The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  Taking his breakfast with him, Schorner returned to his hut. Private Primrose had rolled his bedding, discovered a ragged and mildewed strip of carpet and put it over the cracked concrete of the floor, and set up a trestle table and a chair as a desk. A fat and cheerful engineer was putting in a telephone which he had connected to a line at the bottom of the field. Schorner said: ‘Good. That’s quick work.’

  ‘Nothin’ to it, sir,’ grinned the man. He had a face that beamed like a freshly-made pie. ‘Telephones is telephones no matter where you go. And we invented them. Alexander Graham Bell. So we know we’ll always have a phone. Just pick it up and call your wife – it’s easy!’

  ‘I just wish I could,’ said Schorner, realizing how much he meant it. ‘She might give me some advice on setting up house here.’

  ‘It’s something you get used to,’ said the man confidently. ‘This country.’

  ‘You’ve been here before? In England?’

  ‘Sure. I was here from thirty-five to thirty-nine, every two weeks. I was a steward on a liner, the Mauretania, so I got to know the Limeys okay.’

  Schorner regarded his smile with something like relief. ‘You might be the guy we need,’ he said carefully. ‘Somebody who knows the natives.’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Ballimach, sir. George A. Ballimach. Private first class. Englishtown, New Jersey.’ His face remained straight.

  Schorner laughed. ‘Okay. And what’s your opinion of the English?’

  ‘Weeell … they’re okay. Sometimes, that is, and sometimes they ain’t. If they can get a cup of their tea, they’re generally okay. If they can’t then they ain’t.’ He had finished connecting the telephone and now he stood regarding it as if he were considering improving its design. ‘They got one big trouble,’ he continued.

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘They think they made the world. Like they own it. The greatest people ever, they figure they are.’

  Schorner grinned. ‘And you don’t go along with that, Ballimach?’

  The fat soldier looked surprised. ‘No, sir. The greatest people ever – that’s us. That’s Americans.’

  Sitting in the bleak hut, the cold wind seeping through, with the vacant table in front of him, the telephone silent at his elbow, it occurred to Colonel Schorner that this was a strange way to begin an invasion. He picked up his briefcase and put it on the table. Somehow that made it seem more empty than ever. The telephone rang and startled him. He picked it up. It was just Ballimach, the fat engineer, testing the line.

  ‘Colonel,’ he said breathlessly, ‘I need a little help. Put the phone down. It will ring again but this time don’t pick it up. Just go to the door of your hut and wave at me. I’m up a goddamned tree alongside the goddamned gate. Could you do that, sir?’

  Schorner smiled and agreed. He replaced the handset and waited. There was nothing more urgent for him to do. When the tinny bell sounded he walked out of the hut and waved. Ballimach, as he had said, was wedged like some bulky fruit in the bare branches of the tree. He cautiously waved back.

  The conducting officer, Hulton, was walking down the slope of the field towards Schorner. He was well-cast, the colonel thought, for he had a slightly bowed, studious air and a habit of moving his bespectacled head from side to side like a professional guide. Schorner could imagine him airily conveying visitors around stately southern homes. They exchanged blunted salutes. Hulton looked about him with some satisfaction. ‘Well, colonel, we found the place in the end. What do you do now, that’s the big one?’

  Schorner led him into the nissen hut. ‘We’ll find something to keep busy, I guess,’ he said. Hulton sniffed the damp cold of the corrugated room. ‘We’re going to start by getting something better than this,’ added Schorner, reading the expression.

  ‘It sure ain’t the Pentagon,’ agreed Hulton. At Schorner’s invitation he took the second metal chair and they sat formally one each side of the desk.

  Schorner said: ‘We’ll get some quonset huts in as soon as possible and in the meantime get some fuel to use in those stoves. We’re going to start this invasion by collecting wood. I’m going to try and get these huts patched up as much as possible until the quonsets arrive and can be erected. I’m not sure the tents are not more comfortable. At least they don’t have so many holes in the walls.’

  ‘Mine did,’ mentioned Hulton. ‘Moths, I think.’

  The phone rang. Hulton jumped at the sound and looked at it in astonishment as if he had thought it was merely decoration. Schorner picked it up. ‘Schorner,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to wave?’

  Hulton’s eyebrows arched. He regarded Schorner with a close and serious respect thinking this might be some message in code. Schorner leaned closer to the mouthpiece as people curiously do when they cannot hear well. ‘You’re what, Ballimach? Stuck? You’re stuck up the tree? Christ! Hold on man, we’ll have to get you down.’

  He put the phone back firmly and got to his feet, glancing at Hulton. ‘Excuse me, we seem to have a guy stuck up a tree,’ he said. He went to the door and peered towards the gate. The dark mass was waving pitifully from the branches. ‘Albie!’ called the colonel. ‘Albie Primrose … anybody seen … oh, there you are, Albie. Look over there, by the gate, up that tree. Got it. That is an American GI. He’s got himself stuck. Get somebody to get him down, okay. Better take plenty of help. He’s heavy.’

  He returned to the table. ‘These guys will be great in action,’ he said, solemnly. ‘Killers.’

  Hulton said: ‘I thought it was all in code. Do you want me to wave? … Stuck up a tree … Albie Primrose. I figured the invasion had already started.’

  Schorner shrugged. ‘Everything will get better. It needs to,’ he said. ‘Do you know why we’re here? This particular unit, I mean?’

  ‘Not exactly. I’m just the guy who takes everybody by the hand to their places. Just so long as they don’t want me to take the army across to France …’

  ‘This is going to be something very big. The last chance to get it right before the real thing.’ Schorner glanced around. ‘It may not look like it, but it is. When are you leaving?’

  Hulton looked at his army watch. ‘In ten minutes, I hope. I have to get back to Bristol tonight to nurse another battalion or so across this fog-sodden country.’

  ‘You don’t like it? The country?’

  ‘I prefer Georgia.’

  ‘Right. But I wanted to ask you a couple of things. Since you’ve been here a while.’

  ‘A year,’ said Hulton sombrely. ‘Twelve whole fucking months.’

  From such a mild man the language seemed strange, almost shocking. Schorner blinked with surprise. ‘I’d really like to see my mother,’ added Hulton, as though justifying the outburst.

  Unsurely Schorner glanced at him. ‘Yes, I guess a lot of guys would.’ He leaned forward over the table. ‘The reason I asked you to come over is the same thing we’ve already talked about. I’m anxious to get things right with the British. We’ve got a job to do here, and it’s a job that’s going to make us even more unpopular than armies are anyway. I want to cut off as few toes as possible. So I need advice. For example, those people in the inn last night. With the exception of that doctor and his wife they were pretty unhelpful. Even … okay, hostile?’

  ‘They are,’ confirmed Hulton. ‘In general, the English are. I sometimes get the feeling that, given the choice, they’d have preferred the Germans to us.’

  Schorner looked at him with astonishment. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I’m not,’ shrugged Hulton. ‘That’s the message I get loud and clear, colonel. It varies with the place, of course. In some parts of the country they love us – they’ve never been so prosperous, but there’s all the usual resentments.’

  ‘Over-sexed, over-fed and over here?’ suggested Schorner.

  ‘Sure. Even the little kids can repeat that. That’s when their mouths aren’t full of gum or US candy.’ />
  The colonel whistled. ‘Wow, you’re serious, Hulton. I can’t say you’re filling me with optimism. As far as I know we’re the first US troops to come to this area. I need it to be as painless as possible. We’re going to have enough military problems without a hostile civilian population. You make it sound like we can expect trouble from the underground resistance.’

  ‘You certainly might get it,’ alleged Hulton solemnly. He spread his arms. ‘Colonel, I just hate the goddamn place. It rains and it rains. And with all that water the people still don’t wash. Not like we wash at home in Georgia.’

  Schorner pursed his lips. He said: ‘Maybe it’s the war. Maybe soap is short. Maybe they get extra dirty in the plants making guns and ammunition.’

  Hulton did not appear to have heard him. ‘The whole country seems like it’s spent the last two hundred years under a gigantic glass case,’ he complained. ‘Just getting anything to move is an impossibility.’ He struck the split concrete floor of the hut with his shoe. ‘Just watch a gang of Englishmen putting down this stuff, concrete, or digging a ditch. It’s like something out of history. They had a war once called the Hundred Years War, and I’m not surprised.’

  Schorner said unconvincingly: ‘Well, thanks, Hulton, I guess we’ll have to keep a look out for these problems.’ He stood up and the conducting officer shook hands with him and turned towards the door. ‘How about London?’ asked Schorner. ‘I heard some of the men already asking how far we are here from London. I didn’t tell them yet just how far. They seem to think they can get there by cab.’

  ‘I got a dose of clap in London,’ said Hulton reflectively. The memory of the cause, if not the effect, apparently still held some pleasure for him. ‘Wonderful girl. Great complexion. They get it from the rain, you know. The complexion, I mean, not the gonorrhoea.’ He shook hands again and saluted. ‘I must go, colonel.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Schorner, not sorry. ‘Thanks for the information.’

  ‘That’s okay. Glad to help.’ He paused seriously. ‘One thing’s for certain – whether they like us or not. They need us. They need an organized army.’

  As Hulton saluted and turned, a formation of US soldiers appeared from the direction of the gate. A stretcher party emblazoned with red cross emblems was carrying the limp bulk of Pfc Ballimach. Another man, this one moaning, was being borne behind. Twenty other soldiers followed like an animated funeral procession. Albie Primrose led the way importantly.

  ‘Ballimach fell out of the tree, sir,’ said Primrose as though reporting a battle casualty.

  ‘Jesus,’ breathed Schorner. He advanced on the prone mass in the khaki fatigues. It was awake and gutturally moaning. ‘I’ll be okay, sir,’ muttered the fat man gallantly. ‘It was that fucking Limey tree.’

  ‘What happened to the other man?’ asked Schorner. Then he knew. ‘Ballimach fell on him?’

  Schorner spread a few useless pieces of paper across his table and pinned his map of the area against the only piece of wood remaining on the wall. God, he had to get some heating in that place. The wind blew straight from the cold-eyed sea, up the valley, and through the crevices in the curved walls of the nissen hut.

  ‘Albie,’ he called from the entrance. ‘Private Primrose, are you around?’

  ‘Sure, sir,’ replied Albie quietly coming round the corner. He was the sort of man who appeared, materialized, at any given moment, as though he had been lying in wait for the call.

  ‘How are the casualties?’ asked Schorner.

  ‘Ballimach, well, he ain’t too bad, considering all that poundage dropping out of a tree. I guess that’s why elephants don’t climb trees, because it’s serious when they fall. The other guy, Fillborough, he just got every square inch of wind knocked out of him.’

  ‘We should get a doctor,’ said Schorner. He was reluctant to send for a civilian doctor and they had none of their own.

  Albie thought about it. ‘Ballimach don’t seem too bad, sir,’ he said. ‘Some of him’s gone black. But that’s about all as far as the medics can see. But they’re not real medics, either. Just two guys with red cross arm bands. They found them along with the stretcher. But they don’t know nothing. Jesus, twice those goons dropped Ballimach off the stretcher.’

  ‘Well, maybe we ought to get a doctor,’ sighed Schorner.

  ‘It could be you’re right there, colonel. I mean Ballimach’s got a whole lot of insides, if you know what I mean, there must be miles and miles of them. Anything could be wrong in there. In the dark.’

  ‘Okay, get somebody in a vehicle to go into that place we came through last night, what’s it called … Wilcoombe, and get a doctor. That nice guy in the bar was a doctor. See if he’s around. Maybe we ought to send Ballimach and Fillborough down there instead of getting the doctor here.’

  Albie looked doubtful. ‘Gee, I don’t know about that, sir. Like I say, there may be all sorts of splits and cracks inside Ballimach, things we just don’t know about.’

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Schorner. ‘But send some guy down who can open his mouth politely. I don’t want any mutton-head upsetting people.’

  ‘Ballimach could get a medal,’ offered Albie thoughtfully. ‘First purple heart of the invasion.’ He sauntered away through the tents. As he went Schorner saw a group of two officers and three sergeants approaching warily as a sheriff’s posse.

  ‘Come on in,’ he called cheerfully.

  They trooped in. Each one looked about him, as Schorner knew they would, ascertaining whether the quarters were an improvement on their own. ‘Luxury,’ he said, waving his arm to encompass the bleak accommodation. ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you gentlemen a seat, or light refreshments.’ He sat on the table, felt it quiver and prudently went round it to the chair. ‘First we have to get names,’ he said. He picked up one of the pieces of paper from beside the telephone. ‘Maybe you’d just let me know who you are. Since we didn’t get the opportunity to be introduced yesterday.’ He looked up at them and two, one officer and one sergeant, nodded as if he needed their compliance.

  ‘Lieutenant Brunn, Harold,’ he recited from the manifest roll.

  Brunn was the wrong shape for an officer, stubby and wide, his shoulders falling away like folded wings. Three months back in civilian life he would be a fat man. Schorner shook hands with him. ‘Glad you’re here,’ he said.

  Doubtfully Brunn turned his eyes around the hut. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘I am too.’

  Schorner returned to the roll. ‘Lieutenant Kenholm, Conroy.’

  The second officer saluted. ‘From Nebraska, sir,’ he said as though it might get him special consideration.

  ‘Great,’ said Schorner, mildly surprised. ‘I guess this place feels pretty warm to you.’

  ‘It feels damp and cold, sir.’

  ‘Right. One of our priorities, today in fact, this morning, is to organize fuel. Lieutenant, I’d like you and one of the sergeants … what’s your name, sergeant?’

  ‘Humpchick, sir. Raymond.’

  ‘Okay, Sergeant Humpchick. You go with Lieutenant Kenholm and organize some fuel. Get the men together into wood-gathering parties and also get on to the US Quartermaster in … wait a minute … what’s the place? Yes, Exeter, which is a city not too far away. Gall him and fix a supply of coal or coke, or whatever these iron stoves need. Tell him the invasion force is freezing its balls off.’

  The group laughed with varying degrees of sincerity. The other two sergeants made themselves known, Perry from Illinois and Shermack from Georgia.

  ‘Georgia,’ ruminated Schorner. ‘That captain who eventually got us down here last night, the conducting officer as he was called, the guy who nearly made us into the lost company. He was from Georgia. He said he wanted to get home and see his mother.’

  Sergeant Shermack smiled seriously. ‘I sure would too. We think a lot of our mothers in Georgia.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ sighed Schorner. ‘Now that we all know who we are … My name’s Schorner by the way, in case
nobody mentioned it. I’m from West Virginia.’ He walked to the solitary map which he had himself pinned on the wooden boarding of the hut. ‘Where we’ve come from doesn’t matter right now,’ he added. ‘Just where we are. And this is it. This map shows part of Devon county, England. That small town we came through last night is Wilcoombe. This camp is here, at Telcoombe Magna. The beach is right along here, as you can see, and it’s straight as a Texas cow fence, the ocean is there and right across there are the Nazis.’ He paused and glanced back at them, five concentrated frowns. He went on: ‘We are the first unit of the US Army to arrive in this section of England. I don’t have to tell you what a mess everything was yesterday. That was down to some logistical genius on the troopship. I just hope to God he’s not fixing the arrangements for the invasion. The task of this advance party is to first, establish this camp and attempt to make it livable. We will then go on to construct a further camp for a second company of engineers and combine with them, and a hell of a lot more who are on the way, to make this area into a very big military deal. Once our construction work is through and, the way I see it, it will never be through, we have to start thinking about our task, as engineers, during the projected landing in France and what follows it. Then, when we’ve won the war, we can all go home to our mothers.’

  He walked back towards them and sat carefully on the edge of the table. ‘What I am about to tell you is classified information – top secret. I’m giving the news to this group because it’s going to make our job a little easier. But what I am about to tell you must not go beyond these tin walls for twenty-four hours. No mention must be made of it to the men and, particularly, and believe me I mean it, particularly to any civilians you may come into contact with. If it does get out then whoever let it out will be court-martialled. Okay?’

  They regarded him with collective seriousness. Lieutenant Brunn’s Adam’s apple rose violently in his truncated throat. Schorner went back to the map. ‘This entire area,’ he said, pushing the flat of his hand across the map, ‘all you see here, apart from Wilcoombe, down here, is to be evacuated of civilians. Everybody, everything goes. In three weeks. That’s the time they’ve got to get everything together; everything, farm animals, homes, everything and quit. They’re not going to feel too happy about this, any more than you would if it happened to you. But they’ve got to go. Six villages, three thousand people, thirty thousand acres.