Sullen, his men were digging, with anger or despair.
****
The promise of the dawn was fulfilled. A few puffed-up clouds sent shadows across what was now revealed as a meadow, green under the late spring sunshine. The breeze kept the heat down, still ruffling the long grasses and rustling the leaves in the hedge and the trees lining the road. A sound like the sea as the tide turns. There was nothing more to see or hear.
The bearers returned with rations and what ammunition they could carry. The sergeant and lieutenant had made themselves scarce at once, they said.
‘Making rounds, I expect.’ Though why he should be excusing them, Peter couldn’t think. ‘Brew up.’
****
The day was passing, marked for Peter by the word “only”. Only ten o’clock; only mid-day; only two o’clock. He took a chance and stretched out in the grass alongside his slit trench. Without thinking, he removed his helmet, turned on his back and, hands under head, looked up at the sky, tracing occasional shapes in the clouds. Once, back in London, he had traced her profile against such a sky.
Only four o’clock. With the lengthening shadows, something new in the wind, a warning note. Faintly, in the distance, the hum of traffic. Then louder. Heavy pounding engines. Then metal grinding, squealing. His mouth dried. Tanks.
He grabbed his helmet and rolled into his trench. ‘Stand to!’
His guts were wrenching; at the same time everything else seemed unreal. Was this he, Peter Hill, in this field, a corporal, clutching this old rifle, never fired, sweating under this helmet, preparing to shoot, preparing to order men to shoot? To kill. How close should he let the enemy come before giving the command? In spite of his turmoil he thought “whites of their eyes” and felt ashamed of his levity. He tried to persuade himself that this would be no different from shooting woodcock or snipe or partridges in a field.
But there was nothing in sight. Nothing across the field, nothing in the hedge. The road under the trees seemed empty. No dust, no flicker of movement. The noise was swelling. Lorry engines rumbling, tank tracks pounding. An army on the move, fast and certain. But its momentum seemed to be carrying it around and away from them. A heavy explosion and another made him – all of them – duck. The ground was vibrating. Further off, fighter aircraft low and fast, banshee howls, distant thudding. But this was like listening to a ghost army. No tanks, no lorries, no men in field grey shockingly visible, rising up out of the grass, screaming, coming at them. The wave of mechanical noise was rolling past. After a while, as it rolled on, he could have sworn he heard horses, waggoners’ shouts and the rumble of cartwheels, then the tramp of marching men.
Across the meadow only the long grass was stirring.
“There came a wind like a bugle;
It quivered through the grass …”
The lines arrived unbidden.
“And a green chill upon the heat
So ominous did pass …”
Passing them by? Should he order his men forward? Find the enemy and attack? Catch him unaware? His orders were to stay put and defend. A runner came in from the section on his left, crouching, pale and breathless. Had he seen anything? Nothing yet.
‘Our corp says bugger this for a lark’, gasped the man, and flung himself down to catch his breath for a moment.
‘No larks here,’ he replied. The runner grinned.
****
Distant gunfire, heavy and light, artillery, tank rounds, machine gun, a percussive chorus swelling to crescendo; black and brown smoke erupting in puffs into the afternoon blue of the late spring sky. Peter turned from scanning his limited horizon to find his section around him. Hands shook as some lit cigarettes. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Go back to your trenches and wait. Those are the orders. Be ready. We stand here. Ready.’
Darkness crept in. The noise of battle had grown fainter. He set sentry duty and waited for what the next hours might bring.
****
As the dawn wind rustled his grasses and the dawn light brought colour back to his field, his hedge, his trees, Peter came to wakefulness with a jump, stiff and clammy in his battledress.
The birds began to rustle and cheep. Otherwise, around him, there was still the hush of night. He strained for the noise of battle. Perhaps. At the edge of his hearing. Another day to command. He stood the men to and sent a runner to find the left-hand section. Had they seen or heard anything?
Returning in a rush, the runner threw himself down, gasping his news. ‘They’ve fucking gone. Done a fucking bunk.’ He produced two tins of bully beef and a Bren gun magazine. ‘Left this.’
‘Lucky buggers,’ someone muttered.
With a certain fatalism, he ordered the runner to the right-hand section, see if they knew anything, had any plans.
The runner was back. He shrugged and looked away.
‘Might have told us.’ Peter was thinking aloud.
‘Knew you wouldn’t agree, daft bugger y’are,’ from a trench. ‘Now wha’re you fuckin’ goin’ to fuckin’ do?’ from another.
Traffic was building up again, somewhere, away behind the trees. Lorries, a motorcycle, horse-drawn carts. Without waiting for his order, his men were brewing up, opening the bully beef. For a brief interlude, they were all busy feeding. Then they were all looking at him.
They were looking at their corporal as if at a stranger … After all, he practically was … Thoughtful but quick … Always carried a book but got things done … They said he practically ran Company Office when a clerk there … Wouldn’t let you down, not like some … You couldn’t say stand-offish, but not one of them … Nothing like so easy-going as their real corp. Not someone to get on the wrong side of: everybody knew how he’d disposed of Podger when the rest was shit-scared of him. What someone with his education was doing in the ELR, in the ranks, was a mystery. Must have got it wrong somewhere …
He felt they were looking to him. Rightly. Time to take charge. Wherever the battle was, it wasn’t there. “There” was sounding like the outskirts of a country town early on market day. Hadn’t the order to hold their ground become, well, irrelevant?
‘Jerry’s gone past. There’s no point in sitting about. We’ll report to company HQ. Expect we’ll find the others there, regrouping.’ Would they?
‘Form up.’ He pointed to one of the ration bearers who’d gone with the sergeant. ‘Lead the way. Single file and keep spread out. And … Forward!’
Chapter Two
Company headquarters had gone. And in a hurry, leaving a few stores, a mass of paper, a disabled three-inch mortar, a smashed wireless,
‘Fuckin’ wankers ’as ’opped it,’ said someone. ‘Scarpered. Now what?’
The section had fallen into a half-circle, staring at him, waiting for him to order something. The irregular beat of aircraft engines approaching made them look up anxiously. The beat became louder. On the edge of what had been the headquarters perimeter stood a clump of elms. Peter found his voice. ‘Trees. Now!’
Moments before two dive-bombers and a fighter came, low overhead, Iron Crosses plain to see, they ran for cover—but not quickly enough. One of the bombers peeled away and returned, rising up and away before falling out of the sky at them.
They flattened themselves in terror, hands over ears against the unearthly howl of the bomber’s siren. The bomb fell short but the blast tore at their eardrums; the ground under them shook and heaved. A rain of dirt and stones rattled down against the elms. The bomber’s nose pulled up and it flew on. Silence returned with the last falling twigs and stones.
The section cheered in relief then rounded on the Bren gunner. Why hadn’t he shot down the Jerry with the light machine gun? Because he’d fuckin’ dropped the fuckin’ thing when he run, hadn’t he, idle, stupid fucker—
‘Home. I want to go home.’ An anguished cry interrupted their tirade. “Tinker” Bell, only 17, probably 16, had collapsed to the ground in tears, curled into a foetal crouch, his hands over his head. ‘Please. Please. I want
to go home. Can I go home please?’ He sobbed though the words. ‘Home, home.’
Peter pulled him to his feet, patted him on the shoulder and said gently, ‘We are going home.’ He turned to face the rest of his squad. His eyes were green in the sun. He repeated, this time loudly and firmly, ‘We are going home.’
****
For a moment, he’d thought of doing his own ELR – eat, leave, run. He could find some civilian clothes and make his way across France, perhaps with the help of the marquis, his and Ella’s godfather after all, and get to North Africa. But of course that wouldn’t do. So how could he begin to make good his promise? He needed a moment to himself.
He posted sentries and told the rest to sort through what company HQ had abandoned in the rush to get away: ‘Food and ammo, and any maps.’
Who were these men he’d promised to get home? He ran through what he had learned from his time as a company clerk plus his own impressions. “Butch” Mulligan, “Organ” Morgan, “Ankles” Smith, Robbie Roberts, “Tinker” Bell, “Shorty” Simmons, “Chalky” White, Joe Johnson, “Fish” Newman. An age ago the club porter had been right. They were, mostly, getting away from something.
Mulligan was from an Irish family that had regularly sent its sons to the Irish Guards. Butch was too small: the nickname was a family joke, and he felt a failure.
Morgan signed up because he was homeless; the barrack room was better than the spike. While for most of them washing meant face, hands and feet, he had no use for soap and water and there had been regular complaints about Organ’s brutal stink.
Ankles Smith had been a professional ballroom dancer, supple, dark, his blue chin always in need of a shave; on the run from a revengeful husband with east London gangland connections.
Robbie Roberts and Joe Johnson, small and tough, took the oath as the alternative to another term in Borstal for persistent thieving. They enjoyed smacking each other with gym shoes.
Shorty Simmons and Chalky White, pudding-faced, stocky, cheerful costermongers, were the exceptions. They’d signed on to do their duty. Their families had served in the ELR in the Great War and before that in the Boer War.
Tinker Bell, just a child really, running away from an abusive, drunken mother; had been an undertaker’s mute and odd-job hand, an altar boy.
Fish Newman, didn’t say much to anyone, but liked to read when he could, putting on a pair of wire-framed glasses. He’d smelt of fish when he joined and for days afterwards; he’d worked in some sort of family-run fish kitchen. He signed up to get away from something. Was there an accent to be heard, a slight accent?
As for himself? “Corp”. If they’d given him a nickname, he hadn’t heard it. Wasn’t he one of them? Avoiding arrest? That was true, but too easy. Not simply avoiding arrest. Paying for blind love, paying for his flâneur’s pride, his egotism.
****
Their haul was thin. A box of .303 ammo, some hard rations. No maps. Nothing to show their location. In these fields, under the summer sky, they could have been anywhere, anywhere along a constantly redrawn front where they’d arrived by night.
‘Divide the rations. We’ll have to live off the land, but we might as well take what we can. Forget the ammo. We don’t want to fight and we need to travel light, keep moving.’ From their blank look, he realised he hadn’t shared his thoughts. ‘Jerry’s obviously gone past us. We’ll walk to the coast. We should meet up with our chaps. I’m sure we will.’
‘If not, corporal? What then?’ Newman was agitated. ‘What plan can you have for us?’
‘There are lots of tiny fishing ports in the inlets along the coast. A fisherman will take us across.’
Simmons looked round. ‘How far, corp?’
‘To the coast? If I knew where we were, I could tell you. But it can’t be more than a 40- or 50-mile march as the crow flies, 60 at most. The first thing is to find out where we are.’
‘But corp, which way?’ asked Smith.
‘North-west by the sun. Pick up the rations and fall in. The longer we hang around, the less chance we have.’ He checked their canteens. ‘The first thing is water. Fall in.’
He led the section away from the abandoned HQ, setting out along tangled, spiny hedgerows by rough, uncultivated fields and over clogged drainage ditches, forward into a deserted landscape.
****
They’d stumbled on to a track. With hoof marks and deep wheel ruts in the brick-hard mud, the track twisted and turned between scrappy hedges and rusty wire fencing but, Peter had reckoned, was taking them roughly in the right direction.
The track became a country lane, running sometimes between hedges, sometimes trees cut back to keep the verges clear, a patchwork of empty fields on each side with deep, dry ditches. Only kites broke into the silence, wheeling overhead, whistling as they looked for prey in the lengthening shadows. The afternoon was drawing on. Water was a worry, canteens emptying fast.
Smith pointed to the little white signpost, almost lost in the foliage. Le Haut des Lilas. A track led steeply downhill, just wide enough for a car or tractor.
Peter felt relief. ‘Follow me down. Stay spaced out.’ There must be a house of some sort.
The track turned sharply and they were in a yard, part rutted earth, part grass. A rusty plough was half-hidden under overgrown bushes; a cluster of apple trees cast deep shadows.
Facing them was a sturdy, whitewashed two-storey house with a steeply pitched red-tiled roof. A wooden barn roofed with rusted corrugated iron extended from one side; along the other, an espaliered pear tree warmed in the sun. With pots of geraniums on either side of the entrance, the house looked neat and cared for, somebody’s home. A lace curtain hung behind the window in the front door; the windows on either side were shuttered. The windows on the first floor were closed. In the silence, Peter tried the front door. Locked. He sent White and Smith round to the back.
‘Back door’s locked. No one about.’
‘Johnson, Roberts, can you open it up?’ He was assuming some skilled fiddling with the lock, the door springing open.
‘Corp.’ Roberts took two steps back, launched himself, and gave the door a tremendous kick with the flat of his boot on the lock. With a splintering crack, the door crashed open.
‘Practice makes perfect, eh lads?’ said Smith. Roberts and Johnson grinned.
The occupants must have left in a hurry. On the dining table, the remains of their half-eaten meal, the bread rock hard, the butter rancid. On a little bureau, scattered papers. On the stove, pans with the dried and crusted remnants of soup and what might have been a stew. In the sink, kitchen knives and ladles unwashed.
Water. The pump at the sink worked. With canteens filled, Peter set a watch and ordered a search of the house and garden. He and Newman would go through the papers and the bookshelf in search of a letterhead or bill, a road map, an atlas.
Morgan and Bell returned: at the back, a long vegetable garden, a privy at the far end; a hen house empty, the door open. They had found steps down into a cellar that ran under the house: logs and kindling, potatoes in a tub, apples on racks, oil for the lamps, flour in a stone crock, some wine and some beer, a bottle of champagne.
Roberts and Johnson returned: upstairs, drawers pulled out; a double bed in one room and a child’s bed in the next, both stripped; a birdcage hung from the ceiling, vacant, gate open; larder and kitchen shelves pretty well emptied of anything that would make a meal; the remains of a ham hanging from the larder ceiling. ‘No fuckin’ valuables. But there’s a shotgun in the cupboard under the stairs.’
Smith returned: plenty of hay in the barn; farming implements, and it looked as if a tractor had been parked there. Mulligan had one other thing. ‘There’s a dead dog in there. Looks as if it’s been shot, poor old boy.’
‘They’ve done a bunk all right,’ said Smith. ‘Shame leaving a nice little place like this.’
‘We’ll harbour here tonight,’ said Peter, ‘and leave at dawn. We’ve got bills with the name of the
place and an old road map, so we know where we are and where we’re going. We’ll eat in here and sleep in the barn.’ They would be all the better off for a decent night and he didn’t want to wander those lanes in the dark.
‘What if they come back?’ asked Bell.
‘They should be pleased to entertain their allies.’
He went to look at the dog. A black and white collie. Very old. Wouldn’t manage the journey. Must have been a wrench. ‘Take him out and put him under the bushes. We’re sleeping in there.’ Next, food and drink. A guard rota. Foot inspection. Weapons. He checked his own rifle. Something sounded wrong when he worked the bolt: the firing pin had fallen out. Old age, he supposed. In the garden, he played with the shotgun, following the darting swifts. A single-barrel repeater, worn but perfectly serviceable: it felt easy, familiar. He’d take it. Under the stairs were boxes of cartridges.
****
He was comfortable in the straw, unwilling to wake when Smith shook him, putting a finger over his mouth and whispering, ‘Corp, listen.’
Smith had a good ear: in the stillness of the dawn, there was the distant hum of a motorcycle, its engine faintly revving and diminishing, but louder by the minute.
They shook the others awake. The cycle was nearer, approaching the little signpost. It ran past, slowed at once, turned and, unmistakeably, was coming down the track. Peter signalled at the section: some to cover the door, others to take sight of the yard, as he would, through cracks in the timbers.
A German motorcycle and sidecar came into sight, pulled round and stopped.
The driver sat there for a few moments with the engine idling, looking and listening while his companion in the sidecar covered the house with his sub-machine gun. Then he shouted a few words and turned off the engine. They pushed up their goggles and dismounted, the driver unslinging his weapon from across his back.
In the barn, Peter’s hands were wet on the shotgun. Wasn’t it his duty to kill them – the enemy, all unaware, right in front of him? Riddle them with bullets. Yet his driving purpose was the section’s slipping to the coast like thieves in the night, getting away home. Why risk gunfire betraying their presence? He stiffened himself and signalled to the section to stay down.
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