The Magic Army Read online

  Contents

  Title

  About the Author

  Also by Leslie Thomas

  Dedication

  The Magic Army

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  June

  Author’s Note

  Copyright

  THE MAGIC

  ARMY

  Leslie Thomas

  THE MAGIC ARMY

  Born in Newport, Monmouthshire, in 1931, Leslie Thomas is the son of a sailor who was lost at sea in 1943. His boyhood in an orphanage is evoked in This Time Last Week, published in 1964. At sixteen, he became a reporter before going on to do his national service. He won worldwide acclaim with his bestselling novel The Virgin Soldiers, which has achieved international sales of over two million copies. His most recent novel, Waiting for the Day, is published in paperback to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day landings.

  Also by Leslie Thomas

  Fiction

  The Virgin Soldiers

  Orange Wednesday

  The Love Beach

  Come to the War

  His Lordship

  Onward Virgin Soldiers

  Arthur McCann and All His Women

  The Man with the Power

  Tropic of Ruislip

  Stand Up Virgin Soldiers

  Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective

  Bare Nell

  Ormerod’s Landing

  That Old Gang of Mine

  The Dearest and the Best

  The Adventures of Goodnight and Loving

  Dangerous in Love

  Orders for New York

  The Loves and Journeys of Revolving Jones

  Arrivals and Departures

  Dangerous by Moonlight

  Running Away

  The Complete Dangerous Davies

  Kensington Heights

  Chloe’s Song

  Dangerous Davies and the Lonely Heart

  Other Times

  Waiting for the Day

  Non Fiction

  This Time Next Week

  Some Lovely Islands

  The Hidden Places of Britain

  My World of Islands

  In My Wildest Dreams

  To Zoo with love

  O what is that sound which so thrills the ear

  Down in the valley drumming, drumming?

  Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,

  The soldiers coming.

  ‘O What is that Sound?’

  W. H. Auden

  THIS MEMORIAL WAS PRESENTED BY THE UNITED STATES ARMY AUTHORITIES TO THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH HAMS WHO GENEROUSLY LEFT THEIR HOMES AND THEIR LANDS TO PROVIDE A BATTLE PRACTICE AREA FOR THE SUCCESSFUL ASSAULT ON NORMANDY IN JUNE 1944. THEIR ACTION RESULTED IN THE SAVING OF MANY HUNDREDS OF LIVES AND CONTRIBUTED IN NO SMALL MEASURE TO THE SUCCESS OF THE OPERATION. THE AREA INCLUDED THE VILLAGES OF BLACKAWTON, CHILLINGTON, EAST ALLINGTON, SLAPTON, STOKENHAM, STRETE AND TORCROSS TOGETHER WITH MANY OUTLYING FARMS AND HOUSES.

  Plinth on Slapton Sands, Devon

  Even today there are signs to be seen of what happened in those months of winter, spring and early summer. The ribs of a ludicrously sunk landing craft lie off-shore; the outlines still show of a house, a farm, the beach hotel, destroyed and never rebuilt. A bullet is wedged forever in the church clock; men and women have odd American names; a few memories; a few graves.

  It began on the final, dark afternoon of the year 1943. They came ashore at Avonmouth Docks on the Bristol Channel, and were moved at once down the West Country through the anonymous wartime night of England. There were no signposts and the conducting officer, an American captain, who had been doing the job for three weeks, got them lost. The convoy halted wearily and Schorner, in the second vehicle, a heavy staff car, waited for the captain to come back. He put the window down and the drizzle blew in. He wound it up again until he saw the man making his way back from his jeep at the front.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said the conducting officer. ‘I guess we’ve gotten off course. This country … it seems like the British keep moving it around. Nothing’s ever the same twice.’

  ‘It is the right country?’ suggested Schorner. ‘I mean, we didn’t get off the ship in the wrong place?’ There were one hundred and eight men in the short convoy behind him. They had come straight from the troopship after a miserable, confined and stormy voyage. He wanted to get them into camp.

  ‘Well, it sure ain’t Florida,’ said the captain half to himself in case the colonel was one who couldn’t take a joke. He nodded ahead. ‘I think we’ll just go as we are, sir,’ he said. ‘According to my compass in the jeep we’re driving due south, so we’re going in the right direction.’ He crouched and went forward through the rain like an infantryman under fire.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Schorner to his driver. ‘His compass. Did you hear that? His compass. I didn’t think this country was big enough to need a goddamn compass.’

  ‘No, sir,’ replied the driver. Schorner could see his big, young nose silhouetted in the dimness. His name was Albie Primrose. They sat in silence until the jeep in front began to stutter forward. The rain thickened. ‘I sure wish I was going home,’ said Albie.

  ‘So do I, son,’ agreed Schorner. ‘So do I.’

  ‘The quicker we get it over, the better,’ ventured Albie. He had been Schorner’s driver ever since he had joined the unit from Camp Abbott, Oregon, the Army Engineers Training Centre, eight months before. ‘The invasion,’ he added, as though the commanding officer might think he meant something else.

  Schorner nodded. ‘I’m with you there too, Albie,’ he said. ‘Just so long as it’s not tonight.’

  The car jerked forward along the tight Devon road. Albie said: ‘No sir, I don’t think I could handle it tonight.’

  *

  At five past eleven o’clock that night Private Peter Gilman stood at the end of the jetty at Wilcoombe and gazed morosely from his greatcoat which was turned up like a wall about his neck. A New Year wind was pushing ragged clouds across the Channel and there was a timid and desultory moon. The jetty, old and wooden, had not been repaired since the declaration of war; as he stamped his army boots he was certain he felt it tremble beneath them. Dull waves, without crests, lumbered in from the open sea.

  The anti-aircraft gun, which he was guarding, was positioned opposite his post, on the stone dock across the enclosed water of the small port. He was protecting it from the seaward side. In case the Germans came across and stole it, he thought caustically. The sentry on the shore side stood by a white picket gate, like that of a cottage garden, and shuffled off every five minutes to warm himself in the cosy guardhouse. The gun had been established there since nineteen-forty-one and had not been fired in anger for twenty-one months. The soldiers had settled into a life of not uncomfortable domesticity. In summer there were geraniums around the gate.

  For several minutes the cloudy moon broke into free sky and shone briskly along the Devon coast. Start Bay was patched with silver and Gilman, turning half a circle, could see the strong shoulder of Start Point. Almost below his feet, small craft creaked in the comfort of the harbour. Someone opened the door of the pub half a mile away and he could hear the singing.

  His relief was not due until midnight, but, to his surprise and pleasure, Catermole appeared, a thick clumsy figure stumping along the jetty, dragging his rifle and small pack behind him, the rifle butt bumping on the woodwork, the pack pulled like a reluctant dog.

  ‘I reckoned one of us might as well have a New Year drink,’ he said to Gilman. ‘If you slope off now you’ll get there in good time.’

  Gilman grinned: ‘Thanks, Pussy,’ he said. ‘What’s Bryant doing?’

&n
bsp; ‘Don’t worry about Bryant,’ sniffed Catermole. ‘He’s writing letters to his missus, like he’s always doing. He’s been down the phone box three times to wish her a Happy New Year.’

  ‘Three times?’

  Catermole shrugged. ‘She ain’t at home. Once his little kid answered. He told me. He had to tell somebody, I s’pose. Poor bugger gets in a right state. She’s probably out with some hairy-balled Yank. If you piss off sharp now, he won’t even notice.’

  Gilman patted Catermole’s arm gratefully. ‘I’ll bring you back something,’ he promised.

  ‘That big landgirl,’ suggested Catermole wistfully. He pulled his solid greatcoat collar up the sides of his head and hung his rifle clumsily across his shoulder. Gilman’s boots resounded on the wooden jetty and then on the stone. Catermole snorted at the cold air. He spat experimentally at the sea and the stiff wind caught the gob and blew it unerringly back on to his nose. Philosophically he wiped it off with his rough sleeve.

  He took a swig of scotch from a flask concealed in his left ammunition pouch. Then a second. Then crossing his arms over his chest, tonelessly, softly, and only just catching the tune, he began to sing into the Channel wind:

  ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

  And never brought to mind …’

  At ten minutes past eleven Howard Evans, the doctor from Wilcoombe, was driving through dark and remote lanes making for Mortown Farm where Mary Lidstone was delivering her sixth child. Although he had answered the call without delay, he guessed he would be too late. Mary had a habit of doing things herself.

  The sides of the lanes were steep-banked and topped with thickly knotted hedgerows, so that driving through them was like going along a trench. Where there was a break for a gate or the junction of another lane, the moonlight rolled through, golden across the narrow road. He turned on to the track that led to Mortown Farm and was at once confronted by the small herd of Lidstone cows. It was as though they had come down the track to meet him. The headlights of his car were filtered through blackout slits but the moon was sufficient. He stopped. The cows advanced and stared blankly and yet with curiosity through the windows of the car.

  ‘Bugger off,’ shouted Evans in his Welsh voice. ‘Go on, clear off, you dozy dolts. Move your arses.’ He tooted and revved the engine, but the animals continued to study him with the same benignity. ‘Right, sod it,’ he swore. ‘I’ll run you down.’

  Since the car was old and miniature, a 1936 Austin Seven saloon, and the cows were mature South Devons, big flanked and great-faced, grown on the thick pastures of that lush region, it was an unreal threat. He revved the hesitant engine again and pushed carefully forward. The cows, like a crowd of bland countrywomen, moved aside with clumsy reluctance and with eloquent hurt in their eyes. Some commenced to moo and soon, as he inched his way through, the others joined the protest. Geese, up at the farm, being disturbed from their pond, began to sound off. Evans got clear of the cows and drove up the rutted track. It had been a dry winter for Devon and the red ground was firm. He stopped in front of the farmhouse, edgings of light showing around its blackout curtains, and, as he left the car, was at once surrounded by the threatening geese. Prudently he decided not to run for it. He sidled back into the car, closed the door and sounded the horn. A boy of about five, in a nightshirt, came to the door and herded the geese away. Evans got out and smiled at him. ‘You’re Edward, that’s right isn’t it?’

  ‘Georgie,’ corrected the boy shyly. ‘Edward’s littler than oi be.’ He moved towards the door. ‘I got another brother now,’ he said without excitement. ‘He just come out.’

  ‘Too late again,’ muttered Evans. He went in. The Lidstone grandmother was sitting in front of the fire holding a cup of tea with both hands as though she thought it might be taken from her. ‘She be upstairs, doctor,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘’Tis another boy, for God’s sake. Another one. B’ain’t never a maid in this house.’

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked automatically as he went towards the ancient staircase in the corner. It was blackened and curled like a lock of hair.

  ‘Same as usual,’ nodded the grandmother, gazing into the tea. ‘She don’t have any bothering.’ She swirled the cup as if it might hold secrets. ‘’Tis no world for little children,’ she muttered dolefully.

  He was not a tall man but he had to bend to negotiate the staircase. It opened out immediately into a bedroom, low, warm and dim as a burrow, lit by two paraffin lamps. Mary Lidstone was sitting cheerfully in the fat bed, her new baby in a wooden box cradle jammed between the mattress and the wall. She smiled at his obvious anxiety.

  ‘Beat me to it again, Mary,’ he sighed. ‘How was it?’

  ‘’Tis easy,’ she smiled. She was a broad, pleasant woman; she wore the white nightgown she always donned immediately after her births. ‘Just like having my dinner, doctor. ’Twas right after I got Gran to bang the old saucepan with a poker.’

  He understood. There was no telephone at the farm and it would have been arranged for the grandmother to go out and strike a heavy saucepan with a poker so that the Steers, the next family down the short valley, could send their son to the telephone box in the near village. Evans examined the baby, which awoke briefly to examine him, and then sat on the bed and held the woman’s hand. ‘Another son,’ he smiled. ‘What’s Ernie going to say?’

  ‘I don’t think ’ee’ll be able to say nothing,’ she said practically. ‘By the time they let him ’ome, this ’un will be as grown as the others.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Evans told her kindly. He was forty and had volunteered for the services, but, ironically, had been considered unfit. ‘It will all be over, finished, this year … you see.’

  A pout of sadness puffed her face. ‘’Tis hard for me to think how far away my Ernie is,’ she said simply. ‘I look at the map in the Daily Herald, when they ’as of Burma and those parts, but ’tis hard for me to think of Ernie being there.’ She looked strangely ashamed. ‘There’s me, I never been out of Devon, you know. Never further than Exeter in all my life. Nor had Ernie afore they sent ’im to Burma, except for the army training and that. I can’t think ’ow far Burma is.’

  ‘It seems a long way from here,’ Evans agreed. ‘This coming year … it’ll be over. You see, Mary.’

  ‘I was trying to ‘ang on until the New Year, with the baby,’ she went on. ‘Now he’s a year older than he might have been.’

  Evans nodded at the odd logic. ‘What are you going to call him?’

  ‘I ’ave a fancy for Winston,’ she said, folding her arms across her large rural bosom. ‘But I know Ernie won’t ’ave any of that. He’s got no time for Churchill, not since he shot at the Welsh miners.’ She glanced at him. ‘You’re Welsh,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but I wasn’t there at the time,’ he replied shaking his head. ‘I’m not all that sure it really happened. I think it’s just a story.’

  ‘You try and tell that to Ernie,’ she answered stoutly. ‘No, he won’t have Winston, for sure. I’d like to have some name like that, though, you know, like one of the leaders. It’ll show when ’ee was born.’

  ‘Why not Stalin?’ joked Evans, patting her puffy hand. ‘That would be original in Devon.’

  ‘Now there’s one I don’t like, myself,’ she sniffed seriously. ‘Never did care for those whiskers, you know. Old Daffy at Telcoombe Beach, he’s got whiskers like that.’ Evans tried to think of Stalin and Daffy together. Mary went on: ‘And we’ve got to get Harold in somewhere, that being Ernie’s late father’s name, before he passed on. It’s got to be ’is second name. Stalin Harold Lidstone don’t sound right. No. I like the American one better.’

  ‘Eisenhower?’ he asked aghast. ‘Dwight Eisenhower?’

  ‘No, not ’im. He’s got a funny mouth. The other one … Roosevelt. I like Roosevelt. I’ll give it a bit of a think. I might even get a letter to Ernie and one back afore we have to make up our minds. Don’t need to ’ave him christened till spring.’


  Evans remained talking to her for another fifteen minutes. She was tired, and sinking down into the bed, and he settled her on her pillows. ‘I’ll be going,’ he said. His shadow arched across the room. ‘I’ll be by to see you tomorrow. Any trouble before then, get Gran to bang the saucepan, or send one of the boys over to the Steers. I’ll come out right away.’

  She smiled mildly and thanked him. ‘Get Gran to give you a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘I forgot, sorry.’

  ‘No, I won’t wait. I might get home for a New Year drink.’

  ‘That’s right, I be forgetting. Happy New Year, doctor.’

  ‘And to you, Mary,’ he smiled. ‘And to all of us. Ernie will be back soon, you watch.’

  ‘I do hope,’ said Mary. ‘There’s ’im wanting a maid and ’tis another boy.’

  ‘There’s never a choice,’ he said. ‘I’ll be going. If I can get past your geese and cows. The Germans would never have got this far, not through that lot.’

  ‘They never even tried, did they,’ she said. ‘Goodnight, doctor.’

  ‘’Night Mary. Have a good sleep. The boy’s fine.’

  He went out and down the stairs. The grandmother was asleep, sitting up before the fire. The five-year-old boy, Georgie, was asleep on the hearthrug. He wondered where the others were. Quietly he went out.

  The geese began to sound, but he got in the car and started the little engine before they advanced. The car bumped in the moonlight across the rutted field track. Evans began to laugh to himself.

  ‘Roosevelt Harold Lidstone,’ he said shaking his head and smiling. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Gilman left the gun-site carefully, but once he was away from the close area of the harbour he thought it was safe enough to walk openly up the hill towards the Bull and Mouth. He was conscious of the regular echoes of his boots striking from the pavement but not overconcerned. Hardly had he begun the steady ascent, however, when he heard a voice, unmistakably the officer’s voice of Bryant, behind him, calling out something from the direction of the gate guardhouse. For a moment he thought he had been spotted. In the best tradition of the basic training manual for street fighting, unused until now, he froze and then dropped quietly into the darkness of a doorway. Tight against the brickwork he heard Bryant’s voice again, but realized, with relief, that it was not shouting after him. He was calling to the corporal in the guardhouse. He was going to post his letter. He would be back quickly.