Dunkirk Spirit

by Alan Pearce

  ‘Ask this Frog bleeder who he is and where he thinks he’s going.’

  Cummings stepped out of the dark and approached Archie cautiously,

  levelling his rifle as he did so.

  ‘Bonjour,’ he said hesitently. ‘Quel est votre nom et où vous va?’

  ‘I don’t speak French,’ said Archie flatly.

  ‘He don’t speak French, sarg,’ called Cummings without looking back. Archy

  heard a click as the translator flicked off his safety catch.

  At the end of the tunnel of trucks stood the 17th century walled town of Bergues, its high sloping ramparts just visible in the faint red glow of the sky. As Archie passed through the fortified gate, flanked either side by an armed guard, thoughts of King Arthur and Camelot came to mind. The sensation of a Dark Age citadel was reinforced as the guard steered him through the narrow unlit streets. Within the city walls yet more evidence of an army in chaos greeted Archie. Only a few of the many weary soldiers, their eyes often sunken and blank, bothered to stare at the escort. One group of men clustered around a watchman’s brazier; the church walls behind flickering like a giant and sinister medieval puppet show. The escort dragged Archie up seven short steps and stopped. A rifle butt was slammed twice against the face of a solid wooden door and moments later it was pulled slowly open with a tired rasp. Archie was shoved rudely inside and steered down a corridor so dark that twice the escorts tripped on unseen obstacles. Another door was pulled open and an officer poked his head out.

  ‘Right! Bring him in here,’ said the officer, a captain of the Loyal Regiment. He stepped back into a large candle-lit room. ‘Sit there.’ He gave Archie a hard look and indicated a chair opposite the desk. ‘And put your hands on the table where I can see them.’ He stepped briskly behind the desk and sat down.

  ‘Right. First things first,’ said the captain, looking up from a slip of notepaper. ‘Let’s see your paybook.’

  ‘I don’t have it any more, sir.’

  ‘You don’t have your paybook?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Ok, let me see your BEF identity card.’

  Archie shook his head and gave a wan smile.

  ‘So, let me see your identity discs.’

  ‘I don’t have those either, now. Sir.’

  ‘Right. So, let’s get this straight. You don’t have a paybook. You don’t have a BEF ID card. You don’t have your identity discs. You claim to be British and yet you are wearing a French uniform.’ The officer sat back and folded his arms.

  ‘It’s not actually a uniform, sir. It’s just a greatcoat.’

  ‘I think I will be the judge of that,’ snapped the captain, springing upright in his chair. He reached for his cigarette case and helped himself. Then, as if by afterthought, he held the open case towards Archie.

  ‘Wurde sie mögen eine zigarette?’ he asked nonchantly.

  Archie moved his hand forward just as the captain snatched the case away.

  ‘So you speak German, then?’ he scoffed loudly.

  ‘What?’ laughingly exclaimed Archie, but the captain jerked his hand up for silence.

  ‘You are wearing a French uniform but you don’t speak French. You do, however, speak German. Some people might see that as strange.’ He sprang forward suddenly, as if he had been propelled by a spring, pushing his face close to Archie, who had no time to utter a defence. The officer snapped: ‘Why have you got an M on your forehead?’

  ‘I had morphine earlier, sir.’

  ‘Morphine?’ his tone incredulous.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And, if I am not mistaken, you have been drinking?’

  ‘Well, just a bit, sir. Look, it’s a long story...’

  ‘Shut up!’ screamed the officer. ‘Why aren’t you with your unit?’

  ‘My unit got smashed up, sir. We were...’

  ‘What unit?’

  ‘Two-ten Battery, Worcestershire Yeomanry, 53rd Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery. Sir.’

  ‘Territorials?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well,’ said the captain, compressing his brow to produce a wrinkled bulldog expression. ‘Even if I do choose to believe you, you are in serious trouble. Very serious trouble. I could have you shot this instant.’

  He sat back in his chair, sucking and exhaling nervously on his cigarette. ‘It seems to me that you are some kind of dope fiend, a drunkard and a deserter.’ He paused, staring into space. ‘That’s three Ds.’ He laughed strangely as if he had discovered hidden meaning in the chance collection of words. ‘Perhaps I should add dastardly.’ He stood up suddenly.

  ‘Sergeant!’

  The sergeant snapped to attention.

  ‘Throw this one in the cells, too. Major Dodds can deal with him in the morning.’

  02:05 Wednesday 29 May 1940.

  Les Cinq Chemins, France

  Major Featherstonehaugh looked again at his feet. He would have a stiff word with the people at Church’s when he got back. These boots were a disgrace. Although it was difficult to see clearly inside the interior of the school corridor, he had no difficulty tracing the blisters around the base of each heel, nor the inflamed pink sores that marked out each of his toes. He was too tired to sleep. But even that seemed ridiculous. How could anyone be too tired to sleep? Either way, the major was wide-awake. There was something about the smell of the white spirit that was troubling him. The Irish sergeant had procured a bottle of the clear fluid for him soon after arriving at the school.

  ‘Now, you rub that into your feet, sir, and you’ll see the difference in the morning,’ the sergeant had told him. ‘It’s no way as good as turps, to be sure, but it’s just the stuff for toughening up the feet.’

  When the major had first unscrewed the top off the bottle, he had inexplicably experienced a momentary surge of elation. And, at the time, he didn’t know why. But, as he lay curled up in the corner trying to sleep, and periodically rubbing his feet, the answer was slowly dawning on him. White spirit was the smell of fresh paintwork; the smell of decorators’ brushes left in jam jars. The smell of the nursery. It was the smell the nursery had taken on when his mother had gone into hospital. Here was the reason for the excitement: the thrill of his mother bringing back a baby brother or – and this wasn’t quiet so conceivable – a little sister. But his mother had not come back from the hospital and there had been no new brother or sister. And it was then, at that point when he was just six years old, that the cosy comfort of his life had been destroyed.

  The father, who had once so regularly bounced young Featherstonehaugh on his knee, became dark and moody and quick to snap. There were no more fireside cuddles, no more picnics on the lawn, nor country rides in the Rover. Young Featherstonehaugh had been packed off to boarding school and, thereafter, rarely invited back home, not even for Christmas. He would watch the changing seasons with ever growing expectation, seeing the leaves fall away from the trees that lined the approach to the school, knowing that winter was to bring another Christmas but no letter inviting him home. And then, in time, he began to enjoy those Christmases at the school; shared with other boys who parents lived too far away. And the worse the weather, the better the Christmas. Long snug afternoons in the shared common room, with roaring fires, toasted muffins and crumpets, and tales of far-away lands, exotic hill stations, burning deserts, glistening jungles, and naked native girls bathing in the streams.

  Young Featherstonehaugh decided there and then that he would travel. His first thoughts were to become an explorer but, on closer inspection, there seemed so few places left to explore. He could be a planter, sitting on a veranda while the little black boys did all the work. That, too, with time, seemed less likely and, finally, he had resolved to join the Army.

  His father, upon hearing the news when young Featherstonehaugh was fifteen years old, was at first delighted and then, swiftly, annoyed. Supporting a son in the Army was no inexpensive affair. A top regiment was out of the question on cost alone, and t
he son was not bright enough for the artillery or engineers. An Indian regiment would be unthinkable and so a county regiment had to suffice. Young Featherstonehaugh would have to work much harder to reach the required entry levels and he would also have to shed considerable weight too. He had entered his tubby phase in his second year at school when, after constant pleading, his father had finally increased his pocket money to such a level that he could purchase liberally at the tuck shop and village stores. So had begun a period of personal indulgence that only subsided when he had his goal clear in mind.

  With the help of the gym master, young Featherstonehaugh began a strenuous personal fitness programme. He even discovered a love of cross-country running and, by his final year, was representing the school in county championships.

  His father had failed to attend the passing out parade at Sandhurst in 1913 so young Featherstonehaugh had sent him a photograph. And so, on August 24, 1914, the youngest subaltern of the Cheshire Regiment found himself commanding a rifle platoon at the close of the battle of Mons where, together with the remains of the rest of the 1st battalion, he was left exposed to the attack of two German Army Corps at a village called Audregnies. The regiment’s heroic stand saved that earlier British Expeditionary Force from disaster not so many miles from where he now lay. But the young subaltern, who had won the respect of his men and received a mention in dispatches, joined nearly eight hundred other members of the battalion on the casualty list. In addition to the shrapnel wounds in his lower back, he had other, deeper, wounds and, no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to utter a single word without violent stuttering for the best part of fourteen months. His father, in a rare moment of parental pride, had travelled up by train to the hospital in Scotland but had found it equally difficult to speak as they both sat mute in the manicured grounds. That was the last time he saw his father.

  On his return to France, Lieutenant Featherstonehaugh soon became Captain Featherstonehaugh but he no longer commanded troops in the field. Seconded to Headquarters, the young, painfully thin officer discovered his talent for logistics. He loved working out transportation tables, ensuring that the forces assigned to his care arrived at the right place at the right time, along with their equipment, stores, ammunition, and comforts. He loved filling in the forms and awaiting the arrival of his chosen stores. He could then count and prod the boxes, crates and bundles with personal pride, the smooth motion of Britain’s most powerful army running like clockwork with the stroke of a pen or flourish of a rubber stamp. He had never been happier nor commanded so many friends. He even managed, at no personal gain to himself, to ensure steady supplies of Scotch whisky to those officers of his battalion who needed it most, hunkering down in the rat-infested dug-outs along the front; men who were steadily consuming a bottle a day, or more.

  But then came peacetime with the Armistice and the miserable posting of both regular battalions to Ireland. And with it, returned the weight. By the time the 1st battalion was posted to Central India in 1922, Captain Featherstonehaugh weighed in at fourteen-and-a-half stone and his uniforms had to be specially made. It was fortunate that, with the death of his father, he could now afford expensive tailors and hand-made shoes. By 1939, the now Major Featherstonehaugh weighed eighteen-stone and, while the 1st battalion moved on to the Sudan, he was posted home on medical grounds and ordered to do something about his growing girth. By September of that year, and the outbreak of war, the major had dropped to seventeen-stone and been transferred out of the regiment and into the Royal Army Service Corp.

  Major Featherstonehaugh shifted his buttocks and tried to make himself comfortable. There was still a lot of rubble lying on the floor, despite the pioneer’s best efforts. Once his feet had toughened, the major knew that he would be all right again. If he could walk unaided, then he would be in a better position to gain the men’s respect. The Padre, who was proving to be something of a bossy boots, had seemed to assume temporary command of this small unit. That would never do. He wondered what had come over the fellow. He wasn’t very military at all. He seemed to have no respect for the chain of command. There was said to be a dark shadow hanging over him, some black mark. He had been in Australia. He had heard that much in the mess. Something about being kicked out of the country. Perhaps, wondered the major, he had been defrocked. It would not surprise him. The fellow was probably a damn communist. But then, wondered the Major, could you have communist Christians? He would have to look into it.

  This, together with the rest of the events of the past few days, was not entirely clear. At the forefront of his mind was the need to reach the coast and get inside the bridgehead. The pioneers and the Padre would surely be assigned a boat home but the major would have his own role to play. He couldn’t organise the defence but he could work in the background to help keep this army in fighting order.

  The major wiggled about, trying to make himself comfortable. This time there was a lump inside his battledress tunic. He popped open the top buttons and reached inside. To his astonishment, he discovered a golliwog. He held it close to his nose and breathed deeply. It smelt of childhood; of warm milk and freshly washed hair. He remembered brushing his mother’s freshly washed hair in front of the dressing table. He stopped suddenly, pulling the golliwog away from his nose for clearer inspection. Where had he found the thing? He thought about it for a while and then he remembered. It had been lying there on the ground, on the Estaires road. He remembered a little girl, no more than four or five. The golliwog had been in her hands.

  Bloody strange, thought the major. How the hell did it get here?

  The Padre lay beside him. Now he was turning over in his sleep. The major studied him for a moment and then realised that the Padre was staring back at him.

  ‘Ah, P-Padre,’ said the Major. ‘I wa-wa-was wa-wa-wanting a wo-wo-word.’

  04:08 Wednesday 29 May 1940.

  RAF Biggin Hill, Kent

  Ginger held the mug of coffee uncertainly in his hands. There were strict instructions that no beverages were to be taken into the Ops Room but it was one of the many rules that the majority of pilots on the squadron tended to ignore. He bent down, placed the mug carefully on the floor between his feet, and reached into his flying suit for the packet of Players. There was no restriction on smoking.

  After the first awkward weeks, Ginger was now thoroughly enjoying the habit. It was such a surprisingly useful social prop, as well as a comfort. It helped fill awkward moments when he was left standing alone in the mess. It aided his concentration when he struggled over the written combat reports each time he returned from a sweep. And, as the squadron sat in the assembly area waiting for the gong to strike, he would smoke cigarettes by the dozen, no matter how dry his mouth.

  The first cigarette of each day was enjoyed in bed before his feet ever touched the thin woollen rug on the even thinner cold linoleum floor. That cigarette, the most important of them all, would help pull him together. The nicotine, coursing through his veins, would drag him from the confused tangle of dreams that haunted each and every night. Getting to sleep was rarely a problem. No matter what time of day came stand-down, Ginger was always able to nod off, either in a chair or, preferably, in his cot of a bed. As a rule, he would sleep like a baby until some time after midnight. From then onwards, he would awake regularly, finding his pillow ice-cold with sweat.

  Each time he would flip the pillow over and try to focus on the luminous Baby Ben alarm clock beside the bed. Three hours to go. Two hours to go. Oh, God! Only one more bloody hour. And each time he would sink down again into the disturbed dreams. Of these, he had two recurring themes. The first was fairly obvious, considering all that had happened since joining the Auxiliary squadron. That first dream involved the engine cutting out. At the moment of realisation, blood would drain from his head, sweat would pour. He would stare at the control panel. The dials would each be shattered. He would look down to the foaming breakers below and see smiling bathers in brightly coloured costumes waving up at him.
His brain, as it struggled to estimate his position and flying time to the English side of the Channel, would feel as if it had been stuffed with damp cotton wool. The other dream had Ginger flying through a thick white cloud, flames igniting his flying suit, licking against his gloved fingers, scorching his face, and the cockpit canopy jammed.

  Ginger bent forward and picked up his coffee. It was luke-warm and it tasted of mud but the caffeine in combination with the nicotine had a rousing effect. He looked to the other side of Clouston at the new Red Three. The original Red Three had been shot down on the last sweep. Clouston had apparently watched him plummet like a stone into a row of terraced houses just outside Zuydcoote. Ginger nodded politely and raised his mug. He was just a kid, thought Ginger. A spotty kid who probably wouldn’t survive the day.

  Clouston gave Ginger a playful nudge. ‘Cor, blimey, gov’nor! I ain’t got me oily rags. Give us one of yours, mate!’

  ‘That’s an appalling cockney accent,’ sneered Ginger.

  ‘That’s an English accent,’ explained Clouston, leaning forward to take a light off Ginger’s butt.

  ‘Bollocks it is. Is that how I speak?’

  ‘No,’ said Clouston. ‘You’re more like Truuble a’ mill, muther.’

  ‘You think I speak like that?’ asked Ginger, staggered.

  ‘Yeah, sort of.’

  ‘And what about this lot? These toffs?’ asked Ginger, indicating the majority of those in the room.

  ‘Ectualleh,’ said Clouston, pitching his voice at the back of his throat and out through his nose in fair imitation of Groupie. ‘I tend to avoid the hoy-paloy.’

  ‘And what about you?’ asked Ginger. ‘What about your own accent? And you say eh? at the end of virtually every word…’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Say “out and about”,’ suggested Ginger.

  ‘Ooot ‘n aboot.’

  ‘See?’

  ‘See what?’