Men at Arms (22 page)

‘Land-mine,’ said Glass. ‘Plymouth probably.’ 

In his vigils Guy thought often of Tony, with three, four, perhaps five years cut clean out of his young life just as those eight had been cut from his own.

Once on an evening of dense sea-mist a message came that the enemy were attacking with arsenical smoke. That was Apthorpe, momentarily left in charge at Headquarters. Guy took no action. An hour later a message came cancelling the alarm. That was Colonel Tickeridge back at his post. 

AT
the end of August Guy was sitting in his company office in the hotel in when two captains of a county regiment entered and saluted. 

‘We’re A Company, 5th Loamshires.’ 

‘Good morning. What can I do for you?’ 

‘You’re expecting us, aren’t you?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘We’ve come to take over from you.’

‘First I’ve heard of it.’ 

‘Damn. I suppose we’ve come to the wrong place again. You aren’t D Company, 2nd Halberdiers?’

‘Yes.’ 

‘That’s all right then. I expect the orders will get through in time. My chaps are due to arrive this afternoon. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind showing us round?’ 

For weeks they had waited for fifth columnists. Here they were at last. 

There was a field telephone, which sometimes worked, connecting D Company with Battalion Headquarters. Guy, as he had seen done in the films, wrote on a piece of paper
Ask Bn. H.Q. if these chaps are genuine
and turned to Brent: ‘Just attend to this will you, Bill? I’ll see to our visitors,’ and to the Loamshires: ‘Come outside, It’s rather a good billet, isn’t it?’ 

They stepped out to the hotel terrace; bright blue overhead and before them; warm gravel underfoot; roses all round them; at his side, the enemy. Guy studied the two men. They were in service uniforms. They should have been in battledress. The junior had not yet spoken – a German accent perhaps; the senior was altogether too good to be true, clipped voice, clipped moustache, a Military Cross. 

‘You want to see my L.M.G. positions, I expect?’ 

‘Well, I suppose we ought to some time. At the moment I’m more interested in accommodation and messing arrangements. Is the bathing good? How do you get down to the beach? As far as I’m concerned this is going to be my summer holidays. We’d no sooner got straightened out after Dunkirk than they put us on defence duty on the invasion coast.’ 

‘Would you like a bathe now?’ 

‘Sound scheme, eh, Jim?’ 

The junior officer gave a grunt which might have been Teutonic. 

‘We usually undress up here and go down in great-coats. I can fit you out.’ 

Brent joined them to say that he had not been able to get an answer from Headquarters. 

‘Never mind,’ said Guy, ‘I’ll see to it. I want you now to take our visitors bathing. Show them up to my room. They’ll leave their things there. Find them a couple of great-coats and towels.’ 

As soon as the Loamshires had gone Guy turned back and found Sergeant-Major Rawkes. 

‘Sergeant Major,’ he said. ‘Did you see anything odd about those two officers who came in just now?’ 

‘We have never had much of an opinion of the Loamshires, Sir.’ 

‘I suspect them. They’ve just gone down to bathe with Mr Brent. I want you to relieve the man at the gun covering the bathing place.’ 

‘Me, sir? At the gun?’ 

‘Yes. This is a security matter. I can’t trust anyone else. I want you to keep them covered all the time, on the way down, in the water, on the way up. If they try anything funny, fire.’

Sergeant Major Rawkes, who had in recent weeks formed a good opinion of Guy, looked at him with mild despair.

‘Shoot Mr Brent, sir?’ 

‘No, no. Those fellows who say they are in the Loamshires.’

‘What exactly would you mean by funny, sir?’ 

‘If they attack Mr Brent, try to drown him, or push him over the cliffs.’ 

Rawkes shook his head sadly: He had let himself be taken in. He should never have come near trusting a temporary officer. 

‘That’s orders, sir?’ 

‘Yes, of course. Get on with it quick.’

‘Very good, sir.’ 

He walked slowly to the gun pit.

‘’Op it, you two,’ he said to the men on duty. ‘Don’t ask me why. Just ’op it and be grateful.’ 

Then he lowered himself to the Bren, stiffly, in protest. But as he put the weapon to his shoulder, he relaxed a little. This was a rare sport, officer-shooting. 

Guy ran to his room and examined the intruders’ kit. One of them instead of a service revolver was carrying a Luger. Guy pocketed the cartridge-clips of both weapons. There was no other suspicious feature; everything else in their pockets was English including a very correct move-order. Guy tried to telephone again and got through to Sarum-Smith. 

‘I must speak to the C.O.’ 

‘He’s at a conference at Brigade.’ 

‘Well, the second-in-command or the adjutant then.’

‘They’re out. There’s only me and the quartermaster left.’

‘Can you get a message through to the C.O. at Brigade?’

‘I don’t think so. Is it important?’

‘Yes. Take it down.’ 

‘Wait a jiffy till I get a pencil.’ 

There was a pause and then the voice of Apthorpe spoke. 

‘Hullo, old man, something up?’ 

‘Yes, will you get off the line. I’m trying to pass a message to Sarum-Smith.’ 

‘He’s gone off to find a razor blade to sharpen his pencil.’

‘Well, will you take it? Message begins: “D Coy to 2 Bn via Bde HQ.”‘ 

‘I’m not sure that’s the correct form.’ 

‘Damn the correct form. Tell the C.O. that I’ve got two men here who claim to be Loamshires. They say they have orders to take over my positions. I want to know if they’re genuine.’ 

‘I say, old man, that sounds a bit hot. I’ll come right over myself.’ 

‘Don’t do anything of the sort. Just get my message to the C.O. 

‘I could be with you in twenty minutes on my motor-bike.’ 

‘Just pass my message to the C.O., there’s a good chap.’ 

Huffily: ‘Well, if you don’t want me, that’s your look-out. But it seems to me far too serious a matter to settle singlehanded.’ 

‘I’m not single-handed. I’ve a hundred men here. Just pass the message.’ 

Very huffily: ‘Here is Sarum-Smith, It’s his pigeon to pass messages. I’m very busy here, I can tell you, on pretty confidential business.’ 

Sarum-Smith, back at the telephone, took the message. 

‘Sure you’ve got it clear?’ 

‘Yes. But I think there’s an order that has some bearing on your query. It came just as the adjutant was leaving. He told me to pass it on but I’ve not got round to it. Wait a sec. It’s somewhere here. Yes. Second Battalion will hand over their positions to Fifth Loamshires and concentrate forthwith at Brook Park with full stores and equipment. That’s the place we first arrived at. Sorry for the delay.’ 

‘Damn.’ 

‘Do you want that message sent to the C.O.?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘It’s all been rather a flap about nothing, hasn’t it?’ 

As Guy rang off he saw the bathers return up the cliff under the sights of the entrenched Bren gun. They had enjoyed their swim, they said. They lunched with Guy, slept, and bathed again, then drove back to their unit. It would surprise them, Guy supposed, when they found their pistols unloaded. They would never know they had been as near death that sunny first day of their holidays as on the dunes at Dunkirk. One untimely piece of horse-play and they might have been goners. 

Another series of jolts, buffer on buffer down the train. 

The brigade assembled and went under canvas at Brook Park. ‘Dispersal’ was the prevailing fashion now. Instead of the dressed lines which had given Penkirk the airs and some of the graces of a Victorian colour-print, there was now a haphazard litter of tents, haunting the shadows round the solitary oaks of the park, or shrinking in the immature surrounding coverts. A great taboo fell on the making of tracks. Special sentries were posted to shout at men approaching Brigade Headquarters across the lawn, directing them to creep through the shrubberies. 

The nature of Apthorpe’s ‘confidential business’ was soon revealed. He had been helping the quartermaster arrange an unexpected consignment of tropical uniforms. In the first two days at Brook Park the Halberdiers paraded company by company and were issued with sun helmets and ill-fitting khaki drill. Few looked anything but absurd. The garments were then put away and nothing was said about them. They aroused little curiosity. In the past months they had moved so suddenly, so often and so purposelessly, they had been alternately provided with, deprived of, and reprovided with so many different military objects, that speculation about their future had become purely facetious.

‘I suppose we’re going to reconquer Somaliland’ (which had just been precipitately abandoned), said de Souza. 

‘It’s just part of a fully equipped Halberdier’s normal kit,’ said Brent. 

However it produced one climax in the process which de Souza called ‘the Languishing of Leonard’. 

During their defence of the Cornish cliffs the Second Battalion had seen very little of one another. Now they were reunited and Guy found a sad change evident in Leonard. Mrs Leonard had planted herself and her baby in lodgings near him and she had worked hard on his divided loyalty. Bombs were beginning to fall in appreciable numbers. An invasion was confidently predicted for the middle of September. Mrs Leonard wanted a man about the house. When Leonard moved from the coast with his company, Mrs Leonard came too and settled in the village inn. 

She asked Guy to dinner and explained her predicament. 

‘It’s all right for you,’ she said. ‘You’re an old bachelor. You’ll make yourself very comfortable, I daresay, in India with native servants and all you want to eat. What’s going to happen to me, that’s what I’d like to know?’ 

‘I don’t think there’s any prospect of our going to India,’ said Guy. 

‘Then what’s Jim’s new hat for then?’ asked Mrs Leonard. ‘That’s an Indian hat, isn’t it? Don’t you tell me they’ve given him that hat and those size six shorts to wear here in the winter.’ 

‘It’s just part of a fully equipped Halberdier’s normal kit,’ said Guy. 

‘D’you believe that?’ 

‘No,’ said Guy. ‘Frankly, I don’t.’ 

‘Well then?’ said Mrs Leonard triumphantly. 

‘Daisy won’t understand it’s what a soldier’s wife has to put up with,’ said Leonard. He had said this often obviously. ‘I didn’t marry a soldier,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘If I’d known you were going to be a soldier I’d have married into the RAF.
Their
wives live comfortable and what’s more they’re the people who are winning the war. It says so on the wireless, doesn’t it? It isn’t as though it was only me; there’s the baby to think of.’

‘I don’t think that in case of invasion, you could expect to have Jim expressly detailed for the defence of your baby, you know, Mrs Leonard.’ 

‘I’d see he stayed around; anyway, he wouldn’t go surf bathing and lying about under palm trees and playing the ukulele.’ 

‘I don’t think those would be his duties if we went abroad.’

‘Oh come off the perch,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘I’ve asked you here to help. You’re in with the high-ups.’ 

‘Lots of men have young babies, too.’

‘But not my baby.’ 

‘Daisy, you’re being unreasonable. Do make her see sense Uncle.’ 

‘It isn’t as though the whole army was going abroad. Why should they pick on Jim?’ 

‘I suppose you
could
apply for transfer to barrack duties,’ said Guy at last. ‘There must be a lot of chaps there who’d be eager to come with us.’ 

‘I bet there would,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘It’s just evacuation that’s what it is, sending you off thousands of miles from the war, with bearers and sahibs and chota pegs.’ 

It was a sad little party. As. Leonard walked back to camp with Guy, he said: ‘It’s getting me down. I can’t leave Daisy in the state she’s in. Isn’t it true women sometimes go off the heads for a bit just after having a baby?’

‘So I’ve heard.’ 

‘Perhaps that’s the trouble with Daisy.’ 

Meanwhile the sun-helmets were laid aside and long, hot days were spent in biffing Brook House from every possible direction. 

Some days later Leonard met Guy and said gloomily: ‘I went to see the colonel this morning.’

‘Yes.’ 

‘About what Daisy has been saying.’

‘Yes?’

‘He was awfully sporting about it.’ 

‘He’s an awfully sporting man.’ 

‘He’s going to send my name in for transfer to the Training Depot. It may take some time, but he thinks it’ll go through.’

‘I hope your wife will feel relieved.’

‘Uncle, do you think I’m behaving pretty poorly?’

‘It’s not my business.’ 

‘I can see you do. Well, so do I.’ 

But he had not long in which to face whatever shame attached to his decision. That night, a warning-order arrived and everyone was sent on forty-eight hours embarkation leave. 

GUY
went for a day to Matchet. It was summer holidays for the school. He found his father busy with North and Hillard’s
Latin Prose
and a pale blue
Xenophon
‘brushing up’ for the coming term. 

‘I can’t read a word of it unseen,’ said Mr Crouchback almost gleefully. ‘I bet the little blighters will catch me out. They did last term again and again, but they were very decent about it.’ 

Guy returned a day early to see that everything was well with his company’s arrangements. Walking through the almost empty camp at dusk, he met the Brigadier. 

‘Crouchback,’ he said, peering. ‘Not a captain yet?’ 

‘No, sir.’ 

‘But you’ve got your company.’

They walked together some way. 

‘You’ve got the best command there is,’ said the Brigadier. ‘There’s nothing in life like leading a company in action. Next best thing is doing a job on your own. Everything else is just bumf and telephones.’ Under the trees, in the failing light, he was barely visible. ‘It’s not much of a show we’re going to. I’m not supposed to tell you where, so I shall. Place called Dakar. I’d never heard of it till they started sending me ‘Most Secret’ intelligence reports, mostly about ground-nuts. A French town in West Africa. Probably all boulevards and brothels if I know the French colonies. We’re in support. Worse really – we’re in support of the supporting brigade. They’re putting the Marines in before us, blast them. Anyway it’s all froggy business. They think they’ll get in without opposition. But it’ll help training. Sorry I told you. They’d court-martial me if they found out. I’m getting too old for courts martial.’ 

He turned away abruptly and disappeared into the woodland. 

Next day the move-order was issued to entrain for Liverpool. Leonard was left behind with the rear-party ‘pending posting’. No one except Guy and the colonel knew why. Most supposed him ill. He had been looking like a ghost for some time. 

Something of this kind had happened in Captain Truslove’s regiment. A showy polo-player named Congreve sent in his papers when they were under orders for foreign service. The colonel announced at mess: ‘Gentlemen, I must request that Captain Congreve’s name shall never again be mentioned in my presence.’ Congreve’s fiancée returned his ring. From colonel to drummer-boy all felt tainted and many of their subsequent acts of heroism were prompted by the wish to restore the regiment’s honour. (Not until the penultimate chapter did Congreve turn up again, elaborately disguised as an Afghan merchant with the keys of the Pathan fortress where Truslove himself awaited execution by torture.) But Guy had no shame about the defection of Leonard. It seemed, rather, as their train moved spasmodically towards Liverpool, that it was they who were deserting him. Their destination was not the Honolulu-Algiers-Quetta station of Mrs Leonard’s film-clouded imagination, but it was a warm, highly coloured, well-found place far from bombs and gas and famine and enemy occupation; far from the lightless concentration-camp which all Europe had suddenly become. 

Chaos in Liverpool. Quays and ships in absolute darkness. Bombs failing somewhere not far distant. Embarkation staff officers scanning nominal-rolls with dimmed torches. Guy and his company were ordered into one ship, ordered out again, stood-to on the dockside for an hour. An all-clear siren sounded and a few lamps glowed here and there. Embarkation officers who had gone to earth emerged and resumed their duties. At last, at dawn they numbly climbed on board and found their proper quarters. Guy saw, them bedded down and went in search of his cabin. 

This was in the first-class part of the ship, unchanged from peace time when it had been filled with affluent tourists. This was a chartered ship with the Merchant Marine crew. Already Goanese stewards were up and about in their freshly laundered white and red livery. They padded silently about their work, arranging ashtrays symmetrically in the lounges, drawing the curtains for another day. They were quite at peace. No one had told them about submarines and torpedoes.

But not all were at peace. Turning a corner in search of his cabin Guy found a kind of pugnacious dance being performed in and out of his cabin by Halberdier Glass and a Goanese of distinguished appearance – thin, elderly, with magnificent white moustaches spanning his tear-wet nut-brown face. 

‘Caught this black bastard in the very act, sir. Mucking about with your kit, sir.’ 

‘Please, sir, I am the cabin boy, sir. I do not know this rude soldier.’ 

‘That’s all right, Glass. He’s just doing his job. Now clear out both of you, I want to turn in.’ 

‘You aren’t surely going to have this native creeping round your quarters, sir?’ 

‘I am no native, sir. I am a Christian Portuguese boy. Christian mama, Christian papa, six Christian children, sir.’ 

He produced from his starched blouse a gold medal, strung round his neck, much worn with the long swing and plunge of the ship rubbing it year by year to and fro on his hairless dark chest. 

Guy’s heart suddenly opened towards him. Here was his own kin. He yearned to show the medal he wore, Gervase’s souvenir from Lourdes. There were men who would have done exactly that, better men than he; who would perhaps have said ‘Snap’ and drawn a true laugh from the sullen Halberdier and so have made true peace between them. 

But Guy, with all this in his mind to do, merely felt in his pocket for two half-crowns and said: ‘Here. Will this make things better?’ 

‘Oh yes, sir, thank you. Very much better, sir,’ and the Goanese turned and went on his way rejoicing a little, but not as a fellow man at peace; merely as a servant unexpectedly over-tipped. 

To Glass Guy said: ‘If I hear of you laying hands on the ship’s company again, I’ll send you to the guard room.’ 

‘Sir,’ said Glass, looking at Guy as though at Captain Congreve who let down the regiment. 

The men were given a ‘long lie’ that morning. At eleven o’clock Guy paraded his company on deck. An unusually large and varied breakfast – the normal third-class fare of the line – had dissipated the annoyances of the night. They were in good heart. He handed them over to their platoon commanders to check stores and equipment and went to explore. The Second Battalion had done better than the others, who were close packed in the ship moored next to them. They had their transport to themselves except for Brigade Headquarters and a medley of strangers – Free French liaison officers, Marine gunners, a naval beach-party, chaplains, an expert on tropical hygiene and the rest. A small smoking-room was labelled
OPERATIONAL PLANNING. OUT OF BOUNDS TO ALL RANKS
. 

Lying out in the stream might be descried the huge inelegant colourless bulk of an aircraft carrier. All contact with the shore was forbidden. Sentries stood at the gangways. Military police patrolled the quay. But the object of the expedition was not long kept secret for at midday an airman jauntily swinging a parcel charged ‘
Most Secret. By hand of officer only
’ allowed it to fall asunder as he approached his launch and a light breeze caught, bore up and scattered abroad some thousands of blue, white and red leaves printed with the slogan

FRANÇAIS DE DAKAR! 
Joignez-vous à nous pour délivrer la France! 
GENERAL DE GAULLE. 

No one, except one of the chaplains who was new to military life, seriously expected that these preparations would bring anything about. The Halberdiers had been too much shifted, exhorted and disappointed during recent weeks. They accepted as part of their normal day the series of orders and cancellations and mishaps. Shore leave was given and then stopped; censorship of letters was raised and reimposed; the ship cast off, fouled an anchor, returned to the quayside; the stores were disembarked and re-embarked in ‘tactical order’. And then quite suddenly one afternoon, they sailed. The last newspaper to come aboard told of heavier air-raids. De Souza called their transport ‘the refugee ship’.

It seemed barely possible that they would not turn back but on they steamed into the Atlantic until they reached a rendezvous where the whole wide circle of grey water was filled with shipping of every size from the carrier and the battleship
Barham
, to a little vessel named
Belgravia
, which was reputed to carry champagne and bath-salts and other comforts for the garrison of Dakar. Then the whole convoy altered course and sailed south, destroyers racing round them like terriers, an occasional, friendly aeroplane swooping overhead and gallant little
Belgravia
wallowing on behind. 

They practised doubling to ‘action stations’ twice a day. They carried ‘Mae West’ life-belts wherever they went. But they took their tone from the smooth seas and the Goanese stewards who tinkled their musical gongs up and down the carpeted passages. All was peaceful and when the cruiser
Fiji
was torpedoed in full sight of them a mile or two ahead, and all the naval detachment became busy with depth-charges, the incident barely disturbed their Sunday afternoon repose. 

Dunn and his signalmen had reappeared and were on board with Brigade Headquarters, but Apthorpe ignored them, perhaps never was aware of their presence, so deep were his colloquies with the specialist on tropical medicine. The men did Physical Training and boxed and listened to lectures about Dakar and General de Gaulle and malaria and the importance of keeping clear of native women; they lay about on the forward deck and in the evenings the chaplains organized concerts for them. 

Brigadier Ritchie-Hook, alone, was unhappy. His brigade had a minor and conditional role. It was thought that the Free French would find the town beflagged for them. The only opposition expected was from the battleship
Richelieu
. This the Royal Marines and a unit of unknown character called a commando would deal with. The Halberdiers might not land at all; if they did it would be for ‘cleaning up’ and relieving the Marines on guard duty. Little biffing. In his chagrin he quarrelled with the ship’s captain and was ordered off the bridge. He prowled about the decks alone, sometimes carrying a weapon like a hedging implement which he had found valuable in the previous war. 

Presently the heat grew oppressive, the air stagnant and misty. There was an odd smell, identified as that of groundnuts, borne to them from the near but invisible coast. And word went round that they were at their destination. The Free French were said to be in parley with their enslaved compatriots. There was some firing somewhere in the mist. Then the convoy withdrew out of range and closed in. Launches went to and fro among the ships. A conference was held on the flagship from which Brigadier Ritchie-Hook returned grinning. He addressed the battalion, telling them that an opposed landing would take place next day, then went to the transport carrying his other battalions and gave them the stirring news. Maps were issued. The officers sat up all night studying their beaches, boundaries, second and third waves of advance. During the night the ships moved near inland and dawn disclosed a grey line of African coast across the steamy water. The battalion stood to, at their bomb-stations, bulging with ammunition and emergency rations. Hours passed. There was heavy firing ahead and a rumour that
Barham
was holed. A little Unfree French aeroplane droned out of the clouds and dropped a bomb very near them. The Brigadier was back on the bridge, on the best of terms with the captain. Then the convoy steamed out of range once more and at sundown another conference was called. The Brigadier returned in a rage and called the officers together. 

‘Gentlemen, it’s all off. We are merely awaiting confirmation from the War Cabinet to withdraw. I’m sorry. Tell your men and keep their spirit up.’ 

There was little need for this order. Surprisingly a spirit of boisterous fun suddenly possessed the ship: Everyone had been a little more apprehensive than he had shown about the opposed landing. Troop decks and mess danced and skylarked. 

Immediately after dinner Guy was called to the room marked ‘Out of Bounds to all Ranks’. 

He found the Brigadier, the captain and Colonel Tickeridge all looking gleeful and curiously naughty. The Brigadier said: ‘We are going to have a little bit of very unofficial fun. Are you interested?’ 

The question was so unexpected that Guy made no guess at the meaning and simply said: ‘Yes, sir.’

‘We tossed up between the companies. Yours won. Can you find a dozen good men for a reconnaissance patrol?’

‘Yes, sir.’ 

‘And a suitable officer to lead them?’ 

‘Can I go myself, sir?’ he said to Colonel Tickeridge.

This was true Truslove-style. 

‘Yes. Go off now and warn the men to be ready in an hour. Tell them it’s an extra guard. Then come back here with a map and get your orders.’ 

When Guy returned he found the conspirators very cheerful. 

‘I’ve been having a little disagreement with the Force Commander,’ said Ritchie-Hook. ‘There was some discrepancy between the naval and military intelligence about Beach A. Got it marked?’ 

‘Yes, sir.’ 

‘In the final plan it was decided to leave Beach A alone. Some damn fool had reported it wired and generally impracticable. My belief is that it’s quite open. I won’t go into the reasons. But you can see for yourself that if we got ashore on Beach A we could have taken the frogs in the rear. They had some damn fool photographs and pretended to see wire in them and got windy. I saw no wire. The Force Commander said some offensive things about two eyes being better than one with a stereoscope. The discussion got a bit heated. The operation is cancelled and we’ve all been made to look silly, but I’d just like to make my point with the Force Commander. So I am sending a patrol ashore just to make certain.’ 

‘Yes, sir.’ 

‘Very well, that is the intention of the operation. If you find the place wired or get shot at come back quickly and we will say no more about it. If it’s open, as I think it is, you might bring back some little souvenir that I can send the Force Commander. He’s a suspicious fellow. Any little thing that will make him feel foolish – a coco-nut or something like that. We can’t use the naval landing craft but the Captain here has played up like a sportsman and is lending a launch for the trip. Well, I’m turning in now. I shall be glad to hear your report in the morning. Settle the tactical details with your C.O.’