by Jack Murray
‘You’re fortunate, Carruthers. This may save your life one day.’
Carruthers smiled for a moment and then related what had happened. When he had finished Foster asked them what they had done to prevent Harn from leaving.
Danny answered this time, ‘We tried to persuade him, sir. He wasn’t having it. Bob came with us, but we let Harn go.’
‘Why?’
And there it was: the key question that Danny had been wrestling with since he’d woken up. Danny took a moment and then answered truthfully, ‘Bob’s my friend. I would have battered him rather than see him go. Harn, sir, is not what you’d call a friend. If we’d started a ruck, it would have woken the camp and we’d have been in the same situation here anyway.’
This was the best Danny could come up with in the situation but even he felt the chances of it working were remote. Now, he realised in surprise, they were all culpable to a greater or lesser degree in Harn’s AWOL.
The silence in the office once Danny had finished was overpowering. It was almost palpable. Foster glanced at Budd and then back to the three men.
‘Harn was caught last night at the train station. This would not have happened so quickly without your timely intelligence. However, had you acted in the way you acted towards your friend, it need not have happened at all,’ said Foster to Danny and Carruthers.
Turning his attention to Bob, he said, ‘Nobody chooses to go to war unless they are a damn fool. You are no different from any man here. You have no, more, right to avoid war than any other man. You are not a special case, Owen. Remember that. I sympathise with your situation but remember, many men like you have already given their lives against this tyranny. Many more will. In all likelihood, some of the men in your barracks will die. If I could stop that happening with a snap of my fingers, I would. I can’t. All I can do is make sure that you and the rest of these young men are trained to such a degree that your chances of survival are greater. I want that you all be inculcated with the values and the esprit de corps that ensure that you work effectively together. This is how we will defeat the Nazis.’
The three men stood to attention, eyes ahead as the colonel spoke. With each word, Bob’s shame increased. Danny suspected this was the case and felt deeply for his friend. Paradoxically, he also began to feel something else. It wasn’t for another year before he could identify what the feeling was. By then he was in the middle of desert, dust and death. The feeling was love. Love for his friends and for his fellow recruits.
Foster had paused to let his words sink in. He could see they were having the intended effect.
‘Harn will be given fourteen days detention. We’ll let him out. No doubt he’ll try again. This time alone. He may succeed, who knows? If not, we’ll repeat the process. We’ll probably try and post him elsewhere after that. No doubt, in return, we shall receive someone else just like him.’
The three men waited for their punishment, for they were all, by now, convinced this was where things were heading.
‘You three men,’ said Foster, pausing for a moment while he looked each in the eye. They were all very different, he thought. Carruthers, older, weedy and yet as likely to make a good soldier as anyone; Owen, stouter but so young to be at war so young to married. What madness. And then Shaw. The one they all had hopes for. An officer in the making, the only person who did not realise this was him.
‘You three men,’ repeated Foster, ‘are dismissed.’
5
Caterham Army Barracks, March 1941
Change was in the air. Flowers were beginning to bud. Birds were reappearing in the trees. The sound of dawn was no longer silence or rain battering the parade ground. The heat of summer was just around the corner. Danny didn’t care. He was enjoying army life but, at the same time, as he looked forward to the changes he knew would soon occur, he felt trepidation.
It was now six weeks since their arrival at the barracks. Route marches were the only occasions any of them had been in the outside world over this period. Captain Budd made a rare appearance at the parade ground accompanied by O’Dowd. The sergeant looked even less happy than normal.
The platoon immediately stood to attention, but Budd quickly made them stand at ease. He then gave them the news they had been looking forward to for days.
‘Gentlemen, you will doubtless be aware that at this stage of your training some of you will be leaving and some will stay on. Your basic training has finished. The next six weeks of your instruction will be specific to the branch of the army where you will be headed. This will be revealed tomorrow. The good news is that tonight you will be permitted to leave the barracks and go out into town. I suspect this is more likely to be a pub than a museum.’
This was greeted with laughter by the men. Budd laughed along with them.
‘I don’t blame you. However, I hope that you can enjoy a well-earned drink while remembering something tremendously important now. You are British soldiers. We hold ourselves to a high level of account. Do nothing that will let yourself, your comrades or your regiment down. The locals will be very welcoming. Do not take advantage of their goodwill. I hope my meaning is clear. Others will follow you and they will also want to be able to have a drink in town without encountering ill will or anger. Sergeant O’Dowd will now hand out your passes.’
He broke off for a moment. Overhead, he and the rest of the recruits could hear the sound of planes. Everyone looked up. The training had included plane identification. The distinctive sound and underside made these planes instantly recognisable.
‘Messerschmitt,’ said Budd. Three planes flew past, too high to take a pot shot from where they were. A minute late the sound of the planes was a distant murmur, but the ack-ack had started.
‘Give ‘em hell, boys,’ shouted Arthur. This set off a chorus of shouts of encouragement to the gunners. Budd looked on. He was smiling but his mood was bittersweet. Somewhere between the pride he felt for the transformation of the men before him was a sadness at what they would face. He avoided trying to get to know the men personally. This was a factory for recruits. Most of them came in callow youths. They left as men. Many of them were going to their deaths. Budd knew this and it saddened him greatly. Every night he had to console himself with the same thought: there was a job to do.
The platoon broke up. Danny walked with Arthur and his friends to the barracks. Tom said quietly, ‘I thought that had all finished.’ He was referring to the Battle of Britain which had ended the previous year.
‘I know,’ replied Bob. ‘We gave them a hiding.’ He wanted to believe it was true. They all did. Otherwise what was the point?
-
Five-thirty came. Danny was joined by his friends from the village as well as Carruthers and Arthur.
‘Don’t you two cramp our style,’ warned Hugh Gissing to the two older men as they climbed onto the bus bound for Guildford, the nearby town.
‘If my dog looked like you, mate,’ replied Arthur, ‘I’d shave its arse and teach it to walk backwards.’
Even Hugh laughed at this and the bus set off into town. They arrived half an hour later in the centre. It was a nice spring evening, and still quite bright. All around were army personnel. All around the army were young women walking in groups.
‘I think I’m in heaven,’ said Bert Gissing as a couple of teenage girls walked past the group. ‘This place can’t be real.’ Above their heads, the sound of music emanated from a flat. It was Al Bowlly. He was waltzing in a dream. So was Danny. He looked around him with something approaching awe.
Until this moment he had not realised how limited his life had been. He had accepted the monotony of life at the forge and lived vicariously through the books in the Cavendish library. But Guildford seemed the promise of something else. Another type of life. He glanced at Tom. Their eyes met and they smiled.
‘Bit different from Little Gloston,’ said Tom.
‘Just a bit,’ agreed Danny. ‘C’mon, let’s go.’
They strolled alon
g the high street, saluting back to people who saluted them. Children seemed to be fascinated by soldiers and they stopped time and time again to speak to star-struck youngsters. By now the boys had worked out that many had older sisters and they made extra efforts with the boys who were accompanied by young women.
‘Look at this’ said Danny, pointing to a photographer’s shop, “Arnott’s Photographs”. ‘Do you fancy getting a team photograph?’
The boys looked at one another and then Carruthers said, ‘Well I’m game.’ That appeared to swing the doubters and moments later they were climbing a narrow staircase to a small studio. Danny knocked on the door and they all trooped in. The photographer in question was a young woman, in her mid-twenties.
‘Hello,’ she said introducing herself, ‘I’m Lucy Arnott. What can I do for you?’
Politeness constrained a more truthful answer from the boys.
‘We’d like a team photograph, please,’ said Danny, ‘And individual ones. Then if you can send prints to our home addresses, please.’
‘Certainly,’ said Lucy, leading the men to a studio behind the counter. The studio was small, but they were able to line up in two rows before a plain grey backdrop. Lucy apologised for the basic set up.
‘There’s a war on.’
For the next ten minutes Lucy took photographs of the boys. It would have taken less time, but the amount of jesting interrupted the poses. At one point, Lucy threatened to insist they all stayed out of the studio while the individual shots were being taken. The behaviour improved.
The session completed, they left the studio and returned to the high street.
‘She was all right,’ commented Arthur.
This brought a predictably ribald response as, to a man, the others pointed out his marital status.
‘Can still look, can’t I?’ pointed out Arthur. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘When you reach the elevated state of happiness that me and the missus have...’ The rest was left unsaid as the rest of boys began to hurl abuse in Arthur’s direction. He concluded, ‘I was just saying she’s a nice girl. You lot could do worse, and knowing you, probably will.’
-
‘I’m not sure I want to go back,’ announced Tom when they found a pub that wasn’t already packed with boys from the barracks they had left. The girls, the sun, the feeling of freedom were in stark contrast to the monotony of life in the barracks. Like Danny, he recognised how limited his life had been thus far. The presence of so many attractive young women also made him think about his own Rosie. She was his first and only sweetheart. It was the way of things in the village. They were engaged and talking of marriage before he left. Now, he was not so sure.
He watched Danny make his way to the bar. It was fairly crowded, and Danny had to wait a few minutes to be served. This was unusual in his experience. So different to the village. He ordered half pints of bitter all round. Helped by Bert, he brought the drinks outside, where the group had stationed themselves to have a better view of the girls. The young women in the town were on their parade ground. Conversation was muted as they drank the freedom down in huge gulps.
‘How long have you old men been married, anyway,’ asked Danny after a while.
Carruthers raised his eyebrow and looked at Danny in mock seriousness. Then he admitted, ‘Fourteen years now, no, fifteen in July.’
‘What about you Arthur?’ asked Hugh.
‘You won’t laugh?’ asked Arthur. He was met by the inevitable response, which started him off too. ‘seventeen years, next year.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Danny, ‘You must have married late.’
‘Get out of it,’ laughed Arthur, smacking Danny on the arm.
Then he heard it again. That song. Al Bowlly was singing ‘The Very Thought of You.’
Arthur noticed the change in Danny’s features as they all listened. He nudged Tom in the ribs and his brow furrowed in a question. Tom shrugged, bemused. Soon the others were singing along. As the song drew to a close, they all surrounded Danny and crooned the words to him, laughing as they did so.
As the evening wore on, the number of the group diminished in search of dancing and female companions. The remaining boys were Danny, Bob, Carruthers and Arthur. All were in a jolly mood bolstered by half pints of cheerfulness. The sing-song in the pub was in full cry as the pianist and singer led the crowd in ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World.’
Closing time saw the boys troop back towards the bus stop. When they reached it, they saw a hundred other recruits waiting for a bus that would barely take fifty.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Danny, giving voice to everyone’s thoughts. ‘How far is it to Caterham?’
‘Thirty miles at least,’ said Arthur, with his heart sinking.
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Carruthers. ‘Why on earth don’t the army have something organised?’
‘Army? Organised?’ replied Arthur. ‘Where have you been for the last two months?’
As he said this, a lorry came past, and then stopped suddenly. Sitting in the front passenger seat was Tom, grinning broadly.
‘Hello boys, bit of walk by the looks of things,’ he shouted. ‘You’d better get in.’
Danny noticed that there was a young woman sitting between Tom and an older man, who was driving. It was Lucy, the photographer they’d met earlier. He gave Tom the thumbs up and he ran around to the back and hopped on with the other lads. Inside the back of the van were the two Gissing brothers. Both looked like they’d had such a great evening they would bitterly regret it the next morning. Bert was semi-conscious; Hugh out for the count.
When they arrived back at the camp, they carried the Gissing boys into the barracks and undressed them. Along the way Tom related how their night had gone.
‘We met up with three girls leaving the park. They were heading into the town to a dance. We asked where it was taking place and they suggested we join them. It suited them because they were getting a bit tired of fending off some of our lot. They said we were more polite. Have to thank Bert for that. He remembered to take off his cap when we met them.’
Danny knocked Tom’s cap off as he said this.
‘Anyway, the dance was at the church hall and there was no alcohol. The two boys here were about to leave when I saw Lucy. She told us there was a secret bar at the front, outside. The vicar had no idea. Well, maybe by the end of the night he did. By then, Bert and Hugh were five sheets to the wind, but we managed to get them away before it became too obvious.’
‘What’s the story with Lucy?’ asked Danny with a grin.
This time, Danny had his cap knocked off by Tom who said, ‘You’re too young yet.’ This amused Arthur and Carruthers immensely.
6
Sergeant O’Dowd relished this day on a number of levels. He would be rid of the latest batch of recruits. They would become someone else’s problem. A new lot would arrive in the next few days. New people to bully. He was looking forward to it immensely. There was a fundamental problem with the training the army was giving to each new bunch of recruits. They became soldiers. A unit. A brotherhood who looked out for one another. After six weeks, they were a tougher, more resourceful and more confident bunch of men. In less jaundiced eyes, this would have been considered a success. In O’Dowd’s, it was a disaster.
With each passing week their fear of him diminished as their effectiveness grew. O’Dowd’s opportunities for bullying them decreased exponentially. The one glowing exception to this was their first pass. Time after time it presented untold opportunities to mete out one last dose of punishment. In this regard, the last day was usually one of double joy for O’Dowd.
The morning was predictably bad for most of the whole platoon. The Gissing brothers, in particular, knew they were in big trouble which was unlikely to be mitigated by the fact that this was the day when the platoon would break up. The platoon scrambled onto the parade ground like a wave crashing against the cliff: uncontrolled, arbitrary and compelling in equal measure.
&n
bsp; O’Dowd looked at the riches in front of him and almost did not know where to begin. This was the mother lode. Like an ivory poacher stumbling across the mythical elephant’s graveyard, he walked along the line, almost licking his lips in anticipation as he slowly identified potential victims. Finally, he returned to the centre standing directly in front of the platoon. With a bark that resembled a growl, O’Dowd began the drill.
‘Ten-shun.’
The platoon’s movement had all the silken precision of an inebriated elephant which, coincidentally, many still were. In particular, the Gissing brothers were almost a day late in completing their drill. Neither cared much. Both had long accepted the inevitable and made little effort to keep in time or stem the giggles. O’Dowd lost no time in picking them and many others out for their appearance and sent them out running around the parade ground, rifle in air. One by one the runners and riders fell by the wayside. After ten minutes of drilling, barely half of the platoon was left, although Danny and his friends were still at the races.
This was very disappointing for O’Dowd, still smarting from his humiliation in the unarmed combat. Danny had adroitly managed to avoid upsetting the highly up-settable sergeant. As a result, aside from extra duty peeling potatoes or night watch, Danny had escaped any direct confrontation.
After half an hour of drilling, there were few still running. Most had offered up a sacrifice to Dionysus by the side of the parade ground. This provided much amusement to those of a more temperate disposition. It also offered potential rewards to those running a book on the field. O’Dowd was delighted with his handiwork and made a few bob in the process from the other sergeants.
The pantomime was brought to an abrupt conclusion as Budd arrived at the parade. He looked on with amusement at the carnage. However, he recognised the cause and decided to put everyone out of their misery. The recruits returned to the barracks to await details of their next posting.
As they trooped back, the whole parade ground stopped for a few moments and looked up. Overhead a Spitfire appeared and then another and then another. There was a rumble in the distance. The parade ground, to a man, began to cheer the RAF as they went to engage the enemy. The dog fight was too far distant to see, but the sound would live with Danny.
