The '44 Vintage

by Anthony Price

Carbolic soap, sweat, and ouch!

  “Sorry,” said Audley for the twentieth time.

  “Sir,” said Butler for the twentieth time.

  The major turned in his seat and fixed his good eye on Audley. He hadn’t said a word since they’d set off, so it might be that he was coming to the same conclusions about his fluent French-speaking dragoon subaltern, thought Butler.

  “Where did you pick up your French, David?” The major spoke conversationally. “School?”

  “And F-France, sir,” said Audley, rubbing his shoulder.

  “On holiday, you mean?”

  “F-f-friends of the f-family, sir. I was b-billeted on them every summer holiday up to ‘38, to learn the language. W-wouldn’t say a w-word of English to me—bloody awful.”

  “But you learnt the language, eh?”

  Audley grimaced, which with his bruised face was easy. “It w-was that or starve to death, sir. W-wouldn’t even let the doctor speak English to me when I w-was sick—even though he spoke it better than I did.” He grinned suddenly. “Matter of fact, I’ve g-got a rotten accent—no ear for it. But I know the right words.”

  “Well, that’s all we shall be needing.” Major O’Conor nodded at Butler. “Corporal Butler here wouldn’t pass for an Obergefreiter—not unless the Germans have been recruiting in Lancashire anyway. But he knows the words, I’ll say that for him.”

  Butler’s cheeks burned as Audley turned to him. “Good show, Corporal,” said Audley.

  Butler searched the white face for the patronising expression which ought to go with the words, but found only a polite innocence worn like a mask. Whatever Audley thought about his situation was locked up inside his head.

  “You’ve got some German too, I gather?” said the major.

  “S-school Certificate German. I can maybe read it a bit, but not much more as yet,” said Audley self-dismissively.

  Butler bit his lip. Not so long ago the acquisition of School Certificate German had been the limit of his ambition, looming larger than anything else except the Army itself. But here was Audley shrugging it off as a thing of little importance.

  “You have a history scholarship?” The major’s tone was casual. “Am I right there?”

  Hände hoch! thought Butler. The complete unimportance of Mr. Audley’s education could only conceal a hidden ambush to come—and there was nothing he could do to warn the subaltern.

  “Yes, sir.” Audley relaxed.

  “Oxford, I presume?”

  “Cambridge actually. The climate in Oxford … it’s terribly muggy. I didn’t fancy it at all. I think Cambridge is much healthier.”

  Butler was impressed. The subaltern might be exaggerating, but he had spoken as though he’d had a choice between the two ancient and exclusive seats of learning, and not even the great Dr. Fredericks of King Edward’s had ever boasted of that so far as he could recall.

  “Besides, there was this fellow at Balliol who was mad keen for me to read Greats, and the truth is I’ve never been absolutely sold on the classics since—“

  Butler had just worked out that “Greats” must be Latin and Greek when the jeep hammered violently over a pothole again, catching him unprepared and throwing him sideways against Audley before he could swing against the lurch. He felt the subaltern shrink away from him, and then tense up with pain as their shoulders met. “Sorry,” said Audley for the twenty-first time, automatically. Butler looked away, embarrassed. Ahead of them the road now arrowed towards a far skyline that was just beginning to blur with the haze of evening. They had left the Norman Switzerland behind them and were heading into a countryside untouched by war. But for the evenly spaced trees along the road and the hedgeless fields beyond them, it might almost have been the anonymous landscape of southern England he had glimpsed on the battalion’s journey southwards a month before. It hardly seemed possible that only a few days back this might-have-been England had been German territory.

  Audley lapsed into silence, leaving the sentence unfinished, as though the pain had reminded him where he was. He had managed all those words, from “Cambridge” onwards, without a trace of a stutter, Butler realised.

  “So you decided to study history?” The major seemed determined to drive the young officer from cover. “A more useful subject—eh?”

  Audley gave the question some thought before answering. “I wouldn’t go so f-far as to say useful. I certainly d-didn’t find my knowledge of … W-William the Conqueror’s f-feudal administration in Normandy awfully useful in the b-bocage.” He made a ghastly attempt at a smile. “M-medieval history doesn’t help against eighty-eights, I found.”

  “Medieval history?” The major’s good eye widened. “Now there you might just be wrong, young David, you know.”

  “I b-beg your pardon, sir?” Audley looked at the major with a mixture of surprise and unconcealed curiosity.

  “I said you may be wrong—eh, Sergeant-major?” The major sought confirmation from what Butler regarded as a most unlikely source.

  The sergeant-major grunted knowingly.

  “Sir?” Audley’s interest fluttered like a bird in a cage.

  The major’s golden smile showed. “The name Chandos mean anything to you, my lad?”

  “Chandos?” Audley repeated the name, frowning.

  “That’s right And there was an Audley too in his time, I rather think—does he ring a bell with you?”

  “Sir James Audley,” said Audley.

  “An ancestor perhaps? That would be highly appropriate.” The eye closed for an instant “The O’Conors themselves were kings of Connaught in those days, would you believe it! But Chandos now—“

  “Sir John Chandos,” said Audley.

  “That’s the man. Chandos, Manny, Holland, Burghersh, Audley, Mowbray, Beauchamp, Neville, Percy—aye, and the Black lad himself … all names to conjure with, David. As fine a band of cutthroats as ever left home to make their fortunes at someone else’s expense! But Chandos first and last—and best.”

  Butler looked questioningly from one to the other, completely at sea, and the major caught the look. “Never heard of Sir John Chandos, Corporal? What did they teach you at school?”

  Butler flushed with shame at his latest display of ignorance. The full extent of his medieval history lay between the covers of E. Wilmot Buxton, but there had been none of those names in those pages; and the rest of his historical knowledge coincided exactly with the School Certificate syllabus, which had acknowledged nothing before 1815.

  His tongue was like a piece of balsa wood in his mouth.

  “Tell the man, David,” said the major.

  Audley glanced at Butler sympathetically. “Hundred Years’ War and all that, Corporal—the Black Prince and the battle of Crécy, 1346—“ he blinked and cut short the recital of facts as though they irritated him.

  “Go on,” the major urged him. “Sir John Chandos?”

  Audley turned towards him. “What’s Sir John Chandos got to do with us … sir?”

  “I said go on, Mr. Audley,” said the major. “And I dislike repeating instructions.”

  Audley’s chin lifted. “I didn’t know it was an order, sir. Chandos was a fourteenth-century soldier, one of Edward III’s field commanders and a comrade of the Black Prince’s. That’s all I know about him—except that he was famous for his courtesy and good manners.”

  Butler held his breath as the major’s good eye became as fishlike for an instant as the glass one. Then the corner of his mouth twitched upwards.

  “Not just for his good manners, David,” he said coolly. “He was the greatest captain of the age—the complete fighting man, you might say. Crécy, Poitiers, and Najera, and a hundred skirmishes.”

  Audley met the stare. “Yes, sir?”

  He hadn’t actually said “So what?” but he hadn’t left it quite unsaid, Butler realised. It had never occurred to him that officers as well as other ranks should have mastered the art of dumb insolence—or it might be better described as dumb arroga
nce in young Mr. Audley’s case; and somehow he didn’t think that it was a newly acquired skill.

  But at least the set of the subaltern’s jaw and the obstinate expression in his eyes settled one question: whatever there was wrong with Second Lieutenant Audley, it wasn’t LMF.

  Suddenly the major grinned disarmingly, displaying the full range of gold in his mouth.

  “Welcome to Chandos Force, David”—he took in Butler with the grin—“and you, Corporal.”

  Butler kicked himself for a fool. He had quite forgotten that any test set by the major would be as foxy as the major himself.

  Chandos Force?

  “I—“ Audley’s jaw dropped. “Sir?”

  “Chandos Force. Which I have the honour to command, and in which you have the honour to serve now—both of you.”

  The jeep was slowing down. As Butler was grappling with the significance of what had gone before he was also aware that the sergeant-major was searching the line of trees on the left of the road.

  The major looked ahead briefly. “Another two hundred yards, Sergeant-major—you’ll see the broken signpost on the opposite side.” He swivelled back to them. “And what is Chandos Force going to do, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.” Audley sounded a little chastened.

  “Naturally. Well, that one will discover in due course. But one is entitled to add two and two if one wishes—as I have … that is, if one is good at history as well as arithmetic.”

  The test wasn’t over.

  The jeep was crawling now, almost down to walking pace. But that didn’t matter.

  “I thought code names weren’t meant to mean anything,” said Audley slowly. “But this one does—is that it?”

  “So I am authoritively informed.” The major nodded. “It was apparently coined by a historian like yourself—with an historical sense of humour, so I’m told.”

  The major was no historian obviously, thought Butler. But the major was the sort of man who would do his homework if he got half a chance, that was for sure.

  “Then I presume we’re going to follow in Chandos’s footsteps, sir,” said Audley. “I seem to remember … he covered a lot of country in his time.”

  The jeep turned off the road, though mercifully it was moving so slowly that there was no danger of a twenty-second collision in the back. Ahead of them Butler saw a track leading across open fields towards a low huddle of farm buildings from which several slender columns of smoke rose vertically in the still air, pale blue in the evening light.

  Cooking fires, decided Butler hopefully.

  “Very good, David! All you need now is the right word,” said Major O’Conor.

  The right word? There were vehicles under camouflaged netting among the trees ahead—the right word?

  “Chevauchée,” said the major. “We’re going on a chevauchée, my boy.”

  “A chevauchée?” The incredulity in Audley’s voice helped Butler to concentrate on his ears rather than his eyes. They would reach the buildings soon enough.

  “One of Chandos’s specialities. You know what it means?”

  “Well … in modern French it’s … ‘a ride,’ I suppose,” said Audley pedantically. “But in medieval French … it was a raid—and more than a raid.”

  Audley had known more about the Hundred Years’ War than he had admitted, but the major let that pass.

  “Yes, David?”

  Audley drew a deep breath. “It was the classic English tactic for taking what they wanted—take and capture, or rape, burn, pillage, and plunder on the march. That is, unless the people agreed to s-s-submit to their rightful lord, King Edward. But our chaps usually forgot to ask first.”

  There was a bearded man in a check shirt just ahead. He had a machine-pistol slung round his neck and a cigarette in his mouth.

  “Yes … well I can’t promise you all of that, though we’ll do our best of course,” said the major. “But we are going to take something, certainly.”

  The check-shirted man gave them a cheery wave without removing the cigarette. He wore khaki battle-dress trousers and army gaiters, Butler noticed with sudden surprise.

  The farm buildings looked up ahead.

  “What are we going to take?” asked Audley.

  Major O’Conor chuckled. ‘Why—a castle of course, just as Chandos would have done. Except we’re going to take it from the Germans, naturally.”

  CHAPTER 5

  How Second Lieutenant Audley chanced his arm

  THE MEN of Chandos Force shuffled into the barn in ones and twos for their final briefing.

  From his chosen spot in the darkness just beyond the dim circle of light cast by the hurricane lamp Butler watched them with a sour mixture of contempt and disapproval.

  The mixture embarrassed him, and also confused him because he couldn’t square it with his impression of either Major O’Conor or Sergeant-major Swayne, who belonged to the world of soldiering which he understood. But these men—the major’s men, the sergeant-major’s men, and also (Jesus Christ!) his new comrades—came from another world altogether, and one which he did not understand at all.

  He knew he was green and raw and wet behind the ears, and that the memory of the only shots he’d ever fired in anger—at the major himself—made his cheeks burn at the very thought of it.

  And he knew that first impressions could be false impressions—

  Must be false impressions.

  It had looked more like a bandit encampment than a unit of the British Army about to go into action.

  Not so much the weird assortment of non-uniforms—of knitted cap-comforters instead of berets or steel helmets, of flak jackets and camouflage smocks instead of battle dress, of bandoleers and belts of ammunition instead of standard webbing pouches… .

  Not so much even the weirder assortment of weapons—machine pistols and automatic rifles, and LMGs which looked suspiciously German but just might be American; the anti-tank rocket launchers stacked by the farm gateway were certainly American; but there was not a Bren or a Sten to be seen, never mind an honest-to-God Lee Enfield rifle… .

  No, not the dress and not the weapons … but the savoury cooking smells and the card games and the dice; and the casual greetings—no salutes—and the laughter in the background, all of which he had smelt or heard or glimpsed during the last half hour. All it had needed was a girl or two—say Dolores del Rio in a low-cut dress, with gipsy earrings— to complete the picture.

  Chandos Force.

  The Chandos Gang—

  Must be false impressions.

  Butler struggled with the evidence of his senses and his limited experience, as the sudden glow of the half-smoked dog-end in the mouth of the next man to enter the barn caught his eye. As the man stepped briefly into the lamplight Butler saw that he sported an Uncle Joe Stalin moustache.

  In the Lancashire Rifles no rifleman or junior NCO dared to grow a moustache. In the Lancashire Rifles men stood close to their razors every morning without fail.

  And when the ACIs were pinned on the notice boards appealing for volunteers for the paratroops or any other strange and wonderful units like this one, Lancashire Riflemen did not volunteer—the senior NCOs saw to that, their official reasoning being that anyone wishing to quit the best battalion in the finest regiment in the whole British Army must be bloody mad, and it wouldn’t be right and proper to saddle other units with such madmen, particularly units which must already have more than their share of thugs, misfits, and criminals.

  Over two happy years of mastering the basics of the only trade he had ever wanted to learn, Butler had become convinced of the inner truth of that simple logic. Everything he was told and everything he learnt fitted in with everything he had ever read and with those things which General Chesney had told him: that the highest moment in war was the ordinary line infantryman setting his face and his best foot toward the enemy in battle. All the rest—all the tanks and artillery and planes and staffs and generals—were but the means and the auxiliaries to tha
t end.

  He had tried to prepare himself for the ugly facts of pain and discomfort and dirt and smells which he knew would mask this truth. But he discovered now that he had relied far more on the shelter of the battalion itself: he had not prepared himself for this kind of war in this kind of unit.

  He wasn’t afraid, he told himself. Because this wasn’t the feeling he had had by the side of the stream, when the major had shouted at him in German.

  But he was alone, and he was unutterably and desolately lonely.

  A sudden stir among the bandits, and then a spreading hush of their muttered conversations, roused him out of self-misery.

  The sergeant-major strode into the lamplight and glowered around him into the darkness. He was still wearing his leather jerkin, but had forsaken his beret for a knitted cap-comforter.

  “Purvis!” he barked into the gloom.

  “S’arnt-major!” One of the bandits barked back.

  “Everybody here?”

  “S’arnt-major.” Purvis paused. “One extra.”

  The sergeant-major frowned for a moment. “Corporal Butler!”

  “Sergeant-major!” Butler attempted to bark, but his voice cracked with the effort.

  “Right.” The sergeant-major swung round towards the doorway, his hand coming up to a quivering salute. “All present and correct, sir!” he roared into the darkness.

  Second Lieutenant Audley stepped cautiously through the doorway into the circle of light, stooping to avoid the lintel.

  The bandit in front of Butler inclined his head towards his neighbour. “Cor, bleedin’ ‘ell,” he said in a deliberate stage whisper.

  It was true that Audley looked absurdly young, despite his size. Indeed, his size seemed to emphasise his youth as he blinked nervously around him, with the squatter but menacing figures of Purvis and the sergeant-major on the edge of the light on either side of him, like wolves bracketing a newly born bull calf.

  “ ‘E wants ‘s mummy,” stage-whispered the other bandit.

  Bastards—Butler thought of the burnt-out Cromwells—bastards.

  The sergeant-major swung sharply towards the direction of the whisper, his chest expanding. But Audley forestalled him.