‘Doing the rounds?’ inquired the colonel.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Scarlett. ‘Just trying to figure out if everything’s on schedule.’
‘Is it?’
‘Christ, no. It’s okay here because with these limited numbers it’s easy, but at Plymouth and Portland and Dartmouth everything’s got balled up. One broken down truck and the whole invasion is out of gear. You never saw such jams. And the British police and the mayor and God-knows-who else … yes, some people called the Chamber of Commerce, for Christ’s sake, all protesting and saying that civilians can’t get to work. Get to work! If this doesn’t go right they won’t have any goddamn work.’
Schorner’s mouth wrinkled wryly at the outburst. He turned to Bryant. ‘I guess a Chamber of Commerce here is the same as in the States?’
‘Businessmen ganging together to protect their businesses,’ nodded Bryant. ‘Some of them don’t know there’s a war taking place.’ He felt strangely ashamed.
‘When the real thing comes along they’re going to have to forget their commerce and get off the highways,’ put in Hulton grumpily.
‘Out there,’ said Schorner to Scarlett, ‘we have examples of Anglo-American co-operation. Look – dreadnoughts.’
Scarlett pursed his lips. ‘I’ve seen them. There are two more down at Portland. I guess that’s what Noah’s Ark looked like. Next they’ll be wanting everybody to row with oars.’
‘When the day comes,’ said Schorner, ‘maybe we’ll have an escort that’s a little more up-to-date.’ He looked quickly to Bryant.
‘I hope so, sir,’ said the British officer. ‘Those crates will have to get out into the Atlantic to turn around.’
They all laughed, their laughter going up in early morning vapour. The sound caused the silent soldiers in the barges to look up to the quay with anxiety and envy. Like cattle might look at boisterous slaughter-men. Scarlett said he had to move on down the coast. He shook hands all round and made his way back to the car. The civilians, waiting for him, collectively wished him another solid good morning and he nodded to them. ‘That one,’ said the knowing Meg solemnly, ‘’Ee be the one in charge. You can tell by ’is face ’ee’s the boss officer.’
One of the schoolboys said it was not true, that the man’s insignia of rank was inferior to that of the battledressed colonel on the quay. An argument sparked among the group and Meg cuffed the lad briskly for what she called his dumb insolence. He retreated holding his ear, crying and calling foul names back at her. Meg’s everyday truculence had made her accustomed to abuse. Phlegmatically she returned to watching the soldiers.
A blunt-nosed LST – Landing Ship: Tanks – its bow striking the moderate sea like a flat hand, approached the harbour from the leeward of the two escort vessels. ‘This one’s ours,’ guessed Schorner correctly. ‘It’s the one that bounces best. Okay, let’s go.’
With Bryant and Hulton he strode purposefully around to the wet stone jetty, a route which took him directly past the British troops watching from the gun-site. Bullivant, seeing the officers approaching, bundled across the asphalt, and bawled the soldiers to attention before throwing up a rotund and theatrical salute, his hand vibrating against the side of his head like a railway signal. The Americans acknowledged the artillerymen and Bryant returned their smirks with a minor salute of his own. ‘Don’t get throwing your ring up, sir,’ ventured Catermole, nodding towards the boat and the sea. Bryant had gone by. In the background a window opened and Captain Westerman, his chin bubbling with shaving soap, looked out at the scene. For a moment he took it in and then, slowly withdrawing, closed the window and went back to the brush and the mirror.
The large tank landing ship, a blunt and ugly five thousand tonner, had been persuaded alongside the wet jetty. Schorner reached the steep iron ladder, then, at a thought, motioned Hulton and Bryant to climb down to the deck while he remained on the quay. ‘Quartermaster,’ he called down, ‘let me have a loudhailer. Get it up here to me.’
A British sailor brought the trumpet-shaped speaker up the undulating ladder, managing to hand it over, step back a rung and salute. But Schorner was staring out over the little enclosure of the harbour, his eyes narrowing in the salt wind. The small craft were rolling uneasily like cattle in a pen. The lines of rounded helmets remained still, only a few putty faces turned towards him on his elevated place.
‘Now hear this,’ Schorner called into the loud-hailer. He was too close to it. The blurted shout sent gulls heaving into the mouldy sky. A dog set up a protesting bark in the village street. Schorner saw the doctor’s car of Howard Evans pull around to stop before his safe and comfortable house. He noticed Beatrice Evans watching, very still in their cottage window. He felt a tinge of envy. At his shout the GIs had all turned their heads as if they were threaded and linked with wire. On the stone quay the assembled villagers pressed forward, eager to hear. Schorner wished they were not there. He felt like an actor performing an audition before people who had nothing to do with the play.
‘You have to shift your mouth back, sir,’ called the British sailor helpfully from the deck below. Schorner knew that and his acknowledgement of the advice was brusque.
‘Now hear this,’ he repeated at the right distance from the funnel. He was very conscious of the civilians, with the mountainous Meg in the centre, like a mother surrounded by children, pushing to the very edge of the harbour on the other side, their ears eager. God, why didn’t he have them moved? It was too late now. And too difficult.
‘This unit,’ he called. Every gull for miles was circling now, a screeching halo over the little town and harbour. ‘This outfit will proceed in –’ he checked his watch ‘– in fifteen minutes to the harbour mouth and the open sea. You will be conducted three miles out and there will rendezvous with other assault units aboard vessels from Plymouth, Portland, Brixham and Dartmouth, for the simulated assault on Telcoombe Beach. Each one of you has received individual assignments and orders. You know what you have to do. You know what’s expected. So do it.’
He paused and looked along the lines of dumb faces under the small roofs of the helmets that gave protection and, somehow, privacy. ‘There are going to be a limited number of opportunities to get it right. Okay? Things may go wrong but I won’t have this exercise being loused up by laziness, carelessness or incompetence. What you are going to learn today could save your life and the lives of your buddies, when the real thing comes. So let’s learn the lessons. Keep to your sections, keep to your orders. There will be a live bombardment from the sea but this will be aimed a half a mile ahead of the most advanced units. If these gunners can shoot straight we shouldn’t have any casualties. Okay? Right, let’s go.’
He tossed the loudhailer to the sailor on the deck below and climbed down the ladder. The gun-site soldiers watched his head go below the bulwark of the deck. Gilman felt sorry for the Americans. Catermole echoed his thoughts. ‘Live bombardment,’ he sniffed. ‘From the sea. Bollocks to that. I wouldn’t like those bloody matelots shooting within ten miles of me. Half the time they’re pissed on that rum they get for nothing.’
Bullivant moved busily in front of them, his manner like that of a zealous policeman pushing a crowd. ‘All right, you lot, back to breakfast,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a busy day. Come on, move. Move it.’
Gilman walked towards the mess hut with Catermole. ‘What do we have to do today, Pussy?’ he asked. He was not sure whether Bullivant could hear him but he did not care. ‘Clean our nice gun, I suppose.’
‘Got to keep the gun clean,’ agreed Catermole loudly. ‘Father Christmas wouldn’t like it if we let the bang-bang get dirty.’
Bullivant, puce-faced, turned and stamped towards them like a spoilt and angry child. ‘You two,’ he seethed, still drumming his feet on the ground, on the spot. ‘You bloody two!’
Gilman and Catermole turned to each other in hastily constructed astonishment. ‘What, sarge?’ inquired Catermole in a hushed tone. ‘Us two? What did we do?’
> ‘What did you say, that’s more like it,’ replied Bullivant still savagely but dropping his voice to a low rattle. He realized they were adjacent to Captain Westerman’s window. ‘I heard you taking the mickey. That gun –’ He pointed dramatically as though he thought they might not know its location. ‘That gun has brought down a German aircraft. Killed Germans. That’s more than any of those Yanks have done. It’s all very well playing games, but we’ve seen action. And no thanks to either of you. Either.’
They knew, as they all knew by now, that the Junkers had been hit by gunfire over Plymouth. It was an already-stricken bird.
‘Watch it,’ incanted Bullivant, his favourite threat. ‘Just watch it. Or it will be a two-five-two. I’d love to have you on a charge, Gilman. Love it, I would. Take some of the bullshite out of you. Now get moving. This unit has been assigned air protection duties during the exercise. So let’s see if you can be real soldiers.’
They watched him wobble fiercely away. They knew he was romancing again. The gun was not on alert because the valve was playing up again and the barrel could not be elevated. In any case, the Americans now had pockets of anti-aircraft guns and rockets all along the coast and enough fighter planes within minutes to deter or deal with any foolish German raider who ventured from France.
*
Thin sirens were tooting from the harbour as the landing craft pushed out; they sailed one at a time, joining like an ugly necklace behind the Landing Ship Tanks with the commanding officer aboard. Once out to sea they rolled grotesquely under the hulls of the ancient destroyers, the soldiers looking askance at the straight-fingered triple funnels of their naval protectors. The sea was moving moderately in wide, easy, grey waves that slid like vast hands under the flat barges and made the men pale and hold their stomachs. Schorner, now in his flak jacket and helmet, stood on the narrow bridge of the landing ship, its great middle occupied by fifteen clamped down trucks, his own command jeeps and half a dozen motorcycles with their dispatch riders. The motorcyclists sat astride their machines and eased up and down with the ploughing vessel, like riders on a fairground carousel. Hulton was white and cold. Bryant was aware of a tinge of chill sweat on his forehead below his British steel helmet.
‘There’s the good news,’ said Schorner looking back. ‘Smokey and Stover are moving.’
The two old destroyers were steaming slowly east, their stacks puffing, signal flags rippling. Even the simple manoeuvre of turning to starboard was necessitating a curve that would take them halfway across Start Bay. ‘That’s a good name for them, sir,’ said Hulton watching them. Bryant asked: ‘What does it mean?’
Hulton regarded him as if he ought to have known. ‘Smokey Stover is a comic-strip character back home, Stateside,’ he said. Bryant nodded as though that explained everything.
As they moved further out into the morning sea they became aware of dark dots strung across the horizon, moving from both east and west, and further out the square, misty forms of large ships. The mock invaders were assembling. A squadron of Mustang fighter planes abruptly arrived overhead and screamed across the proceeding barges at two hundred feet, causing the soldiers to duck, withdrawing their helmeted heads like tortoises. Now the morning was much lighter, the sky spreading a wan grey from along the throat of the Channel. There was the indication of a flat-skied day.
As Schorner’s short fleet moved out to the rendezvous point, the two destroyers, having finally accomplished their manoeuvre, overtook the barges and went by only two hundred yards distant with flamboyant wash waves rolling from beneath their bellies. Schorner cursed them as the landing craft, and then the smaller barges, mounted each successive roller and slid sideways down the other flank. It was as if the warships were taking revenge for the soldiers’ ridicule.
Now the joining fleets were almost in position, occupying much of the horizon, lying together, Schorner thought, like a herd of cattle waiting to be moved. The naval vessels at the rear and the one large American transport, from which he knew General Georgeton was watching the operation, stood off in the growing light. More fighter planes curled across and there were other reconnaissance aircraft droning high in the vacant air.
‘Well, we got this far,’ muttered Schorner as the landing craft reached the middle section of the fleet and inelegantly eased round into its assigned position, shepherding its covey of barges with it. Now the whole formation lay, rolling and waiting. A British sailor brought three mugs of coffee from below and the army officers drank gratefully. The captain of the LST, a British naval lieutenant, had not left the side of the wheelsman and had never looked around at his guests. Now the vessel was turned and waiting he walked the few paces across the steel deck, his half-empty coffee mug dangling negligently from one finger. ‘Not too bad, hey?’ he said through his nose. ‘Got her out here. Now got to get her back.’
As always when faced with something British and strange, Schorner glanced at Bryant. Bryant returned a slight shrug. The young man said: ‘I’m Younghusband, by the way. Lieutenant RNVR.’ Bryant said: ‘This is Colonel Schorner, US Army Engineers. And Captain Hulton. I’m Bryant, Royal Artillery.’
‘Good,’ said Younghusband in a manner which suggested he had been in some doubt about the matter and was glad it was now settled. He looked at the soldiers on the deck and then in the small craft in the sea. ‘This is what we call trade,’ he said. ‘It’s the lower end of the navy, you know. Long time since I saw so many brown jobs,’ he said. ‘Not since Dunkirk.’
He smiled, apparently at the memory, and turned back towards the wheelhouse. Now it was Hulton’s turn to ask. ‘Brown jobs?’ he said. ‘What the hell are brown jobs?’
‘Soldiers, any sort of soldiers,’ said Bryant. ‘The Navy calls us brown jobs.’
‘I wonder what kind of job he is?’ suggested Hulton.
‘They call the Navy the Andrew,’ Bryant informed him. ‘The sea is known as the hoggin, on the upper deck anyway. On the lower deck it’s called the ’oggin.’
Schorner looked over the side at the swaying assault barges. ‘Everybody okay down there?’ he called. Fifty white faces under the lids of helmets looked up. Some smiled tightly, others murmured and others muttered. He pulled his head back. ‘The way some of those guys look they’ll be glad to be ashore on any beach, even if it’s lousy with Germans,’ he said.
A hollow siren sounded from the big US transport ship in the rear, followed by a crimson rocket that exploded and fell through the air like a trickle of blood. ‘Okay, this is it,’ said Schorner. He went quickly to the side again, picking up the loudhailer. ‘Let’s get it right first time,’ he shouted again.
Few faces were upturned this time; most had gone back to staring straight ahead, as though each man was watching a narrow road. The smaller craft began to move forward, a long speckled line stretching a mile each side of the central transport ship.
Lieutenant Younghusband was watching HMS Oregon. The signal blinked brightly across the pale morning. He rang for quarter speed ahead and the landing ship rattled and began to move forward. Schorner raised his glasses and, looking across the backs of the assault craft now streaming ahead, he could see the brown seam of the beach and at its centre the white square that was the Telcoombe Beach Hotel, his target.
The blunt prows of the assault craft parted the sea as they travelled shoreward. Their propellers churned the morning surface to dirty cream. The soldiers crouched and waited, each young face already looking old. The cold sea showered over the metal hulls and sprayed them. They wiped the salt away. Each one knew that the pretence of this English morning would be translated, within a few months or even weeks, into a reality from which some of them would never return. They were silent, rolled by the waves; their occasional movements just the blink of the eyes and the regular churning of chewing gum.
Then, from behind and above them, they were shocked by the explosion of the guns from the distant warships. Each man ducked involuntarily as the naval shells howled over their heads, cutting t
hrough the empty air and exploding on the green uplands beyond the beach towards which they were journeying. First a salvo, then another, then a new sound, a screech as a flight of rockets rushed through the sky. The soldiers could see nothing because of the high prow of their craft, but they cared nothing either. Every man, at that moment, wanted to be one place. Home in the United States of America.
Schorner steadied his glasses on the surf-line. He was aware that Hulton had gone to the rail, probably to be sick. Bryant, pale, watched the approach carefully, bracing himself as each buck of the landing ship sent its squared nose heaving against the bleak sky. They were both conscious of Younghusband, the naval lieutenant, giving orders so quiet as to be like conversation as the flotilla moved towards the beach.
Shells were bursting like feathers on the expanses of upland green beyond the beach. A quiver of rockets seared above them and danced in a skirted chorus line as they struck the earth. Bryant wondered how much it was costing. Schorner turned and handed the glasses to him. ‘That’s rich dirt,’ was all he said. ‘Take a look.’
The young Englishman peered towards the land beyond the beach. Where the explosions had thrown up the fields there were mounds and circles of red Devon soil. It lay like wounds against the bright green of the pastures. His next instinctive movement was to seek out Telcoombe Magna Church. The spire thrust up clearly; smoke moved across it. He wondered how long it would stand. Then his eye caught something else. ‘There’s something moving on the beach, sir,’ he said, pulling the strap of the glasses from his neck and handing them to Schorner.
‘On the beach!’ snorted Schorner. ‘What the hell is it?’
The colonel glared through the glasses. ‘It’s a man,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake it’s a goddamn man. And … Jesus, a dog. I don’t believe it …’ As if he couldn’t bear the sight he pushed the glasses back towards Bryant. Without looping them about his neck the English officer stared at the figure on the far right of the shingle. He could see a dinghy drawn up beyond the waterline. The man was digging and the dog was running around happily. They seemed serenely unaware of the shells looping across their heads and blowing up in the fields not half a mile beyond.
The Magic Army Page 25