The Magic Army Page 6

  ‘This is tough for them, but things aren’t going to be easy for us either. The pre-invasion exercises conducted in this area are to be as near the real thing as makes no difference. That means live ammunition.’ He watched their faces. Surprise, worry, a limp grin. Brunn’s Adam’s apple seemed to have become wedged under his chin. ‘Some guys are going to get killed here, it’s just about inevitable; killed before they’ve ever got a look at a German. And by other Americans.’

  He sighed heavily. ‘You just have to look around this unit, these hundred or so guys we’ve got here. Right now they’re not fit to fight anybody, even other Americans. Christ, we had a guy stranded up a tree this morning – and he fell out of the tree on top of some other guy. So you see what I mean.’

  The two officers and one of the sergeants, Humpchick, nodded sagely as if they were confident of controlling the situation. Perry was staring through a fissure in the nissen hut wall and Shermack looked as if he might be thinking of his mother.

  Schorner said: ‘We can anticipate a back-up unit in a couple of days, once the local population has been told what’s going on, and then there’ll be doughboys coming in thick and fast. There’ll be a month to shake down, get everything organized. After that the battle – the battle before the real battle.’

  He looked through the hut door and saw Private Primrose standing twenty yards away with the doctor from Wilcoombe. They had stopped, as though unwilling to come further, and were peering towards the hut. Schorner said to the officers and sergeants, ‘I’ll tell all the men what’s going on just as soon as I think it’s the time, or I get the okay from a higher echelon, wherever that is. The English civilians must know first anyway. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they chorused. A succession of ragged salutes went up and down and they left the hut.

  The doctor walked towards the colonel and they shook hands. ‘Howard Evans,’ said the doctor. ‘Just in case you don’t remember from last night.’

  ‘I remember all right,’ smiled Schorner. ‘You were like a kind light in a difficult world.’

  Evans nodded. ‘And you’re Colonel Schorner. I’ve seen your two injured men. They’re all right.’

  ‘Good,’ said Schorner. ‘I’m sorry to have called you out but we don’t have a medical officer yet and that guy fell out of a tree for God’s sake. And he hit another guy. We can’t afford to lose good men like that.’ He smiled.

  ‘I’ve examined them,’ said Evans. ‘Nothing broken as far as I could make out. Except the tree.’

  ‘Yes, the tree. I guess we’ll have to compensate somebody for that tree.’

  Evans looked at him seriously. ‘I think you’ll eventually have to compensate for a bit more than a tree,’ he said. ‘From what I understand.’

  ‘You know,’ nodded Schorner. ‘I guess some folks do. It’s the sort of thing that leaks out. Bad news always does.’

  ‘Not many people know yet,’ said Evans. ‘Barrington, the chairman of the council, he knows. You met him last night.’

  Schorner smiled grimly. ‘He wasn’t very pleased to see us,’ he said.

  ‘You might feel like that if you were going to have your farm blown up, or whatever the US Army intends to do,’ said Evans reasonably.

  ‘Blow it up,’ confirmed Schorner grimly. ‘That’s the intention.’

  Evans sniffed at the grainy day. The landscape rose and descended indolently like a swell on the sea. ‘Pity it has to be here,’ he commented. ‘Lovely part of the country, lovely. Soft, don’t you think, colonel, not harsh in any way? And it’s a lived-in countryside, if you know what I mean. People belonging here and working.’

  ‘Yes, I see it and I understand,’ replied Schorner. He had a strange, shame-faced feeling, as if the decisions were his. ‘I’m a farmer myself. In the Shenandoah Valley, West Virginia.’

  Evans smiled and said: ‘Shenandoah. We’ve heard the song here, that’s all.’

  Schorner responded to the smile. ‘That’s something I sing to myself now and again,’ he admitted. ‘Not when anybody’s around, but I sing it. Are you from this area, this county? Devon?’

  It was such an unexpected question that Evans blinked. ‘God, no, I’m a Welshman.’ He paused. ‘But I suppose it’s difficult for you to detect the accents.’

  ‘More like impossible. In time I’ll learn. And a lot more.’

  ‘There are going to be six meetings in different parts of the area, I gather,’ said Evans, looking away from him towards the modest hills. ‘The first one’s right here today, at Telcoombe Magna, in the church, and the others are in different villages. There’s three thousand people involved, you know. Will you have to be there?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to find a way out of it,’ said Schorner caustically. ‘At the moment I’m the senior representative of the … well, okay, the invaders in this area. They have to throw the rocks at somebody.’

  They had begun to walk back towards the gate. A thin western rain began to drift across the hill. Schorner looked up as if he wanted to detect the cloud from which it was falling but the sky was flat ash. Evans did not notice the drizzle or the look. ‘I understand that some British admiral is to tell the people,’ he remarked. ‘Christ knows why. An admiral! I would have thought the Minister of Agriculture would have been more appropriate. He’s the one who’s been exhorting them to grow more food. Dig for Victory it was called. Good slogan, isn’t it? He’s the one who by rights ought to come and tell them they’re being kicked out, dispossessed of their land. Or a bishop. He might convince them that it’s what’s known as God’s will. An admiral seems to be neither here nor there.’

  Schorner enlightened him. They had reached the gate now. The small boy was still bent against the bars, gazing like a sniper at the soldiers. ‘The whole business is going to be under the umbrella – and maybe that’s a good word also – of your Admiralty. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s to fool the Germans. The Admiralty won’t be responsible for our operations, of course, but they’ll be answerable for everything else. We’re going to make the mess and they’re going to have to take the blame and clear up.’

  Evans looked up at the tree from which Ballimach had fallen. ‘They’re not all that strong, some of these trees,’ he remarked. He looked down at the boy. ‘Had much attention from the local populace yet?’

  ‘Some were at the gate at dawn,’ answered the American. ‘Giving us the bird. But we expected that.’

  ‘They’re strange people down here,’ said Evans. ‘Warm but strange. I found that when I came here. Some of them couldn’t get over my Welsh voice. They were very suspicious of a doctor speaking like a miner. Your accent will really be a novelty.’ He added thoughtfully: ‘They’ve been sheltered from change in these parts much more than most other places. Even the railway never got this far, you know. It’s all going to be one hell of a shock to them, not just the evacuation and all that entails, but having strangers in the countryside. Will you be bringing any coloured troops here?’

  ‘Sure will,’ said Schorner. ‘By the thousand, I expect.’

  Evans nodded at the boy. ‘I bet he’s never seen a negro,’ he said. ‘Nor have any of his friends. It’ll be a novelty, believe me.’

  ‘Not so much of a novelty as having a few thousand coloured and white troops in a mock battle – but using live ammunition,’ ruminated Schorner. ‘That’s going to be something to see.’

  Evans said: ‘Are negroes good soldiers? Do they fight well?’

  Schorner shook his head. ‘The US Army doesn’t use them for fighting,’ he said. ‘Not yet anyway. Maybe one day it will. Depends on our losses, I guess. The coloured guys do the work, digging and making roads, stuff like that. Which doesn’t mean they don’t get shot at. But when it comes to combat – that’s down to the white soldier.’

  Evans had parked his small car in the lane. Schorner regarded the high-banked sides, topped with bony hedgerows. They were well above his head. ‘Are all the highways like this?’ he asked. ‘Li
ke trenches?’

  ‘A lot of them,’ confirmed Evans. ‘You’re going to have a job getting a tank along these lanes.’

  Schorner shrugged. ‘There are ways,’ he said.

  Evans looked out from the driving seat. ‘How?’ he challenged.

  Schorner looked at the tight lane with the high entangled banks enclosing it like walls. ‘We just fill them in,’ he said. ‘Fill them in with dirt.’

  Evans shook hands with the American and started the car. As he drove away he saw Schorner talking to the small boy at the gate. He was giving him something. Chewing gum, thought Evans correctly. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said aloud to himself. ‘What a nasty shock they’re all going to have.’

  On New Year’s Day Gilman trudged up the cobbled hill from the anti-aircraft gun. He reflected that it was not possible to do very much else except trudge in British army boots. A milkman, whistling through his teeth, was delivering from a handcart halfway up the slope but there were few other people about. He wondered how long the Americans were going to stay. Captain Westerman and Lieutenant Bryant had been excited by something that morning. Westerman, who was a lazy man, had suddenly decided to inspect everybody and everything on the gun-site, from the gun itself down to the mess-tins. Sergeant Bullivant, another one for an easy life, had begun to storm about vocally like a real sergeant. Something was happening.

  Because he had been on guard all night, Gilman had three hours off-duty. He walked up the street to the house where he had concealed himself the previous night. With caution he knocked on the door. It was answered immediately, almost as if she had been lying in wait.

  ‘You’re back,’ she said caustically. ‘Did you lose your way?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he replied. ‘I would have come back, you know I would, but something happened.’ He produced the half-bottle of scotch. ‘There, look, I didn’t touch a drop.’

  Reluctantly, it seemed to him, she opened the door and let him in. She was wearing a dull, flowered dress. A washed-out looking child was playing with no enthusiasm in front of the reduced fire in the grate. Gilman, who did not know what to do with children, asked its name. The woman answered: ‘Karen.’

  ‘That’s an unusual name,’ commented Gilman. She nodded towards the armchair on the opposite side of the fire. He sat down. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I intended to come straight back. But a whole lot of Americans turned up in the pub. There was a convoy of them, straight off a troopship, apparently. Two officers, a colonel and another chap, came into the pub and asked the way to Telcoombe Magna. They wanted the old RAF camp there. It looked as though there was something special going on. You could tell. Anyway I thought that if Lieutenant Bryant saw this lot coming down the street, headlights full on and everything, he’d have the guard out – and I’d be missing. So I went out the side door and tried to get back.’

  She had opened the half-bottle of whisky and poured out two measures. ‘It’s a bit early,’ she said almost to herself.

  ‘I’d just got outside the pub and the two American officers came out and got into the cars and the whole convoy started off. Then the officers’ car stopped and the colonel asked me if I wanted a lift. That was the last thing I wanted, but he told me to get in. They gave me a lift down to the bottom of the town.’

  ‘Perhaps they thought you were a general or something,’ she said. ‘I heard they even salute the doormen outside the cinemas in Plymouth.’

  Gilman grimaced: ‘I don’t think so. I think they just wanted to take a look at a British soldier. I mean, it was very odd, sitting there in the dark and it’s only a short ride, but I got the impression that they wanted to get a look at me, almost touch me to see what I was made of.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s a difference between them and us, you know. They’ve got those smooth uniforms. And shoes. Not these bloody boots we have to clobber along in.’

  He glanced up and saw that she was regarding him with amusement approaching disdain. It put him on the defensive. ‘No, but … I mean, the driver … well he was only a driver so he couldn’t have been anything very special in rank. He didn’t have any stripes or anything as far as I could see. But him … he had a pair of brown shoes on, I saw them on the pedals when they turned the light on to get a look at me and, honestly, we’ve never had shoes like that in this country.’ He glared down at his own bulging boots. ‘And there’s us wearing these great things. They’re like the boots cripples have to wear.’

  The woman erupted with mirth. He looked at her with almost a sulk. ‘No, well, I mean,’ he stumbled.

  ‘You are odd,’ she said, putting her hand across her mouth. The fingers were slim and curved, her eyes blue and mocking over the barricade they formed. ‘You’re a scream. Getting all worked up about shoes and boots.’

  ‘But don’t you see, that’s what it all means. They put us in these damned things so that we know, we know from the moment we put them on our feet that we’re servile – they’ve got us. They might as well be chains. They mean the same thing. Surely you can have an army without making some people feel inferior. The Yanks, they don’t make their soldiers feel like rubbish by dressing them in this stuff …’ He tugged at the rough khaki of his tunic, ‘ … and with bloody clodhoppers.’

  She exploded with laughter again and he had to join in. ‘You’re … you’re very expressive,’ she said, leaning forward with interest. ‘What did you do before the war?’

  ‘I worked in a bank,’ Gilman said without pride.

  ‘Oh, that’s disappointing.’

  ‘Yes, it was for me too. I want to write. Write anything. On a newspaper, if possible, but anything just as long as it’s writing. I’m using up this war trying to teach myself. I’ve got a correspondence course. I’m never going back to that bank. There’s nothing more demoralizing than counting other people’s money. It’s like working as a washer-upper in a brothel.’

  She laughed outright again. He took a heavy drink of the scotch. ‘Listen,’ he continued, ‘you don’t realize the meaning of the word envy until you see the miserable woebegone buggers who’ve got all the money in the bank. They watch you like a bloody ferret while you’re counting it out – and all for three pounds a week.’

  The woman looked at him seriously. ‘You know, I can’t even remember your second name,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Gilman,’ he said. ‘Peter.’

  ‘Ah, that’s right. And I’m Mary Nicholas.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I remember.’

  ‘How long have you been down here?’

  ‘Three months,’ he answered. ‘I hope it’s until the end of the war. That would suit me fine. I’d like to leave the fighting to the Yanks.’

  ‘You’re honest about it, anyway,’ she said. ‘My husband makes out he’s doing work of national importance. He whispers when anybody asks. Just as if he’s in espionage or something. He’s in the Ministry of Pensions, in Manchester. God, he’s a wet week, believe me. He’s so prissy. He even put a bloody cuckoo clock in our air-raid shelter.’ She laughed wearily.

  Gilman stood up. ‘I’ll have to be going,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d better come up and explain about last night.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she replied easily. ‘Any time. I don’t go out. Just knock.’

  Gilman smiled at her. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I will. Maybe sometime you’ll show me your cuckoo clock.’

  *

  The parish church of St Peter and St Paul, Telcoombe Magna, dated from the eleventh century and had a long, wonderful roof, ribbed like the upturned hull of a boat. Mottled slabs paved its walls listing the members of important families, dormant now beneath the chancel floor; there was a font dating from Elizabethan times; Cromwell’s soldiers had cut, but not destroyed, the fine screen with their ignorant swords. On the side of one of the pews – made much of by children – was carved the demure figure of a bare-breasted mermaid.

  At two o’clock on the short, mean January afternoon the first parishioners of Telcoombe Magna and Telcoombe Bea
ch walked uncertainly into the church; Mr and Mrs George Hicks, who kept the village store at the beach, with Sammy, their fifteen-year-old son, who reluctantly helped them. They came through the rattling oak doors timidly, unvaried expressions of puzzlement nailed on their faces. Eric Sissons, the vicar, was standing almost at the altar steps. He saw them, said, ‘Ah,’ and walked towards them nervously.

  ‘You’re the first, I’m afraid,’ he greeted them as brightly as he could. ‘Still, there’ll be plenty here soon.’ The family were not regular churchgoers. Mr Hicks, who had a mole on his eyebrow which lent him an undeservedly devilish appearance, said: ‘What be it all ‘bout then, vicar? I ’ope it b’aint be just a church service.’

  ‘Nor one of they appeals,’ his wife added emphatically. ‘We ’ad to shut the shop.’

  Sissons said: ‘It’s not a service and it’s not an appeal.’ He felt like saying, ‘It’s an order.’ But he only added: ‘It’s something very important. Something which affects us all.’

  He was grateful when they passed on without further words, seating themselves typically in the back row and staring, unspeaking, down the dim length of the church. The Hibberts, a family from Telcoombe Magna, were next, parents, two sons and a seventeen-year-old daughter, Tilly, who smelled of chickens. The father and the boys came in wearing their farm clothes and with mud still on their boots. ‘What’s all this then?’ asked Jack Hibbert. ‘Getting us away from work.’

  ‘It is very important,’ Sissons told him. The family, looking as if they thought he was lying, moved into the church. Sharply they nodded to the Hicks, whom they did not like and moved three rows down on the other side of the aisle.