The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  He frowned down at the written orders bunched in his hand. ‘This is a daytime operation,’ he said, ‘because you guys can’t see at night. Not yet. But you’re going to have to learn. And soon.’ It was a hushed, grey day with no wind. The sky was as flat as paper. The men could hear the calling of the gulls from the inland coombes, gulls looking for the pickings that had, for generations, come from the spring ploughing, the worms from the upturned earth. This year there would be none and the white wings made puzzled circles over fields that were already greening with weeds and rough grass.

  ‘This unit,’ said Schorner, ‘will come ashore near home. Every man will be familiarized with the details, his own job, where he must be and what he is expected to do. In general, our section will be the area of beach immediately to the east and west of Telcoombe Beach Hotel. That will be nominated a fortified enemy strong point and will have to be taken out as soon as we get ashore. But no soldier is to go into that place – the hotel – because it’s mined to hell. Okay? It will be our task, once we’ve got a beachhead, to clear obstacles on the beach, open out the roads and fix communications and construct pontoons across those inland lakes. Those bridges are very important – one day you will understand just how important.’

  The Colonel examined their faces. They were young enough to be his sons. ‘Live ammunition will be used in this exercise.’ He watched the pinched expressions along the ranks. ‘Firing will be overhead, so nobody ought to get hurt, but it’s going to help you move your asses a little faster than you might do if it was just some picnic. There will also be a bombardment from the British warships at sea. This will be aimed at the hills and the far side of the lakes. Maybe half a mile ahead. So let’s hope the Englishmen can shoot straight – and get the range right.’

  There was a shuffling among the crowded troops but it stopped as he looked steadily at them as if he had caught each man’s eye. ‘Okay then,’ said Schorner. ‘We will move off at eight hundred hours tomorrow. Tonight every man is confined to camp. Briefing by platoon officers will be at twenty-one hundred hours.’ He paused. His next sentence, he realized as he said it, came like a plea. ‘We’ve got to get this right because there’s going to come a time when practice is going to be too late. Okay? Right. Enjoy yourselves.’

  He left the parade to be dismissed and walked back towards his tent. Captain Hulton, the conducting officer, was waiting outside. He saluted. ‘Hi,’ said Schorner. ‘Got any more armies?’

  ‘No, sir,’ returned Hulton in his lugubrious manner. ‘They’ve transferred me. I’m not a conducting officer any more. I got a unit lost on Dartmoor. We got lost all night. Jesus it was so cold. I felt like crying, I can tell you, sir.’

  Schorner suppressed a grin and he succeeded in looking concerned. ‘So what are you doing now, Hulton?’

  The doleful officer looked doubtfully at Schorner. ‘I’m attached to your unit, sir. This post. Liaison.’ He said the final word with descending apology. Then he added: ‘I didn’t like being a conducting officer anyway.’

  Schorner breathed: ‘Not another liaison officer. I’ve got them up to my ass, Hulton. There’s the English guy, Bryant, and Scarlett from General Georgeton’s staff. Soon we’ll be having liaison officers for the liaison officers.’ Hulton looked as if he might be forced to tears. Schorner shrugged: ‘So what are you going to do?’

  The captain brightened marginally, as if at least he knew one answer. ‘Exercise liaison, colonel,’ he affirmed. ‘I’m attached to this unit to keep in touch with other units during manoeuvres and with the British Navy. That’s pretty important.’

  ‘Okay, okay, captain,’ said Schorner good-naturedly. ‘The navy job sounds impressive. Just get your quarters assigned and your kit moved in. I’ll expect you at tonight’s final briefing.’

  Hulton’s face cleared like someone who knows that, at last, they are wanted. He threw up a firm salute. ‘Yes, sir.’ He marched away across the grey camp, the little, lost officer, who ought to be at home with his mother.

  ‘At least he can’t get the navy lost on Dartmoor,’ muttered Schorner to himself.

  The first of the major seaborne exercises saw the American soldiers moving out in the February half-light, with eerie cockerels sounding across a low, dirty sky. Two hundred men from Schorner’s unit climbed aboard trucks outside the camp gate on the night-smeared road. Schorner sat with Hulton and Bryant in his jeep and watched his loaded men creep by like felons.

  ‘In this light they almost look like real soldiers,’ thought Schorner. He saw the bulky Ballimach, hung like a camel with his equipment, moving ponderously in the line. ‘I wish Ballimach wasn’t going,’ he sighed.

  ‘Best telephone guy we’ve got, colonel,’ said Albie Primrose at the wheel.

  Bryant looked sharply at the driver but Schorner nodded, accepting the American Army tradition that anyone may voice an opinion. ‘He’ll never drown anyway,’ said the American commander. ‘That guy could float for years.’

  ‘When the real thing comes he’ll be the biggest target on the beachhead,’ forecast Hulton lugubriously. ‘Like a tank. They could hit him from Paris.’ He wrapped his heavy combat jacket closer about him as if it were not only warmth but protection, and looked sideways at Bryant. ‘Don’t the sun ever come up in this country?’ he asked.

  The British lieutenant smiled. ‘About June,’ he answered. ‘If you’re quick.’ He wondered why Hulton had to talk so much.

  Schorner finished his coffee and threw the empty mug to a man at the gate. The man caught it like a baseball. Schorner jogged his chin approvingly. ‘Okay, let’s get this thing moving,’ he said to Albie. The driver’s nose was outlined, stiff as an icicle in the raw morning. Albie nodded and started the jeep. The heavy trucks snorted behind it. The convoy moved off through the early, empty countryside. Schorner said to Bryant, ‘We have a schedule of four landings before the end of the month – then we’ve got to get the shore drill right. It’s no good getting these guys on the beach if they don’t know what to do when they’re there.’

  There were rats sitting in the street at Telcoombe Magna. Bryant saw them with a sick shock. The empty cottages stood like rotting teeth. Pigeons were already inhabiting the thatched roofs and eating themselves gross in the gardens. A window that had been open since the evacuation banged on its hinges like a funeral drum, so insistent that he wanted to get out and go and shut it. All the panes but one were now missing. The soldiers manning the gun in the lychgate of the church watched them go by with shadowy yawns. As they topped the hill, the English Channel came into view, long, flat and blind. ‘That ocean looks cold,’ muttered Hulton.

  ‘Sure it’s cold,’ answered Schorner. ‘Make sure you keep yourself good and dry, captain.’

  Clumsily the convoy descended the road that unrolled towards the sea. By now the sharp sides of the lane had been monstrously carved away, the levels changed, the ancient hedgerows crushed. There was red mud and huge holes and detours into fields; but now a tank could have reached the shoreline from the rising inland. The new landscape, once so nourished and green, depressed Schorner, the farmer. Soon it would be further holed and pitted, the birds that now sang a piping song at morning would be frightened away by the din of battle.

  A beach wind shredded through the stanchions of the jeep as they turned west along the coastal road. Short of Wilcoombe widespread areas of white concrete covered the sand and shingle, the first of the hards from which the vehicles of the eventual invasion would be driven to the transporters and landing craft. ‘Look at that,’ said Hulton suddenly in his complaining voice. ‘There’s a darned dog on the beach. He ain’t supposed to be in this area.’

  Bryant and Schorner each grinned privately. The dog, Daffy’s dog, the salty mongrel that had for a long time run the Telcoombe Beach, was bounding joyfully along the pebbles parallel with the road, barking and throwing his head up into the travelling wind. Schorner said: ‘There’s nothing, not even barbed wire, ever going to keep that dog away, I guess.
Not even the military police.’ He watched the animal carefully, perversely pleased that some creature had managed to remain undirected, free. ‘Have we got any cookies?’ he asked as Albie obligingly slowed the vehicle. Albie pulled to the side of the road and the trucks behind slowed ponderously. To Bryant’s surprise Schorner left the jeep with a ration pack that Primrose had handed to him. The others stayed in the vehicle as if not to intrude on some private moment. The dog came bounding to Schorner and the colonel pulled the wrapping from the packet and held out the cookies. The dog’s jaws engulfed the offering and it stood, with cock-eared expectancy, waiting for more. Schorner laughed and cuffed it gently. He turned back towards the jeep and looked up to see the faces of the soldiers hanging out from the backs of the trucks, peering around while hanging on the tarpaulins, all mute, all watching. Bryant saw that Schorner was embarrassed, the first time he had seen that in him. ‘Okay, you guys,’ shouted the colonel along the stopped convoy. ‘Get your heads in. It’s only a dog.’

  He climbed into the jeep and told Albie to move on. ‘That hound,’ he said, as if he needed to explain at least something about his diversion, ‘that hound’s been out in the air and the salt for so long it’s darned near changed colour.’

  ‘It belongs to a fisherman they call Old Daffy,’ said Bryant. ‘He takes it in the pub. It must be impossible to keep it off the beach. I’ve even seen it swim ashore from his boat. That was in the old days, before …’

  ‘Before all this crap got here,’ Schorner finished for him. They were moving along the road now, the trucks starting up and grunting after them, like old, heavy men. The colonel eased himself back in the frame seat of the jeep. ‘Well, he’ll still be running like hell along that beach when we’re all gone,’ he said.

  ‘Home,’ added Hulton nervously as if to dispel any misunderstanding.

  ‘Home,’ nodded Schorner. ‘Or heaven.’ He smiled a little mischievously at the captain’s pasty face. ‘Or hell. Some place like that.’

  The British soldiers at the gun-site stood in a group, like spectators gathered at the halfway line at a village football match. Gilman and Catermole remained apart near the end of the Wilcoombe quay for they had been on overnight guard. Killer Watts was rubbing down the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun with the care of a mother wiping her child’s nose. They looked after it with more pride now.

  Watts paused, astride the long snout, to watch with the others as the hunched Americans moved awkwardly into the landing craft rocking in the tight harbour. Moving from the trucks parked on the road at the foot of the village, they trudged in hangdog file to the edge of the quay and down the stone steps to the small, fidgeting vessels. People came from the Wilcoombe houses and others, on their way to work, stopped and stood or sat on their bicycles to watch. It was a muted scene. Occasionally one of the GIs would curse when the landing craft rocked the wrong way as he was boarding it, and a growling admonishment would issue from the sergeant supervising the boarding steps, but little else. Just grunts and vapour from their breaths. Some of the British soldiers were smoking and the wisps curled up into the still, damp air. Several of the Americans looked at them enviously.

  ‘I’m glad it’s them, not us,’ mentioned Gilman eventually.

  ‘Christ, so am I,’ echoed Catermole. ‘They’re welcome to that game of bleeding soldiers.’

  He was unaware of the prophecy in his adjective. ‘Getting up in the morning, in the army,’ he continued in his awkward way, ‘that’s bad enough. Bloody cold and grey, with your mouth like a pisspot. But fancy having to get up and know you’ve got to go and fight the fucking Germans. I wouldn’t reckon that.’

  Gilman looked at him sharply. ‘They’re not going now,’ he said, wondering. ‘Surely not. They haven’t had enough training. It’s only an exercise.’

  ‘Practising,’ sniffed Catermole sagely. ‘Just practising won’t make the real thing any better. Worse.’

  They walked, like two pensioners taking a seaside morning stroll, back towards the others of the unit standing on the gun-site. As they approached Bullivant appeared and stood smirking fatly. ‘Soldiers,’ he grunted, watching the Americans. ‘I’ve shit better.’

  ‘Will you be going, sarge?’ asked Gilman with assumed innocence.

  ‘Going?’ Bullivant withdrew his big face as if someone had taken a punch at him. He glared at Gilman from his new distance. ‘What’s that mean, Gilman? Will I be going?’

  Gilman shrugged. ‘On the invasion,’ he replied simply. ‘You know, charging up the beaches.’

  ‘Don’t let’s have that from you, sonny,’ returned the sergeant nastily. His voice grated like a bad engine. ‘You’re a bit too clever for the rest of us, but not so clever as you think you are, lad. You’ll be finding yourself on a charge before long.’

  Gilman regarded him seriously. ‘Sorry, Sergeant Bullivant,’ he answered with studied politeness. ‘I wondered if you would, that’s all.’ The other men were grinning and Bullivant retreated huffily, turning on his heavy heel and striding towards Watts, still riding on the gun barrel. He shouted for him to get down. ‘Fat cunt,’ muttered Catermole.

  They returned to looking at the embarking Americans. The GIs were huddled under equipment, their rifles and automatic weapons at the trail. Ballimach trundled to the edge of the steps, the wheel of cable sitting on his back like the drum of a one-man band. Gilman recognized the big man and found himself giving a slight, embarrassed, wave. ‘Poor bastard,’ said Catermole seeing the direction of the salute. ‘I’d rather him than me. He’ll be shagged out before he gets his feet on dry land.’

  The villagers had remained silently eyeing the strange, laden soldiers, as if seeing them in their battle suits, the dun clothes almost covered by belts and equipment, the faces smeared black below the truculent edge of the steel helmets, had made them different men. The medical team unloaded stretchers from the final truck and hung their heavy packs and plasma containers around their bodies. The Devon people noted it grimly. Children on their way to school stopped and looked also, the boys staring at the guns, the girls with a childish but female admiration for the fighting men. Doey, leaning backwards against his muddy bicycle, watching men only as old as he, had to say something, as he usually did. ‘Be this the real thing then, zur?’ he suddenly asked Captain Hulton who was standing next to the jeep with Bryant. Doey’s voice was a considerate whisper. ‘You goin’ across there now?’ He nodded towards the sea as if Hulton might be confused as to the direction of Occupied France.

  ‘They be in their fighting clothes,’ put in a woman standing near. Doey’s rural brashness was met by Hulton’s military pomposity. ‘That’s classified information,’ he said, facing Doey in a manner which made the labourer appear, and feel, important. ‘You must know that I can’t tell you classified secrets.’ Doey, pleased at being noticed even to this extent, nodded agreeably. ‘I bain’t goin’ to tell they Germans, zur,’ he said amiably. ‘I promise.’

  ‘It’s classified,’ grunted Hulton before turning away.

  Doey glanced about at his neighbours, regarding him with a measure of respect, as if it were he who was giving the final orders. He grinned like a crack in the earth. He called after Hulton. ‘I s’pose we got to listen for the bangs, then.’

  Bryant looked at his fellow countryman sharply. He moved over. ‘Go and dig a ditch somewhere,’ he advised quietly. Doey knew the voice and the look. He shuffled away with his bicycle. The crowd grinned at his discomfort. ‘Bloody soldiers,’ he called over his shoulder, but not too loudly. ‘Think they be runnin’ the war. T’weren’t for the likes o’ oi, the country’d be starvin’.’

  Most of the GIs had now moved on to the landing craft shrugging uneasily in the confines of the small harbour. Colonel Schorner remained on the stone quayside looking down at the rows of egg-like steel helmets and thinking how strange it was that grown men could be made to stare unerringly ahead. The mist was breaking away from Start Bay, from the enclaves of land where it had clung afte
r the wider water was clear. Bryant pointed out beyond the first ribbon of sea to where a pair of three-funnelled vessels were lying, waiting.

  ‘That looks like the escort, sir,’ he said, pointing. Schorner brought his field glasses up. He lowered them at once and looked with a pained earnestness at the young British officer. ‘They look very old,’ he said.

  Hulton was viewing the pair. He confirmed Schorner’s observation: ‘They look like they ought to have goddamn sails.’ He glanced guiltily at Schorner. ‘I mean, sails,’ he corrected.

  Schorner studied the two vessels again. He breathed: ‘They’ve got three smokestacks each. I didn’t think those kind of ships were used anymore.’

  Bryant had recognized the shapes. ‘HMS Oregon and HMS Florida,’ he recited. ‘They’ve been in Plymouth for the past couple of years.’

  ‘American names,’ said Hulton still staring through the glasses.

  ‘They’re American ships,’ answered Bryant trying not to sound smug. ‘Built in the First World War.’

  ‘Two of the fifty we leased to you in 1940,’ nodded Schorner.

  ‘That’s right. They’re very old but they still float. Just about. They roll like mad, so the navy says, and they take miles just to make a turn.’

  ‘But you never look a gift horse in the mouth,’ Schorner reminded him quietly. The American colonel continued to look at the ships through the field glasses.

  ‘No, sir,’ answered Bryant. ‘You don’t.’

  A heavy US Army staff car slid to a halt on the damp cobbles alongside the quay, causing the assembled civilians to turn as one to see it, like a rehearsed chorus crowd in an opera. Captain Scarlett left the vehicle and walked briskly towards the group of officers, his breath vaporizing. Some of the civilians, now integrated into the scene, wished him a Devonian good morning and he returned the greeting with an involuntary salute. He repeated the movement when he reached Schorner.