The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘And if we don’t manage it?’ said Bryant.

  Schorner was looking out to the placid spring sea. ‘We fail,’ he shrugged. ‘We high-tail out, as best we can. Get back here and lick our wounds for a long time, I guess, a few years even. Then we try again, or the politicians get a negotiated peace, or somebody internally overthrows Hitler.’

  Bryant felt an oddly childish disappointment. ‘It’s got to go right,’ he muttered.

  ‘Sure, lieutenant, and when I see Ike tomorrow I’ll tell him you said so.’

  They had driven the length of the beach and gone out through the barbed-wire barrier. At the bottom of Wilcoombe Hill, where the road turned right and upwards by the harbour, they saw Evans standing beside his small car outside the cottage gate. Schorner told Primrose to drive the car the few yards off the road. Affably Evans greeted them and Beatrice came from the door and up the path. She was wearing a faded, summery dress. The American thought they were two people who would never be changed; by wars or even time.

  ‘It’s spring,’ smiled the American. He got out of the car. In their enclosed garden there were daffodils hiding behind the old walls.

  ‘I told you it came here too,’ laughed Beatrice. The light dress made her slim and jaunty. For a moment Schorner remembered how much he wanted to go home. Bryant left the car and looked across the road to the British gun, now outmoded by the neighbouring rocket batteries. He wondered if it would remain there until the end of the war. Soldiers were moving without hurrying in the compound and a finger of light smoke came from the cookhouse.

  ‘St David’s Day,’ said Evans. He patted the head of a daffodil with affection, as though it were a pet. ‘Our patron saint in Wales, you see.’

  ‘Now that’s something we don’t seem to have caught up on in the States,’ said Schorner admiring the clean and vivid daffodils. ‘We ought to have a patron saint. We have Columbia, but I don’t think about her as a saint.’

  ‘Dewi Sant, they call him – Saint David,’ said Evans as though speaking of someone he knew personally. ‘This is his flower, the daffodil. His father was a saint also and his mother was a nun.’

  ‘Sounds like a strong cast,’ said Schorner. He looked casually at Evans. ‘You know I asked for the inquest to be adjourned?’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ replied the doctor just as calmly. He saw Albie Primrose lean forward to listen. ‘I have to give evidence,’ he added.

  ‘And I have to be there,’ said Schorner. ‘We will also have a US Army lawyer present. That’s normal where GIs are involved.’

  Evans thought it sounded like an apology. ‘You can’t have everybody being a saint,’ he said. ‘Not soldiers.’

  ‘I guess not.’ His brows furrowed. ‘Who’s the patron saint of soldiers anyhow?’

  Evans smiled. ‘I don’t know. Better ask the vicar.’

  ‘Just now the Church is not looking too charitably in my direction,’ shrugged Schorner. ‘We’re getting flak because of the trouble at the dance also.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘Yes, I heard. It might come as a relief when you only have to face the Germans.’

  ‘That could be,’ agreed Schorner. He smiled at Beatrice. ‘You look like the spirit of spring today, lady,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing like an hour of warm Devon sun to start them springing around like fawns,’ laughed Evans. ‘Your boys will be feeling the sap rising.’

  Schorner regarded him with genuine concern. ‘Don’t, for God’s sake,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t I have enough troubles?’ He and Bryant were getting back into the car.

  They said good-byes and drove from the harbour apron and up the steep Wilcoombe Hill. Schorner was silent for several miles as they manoeuvred their route along lanes and roads, piled with war material, cases of ammunition, food, pyramids of gasoline, drums and cans. Soldiers moved about like a thousand storekeepers, convoys pressed along the road, military police waved them on when they saw the stars on the car. There was scarcely a sign of civilian life.

  ‘That daffodil sure is a pretty flower,’ said Schorner eventually.

  ‘The Welsh also have the leek,’ mentioned Bryant. ‘And that’s ugly.’

  Schorner closed his eyes and lay back against the cushioned seat. ‘Bryant,’ he said, ‘do you think those GIs pushed that woman into the harbour?’

  Bryant said evenly, ‘No, sir. I think she fell. She was drunk, and she often was. I think she fell in. Just as they said.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ muttered the colonel. ‘I sure hope you’re right.’

  They met General Georgeton and Captain Scarlett in Exeter, the bombed old city bathed in optimistic new sunshine. People were out in the ruined streets, a sense of lightness in the way they walked. The destroyed buildings had been tidied as if a houseproud woman had been at work with a broom. There were even wild flowers growing on some of the gaunt gaps. There were daffodils in window boxes and cut into bunches on the pavements outside shops, among baskets of vegetables. Worn-out buses, a few cars, bicycles and horse-drawn carts moved in the centre of the city; uniforms and military vehicles were everywhere. Outside the fine, damaged cathedral, two jeeps were pulled to the side and American soldiers, hands in pockets, caps on the backs of their greased heads, were fooling for the benefit of half-a-dozen shopgirls, sitting out for their lunch hour. Two of the GIs were wrestling, bringing raucous laughter from the girls and wild jeers from their comrades.

  ‘They don’t look like killers, do they?’ sighed General Georgeton. He and Schorner were travelling together. Scarlett and Bryant were following in Schorner’s staff car. Georgeton’s driver gave a double touch on the horn and laughed to himself as the Americans sprang to attention on the sidewalk and saluted the passing car. One of the brash girls stood up too, imitating them, at attention, her arm raised in a mocking salute. ‘Few killers do, sir,’ replied Schorner. ‘They’ll find out soon enough.’

  ‘You’re having trouble with the civilian population,’ said Georgeton casually. ‘I got a report. A woman got drowned and some of our men were involved.’

  ‘She was a well-known drunk,’ replied Schorner defensively. ‘She fell into the harbour and some of my men tried to get her out. One guy was in hospital with exposure for three days. But some dumbheads ran away. We don’t even known who they were. They weren’t from my unit. My guys didn’t even know them. But they panicked and they beat it and, naturally, the rumours started.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound too good,’ said Georgeton. ‘Sooner it’s cleared up the better.’

  ‘There’s an inquest on Friday.’

  ‘And you’ll be there. What are the other problems? With the local people.’

  Schorner sighed. ‘We have plenty. We’re in a spot. Every other place in this country you have the troops and you have the civilians together. They have to get by somehow. There’s no other place where the civilians have been dispossessed, moved out of their homes and their farms, so that the troops can blow them to hell. It doesn’t help good relations. Most people are okay, they understand or they say they understand, but there’s a real undercurrent of bitterness. All the time I feel it.’

  ‘You’ll have to learn to live with it,’ said Georgeton.

  ‘I’m learning,’ replied Schorner. ‘Every day.’

  The car braked and they watched a long-barrelled gun being moved along the road, a monster with army outriders. They were in the suburbs of Exeter now and the civilians scarcely did more than pause to see the giant move along. It was like a dragon in a carnival. ‘How are we going to get that thing over the sea?’ said Georgeton. ‘You’re the engineer.’

  ‘It sure won’t float,’ smiled Schorner. ‘We’ll get it over okay. Our problem will be what to do with it on the other side. We’ve got a railhead company arriving at the end of the month. They’ve got to get railroad trains and wagons across there.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Georgeton. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to get a lot of oddball units.’ He paused, then said: ‘I’ve assigned a Grave Reg
istration Company to you for the actual assault.’

  Schorner swallowed. ‘A Grave Registration Company?’ he repeated. ‘Oh, boy, that’s great news.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, colonel,’ said Georgeton. ‘Maybe they’re not the most popular travelling companions, but they’ve got to live somewhere, just like every other outfit, and they’ve got to get across real quick after the first invasion wave. Folks back home want to know where and when their boys got killed.’ He hardly paused this time. ‘What other troubles do you have? Locally.’

  ‘Fights,’ answered Schorner simply. ‘We had one at a Valentine Dance. It wasn’t our guys’ fault but they got the blame.’

  The general shrugged. ‘We have fights all over,’ he commented. ‘Real bloody fights some of them. Knives and all that stuff. We have whites fighting negroes, and Americans fighting British, and the infantry fighting the paratroopers. We’ll have the goddamn doctors fighting the nurses yet.’

  ‘I guess we brought them over to fight and it’s taking a long time to fix the real thing,’ said Schorner. ‘Exercises, war games are okay – we’ve had a total of twenty-four simulated invasions by now – but everybody knows they’re just pretending. They think that everything is just another exercise. They probably won’t believe it’s the real thing until they’ve shot their first German.’ He thought about the doctors and nurses. ‘The hospital is nearly ready, I hear, general.’

  ‘Sure, another couple of weeks. I’ve seen it. Jesus Christ, it’s frightening, Schorner. God, it really is. A million miles of empty beds, wards, operating theatres, a morgue like a football field. If we have that many dead they’re not going to get them into heaven or hell on the same day.’

  ‘What’s the feeling at the top?’ asked Schorner. He glanced at the window between them and the driver to make sure it was closed. Georgeton saw his look and nodded that it was.

  ‘We’ll hear the latest tomorrow, I guess,’ he said. ‘From the big chiefs. But everybody is worried as hell. They ought to be. It’s okay piling up all these tanks, guns, railroad trains and God-knows-what else on this side, but anything could go wrong and screw up the whole operation. Weather, especially the weather, logistics, heavy resistance, the chance of a panzer corps just sitting on the beach as we go ashore. Gee, you know as well as anybody.’

  ‘Sure,’ agreed Schorner. ‘That stretch of water could lose us an army.’

  ‘A war,’ corrected Georgeton. ‘If we get a storm we could be finished before we’ve started.’

  ‘These old warships give me bad dreams,’ put in the colonel. ‘Those two broken down hulks. What sort of protection are they going to be?’

  ‘Ask Eisenhower. Or some guy who knows God,’ said Georgeton. ‘Maybe you’ll get a chance at the briefing.’

  ‘Who do the British think? After all, it’s their Channel.’

  ‘Montgomery is not somebody you would want to take home to your mother,’ answered Georgeton. ‘I wouldn’t take him home to mine. He’s an arrogant bastard, but he’s no fool. He’s damned shrewd. He, and all the other high echelon, are putting great faith in Hitler drawing the wrong card. They believe he’ll be convinced that the landings will be in the Pas de Calais. It’s the shortest crossing and it would make historical sense. Hitler thinks the British would love to go back the way they got themselves thrown out. Just for the sake of history. Poetic justice. That’s what they think he thinks, anyway. Let’s hope he’s doing that.’

  Schorner said: ‘I don’t believe Hitler is that crazy. Not with all this material piling up here in the west. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said the general. ‘I think he’ll guess right, and he’ll be sitting waiting for us with his panzers. It’s going to be fucking murder, colonel. Fucking murder.’

  The great gun held up Scarlett and Bryant in the second car. They waited with three other vehicles and a group of almost indifferent pedestrians as the giant, its barrel seeming to point the way, was manoeuvred around a difficult corner. The owner of the butcher’s shop at the junction came out, a stout man wearing a threadbare traditional striped apron, and stood on the pavement shouting instructions to the driver and crew and illustrating them by waving a blood-stained cleaver.

  ‘Butchers never look hungry,’ observed Bryant.

  ‘He’d be crazy if he did,’ said Scarlett. ‘When the butcher starves there’s no hope for anybody.’

  They watched as anxiety creased the man’s sausage-like face, while the barrel of the weapon turned a fraction at a time. The butcher began using the cleaver like a threat. Eventually the gun just cleared the upper storey of the shop. A pale face appeared at the window above and the butcher began shouting and gesticulating upwards.

  ‘Somebody’s sick in the room,’ suggested Scarlett.

  ‘He missed anyway,’ said Bryant. ‘Maybe they’ll send in a claim for disturbance.’

  ‘They do,’ nodded Scarlett. ‘We have claims from people whose dogs get scared.’

  One of the American soldiers manoeuvring the gun was undersized, smaller than Albie Primrose, who sat at the wheel of their car. The divisional flash on his little arm bore the words: ‘Hell on Wheels’.

  ‘Are you married?’ asked Scarlett. They knew little about each other.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bryant. He added: ‘I’m hoping that my wife will be coming to London. She’s trying to get down by train from Manchester so we can spend some time together. I’ve almost forgotten what she looks like.’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ agreed Scarlett. ‘Jesus, what I’d give just to see my wife’s little butt.’ His face became sad.

  Bryant said: ‘I’m not sure mine will be coming, yet. She’s going to try, that’s all. She is on war work and it’s difficult.’ He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

  ‘How long since you saw her?’ asked Scarlett.

  ‘Four months. Last leave,’ said Bryant. ‘I haven’t had any leave since before Christmas, and with this present job I can’t see much chance of getting any. Not unless they give us a quick forty-eight hours before the invasion.’

  Scarlett said seriously: ‘I sure hope she comes.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Bryant. He wondered if she had better things to do.

  *

  Bushy Park on the western outskirts of London is bordered by the River Thames and Henry the Eighth’s magnificent red palace of Hampton Court. General Eisenhower had called a briefing for six in the evening in a prefabricated building used as an officers’ mess and set on one flank of what had become an American military city.

  Now, the park’s lofty walls were embroidered with skeins of barbed wire, the gates restricted, the paths broadened into roads. On occasion civilian gardeners were permitted to enter to attend to the seasonal wants of some of the rarer plants and shrubs in the gardens. Outside the tall heraldic gates and the guards, children waited for gifts of gum and women waited for dates.

  Early in the evening, before the fine March day had fully died, the camp followers were removed from the entrance and soon US Army staff vehicles converged on the park, with the occasional British Army, Air Force or Navy car, and the transport of various officers of the allied armies, including the French, the Canadians, the Dutch and the Poles.

  Senior officers, a hundred and twenty of them, sat on rows of wooden chairs, curiously like pupils in a big classroom, murmuring among themselves as children do, but watching the doors through which the Supreme Commander would enter. When he came in, with his immediate staff officers, and with the stiff-striding General Montgomery, the assembly clattered to its feet.

  Eisenhower, his impish head nodding a greeting, took the middle chair of those arranged on a platform at one end. His grin was grim. Montgomery took off his beret with the two badges fixed to it, hung it on a chair back and sat down tiredly. Other staff officers, from all the services, took the other chairs. It was as formal as a group photograph. A balding captain on Eisenhower’s staff, who spoke more like a padre, stood and outlined the areas
to be covered by the briefing. ‘Questions and comments after the briefing,’ he said primly.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower stood. His face was waxed and weary, but the voice was convincing. ‘Our weather experts,’ he began, ‘are the people we need to give our attention to.’ It sounded strange, as if he had, by error, begun in the middle of his speech. ‘It’s not one damned bit of use trying to float this operation even across that ditch between England and France if we’re going to get shipwrecked on the way. History is stuffed full of men who came to grief in the Channel, ask the admiral who commanded the Spanish Armada.’

  There was a polite acknowledgement of the small joke. His voice was lowered. He sounded like a man speaking poetry. ‘We need the moon,’ he said. ‘We need the tides. We need the darkness for cover, we need moonlight to identify the dropping zones for the paratroops. We need daylight for our engineers to clear obstacles on the beaches, we need the night to get close enough to those beaches undetected by the guns of the enemy. We need the currents and the weather. In short we need, more than anything else, good fortune.’

  ‘Some dates in May and early June commend themselves on these counts. Any of them, or all, may be confounded by the weather. If we miss these days then we might as well forget it until the fall – and that’s too late. It’s got to be soon, gentlemen, or not at all.’

  Schorner, ten rows back, sitting next to General Georgeton, leaned forward listening as intently as every other man but, quietly, insisting in the bottom of his mind, he kept getting thoughts about his home. He thought of the trees and the fields that swept to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the spring, the wind, his dogs barking at night, people coming over on Sundays; his wife. When would all this game, this charade be finished? Ever?

  The room was darkened and a map of the Channel coast, both sides, England and France, was projected on to a back screen. Schorner, in his mood, had a brief memory of sitting in the picture house when he was a boy; the moment when the beam from the projector cut through the shabby place and made a white square on the screen.