The Hour of The Donkey

by Anthony Price

  All those Germans didn’t bear thinking about when one was running away from them. And, of course, that was why there had been no one along the route they had innocently and accidentally taken to get to Belléme. Because no one, positively no one, would wait about, milking cows or ploughing fields or preparing supper, right in the path of an army about to advance.

  No civilians, that was —

  No one, in fact, except the French Army whose job it was to stop the Germans.

  But where was that army?

  He settled down to another steady run, along the flank of a convenient fold in the ground, and could stop himself trying to think that one out as he ran.

  There was still noise and smoke away ahead, to the left, in what must still be the direction of Belléme. But those Germans in the fields hadn’t been heading-or-pointed-in that direction, so they were obviously set to outflank or by-pass that hot-spot, with its regular Mendips and their anti-tank guns. So where were they heading for?

  With a growing sense of military inadequacy, he began to realize that in so far as he had tried to imagine the Real War he had envisaged a war of trenches and barbed-wire, and great massed offensives—a war of lines and no-man’s-land.

  He was in in a no-man’s-land now, of a sort. But there was nothing to see, just empty farmland.

  A sudden roar blotted out nothing, and two German fighter planes, their black crosses plain to see, snarled low across the empty landscape ahead of him—so low that they seemed to skim below the skyline of the ridge. Bastable flung himself flat and hugged the bare earth, cursing his respirator and webbing pouches which prevented him from flattening himself absolutely against the ground as more planes roared directly over him. And more—and heavier ones, by the thunder of their engines, which concussed his eardrums. It seemed to him impossible that they wouldn’t spot him, lying there on the open hillside.

  But they wouldn’t stop for one man, they would surely have other, much bigger and more important targets than Captain Bastable.

  And they would probably think he was dead, anyway. He was lying as still as death.

  Then they were gone, not as quickly as they had come, but droning away more slowly… But gone: nevertheless—he felt he had almost willed them on towards wherever they were going.

  Only now there was another noise—a far more frightening and terrible noise which he recognized from way back: the clank and screech and roar of metal tracks. And it was coming towards him, the noise.

  God! He could lie there, where he was, then they too just might take him for dead, as the pilots had done, and leave him. Or they might simply roll over him to make sure, saving bullets—no trouble at all, just one more squashed Tommy.

  Or he could rise up on his knees and raise his hands in surrender. And because he’d at least given them a good run for their money, if they were sportsmen they might just take him prisoner —

  The noise of the tracks was very close now, very loud, almost on top of him.

  It stopped beside him.

  ‘Is the poor bugger dead?’ said a rich West country voice.

  ‘Naow! ‘E’s shammin’—I just seen ‘im twitch. Get oop, mate!’

  Bastable was aleady getting up before he received the order.

  ‘E’s an orficer!’ exclaimed the second voice.

  Bren carrier—of course, that was why the sound had been so recognizable! Bastable cursed himself, his stupidity, his cowardice; yet at the same time he wanted to embrace the machine and to kiss it, and its crew, out of sheer love and gratitude.

  And with the Mendips’ divisional sign on it, too!

  ‘Bastable—captain, Prince Regent’s Own,’ said Bastable quickly with what shred of dignity he could find among the rags he had left. ‘You’re Mendips—from Belléme?’

  ‘I didn’t say ‘oo we was.’ The carrier sergeant whipped out a revolver and pointed at Bastable. ‘And I didn’t ask ‘oo you was, neither.’

  ‘Bastable, Sergeant.’ The revolver bewildered Bastable. ‘From the Prince Regent’s Own South Downs Fusiliers—at Colembert.’

  ‘That’s them Terriers down south, sarge,’ said the driver familiarly. ‘That funny lot wot don’t belong to no one, an’ shouldn’t be there—you remember!’

  ‘I also remember there’s a lot of dodgy boogers around ‘oo ain’t so funny, Darkie,’ said the Sergeant. ‘An’ this one’s a long way from home, if ‘e’s wot ‘e sez ‘e is.’

  It was clear that they were going to take him for a Fifth Columnist until proved otherwise, Bastable realized.

  ‘I have identification on me,’ he said haughtily.

  ‘An’ you could ‘ave got that from anywhere,’ said the Sergeant suspiciously. ‘You could be Adolf-bloody-Hitler for all I know!’

  ‘Who won the cup in 1938?’ challenged the driver.

  Bastable stared at him in horror. ‘Which cup?’

  By the expressions on their faces he might just as well have phrased the question in German. Of course, it was a football cup—and he was a crass idiot not to have realized it. All the other ranks were mad on football, of the soccer variety, so that it had been a source of dissension in the Prince Regent’s Own that the regimental game was rugger. But he knew nothing about that either, although he had been forced to play it—at considerable cost to his person in bruises and contusions—and yet to admit knowing nothing about either sport now would be disastrous.

  Fear honed up his wits. ‘Who won Wimbledon?’ he challenged the driver. The mixed doubles?’

  ‘Wimbledon?’ the driver looked to his sergeant. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Tennis,’ said the Sergeant shortly. ‘Who —‘ He cut off the question unasked. ‘No! Who’s Len Mutton?’

  So the Sergeant was smart enough not to ask a question which his Fifth Columnist could answer. Which was just as well, because he hadn’t the faintest idea who had won the mixed doubles in ‘38. But he did know who Hutton was.

  ‘Test cricketer.’

  But he must retain the initiative. He plucked the only name he could think of out of his memory. ‘Who’s Sydney Wooderson?’ he slammed the question in before the Sergeant could counter-attack him. Father had been a notable athlete in his youth, and Wooderson’s record mile was one of his favourite Great British Triumphs.

  The revolver drooped slightly. The Sergeant evidently didn’t know who Sydney Wooderson was, but remembered the name.

  ‘Look, Sergeant —‘ Bastable pressed his advantage,’ —whoever I am—and I’m Captain Bastable of the PROs, I assure you—whoever I am, I suggest we all get the blazes out of here before the Germans arrive!’

  The Sergeant’s jaw tightened. ‘Why were you tryin’ to hide from us—shammin’ dead?’

  ‘From you?’ Bastable looked round over the open field in surprise. ‘I was … taking cover from those German planes!’

  ‘But they’d gone—we took cover from them. An’ you stayed flat… sir.’ There was doubt in the Sergeant’s voice.

  Humiliation stared Bastable in the face—and he embraced it like a sinner in the Confessional. ‘Because I was scared shitless, Sergeant—that’s why! We haven’t been bombed at Colembert—we haven’t even seen enemy aircraft close up. I was heading for your chaps at Belléme, to get ammunition for our anti-tank rifles, when I ran into their tanks, just not far from here.’

  Suddenly the Mendip sergeant’s face cracked into friendliness. Not knowing who had won the Cup was one thing —but being frightened was a password he understood. ‘Hop on, sir!’ he commanded. ‘Get moving, Darkie!’

  Bastable threw himself into the carrier. ‘Where’s your Number Three?’

  The carrier squealed and jerked forward. ‘Lost ‘im near Doullens,’ shouted the Sergeant. ‘Jerry armoured car— but we knocked the bastard out with the Bren then—God knows how … Where’s Jerry, sir?’

  ‘Over the ridge, back there somewhere,’ shouted Bastable.

  ‘In what strength, sir?’

  Bastable had a sudden terrifying
vision of cornfields filled with tanks. ‘More than I’ve ever seen in my life,’ he replied honestly at the top of his voice. ‘Dozens of tanks— they looked like hundreds to me, but certainly dozens of them.’

  The Sergeant nodded, not disbelievingly.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ shouted Bastable. The slap of the tracks on the underside of the carrier made conversation difficult.

  ‘Tryin’ to re-establish communications with Brigade, sir,’ shouted the Sergeant. ‘They got our wireless trucks—with the bombers, sir.’

  Bastable nodded, as one unbombed veteran to another obviously much-bombed one.

  ‘They tried their Stukas on us, sir,’ shouted the Sergeant. ‘All noise—but they didn’t hit anything, and we got two of ‘em with the Brens. But then they clobbered us with the big boogers—gave us a right goin’ over.’

  Bastable nodded again. The Stukas were the dive-bombers, whose hideous screech had reached Colembert briefly the previous afternoon. But he had heard nothing of them since then.

  ‘We’re going to RV with Mr Greystock and Corporal Titchener, sir,’ shouted the Sergeant, lifting his map meaningfully. This was the difference between the Professionals and the Amateurs, thought Bastable, remembering Wimpy’s regrets for their lack of a map: these men knew where they were going as well as what they were doing.

  But he also had to remember what he was doing. That was also the beginning of professionalism.

  ‘You can drop me off on the main road, Sergeant.’ He wondered bleakly what had happened to Wimpy. ‘I must report back to my battalion.’

  The Sergeant merely acknowledged that decision with a nod. Professionalism was also the acceptance of another man’s duty, without argument—that was another lesson learned: precautions, but no panic, no running away blindly in the most convenient direction without knowing where one was going.

  And ‘Darkie’, the driver, was a very skilful operator too, he decided, as the carrier hugged the hillsides and slipped through each natural gap in the countryside, as though Darkie knew every hump and hollow in it like the geography of a NAAFI girl’s body in the dark behind his billet.

  ‘Not much further now, sir.’ The Sergeant pointed to another copse ahead of them, alongside the stream they’d been following for the last quarter of a mile.

  Bastable followed the line of the Sergeant’s finger, and saw a Bren carrier like their own snugged under the overhanging foliage at the edge of the copse.

  Darkie swung the carrier expertly round alongside the waiting machine.

  A very young subaltern, who reminded Bastable of his own new Christopher Chichester, hailed them crisply. ‘Good work, Sergeant Hobday—‘ his eye registered Bastable quickly, and the absence of a third face he knew—‘you’ve had some trouble?’

  ‘Armoured car, sir, Mr Greystock. They’re pretty thick on the ground there, to the north—motor-cyclists too. No way through there, I’m afraid.’ He looked his officer squarely in the eye. ‘Corporal Titchener, sir—?’

  ‘Won’t be coming with us any more, Sergeant… Who’s your passenger?’

  Bastable stood up. ‘Harry Bastable, Prince Regent’s Own, Mr Greystock. From Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts—Territorial battalion.’

  ‘He was trying to get through to us, sir,’ explained Sergeant Hobday. ‘Met up with the Jerries, farm buildings 883768 and the fields north-east of there, so far as I can make out.’

  ‘Oh, indeed?’ The subaltern glanced down at his own map-case for a second or two, then up at Bastable enquiringly. ‘In strength, I take it, Captain?’

  It was a merciful question, thought Bastable. All those serried ranks of armoured vehicle could have been a regiment, or a brigade, or God only knew what—it had looked like a whole army to him.

  He nodded. ‘A lot more than I had time to count. They looked like the Grand National under starter’s orders.’ He had never seen the Grand National, except on the Pathe News, but that was the image which sprang to mind, horses transmuted into tanks waiting for the signal to spring forward to crash through every obstacle ahead.

  The subaltern nodded back at him, wonderfully cool and composed in face of such bleak news. ‘So they should be here pretty soon, I shouldn’t wonder? Well—thank you, Captain … So we’d better tear ourselves away, back to Belléme … south first, for choice, back among those poor devils of refugees. With a bit of luck they’ll steer clear of them now that they don’t need them—is that anywhere near where you want to go?’

  ‘That’ll suit me fine.’ Bastable tried hard to echo the composure and courage. ‘I must get back to Colembert, and I can walk from there.’

  ‘Jolly good!’ The subaltern smiled. ‘Right then, Sergeant—follow me!’

  The Sergeant gave Bastable a half-nod, half-smile, half as though to reassure him that everything was all right now, half to register his own pride and confidence in his officer for the benefit of a stranger. When he could win that sort of look from a senior NCO, behind his back and in the imminent presence of the enemy, then he would have arrived in a military sense as an officer as well as a gentleman, Bastable thought enviously. That half-nod, half-smile was what it was all about, without any requirements of words.

  The carriers moved off again, wrapped in their own noise, at top cross-country speed, Darkie carefully holding their own at a fifty-yard interval behind Mr Greystock’s.

  Bastable had lost all sense of distance, and also geography; and, looking down at his wristwatch found that its glass was smashed in and its hands were frozen at ten to three—Rupert Brooke’s honey time at Grantchester, wasn’t that?— which (it occurred to him insanely, as the carrier tipped and jolted) would be the recorded time of his death if he was now killed and anyone found him, and —

  Christ! That was the other thing he had been trying to think about—which he had forgotten which had been shocked out of his mind by subsequent events, but which was his other duty —

  Christ! Which was even his main duty, beyond even that of getting back to the battalion—Christ! How could he have forgotten it —

  The Brigadier—

  Mr Greystock’s carrier blew up with a shattering flash of orange-red fire, spattering pieces of metal and flaming debris in smoke-trails arcing out from the centre of impact.

  ‘Hold tight!’ shrieked Sergeant Hobday.

  Darkie spun their carrier round almost in its own length as the sound of the German tank guns reached them. The road bank just ahead mushroomed—Bastable lost sight of it as the carrier lurched sideways, the trucks on one side lifting off the ground with the force and momentum of the change of direction.

  In the next fraction of time he was deafened by an even more shattering explosion—so loud that it had no sound at all, only force, as the carrier continued lifting, overturning sky and earth, to crash down in darkness on top of him.

  V

  HARRY BASTABLE wasn’t dead.

  And yet, so it seemed to him afterwards, a part of him did die some time during that long summer’s afternoon, as so many men of the British Expeditionary Force and the French Army had already died, and were dying, and were yet to die; and not on any golden bridge above any shining silver river, but in pain and darkness and defeat and despair. And alone.

  Certainly, he died so far as the Sixth Panzer Division was concerned—the officers and men, armour, foot and guns, who (so he afterwards decided) must have seen the legs and boots of one more anonymous dead Tommy protruding out from under the overturned carrier.

  Certainly, although they were in fact the living legs of Captain Bastable, they must have seemed dead legs to the swarming Germans. And not even any German Army Medical Corps men, if any passed that way, could be blamed for not bothering to investigate them: it must have seemed to them that when a Bren carrier of several tons’ weight fell upside down on a man, then that man could reasonably be left to some eventual burial detail, with no great urgency involved in the matter.

  First, he couldn’t think at all, even when he was no longer
truly unconscious.

  Then, though by no recognizable thought-process, he assumed himself to be dead—and was, to all intents and purposes, dead; and, having identified death as a final darkness, he lost consciousness again.

  When he regained some consciousness for the second time, taste was the first thing he registered, and it was the taste of blood.

  His blood! something told him.

  It was in his mouth and on his upper lip—he could feel it, thick and congealing, with his tongue. But there was no sound to go with the taste, and when he opened his eyes there was at first no sight either, only darkness.

  The soundlessness and darkness didn’t frighten him; the fear only exploded in him when he realized that the darkness wasn’t total—that there was a penumbra of not-darkness and not-light where he was—of not-death, but not-life.

  The fear ignited his last sense in panic: he tried to move his arms—and found that he couldn’t move, but touched something. And, as part of the same convulsive movement-attempt, raised his head—and hit his forehead on something hard and unyielding.

  The panic and fear instantly became total and irrational.

  He struggled now, wildly but helplessly—and there came a sound now, and it was the sound of his own thick cries of panic and fear as he realized that he was trapped and bleeding.

  How long that stage went on, he had no idea. But when it ended he knew more or less where he was, and despaired.

  He remembered the carrier in front exploding. His own carrier had obviously been hit immediately afterwards, and he was trapped, half-blinded—almost totally blinded—and dying under its wreckage, lying on his back—in pain —

  Alone —

  All the bitterness of dying and in pain and defeat rose up and engulfed him in a great wave of self-pity and misery and loneliness.

  That was when Harry Bastable died.

  And then, just as suddenly as he had realized that there was not total darkness round him, he realized that he wasn’t in pain, and that he could move his feet freely—he could feel loose, gravelly ground under his heel—and he could almost bend his knees… he could bend them perhaps an inch or two, enough to give his heels purchase so as to push him —ouch!—the top of his head hit another unyielding surface. Instantly he reversed the movement, scrabbling and contracting himself to move like a worm, backwards down the tunnel in which he was imprisoned.