‘Unfeeling blighters,’ trembled Beatrice Evans bitterly. ‘That was Swain’s shop.’ Evans turned and saw, to his surprise, that she was crying.
‘Soldiers,’ said Evans, putting his arm on the back of her neck, ‘are rarely known for their finer feelings. It’s something they’re probably better off without.’
They stood continuing to watch. The soldiers had not noticed either them or Horace. The poacher, confronted with something he knew by instinct he ought to avoid, turned and began to hurry the few yards up the hill towards Evans and Beatrice, the pig still complaining beneath his arms. As he approached he called: ‘Did ’ee see that then, doctor? Knocking the bloody place down afore they start.’
He turned in time to see the tank pull away from the building that now leaned on it. With a roaring collapse the entire corner of the terrace fell away, the framework of the shop window hanging on to the tank as though trying to prevent it leaving the scene of the crime. Dust and debris rolled about. The members of the crew who were in the street, still laughing, returned to the tank and climbed into the turret, kicking away bricks and plaster from the steel surface. The vehicle roared throatily and went down the slope to the foot of the village.
‘I reckon we better be along our way,’ observed Horace wisely. ‘Can I come with you, doctor? I bain’t havin’ any race with that machine.’
All three returned to the car. Beatrice wiped her eyes and muttered finally: ‘It’s a damned disgrace doing a thing like that.’
In silence they drove along the sunny road. The fields were oddly vacant, no cattle, no horses. They passed the shells of familiar farm houses, no chickens and ducks about the yard now, no dogs lying on doorsteps.
‘Are you going to the Barringtons?’ asked Beatrice, knowing that her husband would.
‘Tom swore he’ll be the last to go,’ replied Evans. ‘I think we ought to make sure he’s leaving today.’
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll be leaving ’ee at the crossroads then,’ decided Horace gravely. ‘Mr Barrington and me don’t often see eye to eye, if you get my understanding.’
Evans nodded knowingly and halted at the crossroads. A farm cart was stopped there and two men were collecting mangolds from a mound at the roadside and throwing them into the back. The horse gnawed the hedgerow. ‘Harvesting,’ laughed one of the men when he saw Evans. ‘Gaffer says ’ee be leavin’ nothin’ for the occupation forces.’
The doctor knew they were Barrington’s men. ‘Is he still at the house?’ he asked. ‘Or have they gone yet?’
The first man looked up from the pile. ‘’Ee be still there, sir,’ he said. ‘In fact I don’ know that ’ee’s going to be gone. ’Ee be wearin’ of his Home Guard uniform and ’ee’s got ’is gun.’
‘Good God,’ muttered Evans to his wife. ‘I hope he’s not gone mad. It won’t do for him to start shooting at the Americans.’ Horace left the car and disappeared almost magically through the hedge and across the field, the pig still objecting as he carried it at a jog. Evans drove from the crossroads along the lane to Barrington’s farm. Anxiously he left the car in the deserted yard and went to the house. Tom Barrington, in his uniform as a captain in the Home Guard, was standing on the doorstep. He had a service revolver at his waist and a double-barrelled shotgun in his right grip.
‘God, Tom, you look pretty warlike,’ said Evans lightly.
He realized that Beatrice had followed him. ‘All ready to move?’ she asked brightly. ‘Is Jean all packed?’
‘Don’t worry yourselves,’ returned Barrington. ‘I’m not going to shoot the first bloody Yank I see. We’ve still got until midnight, remember. I thought I’d just show them that I’ve got a uniform too – and I wore it before them. While they were still trying to keep out of the bloody war. I’d have mounted a ceremonial parade of the Home Guard unit.’ He paused a little shamefaced. ‘But a lot of the men couldn’t get away.’
‘We’ve just seen one of their tanks demolish Swain’s shop in Mortown,’ put in Beatrice. ‘Already. Knocked it right down.’ Evans glanced at her, annoyed that she had said it.
‘They’ll do that to everything, don’t worry,’ said Barrington. ‘This place will be a bloody shambles. I’d like to chuck a few Molotov cocktails at them.’
Evans looked at him with sharp anxiety. ‘Now, Tom,’ he cautioned, ‘don’t talk like that.’ He turned and looked across the fields. Was there a touch of fresh green on the meadows this spring-like day, or did he just imagine it? ‘You’ll end up in front of a firing-squad,’ he added like a joke. ‘And that wouldn’t do, would it?’
When he turned again he saw that there were tears shining in Barrington’s eyes. He was keeping them back but they were there. ‘We would have fought the bastard Germans for every yard,’ he said. ‘The Home Guard and all of us. Now look what’s happening and we’re supposed to give up without a protest. Say nothing.’
Beatrice Evans came up the yard and, seeing Barrington’s face, touched his sleeve sympathetically. ‘Compensation,’ laughed the farmer grimly. ‘What’s bloody compensation?’ He threw his hand out wearily. ‘How can they give you compensation for this – for your life?’
With no further word he turned towards the house and taking a heavy bunch of keys from his pocket he noisily locked the front door. He banged the palm of his hand against it, as someone might bang the side of a departing truck. ‘Right, that’s it,’ he said.
The three people turned and walked slowly down the yard. The patches of dung were already dry on the stones around the cowshed. Evans thought it was the first time he had seen dung left in his yard. It was getting towards the conclusion of the afternoon, the false first day of spring. The sun was going quickly, almost as if it had regretted its indiscretion, and the air was immediately damp. There was still some gold left on the fields that rose and tumbled on the small hills round about, an afterglow of a day out of season. The sky was without clouds, but the air was dimming. A single bird piped hopefully. Everywhere else, everything else, was silent. They were very aware of it.
‘You can just hear the sea,’ said Beatrice.
Neither man spoke. They made their way to the lane where the doctor’s car stood. ‘How are you going?’ asked Beatrice.
‘Walking,’ said Barrington. ‘I’ve left the pony and trap at the police station on the main road. I’ll walk up there.’
‘Come with us, Tom,’ suggested Evans.
‘No, I’ll walk. I’m in no hurry. The way things are I don’t suppose I shall ever come back to this place.
February
By the first week in February there were fifteen thousand American troops encamped in the villages and the fields left by the civilians. From the first primitive outpost which Colonel Schorner and his advance party had established at Telcoombe Magna, the camps had grown across the meadows and up the sides of the easier hills. Trees were hung with wires. Flags and laundry blew in the wind. Lanes were churned with mud, hedgerows flattened, trucks and cranes and tanks were parked in unending lines beneath the metallic winter trees of the villages.
The hamlets and small towns of Devon took most of the people who had been moved from their homes. Wilcoombe, the nearest settlement, absorbed some, others went as far as Exeter, into Somerset and down into Cornwall, the neighbour counties. Some children, who had been evacuated from London during the air raids, and had stayed and become familiar with the West Country, returned as strangers to their original homes, once more evacuated. There was work on the farms for those, and they were the majority, who had made a living in agriculture. Some fishermen went to Newlyn and the Cornish ports with their boats, others went to work in the dockyard at Plymouth. The others, the shopkeepers and small tradesmen, were absorbed into other places. They found some sort of home and job. Many never returned to their roots in Devon for by the time they were allowed to go back they had settled in the new places. They had become different people.
At Newton Abbot and Totnes, to the north, the railway yards were serr
ied with engines and goods wagons. More came in by the hour to be inched forward and unloaded into the waiting US Army vehicles, as if a great industry were hungry for raw material. A railhead company of the American forces had brought in their own engine, a great, gleaming, steaming machine from the Kansas State Railroad, and another was being unloaded at the docks at Southampton. Soon there would be many more, destined to supply the great army once it had established itself in France.
Each day, with more men and materials joining all the time, the soldiers, who had now become the villagers of the region, learned their hard craft. Ten simulated landings in January were followed by four in the first few days of the new month. There was no time to lose or waste.
On the road between Totnes and Newton Abbot a hospital was established almost overnight, using the buildings of a former school on to which were attached long spider-legs of prefabricated huts. It had wards, operating theatres and a substantial mortuary. Doctors and nurses were ready to move in. There were no patients. They would come later, by the hundred.
Dumps of fuel, ammunition and food began to grow along the hedgerows of the quietest places, squared and stepped like small skyscrapers. By the seashore more material was unloaded from barges and boats and the engineers were laying out great areas of concrete, the ‘hards’ from which the tanks and heavy trucks would embark for the beaches of Europe. In the village hall at Mortown, American Red Cross women served coffee and doughnuts to the troops. They were the only American women in the region at that time and were of such formidable demeanour and proportions that they were considered, rightly, by the US authorities to be safe from molestation, even from the most frustrated and rapacious of soldiers.
These troops of the first weeks were mostly engineers and other work-soldiers set to construct the sites and camps for the infantry who were to be trained in relays along the beaches and the hilly hinterland.
The men of Schorner’s advance unit quickly regarded the newcomers with the customary good-natured scorn of veterans. Their camp was now entirely hutted, the tents having been removed to a transit area for the use of incoming units. It had become surrounded by other camps and military areas, like a village swallowed into the suburbs of a growing town. The unit, however, still retained a certain raffishness, a certain confident independence, among all the personnel now occupying the region. They were the pioneers, the first men there. Ballimach said as he watched another company of staring recruits being transported along the tight English lane outside the camp, ‘Jeeze, when I see these rookies I feel like Davy Crockett.’
During the first week in February Captain Scarlett visited the unit, driving the well-used route from Mrs Mahon-Feavor’s manor house, now become the officers’ mess and general administrative centre of the entire evacuation area. The paintings of the old lady’s pusillanimous ancestors remained on the walls but all the good furniture had been removed.
At the Telcoombe Magna camp a company of troops was marching and counter-marching across the ground that had been foot-flattened between the huts. Ashes and cinders from the camp’s fires and stoves had been thrown on it and stamped in by men wearing combat boots, making it into a primitive parade ground. Schorner, in his doorway, was watching a sergeant putting the men through basic drill routines when Scarlett arrived. The general’s ADC saluted. Schorner said: ‘We’re getting these guys ready for their first battle.’
‘They’re going to march?’ asked Scarlett. Bryant, having seen the car arrive, walked over to the hut and shook hands.
‘They’re going to march,’ confirmed Schorner. ‘You remember the old lady, Mrs Mahon-Feavor, said she wanted to put them in a parade. She wasn’t kidding. Next Sunday. I guess the British are going to try and march the pants off us. Even the Boy Scouts. It seems like we have to fight everybody.’
Scarlett grinned. They walked into the orderly room. It was now enclosed and comfortable, tables, desks, maps on the walls. ‘You’ve got bigger troubles than that, sir,’ Scarlett said. ‘Eisenhower’s coming down here.’
Schorner grinned. ‘You don’t say,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I guessed he would pretty soon. He doesn’t worry me as much as Mrs Mahon-Feavor. We’ve got nothing to hide. We ain’t got a lot to show, either.’ Bryant was hovering at the door. Schorner glanced at Scarlett who nodded. ‘Come on in, lieutenant,’ said the colonel good-naturedly. ‘We don’t want Ike to have to eat those brussel sprouts. That could lose us the war.’
‘Montgomery is coming too,’ said Scarlett as soon as Bryant had shut the door. ‘In fact the whole shining circus, as far as I can see. It’s on Thursday, so we’d all better be looking sharp.’
Schorner ruminated. ‘If it is Thursday, at least they won’t see us march with the British Boy Scouts,’ he said. ‘What do we have to do? I mean, especially?’
‘We just get everything right, I guess, sir,’ said Scarlett. ‘General Georgeton says that Ike’s party will only be down here for a few hours. They’re busy so it will just be a flying visit. They’re coming to Exeter, landing scheduled at ten in the morning, and they’ll be gone again by three. We just show them around and show them what’s going on. Just make sure all the guys are doing the right things.’
‘Okay,’ shrugged Schorner. ‘As long as they don’t hope to see the US Cavalry. We’ll be ready for them.’
‘All other units are being warned,’ said Scarlett. He turned with a short smile on Bryant. ‘And he especially wants to see the British troops in the area,’ he said. ‘Your commanding officer, what’s his name …?’
‘Westerman,’ swallowed Bryant. ‘Captain Westerman … Eisenhower wants to see our unit?’
‘Sure, you’ve got it. Eisenhower and Montgomery want to inspect the outfit. Your commanding officer is being told this morning. Monty thinks he’ll show Ike what real fighting troops are like, I guess.’
‘Our mob?’ mumbled Bryant nervously. ‘God help us.’
‘God help us all,’ echoed Schorner. ‘Maybe they’ll tell us how they propose to get this almighty mess across the ocean to France. That’s one detail nobody’s explained to me yet.’
General Dwight Eisenhower, monkey-mouthed, tall, outwardly bland, and the pencil-faced Montgomery left the US Air Force Dakota on the grass runway at Exeter with a dozen staff officers of both armies, and were met by General Georgeton, Colonel Schorner, Scarlett and Bryant, and were at once taken on a tour of the evacuated region. By now every road was gated and guarded, the perimeter, over its many miles, was lined with barbed wire, and regularly patrolled.
At the road block on the seashore, along the straight stretch between the elongated beach and the inland lagoons, the leys, the party stopped. Eisenhower stood at the wire and looked up over the placid green and red hills, the shadows of Devon clouds roaming across them, to the white and widespread houses.
‘I guess these folks must have felt pretty sore about leaving their homes,’ he said. ‘I know I would.’
It was for Georgeton to answer. ‘They didn’t jump for joy, sir. But they went along with it in the end because they knew the reason.’
Eisenhower’s bald forehead under the forage cap nodded at the houses across the landscape, looking empty as such houses do, even at a distance. ‘It can’t be too funny to look over this wire and see your own house and you can’t get to it and some other guy, some foreigner, can,’ he said. ‘And that guy, maybe, is going to destroy it. No, that’s not a nice thought. Necessary, maybe, but not nice.’ He glanced at the military policemen, drawn up stiff as clothes pegs behind the wire. ‘I hope you men remember that. Think as if those houses were your own homes. Okay?’ The snowdrops nodded stiffly and dumbly. The eyes of the negro policeman dangled under his white helmet. ‘When these people go back I want them to find their homes as little disturbed as possible. And that goes for the churches and the bars and everything else. As little as possible.’
Schorner found himself closing his eyes as if in a moment’s prayer. The party moved along the road, walking through the
raised barrier and along the breeze-touched beach towards the school and the Telcoombe Beach Hotel. After they had gone the sergeant in charge of the military police stood the squad at ease. He marched off towards the police post to telephone the next gate with the news that Eisenhower was on his way. The negro policeman took off his helmet as soon as the sergeant was gone. ‘Treat it like my house. Jesus, that man just ought to see my fuckin’ house.’
Montgomery, walking hands behind back, with Eisenhower, sniffed the wind, his pointed nose a touch red at its tip. ‘The British are pretty adaptable,’ he said, his voice high-pitched even in conversation. ‘The inhabitants of these parts will soon get used to things. They’re Devonians, you know. It was Devonians who were first called Limeys.’
Eisenhower was becoming accustomed to the English general’s little lectures. He was not sure he liked them very much. He smiled indulgently, watching a group of British sailors and American soldiers clumsily unloading a landing craft at the shingle-edge. ‘Is that so?’ he answered. ‘The first Limeys.’
‘Devon seamen,’ continued Montgomery. ‘They used to eat limes in tropical parts because it kept the scurvy away. Foreigners laughed at them and called them Limeys because of it. But they had the last laugh. It was the others who got the scurvy.’
The American general was watching the sea. ‘It seems a hell of a long way across there,’ he commented. ‘Even on a peaceful day like now.’
‘Far enough,’ agreed Montgomery pensively. He looked at the American. ‘Everything has to be right,’ he said solidly. ‘Weather, machines, men. Everything. The Germans would never have made it, you know.’
The Magic Army Page 19
