'Sir, I'm afraid Lieutenant Frost is down —'
'I would be too, if I played bridge the way he does,' he says. 'Not serious, I hope.'
'He's by that Crab over there. I was going to take him some of the Padre's tea.'
'Very well, Coward,' he says, handing me his hip-flask. 'You can add some of that with my compliments. Better have some yourself, too. You're looking a little shaky.'
'Bit chilly, that's all.'
Lt. Truelove looks me briskly up and down with his mad, intense blue eyes - an experience akin to being flayed by birches. Then drops his voice and says with unexpected gentleness: 'You won't let us down, Dick?'
'Do you think I would?'
'I never think, you know that. But there are others.' He raises his eyes heavenwards, presumably to indicate Capt. Dangerfield. Or Lt. Col. Partridge. Probably both.
'Lord, but it's so damned unfair.'
'Try being called Ponsonby Truelove sometime. Now, enough chat, I want to see you, and more importantly my hip-flask, by the sea wall in ten minutes. I'll send the medics for Lieutenant Frost.'
By the time I reach the tank, the waves are already lapping the lower part of its tracks and with it the rising tide has carried all manner of flotsam up the beach - jerry cans, empty Mae Wests, crates, a life ring saying SS Victoria, corpses and blackened bits of corpses, advancing inexorably inland like an army of the dead in a rolling mass of oily seaweed and filthy spume. Occasionally, with a revolting crunch, it will be overtaken by the army of the living as another landing ramp crashes down, swiftly followed by an urgent splashing of boots; or the clank of tracks as a Bren carrier or tank manoeuvres through the accumulating debris across the narrowing strip of sand leading towards the nearest beach exit.
'With the compliments of Lieutenant Truelove,' I say, helping Lt. Frost to a sip of tea. He's conscious but only just. Cold and greenish, he has been propped up against the tank's track, and wrapped in a gas cape.
'Landed dry, did he? Jammy devil.'
'And he's promised to send you a medic just as soon as he can,' I say.
'We can wait. We've been having a wonderful time here, haven't we, Sarnt? Go on. Tell him what you need for a one- no-trump opening bid?'
'Twelve to fourteen points, sir.'
'Very good, Sarnt, but that's not all, is it? Go on. You know. What's the other requirement? Begins with "B".'
'Balanced?'
'Bravo, Sarnt. See what a fast learner your man is, Coward? At this rate, by the time you reach Port-en-Bessin, Captain Dangerfield will have his new partner ready-made.'
'You hear that Spandau?' asks Sgt. Price, suddenly.
'No,' I say, half-listening, half-distracted by the LCA which is preparing to drop its ramp not fifteen yards from where we're sitting. Full of green berets.
'That's what I thought. Reckon it's been taken out. You feel up to moving, sir?'
'MEDIC!' I yell towards the body of men pouring from the LCA's bows and one of them peels off to attend to Lt. Frost.
As we shake Lt. Frost's hand and wish him luck, we can't help but hear an agitated exchange just beside us between a corporal and his troop commander.
'Sir, two of the men are refusing to get off the LCA,' says the Corporal.
'Then use that,' says the Captain - meaning the Corporal's Colt .45.
'You mean, sir, to threaten them with, like?'
'I mean, Corporal,' says the Captain, with slow, deliberate menace. 'If they persist in disobeying orders, shoot them.'
'Very good, sir,' says the Corporal, swallowing hard. He watches the Captain sprint off to rejoin his troop, then looks wonderingly at his side-arm.
In the LCA, two crewmen in grey tin helmets are remonstrating with the two commandos cowering in the back of the craft. Frankly, I'm surprised they haven't done the sensible thing and simply buggered off to the support vessel with the refuseniks still aboard. But I suppose, being Royal Marines themselves, these men feel a greater than usual sense of solidarity with their passengers. The honour of the Corps is at stake.
One of the commandos looks familiar. He has his arm draped round the shoulders of the other one, who's sobbing into his fists. A crewman has lost his temper now: 'You should have thought of that when you volunteered,' I can hear him scream. The consoler gestures, arms open, to the crewman, that he's doing his best.
'It's not me, I'm not scared about me, it's my kid, my kid. If you had kids, you'd understand,' says the weeping one and, now his face isn't covered by his hands, I recognise, Christ — it's Billy! The chap I've spent the last three nights with in that lifeboat. And the other one is his friend Ted.
A rifle cracks. The Corporal with the Colt .45 has collapsed on the ramp of the LCA. The crewman in the portside cockpit gun swivels his Lewis gun uncertainly towards the direction of the fire. As the LCA's coxswain bends down to inspect the Corporal's body, another round pings off the armour plating barely an inch from his head.
'Sniper!' he cries. 'Stoker, hard astern!'
'Shan't be long,' I say to Price.
'Leave 'em, you bloody fool,' he calls after me, but I'm gone.
When the bow ramp of the LCA begins to rise, I'm already half-way across the beach.
'Wait! Just give me a moment,' I say to the crew. 'Ted! Billy! It's me. Dick! You're not going to leave me here all on my own, are you, chaps?'
Ted, his arm still draped round Billy's shoulder, greets me with a look of despair. I take Billy's other arm consolingly.
'Forget it, mate, we're off,' shouts the coxswain, above the growl of the twin V8 engines straining to drag the craft from the beach.
'I'm not scared. Tell 'em it's not because I'm scared,' says Billy, his face so twisted he looks more gargoyle than human.
'Of course you're not scared. It's Ted and me who are scared. We're bricking it, aren't we, Ted?'
'Too fucking right.'
'That's why we need you to look after us. Because you're a dad. The world's greatest dad and you know how it's done.'
Billy looks at me. His hideously contorted features begin to unknot and, for just a moment, it seems as if I might have penetrated that fug of wild terror.
'Your last chance!' says the coxswain, as the LCA begins to pull away.
I glance at Ted. Ted glances at me. We're going to have to drag Billy off.
But, before we're able, Billy stiffens and bristles, and, as if suddenly possessed of a superhuman strength, he explodes from our grip, yelling: 'I'm not the world's greatest dad. I'm the world's fucking worst.'
And he scrambles past the stoker on to the wobbly stern of the LCA, where he stands struggling to keep his balance, staring wild-eyed into the lurching green. Then plunges in.
'He can't swim,' says Ted, climbing after him. He stands where Billy stood, scanning the oily, turbulent grey-green waters for his missing friend, then dives after him.
It takes me a few seconds more to reach the same vantage point. By the time I do, I can see no sign of life anywhere in the water. Only weed, waves, protruding spars, Teller mines, shattered metal and the grisly floating detritus of war and sudden, violent death.
Chapter 10
The Hauptmanris Britches
Gold Beach, Jig Green Sector, towards 11oo hours on 6 June 1944: crikey, what a dog's breakfast!
Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. Neither the RAF's bombing nor the Navy's shelling has managed to neutralise the enemy's heavy-gun positions. This means that most of our tanks — those few that even made it ashore — have been knocked out before they can clear the German bunkers. Our two assault waves — first the 1st Hampshires and the 1st Dorsets, then the 2nd Devons - which were supposed to take the beach before our arrival, have either been dragged to the wrong sector by the strong easterly current, or held up by the 75-mm. gun concealed in a fortified sanatorium building in the middle of Le Hamel.
Meanwhile, at 47 (RM) Commando, we've lost about a fifth of our strength and we haven't even got off the
beach. Our rendezvous was supposed to have been the church in Le Hamel, but with the church still very much in enemy hands, all we can do is take what shelter we can, brew up with whatever equipment we can muster, try to smoke our sodden fags, and await further orders.
'Oi! Watch where you're bleeding stepping,' snaps a green beret, as I collapse breathless beneath the sea wall which is sheltering the remnants of our commando. It's Hordern, understandably peeved at having had sand kicked into his enamel mug of rare and lovingly prepared tea. On seeing that it's me, though, he appears to cheer up no end.
'Well, look who it ain't,' he announces. And the rest of the section all look up from their business. Bridgeman, Kemp, Calladine, Dent, Wragg, Mayhew, Coffin, Simpson —
No sign of Sgt. Weaver, yet, and my mind flashes back to the body I saw with three stripes on its arm, floating near where our LCA went down. Pray God it was someone else's. It can play havoc with a section's morale when you lose a popular NCO.
Under the circumstances, the chaps seem to be bearing up remarkably well. Some of them are without boots; some, without trousers, almost all of them, without weapons. They're pale, they're shivery, they're damp and in the eyes is the stunned, far-off look of men who never expected to see quite so much so soon. But for all that, spirits are high, elated even. It's like that when you've narrowly cheated death. For a time, you feel almost immortal.
My return, it would seem, has made them happier still.
'Bad luck, mate,' says Kemp. 'Nice try.'
'Yeah, fucking heroic effort,' agrees Bridgeman.
There are titters and I'm not sure how to respond. Most soldiers, quite sensibly, have an aversion to putting themselves unnecessarily in the way of danger, and are consequently suspicious of those idiots who do. On the other hand, maybe they are, in their gruff pretend-sarcastic way, trying to express their backhanded admiration for what I've just attempted. It was, after all, their comrades I was trying to save from ignominy; and, by extension, the honour of our unit.
'Did you know them?' I ask.
'Who?' says Wragg.
'The chaps I was trying to help off the LCA. Billy Brown and Ted Walters.'
'Names too,' comments Kemp, knowingly, to the general company. 'I like his style.'
'Very crafty,' Bridgeman agrees. 'I've seen courts martial fooled by alibis a lot lamer than that.'
'And what do you mean by that?'
'Outraged dignity too. That always plays well with your officer class,' comments Kemp.
And whether it's the delayed shock or the combination of Kemp's ratlike features and whiny voice, or yet the sheer effrontery and terrible unfairness of his allegation, before I can stop myself I've leapt on top of him with both hands round his throat.
'Would you care to elaborate, Kemp?' I hiss.
'Go on, Arfinch. Tell him his new name,' goads Wragg.
'Coward. Let go of him,' says Sgt. Price.
'When he apologises,' I say.
'I ain't apologising. I saw what I saw,' gasps Kemp.
Before I can mash flat Kemp's pointy, rodent snout, I've been seized tightly by both wrists, my arms are being twisted behind my back, I'm dragged backwards and left lying in a heap on the sand.
'Save it for the enemy,' says Price, pressing down on me.
'Sarge, I think that's the problem. Yeller doesn't much like fighting the enemy,' says Hordern.
That'll be my new nickname then. 'Yellow' Coward. Ah the richness and originality of the squaddie's imagination . . .
'Belt up, Hordern,' says Sgt. Price.
'Are you going to put him on a charge, Sarge? Sarnt Weaver would have done,' says Bridgeman.
'I'm not Sarnt Weaver, am I?' says Sgt. Price.
'No, you're not, Sarge. Sergeant Weaver never had favourites,' says Kemp.
'That's enough, Kemp,' says Sgt. Price in a low, menacing voice which brooks no further insolence. And it's just as well he has one because, without it, I think we'd have a mutiny on our hands.
Maybe there'll be one still, for now here's a runner, come to ask Sgt. Price to report to Lt. Truelove at once.
'See to it there's no more trouble, Corporal,' says Price.
'Sarge,' says Cpl. Blackwell with a confident nod. He's the Commando's heavyweight boxing champ — fists like legs of ham - and, though a gentle soul in the main, you wouldn't want to cross him.
Even if we did want to carry on arguing we couldn't now anyway, because of the noise like a dozen express trains roaring simultaneously overhead: our battle fleet's twelve-inch and sixteen-inch guns have decided to open up on targets which can't be more than thirty or forty yards ahead of us. You don't want to be at the end of a bombardment like that, you really don't. Just lying under it — belly down, eyes closed, palms pressed in prayer — is quite bad enough.
Berets, mugs, stoves, gas capes, cigarettes, letters, magazines, hot tea and sand, it all starts flying all over the place as the vacuum from the shells' passage lifts each one of us, bodily, off the ground. Then, a moment later, it drops you down again with a thump that takes the wind out of your lungs, while your eardrums are all but shattered with the noise of explosions like you'd never imagine. The earth's shaking; your ears are ringing; your bowels are on the verge of emptying. Then silence. Or at least what seems like silence in your freshly deafened state.
Soon as it's over, Kemp, as chief scrounger, is volunteered to scavenge more tea and cigarettes. Those with weapons clean them lovingly and jealously, while the rest of us sit back and watch the unfolding action, quietly relieved that we're under the strictest orders not to take any part of it.
'Christ, what the bleeding hell's that?' yelps Hordern, leaping back, as a huge, thrashing, rust-coloured snake comes hissing from the skies and lands with a thump by his boots. Another couple of inches and he would have lost both his feet.
'I think it's his,' says Calladine, nodding towards the Sherman Crab tank advancing slowly up the beach, its rotating flail carving an explosive passage through an area marked 'Achtung Minen!'.
'Oi, do you mind?' Hordern yells at it, shaking his fist.
'Wouldn't do his job for all the tea in China,' says Coffin.
'Piece of cake, compared with what we've got to do,' says Bridgeman.
'Oh, you reckon, do you?' says Coffin.
The Crab has just taken a hit on one of its tracks. Moments later, smoke starts emerging from its hatches, closely followed by choking crew members. At once machine-gun bullets start pinging off the armour, almost tearing in half the crewman who was trying to escape from the forward hatch.
'Bastards!' cries McMahon. He's our section's sniper, or would be if he had a rifle.
The rest of the crew makes it, just, to the rear of the tank. Beyond them, a team of Royal Engineers is trying, under fire, to fill a crater on one of the beach's main exit routes with a bundle of fascines. Behind them, an AVRE Churchill noses forward towards the emplacement which took out the crewman from the Crab. Something large bounces off its armour — a dud, thank God — as the tank swivels its hefty armament towards the target.
Big one,' observes Mayhew.
'Almost as big as mine,' quips Simpson.
'It's a Petard,' I say.
'Trust Yeller to know. Driven tanks too, 'ave you, Yeller?' says Wragg.
'Italian ones he likes best, with the extra reverse gears,' says Bridgeman.
I flick them both a V sign.
'Go on, Yeller, what's the calibre?' teases Hordern.
With a tremendous boom, the Petard's 26-lb. high-explosive charge crashes into the reinforced concrete. The hole when the dust clears isn't as deep as one might wish, but it's the concussion caused to the men inside that really does the damage. Groggy, dizzy and bloody of ear they come stumbling out from the steel doors at the back, there to be machine-gunned on the steps by infantrymen who've neither the time nor the inclination to notice the hands raised in surrender.
'Right then, lads, who's in need of a fag?' asks Kemp, laying a bulging pack
on the ground.
A dozen grateful hands shoot up.
'One for you, one for you and one for you. Courtesy of your brigade commander.'
'Brigadier Stanier?' says Calladine.
'No word of lie.'
'But, Arfinch,' says Wragg, examining his moist fag in disgust, 'they're bleeding wet.'
'So's the Brigadier. His LCM went down on the way in. "Sorry, these cigarettes aren't as dry as you'd like, dear boy," says the Brig. — or Sir Alex as I prefer to call him. "But I'm sure it won't be beyond the ingenuity of a commando to get them working in the end.'"
'You don't half talk some shite, Arfinch,' says Wragg.
'You ain't heard the half of it yet. I've got news,' says Kemp, pulling out from his bag of tricks a tin of tea, a tin of powdered milk, a tin of sugar and a solid-fuel stove - all of which he tosses in my direction. 'There you go, Yeller. Get brewing.'
'If you ask me nicely.'
'Jesus. Do you want a bloody brew or not?' says Kemp.
'Still thinks he's an officer, I expect. Wants his blooming batman to do it,' says Bridgeman.
'Eh, is it true what I heard? Was Sergeant Price really your batman?' asks McMahon.
'Go on, I dare you, Yeller,' says Hordern, waving a damp banknote at me. 'Bet you this hundred francs you daren't ask Gonad to make us all a nice cup of tea.'
'I think he's having a sulk,' says Coffin.
A bedraggled field-grey line of old men, young boys and frostbite-hobbled Eastern Front veterans files past, herded at bayonet point by a jumpy-looking Hampshire. Christ, I’m thinking. If second-raters like this can hold up our advance so effectively, how the hell are we going to manage when we come against crack troops like the ones from 352 Infantry Division garrisoning Port-en-Bessin?
'If he's not going to join in, he's certainly not getting any of my tea,' says Kemp.
'Lay off him, Arfinch. Can't you see he's had enough?' says young Jack Mayhew. He reaches for the tea equipment and sets to work making the brew himself.
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