The Hour of The Donkey

by Anthony Price

  The NCO started to move, then stopped in front of Wimpy and gave him a smart salute. Wimpy acknowledged the salute gravely.

  ‘Accidentally, of course,’ said the German Colonel. ‘One of your bombs—outside Maubeuge.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Wimpy.

  ‘There is no need to be. It was an accident, as I have said … And we shot down the bomber.’ He flicked a glance at Bastable, then came back to Wimpy. ‘I thank you for your service, Doctor.’

  Bastable watched him continue on his way until he passed out of sight between the lorries, followed by his entourage, rippling his men to attention as he passed them. Wimpy could be right about the fellow, at that; what was certain was that it was a good motorized battalion, this one, smart and soldierly and keen—and, what was more, with men in it who weren’t in a hurry to report sick when they had stomachache, who would rather stay and fight… If there were too many battalions like this one, then the Allies were really in trouble.

  ‘Phew!’ whispered: Wimpy, breathing out deeply and then drawing in his breath again. ‘Phew!’

  Bastable looked at him for a long moment. ‘Did he really have appendicitis?’

  Wimpy raised his eyebrows. ‘How the hell do I know?’

  Bastable stared at him wordlessly.

  ‘At least he had all the symptoms, old boy,’ said Wimpy.

  ‘Those … were the symptoms?’

  ‘Of course they bloody were! Did you think I made them up?’

  Again, no words presented themselves to Bastable.

  ‘I had appendicitis when I was young… I can’t remember much about it…’ Wimpy drew another deep breath. ‘But … when I was acting-housemaster at school the year before last, we had a boy go down with it in the middle of the night—I was terrified he was going to die on me… but I remember how the doctor came out to us, and stuck his finger up the poor little blighter’s arse. And he gave me a running documentary on what he was doing, too— I’d clean forgotten all about it… except about foetor, he insisted that I should have a smell of it, because I was the boy’s Latin master— they have the smell of shit, on their breath…. And he had the same smell too, that’s what brought it all back to me.’

  He looked at Bastable in silence for a second or two. Then he half-grinned. ‘If you want my opinion, old boy… I think we were lucky, and that young fellow wasn’t—or maybe he was, at that: I mean, I think my diagnosis was spot on … And if it wasn’t—well, Harry, you could say I’ve inflicted my first casualty on the enemy. Besides which, it isn’t everyone who gets the chance of sticking his finger up a German and lives to tell the tale—eh?’

  It was about ten minutes later, no more than that, when the German Colonel came back to them. Only this time he was alone.

  Wimpy rose from where he had stretched himself out by the roadside near Bastable.

  ‘Doctor …’ The Colonel glanced at Bastable. ‘Are you able to walk, Captain?’

  Bastable swallowed. ‘Yes, sir—I think so.’

  ‘Very well. We shall be moving on in … not a long time. So it is … not convenient that you remain with us—either of you.’

  ‘Sir!’ protested Wimpy. ‘You said, sir, that we were prisoners of the German Army.’

  The Colonel lifted a gloved hand. ‘So you are, Doctor. And so you will remain. I am sending you to the north, towards Arras—‘

  ‘Arras—‘ The name came to Bastable’s lips involuntarily, almost like a groan. ‘But … but …’

  Towards Arras.’ The German regarded him with a flicker of sympathy, which only made the news more unbearable. ‘Oh, yes, Captain … your comrades are still in Arras. And they defend the town as you would wish them to do—with great courage.’

  The very fact that he was sugaring the pill finally confirmed Bastable’s fears about its fatal contents.

  ‘But I do not think they will be there very long. General Rommel’s column is already to the south-west of the town, he has only to swing northwards, on to Vimy Ridge …’ The gloved hand completed the encirclement of what had been the General Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force only a few days earlier, and Bastable’s heart sank finally into the bottomless hole in the centre of that circle. For four unconquerable years in the last war Arras had been Britain’s other Gibralter, second only to Ypres. Now it was about to fall, with all that blood-soaked ground, in a matter of hours—that ground in which his own flesh-and-blood already lay in Uncle Arthur’s unmarked grave—not in a matter of days and weeks and months and years, but in a matter of hours, perhaps even minutes.

  Bastable stared at the German with a despair which made what he had experienced under the wrecked Bren carrier seem like a happy time. Every disaster, every humiliation, had been a false crest, concealing a worse one behind it; but this was too much, the last straw, the final reality of defeat And now even the slim chance that he could do anything to avert that awful reality was gone-even worse, it was revealed to him for what it really was and had always been: a silly, hopeless, useless gesture that would have made no difference either way, even if he had succeeded.

  ‘Defeat is something every soldier must learn to accept, Captain,’ said the German Colonel, his voice hardening suddenly as though he could read Bastable’s face, and despised the weakness he saw on it. ‘Now, Doctor—there will be other prisoners … wounded prisoners too, who will require your skill… and you will be able to join them. And … I will naturally send the Captain with you, of course.’ He paused. ‘I think that will be … better for you both—do you not agree?’

  Wimpy glanced quickly at Bastable, then back to the Colonel. ‘If you say so, sir.’

  The Colonel nodded. ‘I do say so. Also … there has not yet been time to investigate … that which you spoke of earlier, I must tell you, Doctor.’

  Wimpy opened his mouth, but then closed it again without saying anything, which struck Bastable as being quite out of the ordinary, and very odd indeed.

  The German gave him a long look. ‘In war … in war, Doctor, there are things which happen, which should not happen—which are to be regretted. And also there are things which ought to happen—which ought to be done—which cannot in the circumstances be done … For which there can be regrets also.’ He paused again. ‘And there are also times to remain silent, Doctor—in the best interests of one’s patient, shall we say?’

  Before Wimpy could reply to any of that incomprehensible advice (and, just as incomprehensibly to Bastable, Wimpy showed no sign of wanting to reply to it), the German Colonel turned to look down the road. ‘Ah!’ His manner changed. ‘I think your transport is ready—it is even being backed up the road to save you unnecessary exertion, Doctor!’ He smiled frostily. ‘I suspect that is a way of showing gratitude for your service, perhaps … The soldier you treated is … what is your word—“mascot”, I think … he is only seventeen years of age. They think I do not know, naturally.’ He looked down at Bastable. ‘I was nineteen years of age, Captain, when I was captured at Bourlon Wood in 1917—I remember that I wept at the time, it was my first fight …’ He looked away, and then back to Wimpy. ‘My men are still sentimental, Doctor—they haven’t been properly blooded yet—which is just as well for both of us, I think … You do understand, Doctor?’

  ‘I understand, sir,’ said Wimpy. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ The Colonel turned away without another word. His men made way for him as he passed between the parked lorries and the smaller truck which had backed up the road towards them. Bastable caught a last glimpse of him as he stopped for a moment to speak to one of them. There was a sudden burst of laughter, the slightly forced laughter of men who required half a second to work out whether it was proper to laugh and had decided that it was, and then he was gone.

  ‘Get up, Harry,’ murmured Wimpy. ‘But try and look groggy.’

  Bastable levered himself off the grass verge. It didn’t take much acting ability to simulate grogginess, his knees were like water and Wimpy’s supporting arm wa
s for a moment a necessity.

  ‘Ouch!’ said Wimpy sharply in his ear. ‘My bloody ankle!’

  Instantly shamed by a genuine injury, Bastable swung his own arm to support Wimpy and they hobbled together to the dropped tailboard of the truck. With clumsy gentleness, almost with embarrassment, a large German soldier helped him up on to the vehicle’s floor.

  The German grinned at him and breathed a mixture of alcohol and garlic into his face. ‘War over, Tommy!’ said encouragingly. ‘Goot—yes?’

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t goot, thought Bastable desperately. But he could feel the thought weakening him, that he was still alive when so many others were dead, and that being alive was immeasurably better than being dead—yet when he thought that he would be a total prisoner, and as good as dead, and that would add treason to cowardice.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said stiffly.

  Wimpy scrambled in after him, and two German soldiers followed Wimpy. The tailboard clanged back into position. Someone threw a blanket into the truck, into Wimpy’s hands, and someone else shouted and banged the side with the time-honoured ‘ready-to-go’ signal.

  The truck juddered forward and Bastable hit his head on the floor, and remembered Batty Evans in an agonizing flash of memory. ‘Phew!’ exclaimed Wimpy, hugging the blanket to his chest. ‘A good German, that one, old boy!’

  Bastable thought confusedly of the man who had helped him into the truck, then hit his head again as it lurchedc forward. ‘A gentleman, in fact,’ said Wimpy. ‘I was right about him—eh?’

  Just in time, before the next bump, Bastable cushioned his head with his hand.

  Wimpy nodded at him. ‘Saved our lives anyway, old boy, I shouldn’t wonder—or did his best to, anyway,’ he said.

  XI

  SAVED OUR lives—

  Saved our lives!

  The truck bumped up and down on the road, and the floor bumped Harry Bastable’s knuckles, and the shock of the bump transmitted itself to his aching head.

  Saved our lives—saved our lives—saved our lives—

  ‘I wonder what this General Rommel he’s sending us to is like,’ said Wimpy. ‘I hope he’s a gentleman too—have you ever heard of a Jerry general named Rommel, Harry?’

  Bastable had never heard of a German general named Rommel, but then he couldn’t recall the names of any German generals at all. Even those of whom he had heard, but couldn’t now remember for the life of him, had all had ‘von’ in front of their names, anyway.

  ‘No,’ he said, carefully not shaking his head.

  One of the German soldiers, who was cradling a lethal-looking little sub-machine-gun rather as Wimpy held his blanket, pricked up his ears.

  ‘General Rommel?’ The harsh G came out explosively. Bastable stared fascinated at the sub-machine-gun It was a little weapon with a pistol-grip and a straight magazine sticking downwards from the firing chamber, quite unlike the big round drum on the Tommy-gun he had seen a few months before, which Major Tetley-Robinson had dismissed as a gangster’s tool.

  ‘General Rommel—ja!’ said Wimpy. ‘I mean … that is to say, General Rommel—yes?’

  Bastable continued to study the sub-machine-gun. He remembered having agreed with Major Tetley-Robinson about the Tommy-gun, but in this German’s hands—one on the pistol-grip and one grasping the slender magazine—it looked like a devastatingly effective close-quarter weapon, and he found himself coveting it and wondering why the British Army didn’t have anything like it. Of course, the Bren and the Lee-Enfield and the Webley were the best weapons of their kind in the world, but …

  He wondered whether the Germans had anything like the Boys anti-tank rifle, and hoped fervently that they did.

  ‘General Rommel—‘ The German plunged into his own language enthusiastically.

  Wimpy spread his hands, after having listened carefully.

  ‘Nicht—nicht comprenez, old boy,’ he lied apologetically.

  The German soldier shrugged. ‘General Rommel—goot,’ he said, and made what looked like the sign of the cross at his throat with the hand which had grasped the magazine ‘Pour le Merite—ja?’

  Wimpy nodded. ‘Pour le Merité—jolly good!’ He leaned sideways towards Bastable. ‘He says that General Rommel has got the Pour le Merité—that’s the Jerry equivalent of the Victoria Cross, Harry old boy. So he can’t be a bad type, what!’

  Now it was the German’s turn to nod again. ‘Victoria Cross—goot!’ he agreed.

  Bastable felt that something was required of him, and for once what was required was perfectly obvious.

  He lifted himself on to his elbows. ‘General Gort—goot,’ he told the German.

  ‘General—Gort?’ The German obviously knew no more about the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force than Bastable did about General Rommel. And Bastable could have wept at his inability to tell the blighter how “Tiger” Gort had led his Grenadiers through the Hindenburg Line in 1918, winning the medal they had given him three times over if half of what the history books said about him was true—that would put the Jerry in his place, by God, with his references to this General Rommel of his!

  ‘General Gort—Victoria Cross,’ he said as clearly as he knew how.

  ‘General Gort—VCT Ah!—ah!’ The German bobbed his head in sudden agreement. ‘General Gort—gut, gut!’ He turned towards his comrade and spouted a stream of German to him.

  Wimpy bent over Bastable, spreading out the blanket as he did so.

  Do be a good fellow and stop talking about the Fat Boy, and try to look as though you’re dying, Harry,’ he murmured conversationally.

  ‘What d’you mean “the Fat Boy”?’ said Bastable, outraged.

  ‘That’s what they call him—our esteemed and revered C-in-C—“Fat Boy”,’ said Wimpy. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘But—but he isn’t fat—‘ Bastable moved from certainty to doubt in one bound as he tried and failed to recall General Gort’s measurements from the newsreel and newspaper pictures which were the closest he had come to his commander ‘—is he?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, I don’t know. But that’s what they call him, according to Nigel Audley anyway.’ Wimpy started to push him back ungently.

  ‘But—‘

  ‘Forget about him. Lie back—‘ Wimpy increased the pressure on his chest and lowered his voice to a whisper ‘—lie back and be a casualty, for God’s sake!’

  Bastable surrendered to the urgency in the whisper rather than to the awful possibility that his tiger might be… portly. It was probably only a nickname, anyway: lots of people had nicknames, and the names were not always accurate, as Wimpy’s was—they were often deliberate reversals of the truth, like that which had been fastened on one of his own fusiliers, a six-foot-six beanpole of a man who answered more readily to ‘Shorty’ than to his own name. Indeed, nicknames could also be signs of affection and good fellowship among equals (unlike Wimpy’s). In his own heart of hearts he had always hankered after one like that as a sign that his brother officers accepted him as one of them, and because he could then reassure himself that he was not a dull nonentity.

  ‘That’s better,’ continued Wimpy softly, pretending to busy himself with making his patient comfortable. ‘I don’t think either of these two fellows can understand English, but I’m not prepared to bet my life on it.’

  Bastable looked up at him questioningly.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of this quam celerrime—‘ Wimpy seized Bastable’s wrist and went through the motions of taking his pulse’—because I do rather suspect we’re in a damn tricky situation, Harry old boy. In fact, I’m bloody sure of it!’

  ‘What?’ Bastable floundered. ‘But why—‘

  ‘Ssh! No need to shout.’ Wimpy’s lips hardly moved. ‘Why d’you think our good Colonel shunted us off double-quick to this tame general of his? Who is by way of being an old friend-of-the-family, if I’ve understood our talkative guard’s obscure German dialect aright… Can’t you guess, old boy?’r />
  ‘They were moving out, weren’t they? He said—‘

  ‘Poppycock, Harry. They didn’t show any signs of that—apart from what he spelt out himself very loud and clear … No, old boy—we were just too hot to handle. Or you were, at any rate, Harry—too hot for a mere colonel, but maybe not too hot for a brass-hat like this Rommel-chappie—don’t you realize?’

  Bastable rolled his eyes helplessly.

  They knew my name, man—for God’s sake— they knew my name and my initials,’ hissed Wimpy. ‘Don’t you understand what that means? Don’t you understand why they bloody-well wiped out the battalion?”

  The truck lurched and bumped bone-jarringly over a pothole in the road.

  ‘We’ve had it all back-to-front—‘ Wimpy dropped the wrist and applied a sweaty palm to Bastable’s forehead ‘—We’ve been trying to get your information about that fucking bastard of a Brigadier back to our people … But—can’t you get it through your head, Harry—can’t you understand that the Germans are trying just as hard to stop us doing just that?’

  He nodded and grinned reassuringly—incongruously— as he delivered this information, and Bastable was aware of one of the guards looming up behind him. Prisoners who talked too much—and they couldn’t know that Wimpy always talked too much—even doctors who talked too much to their wounded—were obviously cause for concern.

  Wimpy grimaced at the guard and rubbed his chest and stomach meaningfully. ‘Hauptmann … internal injuries … der—der ribs—‘ he pointed to his ribs’—der ribs kaput, bitte?’

  With his free hand he pinched Bastable painfully, and Bastable winced in support of the diagnosis, his eyes clamped on the muzzle of the sub-machine-gun which pointed unwaveringly in Wimpy’s direction.

  ‘Groan, old boy, groan,’ murmured Wimpy.

  The German snapped out a harsh order.

  Bastable groaned, and arched his body as he remembered Wimpy’s previous patient had done, and closed his eyes.

  Wimpy’s words fed the groan—

  My initials?