Men at Arms (21 page)
‘Crouchback,’ he said. ‘Davidson. Were getting put here. Fall in by companies in the station yard. Tell off a platoon to handle stores. Call the roll and inspect the men. They can’t shave, of course, but see they are respectable otherwise. We’ve two miles march to camp.’
Somehow the dishevelled, comatose figures transformed themselves into Halberdiers. No one seemed lost. Everyone had a rifle. The kit-bags came bouncing out.
X Battalion moved off first. Guy marched at the head of his company, following the company in front, through the suburban lanes and delicious morning air. Presently they came to a field gate and the familiar smell of Soyer stoves. He followed the company commander in front in calling his men to attention. He heard the command ahead: ‘Eyes left.’ His turn came. He gave the command, saluting, and saw a Halberdier guard fallen in at the guard-house.
He gave the command: ‘C Company, eyes front.’
From the distance of a hundred marching men he heard ahead: ‘B Company, eyes right.’
What was it this time? he wondered.
‘C Company, eyes right.’
He swung his head and found himself gazing straight into a single, glittering eye.
It was Ritchie-Hook.
A guide had been posted to lead the battalion to their parade ground. They formed close column of companies, ordered arms, stood easy. Brigadier Ritchie-Hook was standing beside the major.
‘Glad to see you all again,’ he roared. ‘I expect you want breakfast. Get cleaned up first. You are all confined to camp. We’re at two hours’ notice to go overseas.’
The major saluted and turned to face the battalion he had so briefly dominated.
‘For the time being this is our battalion area.’ He said: ‘I gather it won’t be long. Guides will show you where to clean up. Battalion, shun. Slope arms. Fall out the officers.’
Guy marched forward, ranged himself with the other officers, saluted and marched off the parade ground. The battalion was dismissed. He heard the non-commissioned officers break out into a babble of orders. He was dazed. So was the major with the black mark against him.
‘What does it mean, sir?’
‘I only know what the Brigadier said as we marched in. Apparently there’s a complete as-you-were. He’s been fighting the War Office for days to keep the brigade in existence. As usual, he’s won. That’s all there is to it.’
‘Does that mean things are better in France?’
‘No. They’re so bloody well worse that the Brigadier has got us all accepted as fully trained and ready for action.’
‘D’you mean we’re off to France too?’
‘I shouldn’t get too excited about that if I were you. The Regular Battalion got turned off their ship just as they were sailing. I rather feel in my bones that it may be some time yet before we go to France. There’s been a lot happening over there. While we were hunting parachutists in Scotland. It appears, among other things, that the Germans took Boulogne yesterday.
Apthorpe Immolatus
1
NINE
week of ‘flap’, of alternating chaos and order.
The Halberdiers were far from the battle, out of sight and hearing, but delicate nerves stretched to them from the front where the Allied armies were falling apart each new shock carried its small painful agitation to the extremities. Chaos came from without in sudden, unexplained commands and cancellations; order grew from within as company, battalion and brigade each rearranged itself for the new unexpected task. They were so busy in those weeks with their own homebuilding, repairing, rearranging, improvising, that the great storm that was shaking the world passed overhead unnoticed until the crash of a bough set all the hidden roots again vibrating.
First, the task was Calais. No secret was made of their destination. Maps of that
terra incognita
were issued and Guy studied the street names, the approaches, the surrounding topography of the town he had crossed countless times, settling down to an aperitif in the Gare Maritime, glancing idly at the passing roofs from the windows of the restaurant-car; windy town of Mary Tudor; and Beau Brummel, and Rodin’s Burghers; the most frequented, least known town in all the continent of Europe. There, perhaps, he would leave his bones.
But it was only at night that there was time for study or speculation. The days were spent in ceaseless ant-like business.. In the move from Penkirk much had been lost, objects such as anti-tank rifles and aiming stands which no man could covet or conceal among them Hayter, who went on his course of Air Liaison and was not seen again among the Halberdiers. Various regular officers too, had proved medically unfit and left for Barracks or the Training Depot. Guy found himself back in the Second Battalion and still in command of a company.
It was far different from ‘taking over’ in normal conditions. When Ritchie-Hook spoke of his brigade as being at two hours’ readiness to move into action, he was, indeed, ‘shooting a line’. It was two days before it could take over its routine duties in the Area. These were arduous, for parachutists were hourly expected at Aldershot as at Penkirk. Standing Orders kept almost every man on duty every hour of the day. And first the men had to be collected. None had deserted but most were lost.
‘You don’t know what your battalion was?’
‘First it was one and then another, sir.’
‘Well, which was the first?’
‘Can’t say, sir.’
‘Do you know who commanded it?’
‘Oh yes, sir. C.S.M. Rawkes.’
Few of the conscripts knew the names of their officers.
When they joined, Rawkes had said: ‘I am Company Sergeant Major Rawkes. Take a good look so you’ll know me again. I’m here to help you if you behave yourselves right. Or I’m here to make your life hell if you don’t. It’s for you to choose.’
They remembered that. Rawkes drew up the leave roster and detailed the fatigues. Officers, for men who had not yet been in battle, were as indistinguishable as Chinese. Few men, regular or conscript, had associations beyond their company. They knew of the Earl of Essex’s Honourable Company of Free Halberdiers, they were proud to be dubbed ‘Copper Heels’ and ‘Applejacks’, but the brigade was a complex and remote conception. They did not know where the biffs came from; they were one of the hindmost wagons in a shunting train. A Kingdom was lost in Europe and somewhere in the Home Counties a Halberdier found himself with his leave stopped, manhandling stores for another move.
Guy in D Company was short of a second-in-command and a platoon commander, but he had Sergeant Major Rawkes and Quartermaster-Sergeant Yorke, both elderly, experienced and, above all, calm assistants. Ten men were unaccounted for; one man had broken camp; the company roll had been sent to Records; G.1098 Stores were arriving.
‘Carry on Sergeant Major.’
‘Carry on, Colour Sergeant’ And they carried on.
Guy felt giddy, but protected, as though the victim of an accident, dozing in bed, scarcely aware of how he had got there. Instead of medicine and grapes they brought him at regular intervals sheafs of paper that required his signature. A great forefinger, capped by what looked like a toe-nail, would point out the place for his name. He felt like a constitutional monarch of tender years, living in the shadow of world-respected, inherited councillors-of-state. He felt. like a confidence trickster when at last, at noon the second day, he reported D Company as all present and correct.
‘Good work, Uncle,’ said Colonel Tickeridge. ‘You’re the first to report in.’
‘The senior NCOs really did everything, sir.’
‘Of course they did. You don’t have to tell me that. But you’ll have to take all the rockets when things go wrong, whether it’s your fault or not. So take the occasional dewdrop in the same spirit.’
Guy was a little shy of giving orders to the two platoon commanders who had so lately been his fellows. They took them with perfect correctitude. Only when he said: ‘Any questions?’ de Souza’s drawl would sometimes break in with: ‘I don’t quite understand the
purpose
of the order. What exactly are we looking for, when we stop civilian cars and ask for their identity cards?’
‘Fifth columnists, I understand:’
‘But, surely, they would have identity cards? They were issued compulsorily, you know, last year. I tried to refuse mine but the policeman positively pressed it on me.’
Or: ‘Could you please explain why we have to have both a lying-in fire-picket and an anti-parachute platoon? I mean to say if I was a parachutist and I saw all the gorse on fire underneath I should take jolly good care to jump somewhere else.’
‘Damn it, I didn’t invent these orders – I’m just passing them on.’
‘Yes, I know that. I just wondered if they make any sense to you. They don’t to me.’
But whether orders made sense or not de Souza could be trusted to carry them out. Indeed he seemed to find a curious private pleasure in doing something he knew to be absurd, with minute efficiency. The other officer, Jervis, needed constant supervision.
The sun blazed down, withering the turf until it was slippery as a dance-floor and starting fires in the surrounding scrub. Routine was resumed. On the fourth evening of his command, Guy marched his company at nightfall into the training area where the place names are incongruously taken from Central Africa, the memorial to a long-departed explorer; the heart of the Apthorpe country, as de Souza called it. They performed an exercise of ‘company in the attack’, became entirely intermixed, extricated themselves and bivouacked under the stars. A warm night, smelling of dry furze. Guy made a round of the sentries and then lay awake. Dawn came quickly, bringing momentary beauty even to that sorry countryside. They fell in and marched back to camp. Rather light-headed after his sleepless night Guy marched in front beside de Souza. From behind them came the songs: ‘Roll out the barrel’; ‘There are rats, rats, rats as big as cats in the quartermaster’s store’; ‘We’ll hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line’.
‘That sounds a little out of date at the moment,’ said Guy.
‘Do you know what it always makes me think of, Uncle? A drawing of the last war, in one of the galleries, of barbed wire and a corpse hanging across it like a scarecrow. Not a very good drawing. I forget who did it. A sort of sham Goya.’
‘I don’t think the men really like it. They hear it at Ensa concerts and pick it up. I suppose as the war goes on, some good songs will grow out of it, as they did last time.’
‘Somehow I rather doubt it,’ said de Souza. ‘There’s probably a department of martial music in the Ministry of Information. Last war songs were all eminently lacking in what’s called morale-building qualities. “We’re here because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here”, and “Take me back to dear old Blighty”, “Nobody knows how bored we are and nobody seems to care”. Not at all the kind of thing that would get official approval today. This war has begun in darkness and it will end in silence.’
‘Do you say these things simply, to depress me, Frank?’
‘No, Uncle, simply to cheer myself up.’
When they reached camp, they found all the evidences of another ‘flap’.
‘Report at once to the orderly-room, sir.’
Guy found the battalion clerk, and Sarum-Smith packing papers; the adjutant, telephoning, waved him into the presence of Colonel Tickeridge.
‘What the devil do you mean by taking your company out at night without establishing a signal link with Headquarters? Do you realize that if it wasn’t for Movement Control having made their usual balls-up, the whole brigade would have upsticked and off and you’d have found the whole camp empty and bloody well serve you right? Don’t you know that any training scheme has to be sent in to the adjutant with full map references?’
Guy had done this. Sanders was out at the time and he had given it to Sarum-Smith. He said nothing.
‘Nothing to say?’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘Well, see that D Company is ready, to move by twelve hundred hours.’
‘Very good, sir. May we know where we’re going?’
‘Embarking at Pembroke Dock.’
‘For Calais, sir?’
‘That’s about the wettest question I’ve ever heard asked. Don’t you even follow the news?’
‘Not last night or this morning, sir.’
‘Well, they’ve chucked in at Calais. Now go back to your company and get a move on.’
‘Very good, sir.’
As he returned to his lines he remembered that, when last he heard, Tony Box-Bender’s regiment was at Calais.
FOR
a fortnight the Halberdier Brigade got no mail. When Guy at length heard news of Tony it was in two letters from his father written at an interval of ten days.
Marine Hotel, Matchet,
2nd June
My dear Guy,
I do not know where you are and I suppose you are not allowed to tell me, but I hope this letter will reach you wherever you are to. You that you are always in my thoughts and prayers.
You may have heard that Tony was at Calais and that none of them came back. He is posted as missing. Angela has made up her mind he is a prisoner but I think you and I know him and his regiment too well to think of them giving themselves up.
He was always a good and happy boy and I could not ask a better death for anyone I loved. It is the
bona mors
for which we pray.
If you get this, write to Angela.
Ever your affec. father,
G. Crouchback.
Marine Hotel, Matchet,
12th June
My dear Guy,
I know you would have written to me if you could.
Have you heard the news of Tony? He is a prisoner and Angela, naturally I suppose, is elated simply that he is alive. It is God’s will for the boy but I cannot rejoice. Everything points to a long war – longer perhaps than the last. It is a terrible experience for someone of Tony’s age to spend years in idleness, cut off from his own people – one full of temptation.
It was not the fault of the garrison that they surrendered. They were ordered to do so from higher up.
Well, now our country is quite alone and I feel that that is good for us. An Englishman is at his best with his back to the wall and often in the past we have had quarrels with our allies which I believe were our own fault.
And last Tuesday was Ivo’s anniversary, so that he has been much in my thoughts.
I am not quite useless yet. A boys’ preparatory school (Catholic) has moved here from the East Coast. I can’t remember whether I told you. A charming headmaster and his wife stayed here while they moved in. They were very short of masters and to my great surprise and delight they asked me to take a form for them. The boys are very good and I even get paid! which is a help as they have had to put their prices up in the hotel. It has been interesting brushing up my rusty Greek.
Ever your affec. father,
G. Crouchback.
These letters arrived together on the day when the Germans marched into Paris. Guy and his company were then quartered in a seaside hotel in Cornwall.
Much had happened since they left Aldershot eighteen days before. For those who followed events and thought about the future, the world’s foundations seemed to shake. For the Halberdiers it was one damned thing after another. An urgent order came through Area Headquarters on the morning of their departure that the men were to be fortified for bad news. It was bad news enough that they were moving to Wales. They embarked in three ancient heterogeneous merchantmen, and hung hammocks in their dusty holds. They ate hard tack. During the warm night they lay anywhere about the decks. Steam was up; all communication with the shore forbidden.
Colonel Tickeridge said: ‘I have no idea where we are going. I had a talk with the E.S.O. He seemed surprised we were here at all.’
Next morning they disembarked and saw the three ships sail away empty. The brigade split up and went into billets by battalions in neighbouring market towns, in shops and warehouses that had stood empty for nine years since the slump. The units and sub-units began home-building, training, playing cricket.
Then the brigade reassembled at the docks, re-embarked in the same ships, shabbier still now, for in the meantime they had been ferrying a broken army across the Channel from Dunkirk. There was a battery of Dutch gunners, without their guns, ensconced in one of them. Somehow they had got on board at Dunkirk. No one seemed to have a place for them in England. There they remained, sad and stolid and very polite.
The ships resembled blocks of slum tenements. Guy was occupied mainly in the effort of keeping his. stores and men together. They disembarked for an hour’s Physical Training, a company at a time. For the rest of the day they sat on their kitbags. A staff officer arrived from far away and produced a proclamation which was to be read to all troops, contradicting reports spread by the enemy, that the Air Force had been idle at Dunkirk. If British planes had not been noticed there, it was because they were busy on the enemy’s lines of communication. The Halberdiers were more interested in the rumour that a German army had landed in Limerick and that their own role was to dislodge it.
‘Hadn’t we better dispel that rumour, sir?’
‘No,’ said Colonel Tickeridge. ‘It’s quite true. Not that the Germans are there yet. But our little operation is to meet them there if they do land.’
‘Just us?’
‘Just us,’ said Colonel Tickeridge. ‘So far as anyone seems to know except, of course, for our Dutch chums.’
They were at two hours’ notice to sail. After two days orders were relaxed to allow troops in formed bodies ashore for training and recreation. They had to remain within sight of the mast of their ship, which would hoist a flag to summon them in case of immediate sailing orders.’
Colonel Tickeridge had an officers’ conference in the saloon where he explained the details of the Limerick campaign. The Germans were expected with a fully equipped mechanized corps and ample air support and probably some help from the natives. The Halberdier Brigade would hold them off as long as possible.
‘As to how long that will be,’ said Colonel Tickeridge, ‘your guess is as good as mine.’ Provided with a map of Limerick and this depressing intelligence, Guy returned to his huddled company.
‘Halberdier Shanks, sir, has put in a request for leave,’ said Rawkes.
‘But he must know it’s no use.’
‘Urgent compassionate grounds, sir.’
‘What are they, Sergeant-Major?’
‘Won’t say, sir. Insists, as his right, on seeing the Company Commander in private, sir.’
‘Very well. He’s a good man, isn’t he?’
‘One of the best, sir. That is to say of the National Service men.’
Halberdier Shanks was marched up. Guy knew him well, a handsome, capable, willing man.
‘Well, Shanks, what is the trouble?’
‘Please, sir, it’s the competition. I must be at Blackpool tomorrow night. I’ve promised. My girl will never forgive me if I’m not.’
‘Competition for what, Shanks?’
‘The slow valse, sir. We’ve practised together three years now. We won at Salford last year. We’ll win at Blackpool, sir. I know we will. And I’ll be back in the two days, honest, sir.’
‘Shanks, do you realize that France has fallen? That there is every likelihood of the invasion of England? That the whole railway system of the country is disorganized for the Dunkirk men? That our brigade is on two hours’ notice for active service? Do you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then how can you come to me with this absurd application?’
‘But, sir, we’ve been practising three years. We got a first at Salford last year. I can’t give up now, sir.’
Was it ‘the spirit of Dunkirk?
‘Request dismissed, Sergeant-Major.’
In accordance with custom C.S.M. Rawkes had been waiting within view in case the applicant for a private interview attempted personal violence on his officer. He now took over.
‘Request dismissed. About turn, quick march.’
And Guy remained to wonder was this the already advertised spirit of Dunkirk? He rather thought it was, The days ‘in the hulks’, as de Souza called them, were few in number but they formed a distinct period of Guy’s life in the Halberdiers real discomfort for the first time, beastly food, responsibility in its most irksome form, claustrophobia, all these oppressed him; but he was free of all sense of national disaster. The rising and falling in the tides in the harbour, the greater or smaller number of daily sick, the men up on charges, the indications more or fewer, of failing temper – these were the concerns of the day. Sarum-Smith was appointed ‘Entertainments Officer’ and organized a concert at which three senior non-commissioned officers performed a strange piece of mummery traditional in the Halberdiers and derived, de Souza said, from a remote folk ceremony, dressed in blankets, carrying on a ritual dialogue under the names of ‘Silly Bean’, ‘Black Bean’ and ‘Awful Bean’.
He organized a debate on the question : ‘Any man who marries under thirty is a fool’ which soon became a series of testimonies. ‘All I can say is my father married at twenty-two and I never wish to see a happier homier house or a better mother nor I’ve had.’
He organized boxing matches.
Apthorpe was asked to lecture on Africa. He chose, instead, an unexpected subject ‘The Jurisdiction of Lyon King of Arms compared with that of Garter King of Arms.’
‘But, Uncle, do you think it will interest the men?’
‘Not all of them perhaps. Those that are interested will be very much interested indeed.’
‘I believe they would greatly prefer something about elephants or cannibals.
‘Take it or leave it, Sarum-Smith.’
Sarum-Smith left it.
Guy lectured on the Art of Wine Making and had a surprising success. The men relished information on any technical subject.
Extraneous figures came to add to the congestion. An odd old captain like a cockatoo in the gaudy service dress of a defunct regiment of Irish cavalry. He said he was the cipher officer and was roped in to lecture on ‘Court Life at St Petersburg’.
Dunn and his men turned up. They had got to France and travelled in a great arc of insecurity behind the breaking lines from Boulogne to Bordeaux, without once leaving their railway coach. This experience of foreign travel, within sound of the guns, under fire once when an agitated airman passed their way, added perceptibly to Dunn’s self-confidence. Sarum-Smith tried to induce him to give a lecture on ‘the lessons learned in combat’ but Dunn explained that he had spent the journey in holding a Court of Inquiry under the authority of the senior officer in the train, to examine the case of the carved boot. The verdict had been one of deliberate damage but since he had parted company with the convening officer he was not sure where the papers should be sent. He was reading the matter up in his Manual of Military Law.
A sinister super-cargo labelled ‘Chemical Warfare (Offensive)’ was delivered to the quay and left there for all to see.
Guy got a second-in-command, a dull young regular named Brent, and a third subaltern. So the days passed. Suddenly there was a warning order and another move. They disembarked. The Dutch gunners waved them a farewell as their train steamed away into the unknown. The maps of County Limerick were collected. They jolted slowly for ten hours, with many stops at sidings and many altercations with Transport Officers. They detrained at night, a magnificent, moonlit, scented night, and bivouacked in the woods surrounding a park, where all the paths glowed underfoot with phosphorescent deadwood. They were put into buses and dispersed along the sounding coast where Guy received the news of his cousin Tony.
He had two miles of cliff to defend against invasion. When de Souza was shown his platoon front he said: ‘But, Uncle, it doesn’t make sense. The Germans are mad as hatters but not in quite this way. They aren’t going to land here.’
‘They might put agents ashore. Or some of their landing craft might drift off course.’
‘I think we’ve been sent here because we aren’t fit for the likely beaches.’
After two days an inspecting general arrived with several staff officers and Ritchie-Hook, sulking; three car-loads of them. Guy showed them his gun pits, which were sited to cover every bathers path from the shore. The general stood with his back to the sea and gazed inland.
‘Not much field of fire,’ he said.
‘No, sir. We expect the enemy from the other direction.’
‘Must have all-round defence.’
‘Don’t you think they’re a bit thin on the ground for that?’ said Ritchie-Hook. ‘They’re covering a battalion front.’
‘Parachutes,’ said the general, ‘are the very devil. Well, remember. The positions are to be held to the last man and the last round.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Guy.
‘Do your men understand that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And remember, you must never speak of “
If
the enemy comes” but “
When
they come”. They are coming
here
, this month. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘All right, I think we’ve seen everything.’
‘May I say a word?’ asked a neat young staff officer. ‘Carry on’
‘Fifth Columnists,’ said the Intelligence Officer, ‘will be your special concern. You know what they did on the Continent. They’ll do the same here. Suspect everyone – the vicar, the village grocer, the, farmer whose family have lived here a hundred years, all, the most unlikely people. Look out for signalling at night – lights, short-wave transmitters. And here’s a bit of information for your ears alone. It mustn’t go below platoon-commander level. We happen to know that the telegraph posts have been marked to lead the invading units to their rendezvous. Little metal numbers. I’ve seen them myself. Remove them and report to headquarters when you find them.’
‘Very good, sir.’
The three cars drove on. Guy had been with de Souza’s platoon when the final words of encouragement were spoken. Here the high road ran almost on the edge of the cliff. He and Brent walked to the next platoon position. On the way they counted a dozen telegraph poles, each marked with a metal number.
‘All telegraph poles are,’ said Brent, ‘by the Post Office.
‘Sure?’
‘Perfectly.’
Local Defence Volunteers helped patrol the area at night and reported frequent lamp-signals from fifth columnists. One story was so well told that Guy spent a night alone with Halberdier Glass, armed to the teeth, on the sands of a little cove; a boat was said to beach there often in darkness. But no one came their way that night. The only incident was a single tremendous flash which momentarily lit the whole coast. Guy remembered afterwards that in the momentary stillness he foolishly said: ‘Here they come.’ Then from far away came the thump and tremor of an explosion.