Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

  The Major said, ‘I think I see a chink in your armour, Albie.’ When no one laughed he added, ‘Sorry; I couldn’t resist that.’

  The oriental said, ‘That’s very funny. I haven’t heard that one before.’

  Albie was sitting on the turret turned towards us, with his legs dangling over the side. He had found a grey German officer’s cap with a shiny black peak from somewhere. He said, ‘He’s not a Chink.’

  I said, ‘He must be a Jap then. Aren’t we supposed to be at war with his lot?’

  ‘Loyal Japanese. He’s Japanese American: we got thousands of them. He must be all right because RKO sent him to me. He’s a genuine film star. He’s been in Charlie Chan films.’

  ‘My name’s Charlie,’ I told the olive-skinned gnome. ‘What parts did you have?’

  ‘In most of the films I got to say Yeth, Master, or, No, Master. Then I died.’

  He had a great, soft speaking voice that made you smile.

  ‘I saw those bits,’ I told him, ‘and I thought you died very well. I thought that you had a great future in dying.’

  Albie said, ‘So did Uncle Sam. That’s why he sent him to me. My people are always dying. I asked for a professional, for a change.’

  Then I asked Albie, ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Ito. We call him Hero; geddit?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Hero Ito. Hiro Ito. Isn’t he King of all the Nips, or something?’

  Then I noticed his eyepatch.

  Les was faster than me. He asked, ‘Sir? Albie?’

  ‘Yes, driver?’

  ‘What the fuck happened to your eye, sir?’

  ‘I bashed it against the 50-cal magazine. The Cutter said that he’d take it away for me, because it would never work again. Didn’t hurt that much.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Round here somewhere.’

  As we strolled off James offered, ‘You don’t think that the Cutter is collecting enough body parts to assemble his own American, do you?’

  He finished the sentence with a thunderous great sniff, which rumbled around his sinuses like the early phase of an earthquake.

  I suppose that we now had the excuse to jack it in if we had wanted it, but in my case the choice was either going on to Bremen with them, or going to Bremen on my own. Part of me believed that Cliff had only set me off in pursuit of Grace because he thought I’d cock it up: he’d never thought I’d catch her – but at the same time he could turn to the Bakers and say, We tried. Now I was this close I wasn’t going to stop, even if they wanted me to.

  We waited for a day. We cleaned out Kate’s cabin, and Les bartered petrol for a replacement front screen. It came from a Vauxhall, so it didn’t quite fit, but it was better than nowt. We couldn’t do anything to the passenger side window, so Les stretched a cut-out flour sack over it, which he wedged in place with wooden pegs. He used two more tapered ones to seal the bullet holes in the petrol tank, tapping them firmly into place with a wooden mallet.

  ‘Navy taught me,’ was all he’d say about it.

  When I told Les that they didn’t have to stay with me he laughed. Then he said, ‘I’ve a bigger pain in the arse now than you, Charlie, and I think that the Major wants to stick it out. Anyway something’s gone wrong with our comms system, and I think he’s keen to find out what.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘He’s not likely to tell you, is he, sir?’

  ‘What is the problem?’

  ‘It seems like the stores he calls forward don’t always get sent up; an’ other things do instead. Some bastard down in the base store is altering his shopping list.’

  James always had difficulty in saying nothing. Instead, he said:

  ‘I keep six honest serving-men,

  (They taught me all I knew);

  Their names are What and Why and When

  And How and Where and Who . . .’

  I’ve told you about Les. He chipped in with:

  ‘I send them over land and sea,

  I send them east and west;

  But after they have worked for me

  I give them all a rest.’

  Then he added, ‘That was Mr Kipling, weren’t it?’

  James said, ‘Very good, Les. Where did you learn that?’

  ‘It was one of my dad’s favourite pieces.’

  They were just stringing me along, so I played the part in life God had fitted me out for: the dumb laddie.

  ‘What does all that mean, Major?’

  ‘It means, sonny, that somebody is rattling my chain. And I’m going to find out who, how and why. Capiche? So Raffles and I shall be with you for the time being. Do you have a problem with that, Pilot Officer?’

  ‘No, sir. You’re in charge.’

  ‘Glad to have settled that.’ He was unusually waspish; I suppose that his leg might have been hurting. I know that my bloody arm was.

  Les asked, ‘What about me?’

  James grinned.

  ‘Bollocks. You can be in charge, too. My second-in-command. Charlie can be the cabin boy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I told them. ‘I don’t suppose that either of my COs would care to accompany me to a Canadian field kitchen a couple of fields away? They appear to have set up some kind of a bar alongside it. It has a stuffed moose’s head on the ridge pole over the door flaps.’

  That night we slept in the barn at Korne again, but weren’t disturbed. In the morning our hosts turned out to see us away. Les gave them a couple of good dollars, and a handful of forged deutschmarks. The old man put a hand on my bad arm, and indicated the road we were to take. It eventually curved down into a valley, and disappeared. His wife gave Les a fat, wet kiss. James pretended not to notice.

  Twenty-Three

  It was a strong flat valley, and once in it another one of those arrow-straight roads ran from one end to the other. I couldn’t remember who had won the argument about who built the damned things, but they were everywhere. The steep wall of hills to our right was densely clothed with pines. Between them and the road were fields of late winter feeding. That was good defensive country. James said that the northern Jerry fed his livestock on kale. I was partial to the irony taste of kale myself. James said that the first time German POWs were offered kale in England they refused it on the ground that it was animal food, and complained to the Red Cross.

  The valley ridge to the west was flatter and closer, and clothed with good grazing grass. I could see a hill, or a further ridge, beyond it: perhaps it hid another valley. We seemed to be heading towards a distant forest of deciduous trees, without an obvious way through, but James and Les seemed to know what they were doing, and they didn’t seem to be in a hurry . . . which pissed me off a bit. James took his eyes from the landscape, or his map from time to time, to scribble in his notebook.

  When he said, ‘Stop. Stop here, please,’ in majorly tones, it did occur to me to wonder why. I couldn’t see anything of significance for miles. Bollocks. He was away with the fairies again.

  He said, ‘Let’s walk for ten minutes. All of us. It will do the pair of you good, instead of sitting around all day.’

  Les muttered something about leaving someone to mind Kate, and volunteering himself for the duty. James said what I had been thinking.

  ‘Bollocks.’ Then, ‘Who’s in charge?’

  I kept my mouth shut for once.

  It was just as I had thought. As we moved gingerly on foot up to the west and north we were on dark, fine grass; like the South Downs around Hastings. There was thyme mixed in among it. We walked the walk, of course; James set a powerful pace as if he was in a hurry to get somewhere. Les was about six feet behind him, loping along with his Sten bouncing against his hip, and me a good ten feet behind him. We probably looked odd from a distance, if some Jerry sniper had a bead on us. James was taking a chance on the area being pacified, and I didn’t mind him taking chances, as long as it wasn’t with me. The ridge, which was our valley’s west rim, simply looked into an
other: a shallower and more serious affair. It was more serious because there were dead tanks all over it – some square Brits, and some American light jobs. The Yanks looked low and fast and racy. They looked just as dead as the British Comets close to them. Les knew their flash, and said, ‘Fife and Forfar Yeomanry. Scotch jobs. They have had a bit of a doing, haven’t they?’

  I looked quickly for Albie’s past caring among the Americans. No sign.

  James told us, ‘I knew it! There was once a battle here.’

  Les gave him the If only you knew how pitiful you are look.

  ‘Would never have known that, sir.’

  I added, ‘No, nor would I.’

  ‘Arseholes, the pair of you. Products of failed second-rate schools. I mean a real battle – swords against spears. This is where about eighteen hundred Jerries stopped a complete Roman legion dead in its tracks. One of the histories says that a year after, a man looking at this hillside from the tree line down there could be dazzled by the sun reflecting back from a carpet of white skulls. They weren’t Jerries back then, of course, merely barbarians.’

  ‘You’re sure about this, sir? You ain’t just making it up?’

  ‘Absolutely sure. I’ve been wanting to visit here for years.’

  ‘That’s what you said about Agincourt and Waterloo, sir.’ That was Les.

  ‘When were you there?’ I asked him. I was interested in spite of myself.

  ‘Last month,’ he told me. ‘The Major has this thing about battlefields. He prefers the old ones to the new ones.’

  ‘I’m not going to complain, Les. Bloody sight less dangerous.’

  ‘Not always, Charlie. Look at this place. A good place to fight is always a good place to fight: different weapons, that’s all.’

  James had wandered off a bit, towards one of the Brit tanks. It had a great blackened hole where something nasty had gone in between the drive wheels. The track on that side had been thrown. All of its hatches were open, so unless it had been robbed in the last couple of days, some of the crew had got out. James abruptly lost interest.

  ‘Let’s go down there. That’s where most of the fighting took place.’

  There was the valley floor. It wasn’t as deep as the valley from which we’d climbed, and followed a meandering stream fringed by bare trees. They were coming into bud and leaf. The earth seemed disturbed in a narrow line parallel to them; as if it had been ploughed. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to find out why. The knocked-out tanks all seemed to be facing down towards it, as if they had come along the rim that we had walked over, and then turned down in open formation. James set off down through the ankle-high grass. Les hadn’t the heart to let him go alone, and I hadn’t the courage to leave them to it. James turned once on the short descent, to grin back at us. He was animated. Like a child.

  And that’s what they were like: like children.

  The disturbed earth was a hastily dug trench. My dad would have done a better job than that. There were fifteen or sixteen dead children chucked around in it. It wasn’t deep because they had tried to sink it too close to the line of scrubby trees, and had got into the roots. Don’t worry, I won’t go all soft on you. Tommo told me long ago: bad things happen: that’s what wars are for – fade scene. They were soldiers, anyway. Little soldiers. Kids in their mid-teens away for their first and last adventure. They were dressed in bits and pieces of soldier suits, just like me and Les. Not only that, but the empty cartridge cases scattered around, and the fucked-up tanks on the hillside, seemed to indicate that they’d put up a hell of a fight before the tank squadrons had overrun them. I could see the crushed and churned areas of the makeshift trench, and the gaps in the trees where the tanks had crossed them. Some of the bodies were smashed. I thought that they looked like dolls tossed aside by a bored playmate.

  James’s voice was a thousand miles away. No one had ever sounded less like a Major. He said, ‘Stupid, but I suddenly feel sick.’

  It was too true, and too trite to be worth a response. We walked along the scarred earth, slowly, like visitors to a museum studying mildly novel exhibits. At the far end of the trench it fell back into the tree line. A boy who might have been fourteen, one of the youngest fighters there, was lying back out of the trench, as if he had been caught as he stood up. A grubby white handkerchief fluttered in a branch close to him. You never know. One of his arms was thrown back above his head as if grasping for the skittering cloth. His other hand, his left one, rested on his chest. His stomach cavity was as open as his dull eyes. So was his mouth. What had his last sound been like? There were flies. There are always flies, even when temperatures are too low to give them more than a day’s life.

  A boy of no more than five sat beside the corpse, his dirty little hand resting in the hand the corpse had placed on its chest. His little legs dangled in the trench. His head was bowed, chin resting on his chest, his back to us. He had a camel-coloured coat – I remember that coat – with a dark brown soft collar. He was as motionless as all of the others, and because he didn’t move as the flies crawled on him, we knew what we were going to see but could not help ourselves. One of those nightmares you can’t switch off.

  The reality was worse than that.

  I was closest to him. As I came up to him, and steeled myself to look, he moved. That was more shocking than anything else. He turned his head to look at me. His brown eyes were huge, in a small face as round as the moon. That was when Les said, ‘Fuck it.’

  None of us attempted to free him from the corpse he held on to. We sat on the grass in front of him, and spoke as if he wasn’t there. James started it.

  ‘Poor little sod. What do you think?’

  ‘He won’t make it on his own. He’ll starve out here.’ That was Les, replying. I wished that he hadn’t. Then nothing; as if they had nothing to say. Then Les, as if there hadn’t been a gap in the conversation.

  ‘We can’t bury them. It will take all bloody day.’

  ‘I’ll get some Pioneers up here. Don’t worry, they’ll be here in a couple of days.’ James again.

  I asked them, ‘What about the kid?’

  Then nothing again. What the bloody hell was the matter with them all of a sudden? Then Les, ‘It would be kinder if this didn’t go on for him, Charlie. Look at him. He can’t even find his own food.’

  ‘You mean, kill him, don’t you?’

  James wouldn’t meet my eye. Les said, ‘Look on it as being kinder.’ He had almost repeated himself. Then, ‘He wouldn’t be here if he had anyone else.’ The odd thing is that his voice sounded almost tender.

  James coughed. I think that that was to hide his embarrassment. He said, ‘Kinder. And pragmatic. You’re right; he has no one to look out for him.’

  Germany had bled with that argument for the last twelve years. I couldn’t understand them any more. I said, ‘Yes he has. He has us, for the time being. Us. Me.’

  At least Les would look me in the eye. When he spoke he was almost whispering.

  ‘Charlie, Charlie.’ He was shaking his head, as if I was a stubborn child. I noticed for the first time that he had that horrible black-bladed knife in his hand. ‘Will you fight me over it?’

  ‘Yes. If you make me.’

  Then nothing again. Then James: ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve chased halfway across Europe to try to rescue a woman and a baby, haven’t I? Maybe I’m not doing too well at it, but tell me where’s the sense of saving one child, if I murder another one on the way to doing it?’

  James said, ‘. . . or look the other way while someone else does the killing?’

  ‘That too. People have been looking the other way in this country for too sodding long,’ I told him. I saw Les drop his right shoulder, and said, ‘Les, if you make a move towards the kid, I’ll jump you. You’ll have to kill me to get him. I promise you.’ I don’t know what I sounded like, but I felt as if I was going to burst into tears. It was one of those moments. Les was suddenly like a Frog or an Eyetie, because he shrugged as
if it didn’t matter.

  Nothing again. No one moved. Not a sound: then somewhere a bird was singing, and James sighed, ‘Les is right, Charlie, but I’ll pull rank for you. Just this once. I’ll do that if you promise to dump the kid at the next village we get to.’

  ‘All right. Fine.’

  James asked, ‘Les?’

  Les looked away from us. Somewhere into the distance. His hands were empty. ‘Aye,’ he said, and, ‘OK.’ I wish I could say that he sounded relieved, but I’m not so sure.

  The kid didn’t speak as I lifted him away from the corpse, and carried him away from whatever he had seen there. He weighed nothing. His coat sleeve was stiff with someone else’s blood. James had some sort of pidgin conversation with him as we climbed away again over grass that shone like dark-green glass. It was something like, ‘Muter?’ The kid shook his head. James thought that he hadn’t understood, and asked him again. The kid shook his head again. James realized that he meant no.

  ‘Fader?’ The kid shook his head.

  ‘Bruder?’ The kid squirmed in my arms suddenly. I almost stumbled. He pointed back over my shoulder.

  Les spoke for the first time since his grudging OK. He said, ‘Don’t worry kid. We’ll see they look after your brother,’ and he touched the boy’s cheek and hair. Then he walked ahead of me.

  *

  Back on the low west ridge of our first valley we could see Kate down on the road, and something else behind her. We all crouched. Les swung his Sten forward. He grunted, ‘Company.’ Then, ‘Anyone got any ideas?’

  I shook my head. James said, ‘Your speciality, old boy. I’ll leave it to you this time.’

  It was another sign that James and I had been at different kinds of school. My lot would have called that a cop-out. Les turned to me, and grinned. I had noticed before that when he bared his teeth they had a feral look about them.