Men at Arms (23 page)

Ritchie-Hook left them. The captain explained the position of the launch and the sally-port. 

‘Any other questions?’ asked Colonel Tickeridge. 

‘No, sir,’ said Guy, ‘It all seems quite clear.’ 

TWO
hours later Guy’s patrol paraded in the hold from which the sally-port opened. They were dressed in rubber-soled shoes, shorts, and tunic-shirts; no caps; no gas-masks; their equipment stripped down to the belt. Each had a couple of hand grenades and his rifle, except, for the Bren pair who would set up their gun on the first suitable spot and be ready to cover the retreat if they were opposed. All had blackened faces. Guy carefully gave them their instructions. The sergeant would board the boat first and land last, seeing everyone safely ashore. Guy would land first and the men fan out on either side. He would carry a torch stuffed with pink tissue paper which he would flash back from time to time to give the direction. Wire, if it existed, would be above high water. They would advance inland far enough to discover whether there was wire or not. The first man to come on wire was to pass the word up to him. They would investigate the extent of the wire. A single blast of his whistle meant withdrawal to the boat … and so on.

‘Remember,’ he concluded, ‘we’re simply on reconnaissance. We aren’t trying to conquer Africa. We only fire if we have to cover our withdrawal.’ 

Presently they heard the winch over their head and they knew that their boat was being lowered. 

‘There’s an iron ladder outside. It’ll be about six foot to the water level. See that the man before you has got into place before you start going down, All set?’ 

The lights were all turned off in the hold before the sally-port was opened by one of the crew. It revealed a faintly lighter square and a steamy breath of the sea. 

‘All set below?’ 

‘Aye, aye, sir.’ 

‘Then carry on, Sergeant.’ 

One by one the men filed from the darkness into the open night. Guy followed last and took his place in the bow. There was barely room to squat. Guy experienced the classic illusion of an unknown, unsought, companion among them. The sally-port shut noisily above them. A voice said: ‘Any more for the
Skylark
?’ Skylark was the
mot juste
, thought Guy. They cast off. The engine started with what seemed a great noise and the launch bounced gently away in the direction of Beach A.

It was nearly an hour’s run for the beach lay on the north of the town in a position which, if captured, might have secured the landing to the south. The reek of the engine, the tropic night, the cramped bodies, the irregular smack of little waves on the, bows. At last the man at the wheel said: ‘We must be getting in now, sir.’ 

The engine slowed. The line of the shore was plain to see, quite near them. The clearer eyes of the seamen searched and found the wide gap of the beach. The engine was shut down and in complete silence they drifted gently inshore under their momentum. Then they touched sand. Guy was standing with, his hands on the gunwale, ready. He vaulted overboard and found himself breast-high in the tepid water. He stumbled straight ahead uphill, waist-deep, knee-deep, then clear of the sea on firm sand. He was filled by the most exhilarating sensation of his life; his first foothold on enemy soil. He flashed his torch behind him and heard splashing; the boat was drifting out again and the last men had to swim a few strokes to get into their depth. He saw shadowy figures emerge and spread out on either side of him. He gave the two flashes which meant ‘Forward’. He could just see and hear the gun pair move off to the side flank to find a position. The patrol moved on uphill. First hard wet sand, then soft dry sand, then long spiky grass. They kept on quietly. Palm trunks rose suddenly immediately in front. The first thing he met was a fallen coconut. He picked it up and gave it to Halberdier Glass, next, to him on the left. 

‘Take this back to the boat and wait for us there,’ he whispered. 

Halberdier Glass had shown signs of respect during the early stages of the expedition and an unwonted zeal. 

‘What me, sir? This here nut, sir? Back to the boat?’ 

‘Yes, don’t talk. Get on with it.’ 

He knew then that he had lost all interest in whether he held or forfeited Glass’s esteem. 

The second thing he met was wire, loosely tangled between the palm trunks. He gave the three flashes that meant: ‘Go carefully. ’Ware wire.’ 

He heard stumbling on both sides of him and whispered messages came up to him: ‘Wire on the left.’

‘Wire on the right.’ 

Casting a dim light forward now, and exploring with hands and feet, he discovered a low, thin, ill-made defensive belt of wire. Then he was aware of a dark figure, four paces from him, plunging forward across it. 

‘Stand still, that man’ he said. 

The figure continued forward, clear of the wire and noisily pushing through scrub and grass and thorn. 

‘Come back, damn you,’ Guy shouted. 

The man was out of sight but still audible. Guy blew his whistle. The men obediently turned about and made off downhill for the beach. Guy stood where he was, waiting for the delinquent. He had heard that men who ran amok had sometimes been brought to their senses by an automatic response to command. 

‘That half-file in front,’ he shouted as though in the barrack square. ‘About, turn. Quick march.’ 

The only response, quite near to his left, was a challenge. ‘Halte-là! Qui vive?’ Then the explosion of a grenade. And then suddenly firing broke out on all sides, the full span of the beach; nothing formidable, a few ragged rifle shots whistling between the palms. At once his own Bren on the flank opened up with three bursts which fell alarmingly near him. It seemed to Guy rather likely that he would soon be killed. He repeated the words which are dignified by the name ‘act’ of contrition; words so familiar that he used them in dreams when falling from a height. But he also thought: what a preposterous way in which to get oneself killed! 

He ran back to the beach. The boat was there, two men in the water held it in to the shore. The remainder of the patrol stood near it. 

‘Get aboard,’ said Guy. 

He ran across to the gunners and called them in.

There was still a lot of shouting in French and some wild shooting inland. 

‘All present and correct, sir,’ reported the sergeant. 

‘No, there’s a man adrift up there.’ 

‘No, sir, I’ve counted them. All present. Jump in, sir, we’d better be off while we can.’ 

‘Wait one minute. I must just have another look.’ 

The R.N.V.R. lieutenant in command of the boat said: ‘My orders are to push off as soon as the operation is completed, or sooner if I think the boat is being put into excessive danger.’ 

‘They haven’t seen you yet. They’re firing quite wild. Give me two minutes.’ 

Men, Guy knew, in the excitement of their first battle were liable to delusions. It would be highly convenient to suppose that he had imagined that dark, disappearing figure. But he went up the beach again and there saw his missing man crawling towards him. 

Guy’s one emotion was anger and his first words were: ‘I’ll have you court-martialled for this,’ and then ‘Are you hit?’ 

‘Of course I am,’ said the crawling figure. ‘Give me a hand.’ 

This was no German defence with searchlights and automatic weapons, but there had plainly been some reinforcement and the rifle shots were thicker. In his haste and. anger Guy did not notice the man’s odd tone. He pulled him up, no great weight, and staggered with him to the boat. The man was clutching something under his free arm. Not until they had both been hoisted aboard and the boat was running full speed out to sea did he give his attention to the wounded man. He turned his torch to the face and a single eye flashed back at him. 

‘Get my leg out straight,’ said Brigadier Ritchie-Hook ‘And give me a field-dressing someone. It’s nothing much but it hurts like the devil and it’s bleeding too much. And take care of the coconut.’ 

Then Ritchie-Hook busied himself with his wound but not before he had laid in Guy’s lap the wet, curly head of a Negro. 

And Guy was so weary that he fell asleep, nursing the trophy. The whole patrol was asleep by the time they reached the ship. Only Ritchie-Hook groaned and swore sometimes in semi-coma. 

'WOULD
you want to be eating this nut now, sir, or later?’ Halberdier Hall looked down at Guy’s bedside.

‘What time is it?’

‘Eleven sharp, sir, as was your orders.’

‘Where are we?’ 

‘Steaming along, sir, with the convoy,
not
towards home. Colonel wants to see you as soon as you’re ready.’ 

‘Leave the nut here. I’m taking it for a souvenir.’ 

Guy still felt weary. As he shaved he recalled the final events of the previous night. 

He had woken much refreshed, bobbing under the high walls of the ship with the head of a Negro clasped in both hands. 

‘We’ve a wounded man here. Can you pass down a loop for hoisting?’ 

There was some delay above and then from the blind black door above a light flashed down. 

‘I’m the ship’s surgeon. Will you come up and make way for me?’ 

Guy climbed aboard into the hold. The surgeon descended. He and two orderlies had a special apparatus for such occasions, a kind of cradle which was swung down, fastened to the Brigadier and tenderly drawn up again. 

‘Take him straight along to the sick bay and prepare him. Anyone else injured?’ 

‘That’s the only one.’ 

‘No one warned me to expect wounded. Luckily we had everything ready this morning. No one told me to expect anything tonight,’ the surgeon grumbled, out of sight and out of earshot behind the laden orderlies. 

The men came aboard. 

‘You’ve all done jolly well,’ said Guy. ‘Fall out now. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Thanks, sailors. Good night.’ 

He woke Colonel Tickeridge to report. 

‘Reconnaissance successful, sir. One coco-nut’ – and placed the head beside Colonel Tickeridge’s ashtray on the edge of his bunk. 

Colonel Tickeridge came slowly awake. 

‘For Christ’s sake what’s that thing?’

‘French colonial infantry, sir. No identifications.’ 

‘Well for God’s sake take it away. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Everyone back safe?’ 

‘All my patrol, sir. One supernumerary casualty. Stretcher case. He’s been put in the sick bay.’ 

‘What the devil do you mean by “supernumerary”?’

‘The Brigadier, sir.’ 

‘
What
?’ 

Guy had assumed that Colonel Tickeridge was in the secret; had been party to making him look a fool. Now he dropped something of his stiffness. 

‘Didn’t you know he was coming, Colonel?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’ 

‘He must have hidden in the hold and crashed the party in the dark, sir, with his face blacked.’ 

‘The old devil. Is he badly hurt?’

‘The leg.’ 

‘That doesn’t sound too bad.’ Colonel Tickeridge, fully awake now, began to chuckle, then turned grave. ‘I say, though, this is going to be the hell of a mess. Well, we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Go to bed now.’ 

‘And this?’ 

‘For Christ’s sake throw it in the drink.’ 

‘Do you think I ought to, Colonel, without consulting the Brigadier?’ 

‘Well, get it out of here.’

‘Very good, sir. Good night.’ 

Guy took a firm grip of the wool and walked down the breathless corridor. He met a Goanese night steward and showed him the face. The man gave a squeal and fled. Guy was light-headed now. Apthorpe’s cabin? No. He tried the door of the Operations Room. It was unlocked and unguarded. All the maps and confidential papers had been tidied away. He put his burden in the Brigadier’s ‘In’ tray and, suddenly weary again, turned to his own cabin, threw down his bloody shirt, washed his bloody chest and hands, and fell deep asleep. 

‘How’s the Brigadier, Colonel?’ Guy asked when he reported to the orderly-room. 

‘Very cheerful. He’s not been round from the chloroform long. He’s asking for his coco-nut.’ 

‘I left it on his desk.’ 

‘You’d better take it to him. He wants to see you. From his account you seem to have put up rather a good show last night. It’s jolly bad luck.’ This was not quite the form Guy had expected congratulations to take. ‘Sit down, Uncle, you aren’t on a charge – yet.’ 

Guy sat silent while Colonel Tickeridge paced the carpet. 

‘It’s only once or twice in a chap’s life he gets the chance of a gong. Some chaps never get it. You got yours last night and did all right. By all justice I ought now to be drafting a citation for your M.C. Instead of which we’re in the hell of a fix. I can’t think what possessed us last night. We can’t even keep the thing quiet. If it was just the battalion involved we might conceivably have tried, but the ship’s full of odds and sods and the thing just isn’t on. If the Brigadier hadn’t stopped one, we might have made you carry the can. “Over-zealous young officer … mild reprimand”, you know. But there’ll have to be a medical report and an inquiry. You simply can’t do things like that at his age and get away with it. If I’d had any idea what was in his head, I’d have refused cooperation. At least I think I should have done this morning. It won’t look too good for the ship’s captain either. It won’t do you any good. Of course you were acting under orders. You’re in the clear legally. But it’ll be a black mark. For the rest of your life when your name comes up, someone is bound to say: “Isn’t he the chap who blotted his copy-book at Dakar in 40?” Not, I suppose, that it matters to you. You’ll be out of the Corps and your name won’t crop up, will it? Come on, let’s take the head to the Brig.’ 

They found him in the sick bay, alone in the officers’ ward, his machette, freshly scoured, beside him. 

‘It wasn’t a clean stroke,’ he said. ‘The silly fellow saw me first so I had to bung a grenade at him, then look for the head and trim it up tidy. Well, Crouchback, how d’you like having a brigadier under your command?’

‘I found him most insubordinate, sir.’ 

‘It was a potty little show, but you didn’t do too badly for a first attempt. Did I hear you threaten me with a court-martial at one stage of the proceedings?’ 

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Never do that, Crouchback, particularly in the field, unless you’ve got a prisoner’s escort handy. I’ve known a promising young officer shot with a Lee-Enfield for threatening things in the field. Where’s my coconut?’ Guy handed him the swaddled head: ‘My word he’s a beauty, isn’t he? Look at his great teeth. Never saw a better. I’m, damned if I give him to the Force Commander. I’ll shrink and pickle him; it’ll give me an interest while I’m laid up.’ 

When they left Guy asked ‘Does, he know what you told me, Colonel? I mean about his being in for a row?’ 

‘Of course he does. He’s got out of more rows than anyone in the Service. 

‘So you think he’ll be all right this time?’ 

Colonel Tickeridge answered sadly and solemnly. 

‘He’s the wrong age. You can be an
enfant terrible
or you can be a national figure no one dares touch. But the Brig’s neither of those things. It’s the end for him – at least he thinks it is and he ought to know.’ 

The convoy sailed down the coast and then began to break up, first one ship turning aside, then another. The men-o’-war steamed away to another rendezvous – all save the damaged ships who limped down to dry docks at Simonstown. The Free French pursued their mission of liberation elsewhere, the faithful little
Belgravia
with them. The two ships containing the Halberdier Brigade berthed at a British port. Since the night at Dakar a rare delicacy had kept everyone from questioning Guy. They knew something had happened, that all was not right. They pretended not to be curious. It was the same in the sergeants’ mess and on the troop deck, Guy’s sergeant told him. The Brigadier was carried ashore to hospital. The Brigade resumed its old duty of standing by for orders.