet be ’urting.’
The small crowd collapsed with laughter at this sally. Suddenly, at the turn of the hill, appeared the first formation of four military police, helmets like light bulbs, their legs grip
ping their muscular motorcycles. With a last, lost look at the assembly, transferred at once as exasperation to Bullivant, Westerman jerked his head and hurried back to the anxious ranks of his soldiers. Bullivant bundled after him. The sentry at the gate was called to attention by the corporal of the guard and another sentry opened the barrier. At once the crowd began to cheer. In the arriving staff car they had recognized Montgomery, and quickly afterwards Eisenhower. Enormous excitement flew through the small group, anticipation mixed with the avid curiosity of remote people who had never seen anyone famous. But the emotions did not include reverence. As the cars paused by the gate the Wilcoombe folk rushed forward. The military police, encumbered by the motorcycles, could do nothing. The British sentry was pushed back against his own box with one forceful hand by the red-coated woman. Devon faces, the faces of a thousand years, were pressed against the car windows at both sides and several at the windscreen.
Earthy hands were waved and disarranged rural teeth grimaced with friendship. From within the car their voices sounded muted but unquestionably demanding. Eisenhower waved feebly back.
Meg, who was now enjoying the status of undisputed mob leader, forced her jellyfish mouth against the window of the car: ‘’Ow be’ee, Monty?’ came her blunted bellow. ‘’Ow be’ee, boy?’
The inquiry evoked a stiff, unhappy nod from Montgomery, and encouraged a chorus of similar greetings from the people crowding the car. Eisenhower looked perplexed. ‘They seem friendly folks,’ he observed. ‘Maybe we had better just turn the window down.’
‘On no account,’ replied Montgomery savagely. ‘The blighters will be in the car in no time.’ He turned to the front. ‘Hurry along, driver.’
They were relieved when the vehicle moved forward obediently, pushing aside the faces. Even as it moved Meg tried to keep her mouth against the window, further inquiring as to what Montgomery was doing there. Her lips slid across the glass making a trail like a snail.
The car moved on to the small parade ground and the gate guards, with no little difficulty, closed the barrier on the crowd which re-formed behind the perimeter wire, like prisoners in a barbed compound. They now fell to silence, however, watching the proceedings with hushed fascination. Their eyes and expressions followed every salute and introduction taking place on the camp area. They might even have detected Captain Westerman’s trembling as he presented his unit to the polite inspection of the Supreme Commander Europe and the less charitable scrutiny of General Montgomery.
Bryant hovered nervously, making ready to interpolate should he be needed in his function as liaison officer. Westerman looked in more need of liaison than anyone. Eisenhower and Montgomery strolled, the latter sniffing at the place.
‘Very small unit, of course,’ mentioned Montgomery. ‘Almost minuscule.’
‘Sure,’ agreed Eisenhower amiably. ‘We have small units too. No good overmanning anything.’
‘Established to pick off any overflying German aircraft from Plymouth. But it’s all been a trifle quiet for a while.’
‘I liked the flowers at the gate,’ said Eisenhower with a quarter of an inch of grin at the right edge of his wide mouth.
‘Daffodils,’ answered Montgomery not noticing. ‘They grow very early down here. Very mild, you know. I think we’d better take a look at the gun. The chaps will be disappointed if we don’t.’
‘Let’s not disappoint them,’ answered Eisenhower. They walked towards the recumbent gun and Westerman, fluttering like a nervous wine waiter, approached to discover their wishes.
‘The gun, sir?’ he said. Oh Jesus Christ, the gun. They would want to look at the gun. ‘Yes, of course, the gun.’ The generals wandered ahead like a pair of university dons, hands behind backs in nodding conversation. Captain Westerman caught Bryant’s eye. Bryant moved to him. ‘I’m not sure the gun’s working,’ Westerman whispered. ‘Valve trouble. It would be awful if we couldn’t get it up.’
Bryant swallowed nervously. ‘Yes, it would,’ he muttered unhappily. ‘But when Montgomery wants to see a gun, he wants to see it.’
Westerman closed his eyes as if dispatching a quick prayer. He turned on Bullivant. ‘Sergeant,’ he said with quivering sternness, ‘gun crew to action stations.’
Bullivant nodded wildly. ‘It may not ackle, sir,’ he whispered.
‘It’s got to bloody-well ackle,’ returned Westerman nastily. ‘Get them fallen in.’
Bullivant shrugged, then tightening his fat body like an inflated bladder, he bawled the order: ‘Gun crew – to action stations!’
The crew broke ranks and ran towards the gun. This apparently impressed the watchers outside the fence, their numbers now further grown, for there was a rumble of approval and even a slight movement of applause. The visiting generals stood back, benignly observing the drill. The crew took up their positions at the gun. Bullivant, like an actor who knows that the scenery is about to crash down, bellowed the orders. ‘Direction – south-west. Range – two thousand feet. Elevation – forty-two degrees.’
The gun swung and the elevation platform wound. Nothing happened. A gunner turned the wheel frantically, like a mad woman at a mangle. Westerman felt as though his mouth was full of sand. The wheel revolved for what seemed like hours. There was no noticeable difference in the elevation of the gun barrel. From the spectators outside the fence there was a restless movement. Then red-mouthed Meg shouted jovially: ‘It don’t work!’ The response was a huge cloud of laughter from the watchers. The gun crew and their officers were red-faced, stiff and sweating. Eisenhower looked abashed. Montgomery’s expression became even more like a wedge. Westerman was wondering whether to faint as a diversion when, a gift from God, the barrel began to react. It eased up into the sky to the smiling relief of the soldiers and bright cheers from the watchers. Now the civilians, impressed or contrite, lapsed to quietness again. Bullivant shouted the orders, the gun swerved and reared. ‘Load!’ bellowed the sergeant. ‘Check range. Two thousand. Elevation forty-two. Ready, fire!’
Everyone involuntarily winced for the expected explosion. The crowd at the gate ducked low, fingers in ears. But the only result of the order was a collective shout from all the soldiers on the parade area, and those on the gun itself. ‘Bang!’ they exclaimed with loud embarrassment.
This anti-climax provoked, at first, a mute astonishment. Then the civilians, led raucously by Meg, collapsed into huge and undignified merriment. They hung on to the wire, almost falling on top of each other in their mirth. ‘Bang!’ somebody shouted and they all doubled over again with laughter and scorn. Meg’s great cheeks were riven with tears.
Montgomery coughed. He looked sideways at Eisenhower who was trying not to laugh. ‘Training school,’ muttered Montgomery. ‘Didn’t realize they did it at unit level.’ He turned to Bryant. ‘Don’t you indent for blanks in this unit?’ he inquired.
Westerman, a few yards away, eyed Bryant like a frightened horse. Bryant said: ‘No, sir, we don’t. It’s because of the proximity of people’s houses, sir. The blanks sound as loud as the real thing.’
The generals turned slowly to leave. As they entered the car after a round of salutes and farewells, Montgomery turned to Westerman and said with a straight expression: ‘Jolly well shouted, captain.’
Ballimach sat beside Albie Primrose in a jeep hurrying north out of Wilcoombe; in the rear seat was Pfc Benny Wall, the sentry from Cincinnati. Each different face was crammed with anxiety. Despite the cool day, the fat Ballimach sweated all down the ravines of his cheeks and neck. Primrose’s nose was bloodless. The narrow-featured Wall, always nervous, looked like a cornered man.
‘For Chrissake, get a move on,’ pleaded Ballimach. His great hands cleft the air. ‘Hell, how am I expected to get the fucking phone fixed before the big noises get there?’
‘I don’t know, don’t ask me,’ answered Albie squeakily. He turned the car violently around the final turn at the summit of Wilcoombe Hall and headed towards the road to Totnes. ‘Even Eisenhower can’t hav
e miracles. He’s got to wait. Maybe even God has to wait sometimes.’
‘This is Eisenhower, not just God,’ put in Wall pessimistically. ‘That’s the difference. If it was God, maybe it would be okay.’
Ballimach groaned. ‘They can’t expect to have a phone where there ain’t a phone. Just like some magic. Even me, I’m only human. I ain’t Walt Disney. Why didn’t they tell us yesterday.’
‘They didn’t know yesterday,’ pointed out Albie grimly. He swerved the car into a farm gate. ‘Okay, guys, this is it,’ he said. ‘Get going. I’ll tell the man.’
The farm was outside the evacuation perimeter. Ballimach and Wall jumped from the jeep, the fat man paying out a cable from a drum, Wall looking up at the lines attached to a telegraph post at the side of the road. Ballimach followed his skyward glance. ‘I ain’t going,’ he warned. ‘I just ain’t going. So get that.’
‘Me, I’m nervous of heights,’ complained Wall.
‘You, you’re nervous of every fucking thing,’ answered Ballimach bluntly. ‘But we got you here to climb, so climb, sonny. I ain’t falling on my ass and my head any more. How would it look if Ike came by and there was me lying all smashed up again? Get up that goddamned pole, okay?’
Tenuously Wall began to scale the pole using the metal grips at each side. Albie came back. The farmer and his wife, smiling simply, stood at the door of the house, he under a great hat, she behind a clean apron, hurriedly donned at the news of the approaching generals. The man called: ‘When you be done, boys, leave it there. Never ’ad a telling-phone in this house. Always thought ’ee might be useful.’
‘What’s that fucking yokel shouting his mouth about?’ asked Ballimach rudely. ‘I wish these guys would speak some kind of English.’
Albie did not bother to answer. He checked his watch anxiously. ‘You’ve got another three minutes,’ he warned. ‘Then we got to make the next place in two minutes. I just don’t think we’re gonna do it. Not even for Ike. It’s supposed to be forward planning. And now they think about the phones. Now!’
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