The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘He’s digging for bait,’ reported Bryant solemnly.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ breathed the colonel again. ‘I just don’t believe it.’ He took the proffered glasses. ‘How did he get by the road blocks?’

  ‘He’s got a boat,’ pointed out Bryant.

  ‘Sure,’ said Schorner with a defeated sigh. ‘He’s got a boat.’

  Hulton, attracted by the concern, lurched away from the rail. He was wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes were numb. ‘Somebody on the beach?’ he asked with all the incredulity he could muster.

  ‘Digging for bait,’ nodded Bryant.

  ‘These English,’ said Hulton. ‘The whole country’s mad.’ He realized that he was standing next to Bryant.

  Bryant smiled wanly. ‘It must seem like that to an American,’ he said enigmatically.

  ‘Lieutenant!’ Schorner called towards Younghusband next to the steersman. ‘There’s somebody on the beach.’ Another flight of naval shells screeched over and the British officer had to delay his reply. Eventually he called: ‘Yes, I saw him. Fisherman getting bait. Can’t do anything now. If he gets blown to bits, that’s his jolly fault, wouldn’t you say, sir?’

  ‘I sure would,’ Schorner grunted. ‘He won’t be blown to bits, worse luck,’ he added sourly. ‘Not unless somebody’s right off line. But, for God’s sake, the bastard’s right in the path of our landing.’ He turned to Hulton. ‘I want that dumb bastard arrested as soon as we hit that beach. Get a couple of heavy police guys to sit on him.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Hulton. ‘I will.’ He looked irritably towards the small, recumbent figure on the shingle. ‘Fouling everything up,’ he complained.

  The first wave of troops were nearing the beach to the east now, almost among the surf. Schorner turned the glasses that way and then swept them to the other flank. The landing craft there were almost in line. His own assault group at the centre still had three hundred and fifty yards to go. He looked back at the bait-digger.

  ‘That dog,’ he said slowly as he realized. ‘That’s the dog that was there this morning, right? I fed him with cookies.’

  He was conscious of Hulton and Bryant nodding. ‘Just make sure I don’t act kind to any more dogs,’ muttered Schorner. ‘I should have known.’

  He checked on the distant flank assaults and saw that on the right the landing boats were against the shingle, being pushed and rocked by the moderate rollers coming into the beach. Soldiers were jumping over the sides and running down the ramps into the knee-deep water. He could hear their juvenile war cries coming across the bay even above the vibrant engine of the landing craft. On the left the assault had just made the beach. He could see men balancing on the hulls like clowns waiting until the craft levelled out before jumping. He sighed. Those men, on the real day, would never reach dry land.

  Now his attention was taken by his own men, crouched in the boats ahead, bucking over the last waves before the landfall. He heard Younghusband giving orders down a tube; the clumsy craft eased back a hundred yards from the shore. Now the small boats were almost there, jumping among the froth at the sea’s edge. He stared up the shingle. The bait-digger was still at his task, taking no note of the commotion of war behind him, above him and on each side. The dog had begun to run up and down barking excitedly. Schorner swore as he watched. The fisherman was in the direct line of the planned attack on the Telcoombe Beach Hotel. One assault boat had already needed to take avoiding action to miss the negligently-moored dinghy and was now twenty yards adrift of the others, sideways on in the short but difficult surf, trying to regain both its equilibrium and its station. A heavier roller pitched it further away. He saw the men jumping haphazardly overboard into the cold sea that engulfed them to the armpits. ‘Damn that guy,’ the colonel swore, looking towards the boat back on the beach. ‘Damn him.’

  On shore Schorner’s first men, shouting and panting, wet to the waists, ran heavily up the steep shingle that collapsed and slid away under them. The GIs at the front, weapons aloft, reached the flat sandy shelf, there to be confronted by the fisherman and his dog. The dog frisked about with them, barking, its tail flailing. Solidly the man carried on with his bait-digging as though he were the only soul for miles. The bulky Ballimach, pounding up the incline with his coil of cable on his back, ran to the right of the fisherman. He, like the others, reacted with astonishment but, while the first soldiers had rushed on past the bait-digger, Ballimach paused, out of breath, and studied him. The fisherman glanced up, reached out to his bucket and brought it disdainfully closer to him. Then he returned to his digging. Ballimach moved on. The soldiers rushed by.

  As the first wave reached the now derelict garden of the Telcoombe Beach Hotel, they flung themselves behind seams in the shingle and two tables of rock and began a stream of fire into the building. Every window went within a minute. A mortar bomb blew in the door. A second wave took the place of the first and they pushed forward to the low wall that separated the garden from the beach. Automatic fire brought down the guttering that had been hanging perilously for years. Only now did the fisherman lift his head. He was surrounded by advancing troops, none of whom now spared him more than a quick and curious glance. His dog was cavorting along the beach, yelping and leaping among the men. ‘Silas,’ he called gruffly. ‘Silas, you come ’ere, boy. You be getting in the way.’

  As he spoke he was flattened to the wet sand and pebbles by the assault of two heavy military policemen. They thrust him to the ground and held him there, face down. He managed to move his head to one side; one cheek was pressed deep into the slippery sand. His dog bounced joyously at the game.

  ‘’Ee get off, the pair of ’ee,’ threatened the Devonian from the corner of his mouth. ‘Oi be gettin’ damaged.’

  Schorner, Hulton and Bryant arrived in a group, Bryant attempting to get to his countryman first. They had disembarked from the landing craft as soon as it had buried its nose into the beach and ran up the incline. Bryant got there first. ‘Right,’ he said to the snowdrops. ‘Let him go.’

  They looked doubtfully at the English officer but then saw Schorner and Hulton a few yards away and at once obeyed. The fisherman sat up, rubbing his neck and his shoulders unhurriedly. Bryant saw the whiskery face of Old Daffy. ‘That ’urt, that did,’ he complained.

  ‘For God’s sake, man,’ shouted Bryant above the noise of the firing and explosions all around. ‘You shouldn’t be here at all. This beach is closed – and you bloody well know it.’

  The two Americans were now stopped, looking at him. ‘The roads be blocked,’ pointed out the man with what appeared like patience and logic. ‘But there’s nothin’ to stop oi comin’ ’ere in the dinghy. This is where I get my bait. And there’s you buggerin’ it up with all this.’ He waved his arm at the battle.

  Schorner was about to say something when he heard orders being shouted from the direction of the hotel. In the immediate area the firing had ceased, although on either flank it was still clattering and the naval shells and rockets flew overhead towards the hinterland. The colonel cursed again as he saw that his men near the hotel were vainly trying to catch the fisherman’s sandy dog which was running and curving between them, enjoying the fun as they grabbed and missed and jumped at it and missed again. ‘Shoot the goddamn thing!’ howled Hulton.

  ‘Don’ you go shootin’ my dog,’ threatened the captive fisherman. ‘You shoot ’ee and I’ll complain …’

  All further words were superfluous. The dog made a final dash between the men, leapt the wall of the abandoned hotel and rushed barking through the front door. In a moment there was a huge explosion. The hotel seemed to lift itself from the ground. A blast threw the three officers and the military policemen into a bundle with Old Daffy below them. Debris began to cascade from the sky. Hulton, without raising his head, said peevishly: ‘He trod on a mine. Stupid dog.’

  Fragments of masonry, wood and shingle fell about them, and ahead the sandy dust rose like a copse. Their ears
were numb and their faces full of grit from the beach. As the debris settled and the dust cloud began to drift away on the breeze the three officers, the military policemen and the fisherman eased up their heads. It was the Devonian who had the first word. ‘If you gone and killed my dog, mister, oi goin’ to complain,’ he said.

  Hulton looked as if he might say something, wiping the dust from his mouth, but Schorner was already moving at an anxious run towards the wrecked hotel. Bryant was just behind him. He could see now that a great bite had been taken out of the middle of the building. The dust still swirled and the explosion still sang in his head. Other heads were rising from the shingle. Schorner bawled: ‘Everybody stay where they are! Get it – stay where you are.’

  ‘Nobody moves!’ shouted Hulton unnecessarily.

  The fisherman, trying to follow them, was being restrained firmly by the dust-faced MPs. ‘That were a good dog,’ he told them miserably.

  Now Schorner, Hulton and Bryant had reached what had been the perimeter of the hotel garden. The wall was low and much of the blast had travelled across it. Guns were sounding on both flanks but these abruptly ceased and they walked in an odd silence, broken only by the fall of a window that had been tenuously hanging on to its frame. Its shattering made them jump. Bryant noticed that the children’s swing in the garden was moving to and fro.

  Then Schorner stopped. In the dip of the garden, where it reached the hotel, were the sprawled figures of three American soldiers. Bryant, looking down at them, realized he had witnessed the first men to die for the invasion.

  Gilman was shaving in front of the mirror in the barrack room, so crazed and yellowed that it looked as if an egg had been thrown at it. On a raw February evening the washroom was too cold for human use. There had been noses of ice on the taps that morning. Catermole was already in his marching-out uniform and came to stand behind Gilman, clumsily adjusting the ugly collar of his tunic beneath his ugly face. ‘I wonder what lucky big girl is going to have me tonight,’ he mused.

  Gilman grinned, making a fissure in the lather. ‘You and I, friend, will be rolling back here together, drunk as monkeys and telling each other we never cared about women anyway,’ he forecast. ‘The nearest we’ll get to anything warm and slippery is a bag of fish and chips.’

  ‘Get off,’ chided Catermole. ‘It’s Valentine’s Night, mate.’

  ‘It’s Valentine’s Night for the Yanks too,’ pointed out Gilman.

  ‘They got their own hop at Newton Abbot,’ said Catermole confidently. ‘They’ll all be there. They won’t come to Wilcoombe, will they?’

  ‘Neither will the women,’ answered Gilman.

  Catermole moved away and ran the toecaps of his boots along the blanketed side of the nearest bed, which was not his. He inspected them carefully. ‘You’ll get no kudos for clean boots,’ Gilman told him. ‘You have to kid them you’ve got a ranch in Texas and money coming out of your bum.’

  ‘Lay off,’ grumbled Catermole. ‘You’re making me feel like I ought to stay here and get into bed with Health and Efficiency.’ Gilman had finished shaving and was rubbing his face. ‘You ought to be laughing anyway,’ said the other man. ‘You’ve got yours all laid on.’

  Gilman grimaced. ‘I bet,’ he said. ‘She’s not exclusively mine, you know, Pussy. I doubt it anyway.’

  Catermole became philosophical. ‘Well you ’ave to share things in the war, don’t you. Trouble is some other bugger’s getting my bit.’

  Gilman did up the distasteful collar around his neck, its tight roughness on his Adam’s apple. ‘God, I’d like just to wear a collar and tie, just bloody once,’ he said. ‘This is like a rope around your neck.’

  He put some Brylcreem on his hair and rubbed it in. Catermole had used water on his. He glanced thoughtfully at the Brylcreem and took a fingerful. He applied that to his scraggy scalp, then combed it down before looking at himself in the mirror. ‘Sod it,’ he said profoundly. ‘I look like one of the Three bleeding Stooges.’ They put their boat-shaped caps on in unison, both looked pessimistically in the mirror again, and made for the door.

  At the other end of the hut Walt Walters was stretched out on his bed. He called to them, ‘Don’t wear it out, boys.’

  ‘Who you keeping yours for?’ asked Catermole truculently. ‘It’ll be gone off by the end of the war.’

  ‘Vera Lynn,’ answered Walt, holding the iron rail above his head and giving it a gymnastic pull so that his thin body left the mattress as though levitated. ‘Vera Lynn will be creeping around ’ere soon. She always does after you lot have cleared out.’

  Gilman laughed with Catermole. ‘She going to sing for you then?’

  ‘That’s right, mucker. She’ll be singing “This is Worth Fighting for”.’

  They left him and went out into the edgy night. The customary wind was blowing off the bay but the sky was clear and the stars looked low and blue. Catermole sighed. ‘Bloody ’ell mate, I hope it’s not just fish and chips.’

  Ballimach knotted his pale khaki tie under the rolling throat and smoothed his tunic over the mound of his stomach. ‘Do I look like a general?’ he asked at large. ‘Or do I look like a general?’

  ‘Sure, like a general store,’ said Albie Primrose. ‘Listen, even if you get a broad to dance with you she’s going to be so far away you ain’t going to be able to talk to her. You ought to dump some of that stuff.’

  ‘Okay Pinocchio,’ replied Ballimach huffily. ‘We all know you’ll be clattering around the dance floor on those little wooden legs.’ He regarded himself in the billet’s full-length mirror. Reality stared at him. ‘How can I help it?’ he moaned. ‘I just got shaped like this.’

  ‘Try eating less chow,’ suggested Wall. He was grooming his dark hair with confidence. He showed himself his regular teeth and touched a few of them with the end of his finger.

  ‘Quit counting your goddam piano keys,’ snorted Ballimach. ‘For Christ’s sake, I have to eat, don’t I? I got a big space to fill.’ He glanced at Primrose, easier game than the handsome Wall. ‘Anyway, a dame will know she’s got a real guy when I’ve got her,’ he said. ‘She’ll have to feel around for you, Pinocchio. Even then, maybe she won’t even find you. You want to grow up to be a real, live boy.’

  Wall was satisfied. He eased his cap carefully on to the extreme side of his head, where it clung daringly. ‘You guys better hurry,’ he said. ‘That love wagon goes in five minutes. You don’t want to disappoint all those hungry Limey girls, do you?’

  Ballimach glanced at Primrose, and the small man, taking responsibility, said to Wall. ‘We didn’t figure on going to the big ball. Not at Newton Abbot. That’s not for us. We figured we’d go to Wilcoombe. They got a Valentine’s Dance there too.’

  Wall looked stunned. ‘Wilcoombe?’ he breathed. ‘You’re kidding. Wilcoombe! God, there’ll only be a few hill-billies there.’

  ‘That don’t worry us,’ answered Ballimach almost shyly. ‘We kinda like hill-billies.’

  ‘Aw, come on. You guys just don’t care for the competition,’ taunted Wall baring his teeth again. ‘You know you just don’t stand a chance in the big time.’

  ‘Big time? What’s big-time about Newton Abbot?’ demanded Albie. ‘It ain’t exactly Broadway.’

  ‘There’s going to be negroes,’ said Ballimach slowly and archly. His big eyes slowly moved up to meet those of Wall. ‘Lots of negroes. Big negroes.’

  ‘So, okay. So they have to take second place.’

  Albie said: ‘It ain’t that we’re prejudiced, don’t get that idea. It’s just that there’s going to be a whole lot of fighting in that place. Whites and negroes. There’ll be blood on the ground, take it from me.’

  Ballimach nodded his support. ‘A whole ocean of blood,’ he said.

  ‘Drop dead,’ replied Wall making for the door. He looked back doubtfully. ‘There’ll be lots of police,’ he added. ‘They’ll see everything is okay. You guys coming?’ He nodded towards the night.

  ‘No,
we’ll go along and dosey-doe with the hicks,’ said Ballimach. ‘They don’t punch as hard as those niggers.’

  From the outside darkness men were whooping and Wall, with a final look from which the doubt had not entirely been erased, went from the billet. Albie looked with equal uncertainty at Ballimach. ‘You think maybe we ought to go with them?’ he suggested.

  ‘No, to hell,’ said Ballimach. ‘It’ll be okay for you, pal, you’re a small target. I got plenty of me for some Joe Louis to hit.’

  Gilman and Catermole lounged against the splinter-rough bar of the Wilcoombe village hall, watery beer in their disconsolate tankards, hopelessness in their expressions; the Wilcoombe band supplemented by four retired dance-band musicians who had graced the Imperial Hotel, Torquay, before the war, played with disjointed enthusiasm for the half dozen couples alternately rushing and revolving on the floor.

  ‘Did they say this was a bloody tango?’ inquired Catermole before sucking a seam of beer from the glass. ‘A bloody tango?’

  ‘That’s what they said,’ confirmed Gilman. Chalk from the wooden floor was all over his boots and those of Catermole. Looking down he said: ‘We look like Russians, Pussy.’

  ‘Well, this don’t look like a tango,’ answered Catermole still in the hurt voice. As if to confirm that it was, one of the dancers, the Reverend Sissons, galloped towards them driving a lady in a pre-war wedding dress. Eric Sissons liked to dance and thought he could. He came at the two soldiers with long Groucho Marx steps, sweeping his partner alongside him like an outrigger. Chalk flew from the floor. He bent the lady backwards almost under the ledge of Catermole’s beer tankard. The soldier removed it hurriedly and stared down at the pale pan of the woman’s face hanging directly below his own. The Reverend Sissons jerked her upright and swooped away.