Albie said: ‘I’ll tell you something for nothing, Ballimach, I think those guys who just arrived in that small outfit they put in the hut the other side of the church – I think those guys are weird. You know, nobody knows what they do, and they don’t tell anybody. They’re real quiet about things. And they keep to themselves. It ain’t natural for soldiers to keep to themselves, now is it? Somebody said those guys said they’re Intelligence.’
Ballimach shrugged hugely: ‘So they’re Intelligence,’ he said. ‘So they keep to themselves like they got the plague. So that’s what happens when you’re in Intelligence – nobody talks to you.’
Albie glanced at his big watch, like the face of a doll on his thin wrist. ‘I don’t know why I’ve got to be on the beach, anyway,’ he complained. ‘I’m supposed to be Colonel Schorner’s driver. There ain’t going to be many places to drive that first day.’ He sighed. ‘I’m just a lucky guy to have an officer who wants to be right at the front.’
‘Maybe, Albie, you’ll be the first to drive into Paris,’ suggested Ballimach, his eyebrows rising optimistically. He had finished the connection and they now sat together in the pebble hollow waiting for the ships spread grey across the bay to start the bombardment. ‘Two minutes,’ said Albie, looking at the watch again. ‘Then cover your ears.’
‘Maybe we could get deaf,’ said Ballimach without real hope. ‘You can’t even get drafted if you’re deaf. The racket on this beach every day could make you deaf.’
‘Too late,’ dismissed Albie. ‘Now, they’d think you was real lucky to be deaf.’ He became thoughtful. ‘I sure wouldn’t mind being the first to drive into Paris. All those señoritas.’
A single loud explosion came from the left marker of the naval vessels crouching out on the sea. It was a coloured tracer and they watched the shell go over with practical interest. ‘Shorter than ever,’ grumbled Ballimach. ‘Every day those Limey guys are trying to kill us. They sit out there on their safe goddamn ships and try to see how they can kill us.’
Further protest was engulfed by the successive thundering which broke out from the horizon, explosions, flashes, crackling along the strung line of ships, the shells whistling like scimitars through the air above them and descending with explosions shuddering but unseen, just inland. A cloth of smoke soon drifted across the beach. They lay beneath it, regarding it moodily.
‘Here they come,’ yawned Ballimach. Another salvo roared overhead but his reference was to the landing craft which were now grunting shorewards through the smoke. The sea was bucking after rain and wind in the night and the two Americans knew that half their sea-sick comrades coming in to land would end up to their waists, or even shoulders, in the chill water.
This time there was an additional diversion. Two of the landing craft collided metallically as they approached the beach, the nose of one swerving and burying itself into the hull of the second. ‘Boy oh boy,’ breathed Ballimach. ‘Now we got a shipwreck.’
The two blunt vessels, locked together like ugly lovers, careered towards the steep shelf of shingle. They lost way and began to wallow haphazardly in the surf, as though struggling out of their depth. The decks were coped with the helmeted heads of the soldiers, the heads crammed on one deck shouting and cursing and waving disconnected fists at the troops on the other. As the two vessels struck the beach some men toppled overboard into the shallow, churning water.
Ballimach and Primrose rolled over with hilarity. Their laughter became dumb mouthing as another salvo cleft the air and exploded inland. The GIs were struggling ashore from the two craft, still bawling abuse at each other. On the decks the crews of the craft had joined in the curses and the waving of fists. Albie Primrose looked at his friend and, before the next shells, said soberly: ‘Pal, I don’t know why we’re laughing. What’s so funny?’
Fatigue details had cleared the church at Telcoombe Magna of rubbish. The pulpit had been emptied of cans and so had the font, the cigar and cigarette stumps had been swept from the aisle and the chancel. Bare, frigid, bereft even of the ecclesiastical colours of altar cloth and flowers, it presented a suitably sombre place for the unscheduled conference hastily summoned by General Georgeton.
By the time the general arrived every comfortless pew was occupied by silent and apprehensive Army, Navy and Air Force officers, mostly Americans but with a few British uniforms sitting among them. As the general came in through the old arch of the church door every man stood. He was in no mood for formalities and after a stiff wave of his hand, half a salute, half a sign for them to sit down, he strode straight to the brass eagle lectern. The Stars and Stripes remained about the eagle’s neck. The general appeared not to notice it.
‘This is no damned good,’ he grumbled as soon as he stood there. ‘I want to see everybody’s face and I want everybody to see mine.’ He looked sideways. ‘I’ll use that – the pulpit,’ he decided. ‘If God strikes me dead then He strikes me dead. Maybe I’ll be glad.’
These remarks were addressed to Captain Scarlett, summoned back from his leave in London. Scarlett agreed nervously and, without necessity, formally pointed the way to the pulpit. Georgeton grunted and strode heavily past him; Scarlett could hear the short gusts of his breath. He stumped up the wooden steps and turned to confront the ranks of officer faces.
‘All right,’ he began sternly. ‘Let’s not waste time. Every man here knows why I’ve called a conference this afternoon. It’s too bad that it turns out to be in church because what I have to say is not easy to say in church.’
There were some polite smiles but he did not care or notice. His voice remained sharp: ‘The fact is that we have come to a point in our preparations for the invasion where if we do not get off our asses and do something radical, and soon, we might as well forget the whole thing – tell Hitler he’s a good guy, and go home. And Eisenhower won’t like doing that – not at all. So a lot of things have got to be straightened out.’
Isolated in the incongruous pulpit he ran his eyes despondently along the dim length of the church. ‘Every officer here today is aware, or should be – if he isn’t, he has no right to his rank – that training in this area is getting like a comedy show. Except it’s not funny. And the closer we come to the real thing – and take it from me it’s getting closer all the time – the worse it’s getting. Every exercise seems to be a bigger mess than the one before. Last week we had Exercise Buck. Buck! If I wasn’t in a church I’d call it something else.’
Schorner was sitting with Bryant. A mangy black cat walked casually in from the churchyard; a cat abandoned during the civilian evacuation and living wild since. It began to purr loudly and wiped its wet and ragged back across the colonel’s shins. He gave it a firm push. It edged beneath Bryant’s feet and began to mew loudly and plaintively. Its cries seeped through the silent church.
General Georgeton was saying, ‘Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, and not just once …’ when he heard the cat. Its thin mews rose insistently. Faces began to turn. Georgeton looked up icily.
Schorner turned to Bryant. ‘Get rid of it, for God’s sake,’ he muttered. ‘Get it out!’
Bravely Bryant caught hold of the cat around its scraggy waist and with a stupid and uncertain smile backed towards the west door of the church. The cat complained painfully as he carried it. He pushed it out into the rainy day and then shut the door on its tail. It howled violently and he had to quickly open the door again to release it.
‘My God,’ breathed Georgeton from the loft of the pulpit. ‘My Almighty God.’
The general looked gaunt while the young officer sat, pink cheeked, in his pew. ‘That’s what I mean,’ he said eventually. ‘That just about typifies the way things are getting fouled up.’ He picked up a sheet of paper. ‘Every day I get reports and each day seems more crazy than the one before. We have landing craft colliding – six incidents in two months – we have men taking thirty-five minutes to get ashore after the landing craft have grounded. Thirty-five minutes! The Nazi
s would have time to go home, have breakfast and then come back to finish us off.’
His growing glare circled. ‘I have a report here of medical teams getting on to the beach and their equipment arriving nine hours, nine whole hours, after. What are they supposed to do for the wounded? Tell them to rub it better? Sing them a lullaby? We have guns at one end of the landing area and their ammunition at the other. We have reports of men sleeping on the beach because they can’t keep awake long enough for the order to go forward.’ Even from where he sat Schorner could see the general’s hands were shaking. He gripped the top of the pulpit to still them.
‘Embarkation has been terrible. Every road jammed, every junction messed up. The hards that were laid down for the loading when the real thing happens have been so damaged by ill-use that we’ve had to call off using them. So now everybody gets bogged down in the fields. The way the military police try to get the traffic unsnarled, they might as well be on Fifth Avenue, New York City. There’s no order to anything.’
He paused and through the pause, over the shocked heads of the officers, came the plaintive and insistent mewing of the cat outside the church door. Georgeton took three deep breaths. ‘Lieutenant,’ he called down the church. ‘You, the British officer who took that cat out before.’
Bryant, hot-faced, stood. ‘Yes, sir.’
The general said evenly, ‘Get that cat out. Shoot it, drop it under the track of a tank, lock it in a tomb, do whatever you like, but get rid of it. Okay?’
‘Sir,’ said Bryant, coming to attention as smartly as he could from the confinement of the pew. He went out of the door. The sly cat was waiting for him and shot past him into the church. It ran unswervingly down the aisle and into the chancel. Someone threw a hymn book at it and missed. The book lay open on the floor. Bryant ran after the cat, excusing himself loudly as he went, chasing it through the choir stalls until it eventually turned and – to his relief – dashed out through the door again. Bryant went out after it, closing the door prudently behind him.
‘But,’ Georgeton started again. He had waited and watched the pursuit. ‘If embarkation has been lousy, and it has, then disembarkation has been terrible, a shambles. The timing, the handling of landing craft and vehicles and beach discipline – all terrible. We’ve had casualties, we’ve suffered losses, men killed, through sheer goddamn ineptitude. And it’s got to stop right now.’
He paused. ‘At the beginning of next month,’ he said, slowing, ‘we are going to undertake the final exercise. Exercise Lion. Somebody had the idea to call it Exercise Lulu, but the whole thing has become plenty enough of a laughing matter. I don’t want a hundred widows hearing that their husbands were killed during Exercise Lulu. So it’s Exercise Lion.
‘It will be the biggest and the last before the real thing. We’ve run out of time. Briefings will commence next week in Exeter and Plymouth. Everybody has got to get it into their heads that this time it’s got to go right. The plan will be to land three separate forces on Telcoombe Beach, the convoys coming from different directions, and at night. Every man under my command earmarked for the initial assault on D-Day and engineer and back-up units will be part of this. There will be airdrop landings, fighter and bomber strafings and a major bombardment from the sea.’
He waited and then said: ‘There has got to be a risk that the Germans will use this exercise to mount a sudden attack on our ships. They’ll soon pick it up through increased radio activity. This attack could come from the air or by submarine, or surface raiders. And they’ll lay mines like ants lay eggs. We must always have this in our minds and we must be prepared for such an attack and repel it.’ He looked sardonic. ‘It might be good practice for us.
‘I don’t have to tell you that not one word I have said is to go beyond this room. At this stage of the war it should be unnecessary to repeat this. But the fact is, and this is another and a most serious aspect of the general mess that has built up over the past few weeks; the fact is that security is disgraceful. Every two-bit civilian for miles around knows exactly what is happening and when. We might as well put it out on the radio and in the newspapers. It’s just great when some lousy cowhand can tell you what time your troops are scheduled on the beach.
‘This time, Exercise Lion is going to be right. General Eisenhower and General Montgomery will be coming down to sit in the stand.’ He stared at them stonily. ‘I want it to go well, to be right. It had better be.’
Abruptly he turned and walked down the pulpit steps. The assembled officers stood and came to attention as he left the church. He threw up a wry salute and went out into the churchyard rain. The cat was sitting under his staff car and as he approached it jumped lightly on to the roof of the vehicle. Bryant, who had been lurking under the lychgate, turned to grab it. It moved out of his reach but remained on the roof.
Captain Scarlett who was walking a pace behind the general said quietly: ‘It’s a black cat, sir. Maybe it’ll be lucky.’
‘Scarlett,’ said General Georgeton, ‘you’re a goddamn fool.’
The anti-aircraft gun was moved on the first Monday of April, a huge, impersonal army vehicle with a towing crane arriving to take it away. It was dragged from the site where it had been for four familiar years with no regard or respect from the aggressively cheerful and strange soldiers who came for it. They pulled it off like a noble bull being dragged dead and ignominiously from the bullring.
‘That’s a good gun that is, mate,’ said Catermole stoutly to one of the soldiers who came to take it away. He jabbed a stubby finger at the piece. They were all laughing and swearing as they shackled it up. ‘There’s not many guns like that left,’ he insisted close to the man’s ear.
The soldier did not care and looked annoyed. ‘All right, all right, I ’eard you,’ he answered. ‘But it’s about as much use now as a wank on a Saturday night.’
Catermole bridled. ‘Listen mucker, it’s all right for the likes of you, charging around picking up other people’s guns, but we shot down a bomber with that.’ He pointed furiously. ‘Crashed just over the ‘ill there. We got it right in the guts.’
The stranger sighed. He was a man with a tarnished smile, wearied as if with many battles. ‘Listen, I don’t want to ’ear your war ’istory,’ he told Catermole. ‘All we got to do is get this wreck on the back of our lorry and drag it off.’
Catermole sniffed truculently. ‘Bloody ’ell, all you blokes are is scrap merchants, just scav … scav … what you call ’em.’
‘Scavengers,’ provided the other soldier almost politely. He had been called that before. Even clearing up bomb damage. Scavengers.
‘Right,’ affirmed Catermole. ‘Dead right. I s’pose you’ll be goin’ over to France, won’t you, fifty miles behind the bloody action, picking up the bits.’
The man was not annoyed. They were just moving the gun from its position, its unaccustomed wheels turning unhappily. ‘It’s got a squeak,’ said the removal soldier. ‘You blokes ’aven’t overdone it with the oil can, ’ave you?’
Catermole’s blasphemous reply was truncated by a fat bellow from Sergeant Bullivant; it was his special shout that began with an order and curled up into a whine. ‘Battery! Baaaa – ter – eee. On parade!’ Catermole put two fingers up to the outsider and turned towards the broken tarmac at the centre of the nissen huts. Bullivant was standing so stiff and sticking his stomach out so far and so tight that it seemed he might split up his middle seam. ‘Come on! Come on! Let’s have you!’
Gilman was trying to write a poem in the latrine, on the wall but unerotic. He hurried out and joined the oddments of men who were now falling into something resembling ranks on the parade area. Captain Westerman, ramming his cap over his eyes as though he might want to shadow tears, stumped down the steps from the orderly room, followed by Bryant.
The little unit came to attention and they stood thus while the gun that had been their companion, their daily work and their reason for being, was drawn squeakily away. Bullivant brought the
m upright and the captain threw up a theatrical salute. The soldiers of the removal squad watched with scarcely hidden amusement. ‘Blimey,’ said the man Catermole had been upbraiding. ‘You’d fink it was Churchill’s funeral.’ He made a deep sound approximating to the Funeral March and grinned at the standing ranks. ‘What a mob,’ he said to one of his comrades. ‘Rough as a badger’s arse.’ He glanced behind, to the place where the gun had rested. There was a small collection of rubbish; papers, a forlorn boot and a dead seagull. ‘I s’pose they reckon they shot that bugger down as well,’ he muttered.
For some time after the gun had creaked out of the gate, watched now by a thunderstruck section of the Wilcoombe inhabitants, the soldiers in the camp remained at attention. Doey Bidgood, standing close to the fence, called over: ‘What you goin’ to do now, boys, throw stones?’
They all heard, eyes swivelled nastily. Westerman seethed: ‘God, I’d like to have that big mouth under my command.’
Bullivant called the parade to ease, back to attention and then lachrymosely dismissed them. He knew it was for the last time. ‘Catermole,’ said Bullivant softly. ‘Be a good lad and get a dustpan and brush. Sweep up that seagull, will you?’ Catermole nodded uncomplainingly and went off at his ungainly gait. ‘This time tomorrow they’ll all be gone, sir,’ Bullivant ventured to Westerman. ‘End of the story.’
‘True, sergeant, true,’ said the officer giving his thigh a quick slap with his cane. He glanced at the swollen sergeant. ‘Except you and I, Bullivant. And I’ll be off to Ross and Cromarty on Wednesday. Then you’ll be here by yourself. You’ll be a one-man unit, commander, NCO and gunner, all in one.’
The Magic Army Page 43
