The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘Never heard better,’ encouraged Schorner. Albie returned to the class.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘the Quakers are people who believe in goodness and peace. They don’t believe in hurting nobody. My folks were Quakers. They don’t even like me being in the army.’ The class had become quiet. Albie grinned infectiously: ‘Come to think of it, neither do I.’

  Everyone laughed again at that. Schorner said: ‘I guess we must leave. I have to go and answer a few questions myself.’

  Dorothy glanced at him sympathetically. ‘Is it today, the Inquisition?’

  ‘It sure is,’ he sighed. ‘I hope it’s half as easy as coming here.’

  Albie said good-bye to the children and they chorused in return. He went out towards the jeep. There was a vacant moment before Schorner followed him. Dorothy filled it.

  ‘Would I be terribly forward if I asked if you’d like to come to my house to supper?’ she said, her voice low.

  Schorner smiled gratefully. ‘Name the night,’ he said. ‘Only the invasion will stop me.’

  ‘Saturday then,’ she suggested. ‘But, please, don’t bring anything. I don’t want you to think I’ve just invited you for ice cream.’

  ‘I won’t think that,’ he said, touching her wrist lightly. ‘But I’ll bring something anyway. See you then.’

  ‘You can tell me about the Inquisition,’ she said.

  ‘I feel a whole lot better about it already,’ he smiled. He walked towards the jeep as Albie started the engine. The faces of the children filled the lower classroom window. In the next classroom there was only one face, that of Miss Parsons. As he finally turned to go Schorner saw the word form on her puffy lips. ‘Yanks.’

  Lieutenant Bryant met Schorner at the village hall. There were some local people standing idly outside, curious to see the colonel’s arrival. Everyone in Wilcoombe knew that the meeting was taking place; it was impossible to hide anything like that. The rural rumour-mongers had been working vigorously, their normal industriousness given new encouragement by the thrills and uncertainties of war.

  Stories sneaking around the town and the adjoining countryside were of uneven sensationalism. Some had it that Eisenhower himself was to arrive in Wilcoombe to explain the American point of view, although most realistically discounted this. Others said that a huge amount of money – all in dollar bills – was being brought into the village hall under armed escort, to pay out additional compensation to the people dispossessed by the occupation; another was that the Americans were seeking permission to use the cricket field outside the small town to bury their increasing number of dead following inaccurate artillery fire during manoeuvres.

  There was some disappointment, therefore, when Schorner, familiar to many, and his bespectacled driver arrived without additional echelons, to be greeted by the everyday British lieutenant who had been having a half of cider in the pub at lunchtime. Tom Barrington, the chairman of the parish council, the Reverend Eric Sissons, still with discoloured forehead and bruised hands from his minefield adventure, and Mrs Mahon-Feavor, staring as if imprisoned by the net of her own hat, were counted into the hall, with some spasmodic applause from the street spectators, and the small crowd lingered until Schorner arrived, to be greeted with a stiff salute from Bryant.

  A rumble of approval rolled from the soldiers and would-be soldiers in the audience at the smartness of the British greeting. Schorner’s comparatively easy American acknowledgement was greeted with frowns. They would never make soldiers. ‘Our’n were the best, don’ you think,’ a man said loudly from the pavement. ‘That durn Yank looked loike ’ee was squeezing ’is boils.’

  Bryant led the way into the hall. Some flags had been draped around the walls, covering Holman-Hunt’s doorstep Jesus, in preparation for an Aid-to-Russia Whist Drive to be held that evening. An enormous Russian hammer and sickle banner was strung across the centre of the back wall and beneath this, like the downcast committee of a workers’ collective, sat the three leading residents of Wilcoombe.

  They were arranged around the scarred table which Schorner had last seen used by the coroner at the inquest of Meg Pender. By their side was a lady with a grey bun of hair surmounting an angular frame, giving her the aspect of a ball of wool impaled on the end of a knitting needle. She alone smiled nervously as the soldiers entered, although Tom Barrington and Eric Sissons stood with polite grimness. There was a seat placed centrally, facing the committee, for Schorner, but Bryant stood carefully aside. There were English handshakes and unnecessary introductions and Schorner sat down.

  ‘Perhaps there might be a seat available for Lieutenant Bryant, Royal Artillery,’ he suggested. ‘He is my liaison officer. He is my source of information and helps me out with things British.’ He allowed a minor smile to edge his lips. Faces went left and right like doors but no one made any comment. Bryant pulled a chair over and sat discreetly at the side. Then the knitting-needle lady took out a great fold-over pad and a long pencil, the point of which she licked with deep thought.

  ‘Is this lady intending to take notes?’ asked Schorner, his expression lifting.

  ‘Miss Benning is the clerk to the council,’ said Mrs Mahon-Feavor, leaning across the table. She had lifted her hat veil but it was about to descend again over her eyes. ‘She will keep the record.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Schorner quietly, ‘there will be no record.’

  ‘But we always have minutes …’ began Sissons.

  ‘This is one time there will be no minutes,’ put in Schorner firmly. ‘No notes can be taken. This meeting, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely unofficial, off the record, private or whatever you like. If you insist on it being otherwise, there will be no meeting. I have very firm orders on this.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Benning. She made as if to lick her pencil again but then resisted and looked around lost and sorry. ‘Do I have to go?’ she asked Tom Barrington. ‘Or can I listen?’ She leaned confidingly towards him. ‘I can remember most of it,’ she whispered. ‘And write it down after they be gone.’

  ‘I think,’ said Schorner, his firm smile directly on her, causing a flustered blush, ‘it would be appreciated if you left the room, ma’am.’

  Miss Benning dragged her spinster’s eyes from Schorner and looked back at Barrington. The farmer nodded for her to leave. She snapped her pad together, snapped her handbag after stowing the pencil, sniffed out and snapped the door.

  ‘Right,’ said Tom Barrington, adopting a similar businesslike air to Schorner. ‘No record it is. Now, can we ask some questions?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. I’ll do my best.’

  Barrington glanced sideways at his colleagues and said: ‘When will we be getting our land back?’

  ‘I think you know, Mr Barrington,’ said Schorner slowly, ‘that I can’t answer that in any way. It will come back to you when we move out. I guess after the invasion of Europe. And I don’t know when that will be.’

  ‘You’re a farmer,’ pursued Barrington. ‘So am I. I’m stuck in a muck-heap of a smallholding. I feel as though I’m in a hole in the bloody ground.’

  ‘I am very sorry, as I’ve told you before. I farm about twenty thousand acres in West Virginia.’ He paused. ‘I know what you’re driving at and the answer is that, okay, as a farmer, I certainly wouldn’t like to be in doubt as to the day I could next work my land. The seasons don’t wait around for anybody. You need to order seed and plan your year. Believe me, sir, you have my sympathy but there’s nothing I can do and nothing I can tell you. As you know there is provision for compensation.’

  Barrington sighed at the word. ‘A fat lot that’s going to be,’ he said.

  Mrs Mahon-Feavor said briskly, ‘None of the people, the tradesmen, the shopkeepers, have had any compensation for loss of goodwill.’

  ‘That’s a difficult thing to judge,’ said Schorner, thinking that neither had he. ‘As you know, all compensation is being assessed by the British Government. It has nothing to do with us.’ />
  ‘How much damage has been done to the houses?’ asked Barrington. ‘We’ve heard the gunfire. People say the whole area has been ravaged.’

  ‘About twenty per cent of the homesteads and other buildings have had some damage,’ admitted Schorner. ‘About two or three per cent have been badly hit. But we’re going to put everything back eventually. We photographed every house. In a couple of years you won’t know we came by here at all.’

  Sissons had been silent, his chin studiously in his hands; now he stirred. ‘My church at Telcoombe Magna has been desecrated,’ he said, but not confidently. ‘I saw it myself.’

  ‘So I heard,’ said Schorner, keeping his mouth straight. ‘You were in a prohibited area, sir. You risked your own life, and the lives of the men who had to get you out of that jam.’ He waited.

  Sissons looked down at the table. ‘The organ was playing jazz,’ he protested lamely. ‘They were gambling, dice and cards … There was beer. The pews are marked with cigarette burns.’ There returned a painful memory. ‘The pulpit is full of rubbish.’

  ‘It’s not the first time,’ put in Mrs Mahon-Feavor hastily and unexpectedly.

  ‘The church,’ said Schorner evenly, ‘is the only building large enough to use as a rest and recreation centre for men who have been undergoing training under rigorous and dangerous battle conditions. We asked for, and got, permission from the bishop for its utilization. He thought it was a worthwhile Christian use, considering the war situation, the circumstances.’

  ‘The bishop?’ queried Sissons with quiet shock. ‘He did not inform me.’

  ‘He informed us,’ said Schorner. ‘That was all we figured we needed.’

  ‘He never did like the parish,’ retorted Sissons sadly. He looked up with new challenge: ‘In any case – recreation. He couldn’t have meant that sort of recreation. Choral singing or quiet reading perhaps.’

  ‘Most of these guys don’t go in for choral singing,’ replied Schorner, his voice dropping. ‘And some of them can hardly read. They look at the funnies. You know – King Kong, L’il Abner, that sort of literature. But as long as they’re sharp enough to pull a trigger or lob a grenade, we take them. We even grab them. And when we’ve got them, as far as we can, we try to give them some comfort, some place to go. Pretty soon home for those boys is going to be a lousy hole in the ground.’

  He felt his voice hardening. Mrs Mahon-Feavor said with exaggerated sweetness, ‘We are worried about the women situation.’

  Schorner said solidly: ‘So am I.’ He looked directly back at them.

  ‘It has various manifestations,’ she went on when the expressions of the others had subsided. She was deliberate now. ‘There was that unfortunate business in this very room on St Valentine’s Night. Hardly a night of love, I think you’d agree. Prostitutes from Plymouth by the busload – fighting. Here.’ She pointed dramatically at the floor.

  Barrington put in carefully: ‘The night poor Meg Pender ended up in the harbour.’

  Schorner’s look was as careful as the Englishman’s words. ‘Right,’ he confirmed. ‘I recall it. The night poor Meg Pender fell into the harbour.’ He returned to the old lady. ‘The outbreak of fighting, as it was reported to me, ma’am, concerned these ladies from Plymouth and some English girls of the Land Army. We don’t have any control over either.’

  Mrs Mahon-Feavor became haughty, which she did easily. ‘Those wretches from Plymouth would never have been here if they hadn’t come hunting for American soldiers,’ she sniffed. ‘At every street corner, on most evenings, there are your soldiers hanging around with local girls of the lower sort. And there are a number of silly girls in trouble, you know. Pregnancies.’ She managed to drop her voice and make the word rumble at the same time.

  ‘I understand that a situation like that requires two,’ replied Schorner. ‘I have to tell you now, ma’am, that I have received a directive on this matter which says, pretty bluntly I’m afraid, that these mothers will have no standing whatever if they try to take legal steps to involve American servicemen in paternity cases. That’s not my order, that comes from the US Army legal department.’ He looked with some sympathy at them. ‘And, there is nothing to say that they would ever be accepted even as wives into the United States either. They could end up on Ellis Island as all foreigners do and then be deported.’

  ‘What is your advice then, colonel?’ said Sissons suddenly leaning forward into the shocked silence.

  ‘Tell the girls to say no,’ said Schorner simply.

  There was a further hush. ‘Anything more?’ asked Barrington, looking at the others. He was prompting Sissons.

  The vicar was reluctant, but could not avoid it. ‘It has been rumoured,’ he began, ‘that American soldiers who have been killed in these mock battles have been buried wholesale in a field down by Telcoombe Beach. Is this true?’

  A dull bristling redness came to the American’s face. ‘Sir,’ he said, taking difficult control of himself. His eyes went to slits. ‘We do not bury our dead soldiers wholesale, nor do we bury them in any field. Nor, for that matter, do we bury them in your churchyard. The bodies of US servicemen killed on active service are returned to their homes in America for burial, if that is at all practical. In this theatre of war, at present, it is practical. We have a great many planes returning to the United States every day. They take our dead back where they belong.’ He stood abruptly. ‘I think that is all the time I can spare,’ he said stiffly.

  They also stood, automatically and without saying anything else. Schorner said, ‘Thank you,’ turned and marched out. The three people remained grouped oddly under the hammer and sickle.

  ‘I think you really upset him then,’ said Mrs Mahon-Feavor glaring at Sissons. ‘You always were a bit of a bloody fool.’

  April

  By the first week in April the whole of southern England had become like a vast freight yard; crates and boxes and pyramids of fuel, jerry-cans piled on roadsides and in fields, with tanks, guns, trucks and jeeps creeping unsurely among them. The soldiers who were to fight the approaching battle seemed almost insignificant as they moved in slow lines and with increasing bewilderment along the tight roads among the towers of war material.

  After the driest March for a century, the first April days brought traditional rain and soon the firm ground was awash with mud. Apart from the British divisions, the Canadians, and those from France, the Empire and the occupied countries, which spread their dun tents across the green of the springtime land, there were a million and a half Americans training and waiting. Two of these were Privates First Class Ballimach and Primrose. They were lying in a shallow depression in Wilcoombe Beach. Men were moving across the shingle in the morning sun. It was yet another exercise.

  ‘Shit, that’s all we see,’ complained Ballimach. ‘Shit and exercises. Who was the first guys here? Go on, tell me, who was the first?’

  ‘You and me,’ nodded Albie. He rolled into the shingle to give Ballimach more room with his cable drum.

  ‘And how, buddy. We had this place all on our own-i-o, right? And what happens, we get pushed and squeezed up, further and further into the mud. And still they come. How they can get all these guys in this one little country I don’t know.’ His fat eyes squeezed in thought. ‘Shit and exercises,’ he repeated.

  ‘And you have to get in line for the shit,’ confirmed Albie. ‘You get in a line half a mile long for chow and then you get in line for the honeybucket.’

  Ballimach looked at him with serious concern. ‘I don’t like to hear you mouthing like that, Albie. That bad language. It’s not like you.’

  ‘My folks were Quakers,’ agreed Albie. ‘It’s the army done this for me. All the shit and exercises.’

  ‘I guess we’ll all be Quakers soon,’ said Ballimach dolefully but pleased at the pun. He snapped a wire with his pinchers and clipped it to a junction. He laughed and Albie looked at him without understanding. The long beach was spread with two hundred engineers, laying lines, fixin
g the metal trackways up the shore, digging illogical trenches that refilled with the shingle as fast as they were dug. ‘That’s a joke,’ explained Ballimach. ‘Quakers, see? Like quaking …’ He stood and wobbled his great girth extravagantly. ‘Shivering. Shivering with goddamn fright.’

  ‘You ain’t got any slimmer since you been in England,’ mentioned Albie examining the mountainous man. ‘It’s that cider you drink. On the level. If anything, I figure you’re fatter, Ballimach.’

  ‘Thanks a million, pal. Why don’t you swim over right now and tell the Nazis. Go on, tell ’em that Fatso Ballimach is coming and they just can’t miss him. Listen, when they start letting off with those twenty-two millimetre bang-bangs, it don’t matter how big you are.’ He looked down at the slight soldier sprawled against the shingle. ‘You, you’ll be blown hell of a longer distance than me.’

  Albie looked thoughtful. ‘I’ll level with you, Ballimach,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Me neither, pal,’ agreed Ballimach pathetically. ‘I thought I’d be smart. If I was marked down as a meathead in these war games they’d replace me. You know what I mean, if I was too fat and too slow. Then they’d put some other poor bastard in the invasion. So I slowed down even more and I do more things wrong. I even tell them I’m doing things wrong. I report myself for incompetence. Nobody even notices. They want me on that beach.’

  ‘There’s so many dum-dums around,’ philosophized Albie, ‘that even a fat dum-dum like you don’t show up too bad.’ He glanced quizzically at his friend. ‘Is that why you fell out of that tree?’ he asked. ‘Like you did, the very first day when we first got here. Remember, you fell out of the tree? Did you work that out?’

  ‘How can I forget I fell out of the fucking tree?’ asked Ballimach resentfully. ‘Is falling out of a tree something you forget – even when it’s three months ago? The answer is no. It was genuine incompetence. But even that didn’t get me taken off the invasion.’ He rested his great face on his meaty fists. ‘You know, if every other goddamn GI chickened out or got sick, I’d still be there, trying to run up that beach. All on my ownsome.’