“Uh-huh.” The red tip flared. “Well, you should be okay getting across down there. There’s a bunch of kraut infantry about five miles up river, where the bridge was—there was a couple of days back, anyway. But we haven’t seen anything on this stretch so far. Real nice and quiet, it is.”
Butler stiffened. The way the American talked, the Loire was not far away, but right there in front of them in the fast dissolving darkness.
“We’re near the river, then?” he asked, casually.
The cigarette glowed. “Uh-huh.”
“How far?”
In the distance Sergeant Purvis’s voice started up again: “Mount up … mount up.”
“How far, Yank?” Butler repeated the question.
“Mount up.”
“Four-five miles, maybe.” The cigarette glowed and then out’ into the vineyard. “Couple of miles from here, we drop down into the flood plain. Another two, there’s a levee—that’s where the 921st is, the bottom land there this side of it.”
“Mount up.”
“What’s the river like?”
The American glugged the last of the wine and then heaved the bottle carelessly among the vines. “Nothing special. Wide, sandy bottom, lots of little islands covered in brush—not much water coming down now, so most of the channels are dry … pretty much like rivers back home, I guess: mean in the spring, but kind of lazy in the summer, ‘cept where the current is.” He grunted reassuringly. “No sweat crossing, that’s for sure. I heard tell the 921st got a patrol on the other side a couple of days ago—no trouble. So you should get over real easy.”
The Americans hadn’t let the grass grow under their feet, thought Butler approvingly. But that had been what the general back home had said about them out of his experience in the great battles of 1918, when he had had a regiment of them attached to his division: what they lacked in experience they made up for in enterprise.
“How far did your patrol go?”
“Aw, not more than maybe five-six miles.” The American paused. “Where you heading for, mac? You going far?”
It was annoying not to be able to answer that question. If this was the Loire just ahead and Touraine started on the riverbanks, then they could be quite close to their objective. But if Touraine was the size of Lancashire or Yorkshire … ? “I wish I knew,” he began apologetically. “But I think—“
“Corporal Butler!” Sergeant Purvis’s voice came sharply from just behind him.
Butler snapped to attention. “Sergeant!”
“Are you all right, Corporal?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Right. Fourth jeep in the rear, you’ll find Mr. Audley. You’ll be his driver from here on—understood?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” answered Butler automatically. Then a hideous thought struck him. “But, Sergeant—“
“Don’t bloody argue, man—move!” Sergeant Purvis banged the side of the truck with his fist. “Mount up!”
“But, Sergeant—“ Butler trailed off as he realised he was no longer talking to anyone. Even the American had turned away towards his motorbike. He was alone with his problem.
Leaden-footed—and the treacherous left one was reminding him again of its troubles, he realised bitterly—he made his way down the line of vehicles. As he passed each one he could feel the eyes of the occupants on him in the fast-dissolving darkness.
That’s Corporal Butler—the one that was pissed out of his wits last night, the silly bugger …
He came to the fourth jeep, which had only one occupant.
“Corporal B-Butler?”
“Sir.” Butler gripped his Sten with one hand and saluted with the other. “Sergeant Purvis sent me down … to be your driver, sir.”
“Righty-ho. Climb aboard, then, Corporal.”
Butler stood his ground, at a loss to know how to say what had to be said.
“What’s the m-matter, Corporal?” Audley sounded worried.
“Sir”—Butler despised himself—“I can’t drive, sir.”
Audley sat back. “Oh, is that all? Well, that’s no problem—I’ll drive. You come round this side and I’ll move over.”
When they had rearranged themselves they sat in silence, Audley lounging comfortably, Butler sitting stiffly. He felt he ought somehow to apologise for his incapacity, except that apologies usually made things worse. Also it was possible that Audley already knew about his disgraceful performance of the previous night—from the tone of that first worried question and the relief implicit in his reaction to the answer that seemed more than likely.
The thought made him squirm inside with shame. Then his resolve hardened: if Audley didn’t know it would be better to tell him—and if he did know there was nothing to be lost in the telling. “Sir—“
“Yes, Corporal?”
“I got drunk last night, sir. On wine, sir.”
Audley was silent for a moment. “Tricky stuff, wine.”
“Yes, sir.” Relief suffused Butler.
Audley was silent again. Then—“But you haven’t drunk anything since last night?” he inquired casually.
“Sir?” Butler was puzzled by the question.
The young officer turned towards him. “Have you had anything to drink this morning, Corporal?” he asked.
“No, sir.” Butler heard his own voice rise. “Except water from my water bottle.”
“No wine?”
“Sir?” Butler frowned in the half-light. “No, sir—of course not. I—I couldn’t stand the sight of it.” Puzzlement gave way to a quick, cold suspicion. “Has someone—“ he broke off, appalled and confused at the same time by the suspicion.
Audley looked away. “No, I didn’t somehow think you had been.” Then he turned again towards Butler. “And … yes, Corporal Butler, someone has.”
They stared at each other in silence. Away somewhere, far to the north, there came a distant drone of aircraft engines.
“In fact, for the last hour I have been regaled with a c-catalogue of your … vices, Corporal,” continued Audley. “Including a … warning that you were probably on the b-bottle again by now.”
Butler was outraged. It was Corporal Jones, for sure it was Corporal Jones.
“That’s a lie, sir,” he spluttered. “A rotten lie!”
And it must have been Jones who had given Sergeant Purvis the bottle, too; which was a filthy trick, though perhaps understandable as revenge for what he’d done the night before. But what wasn’t understandable—what was unforgiveable—was that Jones should then have betrayed him to an officer.
“Yes, I rather think it was,” said Audley.
The drone of the engines was louder now. And there was activity along the shadowy line of vehicles. One of the men in the jeep just ahead of them had lifted a small, square box from the back of the vehicle. He bent over it and for an instant his face was illuminated with a ghastly green light.
“Now that’s interesting,” said Audley. “Marker lamps.” He swivelled in his seat to stare up into the lightening sky. “I think we have friends up above.”
The drone had turned into a steady beat. It seemed to come slightly from the right now, but as the green lamps went on it appeared to turn towards them.
In a flash Butler understood. “The river’s just ahead of us, sir,” he said. “They’re going to cover the sound of our engines with the plane, I think, sir.”
Someone in the distance shouted “Start up!” and the call was taken up ahead of them.
“I think you’re right, Corporal,” said Audley. “Full marks. And it is rather comforting to know that somebody’s got himself properly organised.”
“That’ll be Major O’Conor, sir,” said Butler.
“Yes, I think you’re right again. The major did strike me as being”— Audley started the jeep—“a downy bird.”
“’Downy,’ sir?”
“Downy—yes.” Audley launched the jeep with a jerk that reminded Butler of the sergeant-major. “You must forgive my bad dri
ving. I completed the carrier and light tank course at Sandhurst with a Grade Three pass, which is the lowest one available—I never got round to telling them that I’d never actually learnt to drive … I presume Sergeant What’s-‘is-name didn’t get round to asking you whether you could drive either, Corporal?”
“No, sir.” Butler warmed to the young officer.
“Well, that’s the Army for you. Round pegs and square pegs, and square holes and round holes. And the Army just hits the pegs until they fit the holes. It’s a splendid system if you don’t weaken… . How far to the river, did you say?”
“Four or five miles. We come off a ridge of some sort, and then there’s a flood plain … and then a flood embankment of some sort.”
Audley nodded. “Yes, that’s the Loire right enough… . Did you know, Butler, that there are two rivers hereabouts with the same name, almost? … There’s Le Loir, which is masculine and not very big, and La Loire, which is feminine and can be a perfect bitch in flood—never mind the Germans. Which only goes to show that the female of the species can be more dangerous than the male, eh?”
It was funny that he wasn’t stuttering at all, thought Butler. “It isn’t in flood now, sir. And there aren’t any Germans behind it, so I’ve been told.”
Audley braked sharply as the jeep ahead loomed up close. They were beginning to drop off the ridge, Butler sensed.
“No Germans?” Audley twisted the wheel. “I’ll believe that when I’m the other side of the river… . And what makes you think there are no Germans, Butler? Who told you that?”
“A Yank, sir. One of their motorbike MPs.”
“He did? And what did you tell him in exchange?”
The question floored Butler. “I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Did he ask you any questions? Like where you were going?”
Butler blinked. “Yes, he did. But I don’t know where we’re going.”
“Ah-hah!” The noise of the plane was so loud Audley almost shouted the sound.
“He said they’d reconnoitred the other side, sir,” shouted Butler. “They’ve patrolled about five miles, and there weren’t any Germans. He said we’d have an easy crossing.”
The light was growing. He could make out fields and even occasional buildings, dead and shuttered as diough they were derelict for all that the fields had a carefully tended look about them. And there were tall trees with strange black balls in them which reminded him of the swarm of bees which had once settled on one of the general’s apple trees … except that they couldn’t all be bee swarms, and they were too big anyway.
“So they’ve reconnoitred the crossing for us … Let’s hope they know their business,” shouted Audley.
Tanks ahead, canted on the side of the road. And beyond them American half-tracks … and American soldiers, groups of them, some smoking, some squatting—one of them even waved a jaunty thumbs-up sign at Butler. This must be part of the 921st the MP had spoken of. He was sorry for them, that they just had numbers instead of proper names like the British Army; surely they’d much rather go into battle with the pride of a known locality to support them instead of a number … Texans and New Yorkers, say. And then the thought of his own regiment, somewhere back on the river Orne a million miles away, twisted inside him—the Lancashire Rifles, which was the best regiment in the Army, with battle honours to prove it from Busaco and Ciudad Rodrigo and Waterloo to Mons and the Somme and Ypres—and Normandy. Except that once upon a time the Rifles had only had a number too, which was there on their cap badge still, and maybe these Yanks didn’t all come from the same country—and when he thought about it there were Riflemen who came from Scodand and even Ireland, and didn’t know Blackburn from Bolton—
The jeep tilted up steeply and he could see the line of a great embankment sweeping away to disappear among the trees on his left. Then came a wide road snaking along the top of the embankment, which they left immediately for another slip road, narrower and unmetalled, on the river side. But there was no river to be made out in the half-light, only a tangle of undergrowth mosdy made up of tall willows which rose out of a lattice of their own fallen branches. The night was making its last stand in the undergrowth, but a pale mist was already replacing the darkness up the track ahead.
River mist, thought Butler gratefully—that must be what the major was relying on to cover the crossing. Noise up above and mist below as a double precaution in spite of the American patrol’s report.
Suddenly the jeep ahead braked to a halt, and the tyres of their own vehicle slithered on the loose sand under them as Audley jammed his foot down. Someone came striding back down the track, pausing at each jeep. It was Sergeant Purvis.
The sergeant halted beside Audley. “Fifty yards ahead, sir—sharp left and you’re down on the river bed. Bank’s a bit tricky, so you better take it easy there, but the going’s good after that. Follow the jeep in front to the next lot of trees and then switch off the engine—there’ll be someone to direct you.”
“What’s happening, Sergeant?” said Audley.
Sergeant Purvis looked at the subaltern irresolutely for a moment, then up and down the line of jeeps as diough he was weighing the delay to his orders against the possible consequence of telling a second lieutenant what to do with his curiosity.
“Sergeant?” Audley prompted Purvis with a sharpness which suggested to Butler that he had met the same problem in the dragoons and didn’t intend to let it spread to Chandos Force.
“Sir …” Purvis just managed to prevent himself shrugging. “The major put three recce patrols from the advance party across the river about an hour ago.”
“I thought the Americans were patrolling the other side.”
Purvis shuffled his feet. “They have been, sir. But the major wanted to look-see for himself, like we always do.”
“When are they due back?”
This time Purvis did shrug. “I dunno, sir—pretty soon, I’d say. But you’ll have to ask the major.”
Audley accepted that with a nod. “Righty-ho, Sergeant. Carry on.”
Purvis swung away and Audley turned to Butler. “So he doesn’t trust our American friends, then. And come to that, he probably doesn’t trust anyone else much either … a downy bird, as I said, Corporal.” There was just enough light now for Butler to see that he was grinning. “ ‘Downy’ meaning ‘crafty’—you don’t remember your Kipling, then?”
“Only Kim and The Jungle Book, sir—and some of the poetry, like If … and the Barrack-Room Ballads, sir.” This time Butler was determined not to be thought an illiterate, even at the risk of seeming to show off.
“Good man! But this is from Stalky,”—Audley reached towards the gear lever as the jeep in front started to move—“you should read that. There’s a touch of Stalky about the major, I’d like to think.”
The sergeant’s fifty yards seemed more like two hundred, but at length the vehicles in front turned sharply before a wall of tangled branches. As Audley followed, Butler saw a wide expanse of open ground walled in by mist in which he could make out the vague outlines of men and vehicles.
“Hold tight,” said Audley.
The front wheels of the jeep fell away into nothing and they half-drove and half-slithered down a steep, sandy bank already deeply rutted by other wheels. For a moment or two the tyres spun sand, lost their grip, found it again, lost it, and finally pulled forward onto a firmer track between two brackish lakes of green-scummed water. As they moved out into the open, Butler saw a line of jeeps drawn up nose to tail, and behind them tree tops growing out of the mist. They must now be in one of the dry channels of the river, behind one of the islands the American MP had spoken of.
Audley followed the jeep ahead into the line and switched off the engine. Behind them the last two jeeps pulled into position. Chandos Force was on its start-line at last, thought Butler. Now the worst time would begin, the waiting time.
A figure materialised out of the mist ahead of them, tall, thin, and unmistakable.
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It paused at the jeep in front. “Morning, Bassett—morning, Mason … stretch your legs, have a bite to eat. We’ve a few minutes in hand, so make the most of them.”
“Morning, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
Major O’Conor advanced towards them, grinning broadly. “Ah, the modern languages section! Bonjour, David—guten Morgen, Oberjager Butler.” He raised his ashplant stick in salute.
“Bonjour, mon commandant,” said Audley.
Butler couldn’t bring himself to play silly games. “Sir,” he said. “Good morning, sir.”
The major nodded. “Well, so far it does look like a good morning, I’m happy to say. We’ve had three patrols on the other side, and so far two have reported a clear run, so we shall probably go in about fifteen minutes.” He looked up into the lightening sky, from which the noise of engines had now diminished to a distant hum. “When we shall summon back our RAF friend, don’t you worry.”
“Do we have any air support today, sir?” asked Audley.
“Oh yes. If we get into real trouble—which we won’t—but if we do, we’ve access to a limejuice strike of our very own, David.”
Audley took a deep breath. “Well, that’s a relief, sir—limejuice saved our bacon several times back in Normandy.”
“Oh, we shall be all right, don’t you fret,” the major reassured him. “The Hun’s thin on the ground, where we’re going—plenty of back roads, thick, wooded country. We’ve operated in far worse than this … Anyway, stretch your legs while you can, both of you. Just don’t stray too far. Wouldn’t want to lose you just when the fun’s beginning, eh?”
They watched him move on down the line, silent for a moment. Then Audley took another deep breath. “Phew! Looks as if we’re playing for the First Fifteen after all, with a limejuice of our own, by God!”
“’Limejuice,’ sir?”
“Rocket-firing Typhoons—ground-strafing experts. When we ran into anything we couldn’t handle—which was anything bigger than a German with a pea-shooter in a biscuit tin, if the FOOs couldn’t get their guns on it they’d give us a limejuice.” Audley’s face clouded suddenly, and he seemed to be staring at something in the mist beyond Butler’s right shoulder. “Last time they did it, it went wrong. The Germans shot down our spotter plane, and the Tiffies couldn’t find the target … and then the Germans made mincemeat of us.” He swallowed, shook his head and focussed on Butler again. “That’s water under the b-b-b-bridge now, anyway. So let’s stretch our legs like the man said, Butler.”
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