James Delingpole

by Coward on The Beach (epub)

  'Sir, he's from 47 (RM) Commando,' calls back Monty's ADC, who has hopped from the staff car's passenger seat to investigate the hold-up.

  'Forty-seven? Why, splendid,' announces Monty. 'The very unit I am here to congwatulate. Are the photogwaphers weady? Will you call them over? It looks so much better, I find, when these impwomptu meetings aren't staged.'

  'Sir, I'm not sure that's wise,' says the ADC. 'He's a little, um, dirty.'

  'Dirty. Well, of course he is. He's just secured the Bwitish army's wight flank. Send him over. I wish to shake his hand. And those photogwaphers. Call them up, at once.'

  The ADC beckons me towards him. I come to a halt and salute. Having surveyed me for a moment with a pained expres­sion, he reaches into a pocket, pulls out a handkerchief and begins dabbing at my uniform — as an anxious mother might do to her son on a school prize day.

  'That'll have to do. Off you go.'

  The three army photographers have appeared now, one American, one British, one Canadian, flashbulbs at the ready. I come to attention next to the staff car's running board and give the General my smartest salute. The flashbulbs pop.

  'At ease, mawine. And tell me your name,' he says, wrin­kling his nose.

  'Marine Coward, sir.'

  A journalist in uniform steps forward, notepad at the ready.

  'Coward?' says the General, furrowing his brow and studying me more closely. 'Why Coward, so it is you, what an extwaor- dinawy coincidence. I have with me a dispatch from the War Office, which your father asked me to pass on, recalling you for special duties.'

  'Really, sir?'

  'But, as a courtesy, I would pwefer to do so when your CO is pwesent. Can you spare a moment fwom your duties?' He turns to his bony-faced neighbour, who, like Monty himself, is wearing a trim moustache. For my father's generation of officers they were almost de rigueur.designed to stop your men noticing that your upper lip's quivering, or so one story has it. I recognise this fellow as General Miles Dempsey, commander of the British Second Army. 'Miles, do you mind if Mawine Coward sits with us? You'll wemember his father, Ajax.'

  'Ajax Coward's boy, are you? I served with your papa in Flanders. It's him I have to thank for this,' he says, stroking the white and purple ribbon of his MC. With a skeletal hand General Dempsey taps the seat next to him.

  I squeeze between the Generals, cringing at the thought of all that Hunnish excrement being transferred from my battledress to their freshly pressed uniforms. The Generals politely affect not to notice the wafts of shite drifting upwards to their nostrils - having both served in the trenches, they're made of sterner stuff - but even so, I feel it's only decent at least to apologise for this ruddy great elephant in the drawing- room.

  'I'm very sorry about the smell.'

  'Always been your style, though, hasn't it, hmm, Coward?' says Monty. 'Never happier than when you're up to your neck in it.'

  'Damn it, now I remember — your brigade commander was talking about you at dinner only the other night,' says General

  Dempsey. 'Can he really have got it right, though? That your papa has decided to pass on Great Meresby to whichever one of you boys has the best war?'

  'I'm afraid it is, sir.'

  'Wank, that's what you need,' says General Montgomery.

  'Sir?'

  'Wank and gongs. That's what your father's looking for. And I can pwomise plenty of opportunities for both where you're going next. Planned the opewation myself, so I should know.'

  'I look forward to it very much, sir.'

  We pass through a succession of checkpoints and into the ruined port, the smell of my uniform now happily smothered by the reek of spilt fuel. The once-empty streets are abustle as the rubble is cleared, the town made habitable and control assumed by the Army Port Authority. The Pipe-Line Under The Ocean (PLUTO) has already arrived and now there are fat petrol pipes snaking down every street, pumping fuel into ranks of hungry tankers. We're forced to park by the church and make the last part of the journey to the CO's waterfront HQ on foot.

  'Quite extraordinary,' murmurs General Dempsey, looking up towards the defences on the Eastern Feature. 'And you took it with how many men, you say?'

  'About thirty, sir.'

  'Thirty, by God. I should have thought 300 too few.'

  'Captain Dangerfield did a fine job.'

  'Dangerfield. That's the chap who was . . .'

  'Killed storming the last blockhouse. Yes, sir. He showed courage of the highest order and the course of the battle might have been very different had it not been for his sterling example.'

  'Heavy hint being dropped there, eh, Miles?' says General Montgomery.

  'Hint duly noted,' says General Dempsey. 'But let's leave it to your CO, shall we, to tell us which of your chaps deserves a posthumous VC. Ah. Now, is that him I see over there? Wearing a face like thunder.'

  It is indeed the CO that General Dempsey has spotted and the reason for his rage is not hard to fathom. He didn't send me to shovel shit on Point 72 in order for me to return three hours later with a general on either arm, hogging the lime­light that should by rights be his.

  Once salutes have been exchanged and introductions effected, Monty says: 'Colonel Partwidge, your achievement here has been wemarkable and I salute you. Mawine Coward has been telling us of the bwavewy shown by Captain Dangerfield.'

  'Indeed, sir,' says the CO. 'I shall be recommending him for the highest honour.'

  'As has Marine Coward,' says General Dempsey, with a faint smirk.

  'Marine Coward is being a little presumptuous, I would suggest, sir, being as he was nowhere near the Eastern Feature at the time.'

  I shouldn't of course. It's quite the wrong thing to do. But in the awkward pause that follows, I just can't help myself.

  'With respect, sir,' I say. 'I was next to Captain Dangerfield when he died.'

  'Contwadicting a senior officer. Doesn't sound vewy wespect- ful to me,' says Monty.

  'No disrespect intended, sir,' I say. 'I was merely hoping to apprise my commander fully of the disposition of his troops at the time of the incident.'

  The CO has turned very pale. And it's true, I really have pushed things far further than I ought. So it's perhaps just as well that at this point General Dempsey steps in to defuse the tension.

  'Very commendable, I'm sure,' he says. 'Now, perhaps, Colonel, if you'd care to lead our tour, we can allow Marine Coward to return to his duties.'

  'Or wather,' says Monty, 'to pwepare for his departure. Colonel, I'm sorry I have to welieve you of two of your best men, but I bwing instructions fwom the War Office calling Mawine Coward and Sarnt Price for special duties with First Airborne Division.'

  'Would that be with immediate effect, sir?' asks the CO.

  'Why, yes. I believe it is. They are to be given a fortnight's shore leave, first.'

  I don't know whether anyone else notices, but I certainly do: the faintest flicker of a smile twitching the CO's prim little mouth, before he says: 'Sir, I feel I must protest in the strongest terms. We're badly understrength as it is. Could their departure not be delayed until reinforcements arrive. For a fortnight at least?'

  'Seems a reasonable enough request, wouldn't you say, Mawine Coward? Another fortnight in the line is much more your style, I would have thought, than two weeks' sybawitic excess in some Bayeux grand hotel.'

  'Quite so,' agrees General Dempsey. 'And your dear papa, I'm sure, would wish it no other way.'

  How Price got to hear of that exchange I'll never know. (From one of the marines scrounging for the fags Monty kept tossing to all and sundry, I would guess.) But hear of it he must have done because every time he volunteered me for a standing patrol in Sallenelles, he'd always say the same thing: 'Coming for some sybawitic excess at the Grand Hotel?'

  There's a book to be written about that fortnight of hell. Living in trenches, plagued by rats, lice, mosquitoes, mortar stonks and 88 airbursts, I got an inkling of how it might have been that my father ended up so bonker
s. Price too, come to think of it.

  But we'll talk about Sallenelles some other time, for I want to tell you of an extraordinary sequence of events on the beach after I'd got that chunk of shrapnel lodged in my arm. Everything happens for a reason, I always say. And while I'm not sure that young Neillands would necessarily concur, I shall be for ever slyly grateful to whichever Schweinhund it was that sent the shell on to that particular section of beach at that particular moment. It meant that instead of hanging around, kicking my heels, I ended up being steered by Price to the nearest medical tent.

  And you'll never guess who brushes past us in the entrance, as he hauls out a vile-smelling bucket filled to the brim with blackened old dressings. He doesn't say anything. In fact I might not even have noticed — just another German pris­oner in field grey, pressed into service as a low-grade orderly — if it hadn't been the quick, shifty look he gave Price and me.

  'Good Lord, was that who I think it was?' I say to Price.

  'Yes. Stupid bastard,' says Price.

  'Lucky bastard, surely? You realise he was that sniper - the one Bridgeman was going to —'

  'It was Bridgeman I was talking about.'

  'Stupid bastard, you say? I'd say it was rather decent of him. The quality of mercy, and all that.'

  'And when that evil bugger gets away, as a pound to a penny he will, and has another of our lads in his sights, what then? Will the quality of his mercy be strange, do you reckon?'

  'I think you mean "strained".'

  'Never mind that, you know what I'm getting at.'

  Fortunately, I’m spared having to concede Price's point because I've just spotted the next big coincidence. There among the crowd of wounded, nursing a very black and swollen- looking ankle, is an old and most unexpected friend.

  'Fruity!'

  You haven't met 'Fruity' Massingberd, yet, so you won't be as excited as I was. Went through quite a bit together in the Western Desert, Fruity and me, not to mention Crete, and I'd honestly never expected to see him alive again.

  'Dick Coward, as I live and breathe.'

  Once I've registered with the Medical Officer in charge of casualty clearance — I might be in for a long wait, he warns — I budge into a space next to Fruity on one of the wooden packing crates that are serving as chairs. We exchange notes, most of it bad news about the mutual friends who've been killed in the interim.

  'You'll have heard about Flash, of course?' he says.

  'I did, I did, poor bugger.'

  'And you know Keith bought it last week?'

  'How could I have done?'

  'Figure of speech, dear boy. Terrible business.'

  'I hope you don't mean Keith Douglas.'

  'I'm sorry. Were you close?'

  'Was he ever that close to anyone? Terrific poet though. Do you remember that wonderful line "It is not gunfire I hear, but a hunting horn"?'

  'I've had precious little of that, the last five seasons, let me tell you. If this show goes on much longer I think I'll have forgotten what a fox looks like.'

  'All the more reason for defeating that bugger Hitler quickly, then. You realise, if we let him win, hunting will be one of the first things he bans?'

  Quite possibly we've been baying rather loudly. For the para­trooper perched next to me on the corner of the crate — runtyfellow with a touch of the Bolsheviks about him; acted a touch peeved when I squeezed between him and Fruity — this last remark is the Final straw.

  'You may be fighting this war so's you can carry on hunting, mate. But the rest of us are fighting it so's we no longer have to live in a country run by the likes of you,' he says, not catching our eyes, obviously. Just announcing it, like you might from the platform at a trade-union meeting. There are one or two grunts of assent, too, which is a bit worrying. Mind you, when you've been waiting for hours and you're stuck with bits of shrapnel and such like, I don't suppose you're ever likely to be in the best of moods.

  Well, you know me. Ever one to pour oil on troubled waters. Problem is, a pretty young nurse chooses just this moment to come bustling past, and puts a naughty idea in my head.

  'Nurse, excuse me,' I say.

  'Yes?'

  'I think my friend here needs urgent treatment.'

  'He's been assessed as non-urgent. He'll just have to wait his turn.'

  'But, nurse, you don't understand. It's his shoulder. He's got a chip of wood lodged into it, a really big one, and I think it might be life-threatening.'

  'I'll give you life-threatening, Royal!' says the para, getting off his chair and raising his Fists.

  'Sir!' calls the nurse to the Medical Officer.

  'You, Private - what the devil do you think you're playing at?' calls the MO from behind his desk.

  'He was asking for it, sir he —'

  'Private, sit down now!'

  The para sits down.

  'Gentlemen,' continues the MO, 'this is a casualty clearing station, not the storming of the Winter Palace' (a significant glance here at the private) . . nor the Normandy branch of White's' (a reproachful look at me). 'If you're not prepared to treat it as such, I shall have to ask you to leave. Understood?'

  Before I can say anything more, Fruity has popped a lighted cigarette in my mouth and it's probably just as well, for there are few things that get my goat quite like inverted snobbery. I've seen where it leads - show trials and bullets in the back of the skull — and I'm firmly of the view that it should be sat on and squashed at every opportunity.

  A few drags on that cigarette, though, and I'm feeling alto­gether more beneficent towards our Bolshie chum. He warms up a bit too after we've exchanged a few anecdotes about Sallenelles, which we both know very well because it was our unit that relieved his - and bloody grateful to us he ought to be, I tell him, and he almost cracks a smile. Then it's Fruity's turn to ruin things by bellowing into our conversation with what he mistakenly imagines is a whisper: 'I say, isn't that Lord Brecon's girl?'

  I'm so busy wincing at the damage this remark is going to cause to my hard-won Man of the People credentials that for a brief moment the girl's identity doesn't register.

  When it does, the bottom drops out of the stomach and my cheeks turn cold. I look up to check. God, it is. It really is her. And I can't immediately make up my mind whether I'm thrilled or ashamed or piqued.

  She has her back turned to us because she's talking to the MO, who she has been told might have some mail for her.

  'You're in luck,' says the MO, beaming up at her with the shit-eating grin of the hopelessly smitten. ('Join the queue, old boy,' I'm thinking. 'Join the queue.') He passes her a sheaf of letters, the topmost of which I recognise instantly, because damn it, it's in my handwriting.

  'Gina?'

  She's dressed not as a nurse, but in a uniform I can't imme­diately place. American? No, Free French.

  'Dick!'

  Her enthusiasm is gratifying, but I’m blushing madly — like when you're at school and you've been allowed into town with your chums and you bump into a pretty girl you know from home and your chums regard you with a mix of envy and disgust. He knows her? Why does he know her, lucky beggar? What on earth does she see in a hideous poltroon like him . . .

  'Darling, what have you done to your poor arm?' she says. Oh, God, worse and worse. It's like being mollycoddled by your big sister on sports day.

  'Just a scratch,' I say. 'Gina, do you remember Fruity? Fruity Massingberd?'

  'Yes, of course I do. How are you?'

  'Oh, you know. Can't complain.'

  'Dick, we've so much to catch up on, do you think the MO would mind awfully if I treated you myself? Shall I ask?'

  I feel a bit of a heel, abandoning Fruity like that, but needs must and of course he'd have done exactly the same in my shoes, the randy bugger. So we leave the medical tent, Gina and I, followed by a certain amount of jealous chuntering and the odd wolf whistle, and weave our way through crates of supplies, jerry cans of fuel, cases of ammo, past jeeps and lorries and B
ren Carriers, into the relatively quiet corner where she has left her vehicle, under guard.

  'Thank you SO much,' she says to the young private who has been looking after it.

  'Pleasure, ma'am,' he says and clearly means it. 'Gave it a polish for you, ma'am,' he adds, lingering.

  'So I see, thank you. You're an angel. Now, if you wouldn't mind leaving us.'

  'Yes, ma'am.'

  'Well?' says Gina.

  'I'm impressed,' I say, inspecting the open-topped Mercedes which until recently must surely have belonged to a high- ranking German. 'Yours?'

  'Colonel de Villefort's, really. He's the Free French liaison officer. I'm his driver.'

  'I didn't know you spoke French.'

  'I'm learning.'

  'I'll bet,' I'm tempted to say, but I bite my tongue. I'm quite sure it's all perfectly innocent. She's in mourning, after all. At least, I assume she is. My God. What if the news has failed to reach her?

  From inside the car she retrieves a box of sterile dressings, medical instruments, sulpha powder and iodine. She fills a billycan of water and sets it to boil.

  When finally she looks up at me, I know at once that she knows. Now that we're alone, her composure has begun to collapse.

  I take her hands and squeeze them gently.

  'I'm so sorry,' I say. 'I let you down.'

  'You did your best, I'm sure you did. Was it quick?'

  'He felt nothing.'

  Her blue, tear-swollen eyes search mine, wanting to believe what I'm saying is true. 'Before it happened, did he - did he say anything — about me?'

  'He gave me this.' I hand her the letter. She clutches it, hands trembling, just staring at the writing on the front. The last words her husband ever wrote.

  'If you'd like to read it now, in privacy, I can —'

  'No, please, there's time enough for that,' she says, trying to sound brisk. 'Your arm. We don't want you losing it to gangrene.'

  Having boiled her instruments, she arranges them on a strip of clean cloth on the car's bonnet. Gently, she undoes my dressing.

  'Who put this on?'

  'Price.'

  'He did a good job.'

  'Doesn't he always?'

  'Where is he now?' she says, probing the wound.