‘Who is he, sir?’
‘A Lithuanian SS man. Unpronounceable bloody name. Very well drilled in the Geneva Convention: expects you to treat him with respect and humanity. He was a merchant sailor before the war, sailing for a shipping line out of Middles-brough.’
‘Anything else, sir?’
‘They’ve prepared three more villages like this. He gave me the names. Do you want to radio them forward?’
‘Thank you, Major. What did happen to the people who lived here?’
‘He genuinely doesn’t know. They were gone before he arrived. He said that they were relocated by a Sonderkommando.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked him.
‘What we’d call pioneers, but they’re really clean-up groups. What they’re good at is disposing of lots of bodies.’
The tank had backed off Lammers for twelve feet or so. Even from where I stood I could see the relief on his face. He smiled, even as Rachel’s Dream suddenly lurched over him. It was over in seconds. Cummings was back with us.
‘Driver’s foot will have slipped, sir,’ he told me. ‘Do you want to say some words?’
‘No. I told you. That bastard can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.’
Cummings grunted. It may have been a little laugh.
‘Why don’t you stick around, sir? You’re our sort of Padre. The lads could get used to you.’
I wanted to be sick.
Les slept through the lot. Even the explosion. As we packed Kate for a getaway I told him, ‘I spoke to a Jerry today. I picked up a telephone in that village and was answered by a switchboard operator in Bremen.’
‘Does the Major know that yet?’
‘No; I haven’t had time to tell him.’
‘Do. It’ll make him laugh.’
He didn’t laugh. He wrote it down in his little notebook while we bounced down little Belgian country lanes. Les can’t have been happy with the roads we were using, because his hands on Kate’s wheel had white knuckles. James said, ‘Thanks very much, Charlie . . . only next time tell me sooner, savvy? These little things can be important.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I told him. Situation normal.
PART FOUR
Holland: April 1945
Twelve
Close to nightfall the Major asked Les, ‘Where’s our crossing point into Holland?’
‘Between Arendonk and Reusel, I thought, Major. I’m pulling us back into the canals. There’ll be units backed up everywhere and a lot of confusion. With a little bit of luck the border’ll be so congested we can slip through like last time. OK?’
‘OK, Private. You’re the boss.’
From a Major, that. Les filtered into a column of big army trucks. James explained to me, ‘The problem is that we’ve been moving north across the fronts of two Allied armies: both moving due west. We’re not going with the flow. But at pinch points like this we can make it work to our advantage: we can slip in with a bigger mob.’
They made me swap over with James. I curled into the back seat-well and pulled James’s camouflage cape over me. Les slotted into a convoy and we lurched along with it for hours. I woke with cramp in my right leg that made me want to scream. I managed to clamp my mouth shut.
James said, ‘OK, Charlie. You can come out now.’
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
‘Holland,’ Les sniffed. ‘Land of the Cloggies. Where the Cloggies live in the boggies. Why don’t you two see if you can grab some kip: like last night?’
Looking back, it was Les who taught me to sleep in cars and moving vehicles. I’ve done it ever since; sometimes when I’m driving. The Major pulled rank and made me swap to the front again.
I don’t know what time it was when I woke up. It was dark, and over in the east there was that glow on the cloud base. The flashes in it, like lightning, must have been gunfire. Les grinned to show he knew I was there, but didn’t say anything. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, and was as dark as a Greek bandit. After a few minutes a tune came into my head, and I must have started to hum it, or something. Les said, ‘Haven’t heard them for a while.’
‘Who?’
‘Flanagan and Allen. You were whistling “Free”.’
‘Was I? I didn’t notice. Do you think they’ll care? – the kids who come after us. Whether or not they’re free? After all, it’s why we went to war.’
‘Did we? Your lot may have, but not mine.’
‘But I thought you went to Spain in the Thirties, and fought Franco? The Major told me.’
‘Sometimes the Major has a big mouth.’
‘I heard that, Raffles,’ James said from behind us, snorted, and turned over.
Les plugged on, ‘I went to Spain because I was outta work, and I can drive anything. It just happened that I ended up driving for the Reds; they were the first I came across, so I came back in ’38 an ’ero, because I’d been on the right side for once. I would a’ driven for the first who’d asked me. It was just a matter o’ luck.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘My old lady says I joined up last time to get away from her.’
‘Does she know you name your car after her?’
‘Safer than calling it Susie, an’ ’aving a lot of explaining to do when she finds out.’
‘Would she? Find out.’
‘Definitely. They always do. That’s one of the rules.’
‘Whose rules?’
‘Their rules. Why do you think there’s ten times the number o’ men getting killed in this war as women?’
James said, ‘That’s bloody well enough!’
I was grinning now. Les switched tack. He said, ‘I’m going to stop in about ten minutes and fill the tank, if you wants to stretch your legs. Then push on for another couple of hours. We can laager up away from the war for a couple of hours, then drive in to the rest area at Blijenhoek just as they’re serving breakfast. Americans eat well.’
‘As you say, Private.’
I spluttered, ‘Just who’s in charge in this damned car?’
They said it together.
‘You.’
*
We got as far as Les said, when Kate chose where to stop by catastrophically deflating her right rear. Les three-wheeled her, coasting gently over the billiard-table Dutch landscape for a mile until he pulled her off the road and into a farmyard. Lights showed dimly from a shed, and cows made cow noises. They seemed friendly, but you never know.
‘If women make noises like that, tell them you love them,’ Les told us.
‘Why?’
‘It’s one of the rules.’
‘Whose rules?’ That was the Major, playing bastard again.
Les told him, ‘Don’t take the piss out of the servants, Major. It isn’t nice.’
Honours even, I’d say.
The Major’s communication skills in Cloggie were much better than he admitted to anyone. He told me, ‘It’s all bloody coughs and grunts. Once you’ve mastered that you’re home and dry.’
He went over to the lighted barn which had made sounds like an urgent cowshed. I told you earlier that he wore his old pistol on a lanyard. I noticed that he pulled it from its webbing holster and let it dangle at belt height as he strolled over. He was gone about five minutes. Les got fidgety. He hauled his Sten into his lap, and cocked and uncocked it, moving the slide. Then the Major strolled back. His pistol was back in its holster. He leaned his head in through the window.
‘We can use that shed over there.’ He pointed to a large dark space with sides of overlapping tiles, and a high, vaulted wooden roof. It was as big as St Paul’s. ‘I don’t suppose that either of you knows how to milk cows?’
‘Not the four-legged kind,’ Les said.
James gave him the look, but I could see that they were going to chew over Les’s attitude to the female of the species for the rest of the week. I shook my head. James added, ‘Pity. That means we’ll have to pay to eat. The farmer is away somewhere with a big orange triangle
sewed on his sleeve: he’s gone off fighting Jerry, now that Jerry’s on the run. Not much different to the Frogs, really. Anyway, Mrs Farmer is in there . . .’ He gestured towards the light. ‘. . . playing with the cows’ tits, and she has a fine couple herself. Young, too – can’t be above twenty.’
‘Maybe I can learn,’ I offered. ‘It’s about time I pulled my weight again.’
‘Make sure that’s all you pull, young Charles.’ He had this wicked grin when he wanted it. ‘Raffles and I will change Kate’s boots, and join you afterwards for an early breakfast.’
Milking for England. I wasn’t too good at pronouncing her name: the first bit sounded like Gerd or Gerda, so I stopped with that. She had no English, and at that time I had no Dutch, but she smiled a lot, and giggled when I was clumsy. She washed my hands right up to my elbows with rough lye soap in steaming water, before she let me anywhere near her cows. They were big black and white bastards, who made soft cooing sounds like enormous pigeons. If they lifted their tails you moved aside smartly, because they shit like fire hoses. Big, splattery, khaki streams of the stuff, the colour of a brown job’s uniform.
Gerd was short and stocky, with wide shoulders and hips. She had short, very fine blonde hair tucked under a milking cap. Its flat top was greasy, and smelled of cow. Her mouth was small, but her lips were full and smiley. Her eyes were huge and round, and a very dark brown – like those of the cows in her herd – and she was pale-skinned. My mum once described such a girl to me as strawberries and cream.
She sat me on a three-legged stool, facing a gigantic, grubby-pink udder and a handful of teats. She pushed my head gently forward until the top of it rested against the animal’s flank. I felt its heat, and breathed in its rich, heady scent. Then, standing behind me, she reached over my shoulders for my hands, and guided each to a teat – the cow’s, mind you – and with her hands over mine showed me how to pull the milk from a cow. It was a rhythmic motion, combining a squeeze, a sliding pull, and a caress. When the milk was hitting the wooden bucket in regular steamy spurts she laughed, said something in Dutch which sounded nice, kissed my ear, and moved to the next cow in the line of stalls. Her hips swung as she moved away. She finished her cow before I finished mine, and I saw her take her wooden bucket down to a row of steel churns, and empty it. She came back for mine, and because I hadn’t finished the job, decided that more practical training was called for. She giggled. I shut my eyes, and breathed in the scents around me: the warm milk, the beast, and her; her breath on my neck.
She didn’t stop giggling, but pulled my hands away when the cow was empty: it didn’t take long. Then she led me to another one. She emptied my bucket, and brought it back to me, pushed my head down against the new cow. My fingers already felt tired, but I was keeping up with her by the time we finished.
Then we washed again, although it would be days before I lost the smell of cow from my hair. She washed my hands and my arms, and my shoulders inside my shirt. She let me wash her in return. She stood with her eyes closed when I did this. The soap was gritty, but lathered richly in the soft water. The water was hot. Her body smelled of warm cow, and warm milk, and tasted of soap. The cows made low noises. We made low noises. She giggled again. Why not? I thought. We both came very quickly; one after the other. What if the war ended right here? Maybe a dairy farm in the Low Countries would be just the ticket.
In the farmhouse kitchen Les was asleep in a wooden rocker beside a brightly tiled floor-to-ceiling stove. You could almost see the heat radiating from it. He was snoring. The Major sat at the table. He had obviously dined from a great, orange-skinned cheese in the middle of it. I hadn’t seen so much food in one place since the start of the war. There was enough bread, eggs, dried meat and milk products to bury a battalion. His small notebook was on the table – he had just finished an entry. He smiled his charming smile, and asked the woman, in English, ‘Give him a good ride, did you, Miss?’
She looked mystified, but smiled back at him, and said, ‘Ja, ja.’ I’m sure that she hadn’t understood a word of that.
James then gave her a string of Cloggie words. Her giggle became a genuine laugh, and she replied. I asked him, ‘What was all that?’
‘I asked if you were a good pupil. She said you are the best pupil she’d ever had, and could I leave you here? She made me an offer for you. Apparently you have the makings of a farm servant.’
I felt tired. My hands ached. There was a high wooden chair across the stove from Les. I slumped into it and stuck my feet out. I felt the heat through the soles of my boots. Gerd and James nattered to each other in Cloggie. I wasn’t jealous. She was my age, and wasn’t likely to go with someone as old as him.
I must have slept. When I awoke something like light was creeping into the kitchen through the outside shutters, and they were still at it. Les was awake, and grinning happily to himself, his eyes on the stove, looking nowhere. You could tell that he was relaxed because he looked as if he hadn’t any bones. He turned his head towards us slowly, and gave us a ghastly vacant grin. His eyes were stary. The windows were open, the lights were on, but there was no one at home.
I asked, ‘What’s the matter with Les? Is he ill?’
‘No, it’s the pills he takes: some to wake up, and some to sleep. This happens sometimes if they get out of step with each other. He turns into a large dumpling for an hour or so.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that you’re driving the car when we get out of here, Charlie.’
‘Which you’re keen to do, now that you’ve had breakfast?’ I pointed vaguely towards the crumbs on the table, and the heartily rogered ball of cheese.
‘Christ no. I was just sampling some of the produce the Army’s going to buy. I just agreed the contract with her.’ He pushed his little book across the table to her, with his pen; a nice black and green marbled Swan, just like the Americans’. I’d have to get one of those. He Clogged her and she Clogged him, and she signed the bottom of a page under a row of figures. Whatever he said must have been coarse because he reached out for her tits whilst she signed. Whatever she said sounded even coarser. She got his wrists with hands stronger than his before he got there, and put them firmly back on the table top.
I suggested, ‘Maybe we could hang around for a few hours; until Les is himself again.’
‘Fancy a rematch?’ Gerda was in my seat by the tiled stove, smiling at me over a deep wide cup of ersatz. It was a smile I found myself responding to. Les was leering at her in slow motion – he was really a bit creepy. ‘I shouldn’t think that that’s such a good idea, old son.’
‘Why, James?’
‘One of her more amusing observations, whilst you slept off your labour, was how proud she was of getting through the war with only three doses of the clap. She got it first from a Fritz who raped her, and something else from her masterful Dutch husband who raped her for getting raped.’
‘What about the third time?’
‘Some lost Scotch soldier looking for his regiment, apparently.’
I had that sinking feeling. It probably showed in my face.
He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, son. Too late for that. Just give yourself a good scrubbing off – without breaking the skin – and hope for the best.’
‘Ha bloody ha!’ He gave me a sharp look; a ranker’s look; so I sullenly added ‘. . . Sir,’ and explained, ‘You’ve just taken all of the magic out of it.’
This time his look told me that he thought I was a bleeding idiot. That was all right: I felt like one. As we left I remembered something that Les and my dad agreed on, and asked James to tell me how to say I love you in double Dutch. I held her by the shoulders and looked her full in the eyes. She smiled and giggled. I stumbled over the strange words a bit, but eventually got them out. I don’t know what her response was, but it sounded nasty. That was after she barrel-housed me with a slap that almost broke my jaw. Time to depart.
Les wouldn’t let go of his Sten, which worried
me because he still wasn’t right. He insisted on sitting alongside me in the front, rattling the bolt moodily. We drove in silence at first, along straight, featureless roads. Eventually he asked me, ‘Why so forlorn, little man? You really liked her, didn’t you?’
We talked about women in the way men do. Something between a boast and the confessional. I think that each of us had said more about himself than he had wanted to, because after that there was just the swish of Kate’s rubber on the arrow-straight road, and the growl of the big Humber engine. Eventually the brooding silence got to me, and I said, ‘That was just like being back on the squadron. We seemed to talk sex all the time then. It feels like years ago.’
‘That’s because you had sex to talk about,’ Les said. ‘It must be that bloody blue uniform you Brylcreem boys ponce about in.’
‘Jealous?’
‘ ’course I am. Aren’t you, now that you’re as scruffy as the rest of us?’
‘Gerd didn’t seem to notice.’
The sky we were driving into was a deep creamy yellow, and the poplars lining the road stood out against it as black. At one point I must have seen movement from the corner of my eye, and glancing to the left saw a familiar trio of American P-38s overtake us at treetop height a field away, flying in the same direction. I made eye contact with the nearest pilot. I think that Les waved to him. The guy just stared. I couldn’t see his face, so why did I sense the malevolence rolling out of him? That was just as the furthest half-rolled out of their little formation, and climbed away forward.
Les grunted. Then he said, ‘Wake up, Major . . . and get down behind the seat please.’
I asked, ‘What’s up, Les?’
‘That bastard bears us ill will. I know it.’
‘Don’t be dumb, Les. They’re on the same side as us. We’ve got bloody great white stars all over Kate for them to see.’
‘Look, sir, just do what you’re told for once.’ He had wound down his window, and put two spare Sten magazines on the floor between his feet. The Sten was round his neck again. When he cocked it the click had an air of finality about it. ‘You can argue the toss with me afterwards. If you see a black dot in the sky in front of us just weave old Kate from side to side as fast as yer can; but keep her on the road.’
Charlie's War Page 17
