The Hour of The Donkey Read online

  Prologue

  Saturday, 10 May 1940, to Tuesday, 20 May

  ‘ON THE MORNING of Saturday, 10 May 1940, at 5.35, the German Army invaded the Low Countries, ending the “Phoney War” which had lasted in Western Europe since the outbreak of hostilities the previous September.

  ‘Holland was overwhelmed before any help could reach her, but as in 1914, the Allies advanced hurriedly into Belgium, the French 1st Army and the British Expeditionary Force coming up alongside the Belgian Army on the line of the River Dyle in an attempt to protect Antwerp and Brussels.

  ‘In fact, nothing could have suited the Germans better, for it was to the south, into France herself, that their decisive thrust was aimed. Having negotiated the supposedly impassable terrain of the Ardennes they burst like a thunderbolt on to the banks of the River Meuse in the region of Sedan on 13 May. Without waiting to concentrate their forces (as military prudence dictated), they at once launched a daring assault on the French defences across the river; and, having smashed through those defences, they then departed further from the rules with an act of even greater daring: instead of securing their breakthrough by attacking the broken flanks of the French line their armoured forces drove straight forward into France on a narrow front.

  ‘Just as treason never profits because when it does so it ceases to be treason, so what seemed like military fool-hardiness was transformed by success into military genius: the eruption of Hannibal’s elephants out of the snowbound Alpine passes on to the plains of Northern Italy was scarcely a greater shock than the appearance of German tanks in the open country of Northern France. Preceded by the screaming dive-bombers which acted as their artillery—and also by equally unnerving rumours of their numbers and invincibility—these tanks now advanced with astonishing rapidity. While the cream of the Anglo-French armies were still closely engaged deep in Belgium, the German armoured divisions to the south did not so much drive back the French frontier defenders as simply leave them behind.

  ‘Nor, to complete the surprise, did the Germans then seek either to threaten Paris or to swing eastwards to take the great defensive works of the Maginot Line in the rear. Herding thousands of panic-stricken refugees ahead of them to choke the roads and further demoralize Allied counsels, they swept irresistibly westwards, towards the English Channel.

  ‘By the morning of Tuesday, 20 May, their exact whereabouts were unknown to the Allied commanders. In fact they had already—and incredibly—passed the line of the Canal du Nord, between Cambrai and Peronne. All that lay between them and the sea, some sixty miles distant, was a rolling peaceful countryside which, although strongly garrisoned by the dead of the 1914-18 War, was now only weakly held by the living soldiers of a handful of unprepared and unsuspecting British lines-of-communication units.’

  —from The Dunkirk Miracle, by Sir Frederick Clinton

  (Gollancz, 1959)

  The Hour

  I

  ‘MAD,’ MURMURED Captain Willis at the Adjutant’s departing back. ‘Quite mad.’

  Everyone at the breakfast table pretended to take no notice, except Captain Henry Bastable, who disliked Captain Willis almost as much as he did Hitler.

  ‘Quite mad’. Now that the Adjutant was out of earshot Willis spoke louder. ‘Probably certifiably mad, too.’

  One day, when the war had been won and the washing hung on the Siegfried Line, and the Prince Regent’s Own South Downs Fusiliers returned to its proper and more agreeable amateur status, there was going to be a new breakfast rule at the annual Territorial Army camp, Bastable vowed silently to himself: to the existing Officers will not talk shop, it would add and at breakfast officers will not talk at all.

  ‘Mad as a bloody hatter,’ said Willis, more loudly still.

  It was wrong to hope that Willis would be the first PRO battle casualty of the Second World War. And anyway, Willis would probably bear a charmed life, he was that sort of person. So that new rule would be needed to shut him up. But in the meanwhile, the best Bastable could do was to glower at him over his crumpled copy of The Times, and grunt disapprovingly in the hope that Major Tetley-Robinson would notice, and take the appropriate action.

  ‘Drill!’ exclaimed Willis, in a voice no one could pretend to fail to hear.

  ‘Eh?’ Major Tetley-Robinson looked up for a moment from the piece of bread which he had been examining, but then looked down again at it. ‘You know, we’ll never get decent toast from this stuff, the composition’s all wrong. We’ll have to find a way of baking our own.’

  ‘I said “drill”,’ said Willis clearly. ‘”Drill”.’

  ‘Eh?’ Major Tetley-Robinson looked up again, but this time at Lieutenant Davidson. ‘No more of this damn Froggie stuff, Dickie —I won’t have it! It’s all crust and air, and you can’t make toast out of crust and air.’ He switched the look to Willis at last. ‘Talking shop, Wimpy? Or did I mishear you, eh?’

  Bastable was disappointed to observe that Tetley-Robinson was trying to let Willis off. Normally the Major could be relied on to savage Willis at every opportunity, his dislike of the man dating from the discovery that Willis’s fluent French stemmed from the possession of a French grandmother, and from Alsace moreover, which was dangerously close to the German frontier. ‘Fellow doesn’t look like an Alsatian—more like a cross between a greyhound and a rat,’ the Major had observed sotto voce on receiving this intelligence. ‘Probably runs like a greyhound too.’

  But now the prospect of action appeared to have mellowed this enmity, for the Major was regarding Wimpy with an expression bordering on tolerance.

  Willis returned the look obstinately. ‘No. I said “drill”. My company—‘

  ‘I heard.’ The Major lifted his chin and looked down his nose at Willis. ‘Shop—and you know the rule.’ He leaned back in his chair and half-turned towards the mess waiter without taking his eyes off Willis. ‘Higgins—fetch Captain Willis’s steel helmet.’

  Willis licked his lips. ‘My company—‘

  ‘Not until you’re wearing your steel helmet, if you please, Wimpy,’ snapped the Major. ‘Then you can talk as much as you like, if you can find anyone to listen to you …’ He pointed down the table. ‘Pass me the marmalade, will you, Bastable?’

  Bastable’s blossoming joy turned instantly into dismay. The pot of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade in front of him was his own, his very own, his private pot and his only pot—and possibly the only pot in the whole British Expeditionary Force, if not the only pot in France. And also a bitter-sweet reminder of his mother, who had given it to him.

  But Major Tetley-Robinson outranked Mother in this company, and Bastable watched helplessly as the Major spooned out a huge dollop of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade on to his plate, and proceeded to consume it in the proportion of three parts of marmalade to one of French bread.

  Fusilier Higgins reappeared with the steel helmet, which he offered rather apologetically to Captain Willis. But to Bastable’s surprise, rather than bow to the pressure of the mess rule, Willis put it on his head and returned to the fray.

  ‘Drill—‘ he began.

  ‘Hah!’ Major Tetley-Robinson assumed an inquiring expression. ‘Very well then, Wimpy … since you choose to attire yourself so strangely at table … “drill”?’

  Willis set his jaw. ‘My company—what there is of it—is under orders to drill this morning, Charlie—‘ the use of the Christian name was permitted, but it always made the Major wince when Willis used it, ‘—orders from the CO, relayed by the Adjutant just now, Charlie!’

  ‘So I gathered.’

  ‘It’s bloody mad—drill, Charlie!’

  ‘Nothing wrong with drill, my dear chap. When you can fight as well as the Guards, then you can stop drilling, I
always say—and your fellows have become a shower, an absolute shower. Worse than Bastable’s there, even.’ Major Tetley-Robinson nodded at Bastable, noticed the marmalade pot again, and helped himself to another spoonful. ‘Apart from which, drill used to be a PRO speciality—we’ve always drilled like regulars, not territorials. And … if you ask me, that’s why we’ve been sent out here, to France, when other chaps are still kicking their heels in Blighty. Because a smart soldier is a good soldier—‘

  Bastable raised his copy of The Times quickly to cut off the view. It wasn’t that he disagreed with the Major, but he couldn’t bear to see the Major finish his marmalade.

  ‘—team-work, self-confidence … not having to think, because one already knows—“

  Bastable tried to concentrate on his Times. It was nearly a week old, and he had already been through it twice, from cover to cover, so now he was rationing himself to one column per breakfast, nodding or shaking his head in exactly the same places and greeting remembered names like old friends.

  ‘—and although most territorial units are downright slovenly, we’ve always, been different—‘

  Major Tetley-Robinson was moving inexorably into the History and Traditions of the Regiment of which he was the acknowledged custodian.

  ‘—we do not bear the royal honour of “The Prince Regent’s Own” for nothing—‘

  He was coming to the famous parade of 1801, when the Regent had reviewed the new Regiment in the skin-tight uniforms of his own design—red coats with primrose-yellow facings and dove-grey pantaloons, snowy pipe-clay and glittering brass and leather; the only pity was that the Prince had subsequently taken his custom to Brighton, which was a rather vulgar town, in preference to Captain Bastable’s own native Eastbourne; but, to its credit, the regiment had done its best to correct that aberration in later years.

  ‘—this lanyard, which every man wears as of right as a PRO— ‘the primrose-yellow-and-dove-grey lanyard always formed the peroration of the Major’s pep talk ‘—is the symbol of his pride in his regiment and in himself for being privileged to belong to it. Which, as an officer of the regiment, you ought to know, Wimpy, by God!’

  ‘But I do know that, Charlie,’ protested Captain Willis wearily. ‘Prinnie granted it to us on account of the exceptionally stylish cut of our uniforms—it wasn’t a battle honour, it was a fashion honour, for heaven’s sake.’

  Tetley-Robinson raised an admonitory finger. ‘But we wore that lanyard at the Somme, man—and at Gommecourt and Ginchy and the Transloy Ridges … aye, and on the Scarpe and Tadpole Copse and Picardy and the Sambre! By God, man! Where’s your sense of history?’

  ‘Yes, I do know—‘ Captain Willis still seemed set on holding his indefensible salient, ‘—but—‘

  ‘And they tried to take it away from us, too … Said it identified us—Huh! “So much the better!” says the Colonel. “Let the Hun know what he’s in for!” Wrote to the Colonel-in-Chief, and he wrote to the King, who happened to be a relative of his in a manner of speaking. So that was the last we heard of that—after we returned their damn bit of paper marked “Kindly refer all future correspondence on this subject to His Majesty the King-Emperor”—that settled their little hash.’

  ‘Yes, Charlie, I know—‘

  ‘So this lanyard means that we’re different, Wimpy—and don’t you ever forget it.’

  ‘I won’t, Charlie—I promise you faithfully that I won’t.’ Captain Willis; drew a deep breath and looked up and down the table presumably in the hope of finding a little moral support somewhere, and found none. ‘But, you know, in a way that is precisely the point I am trying to make. I mean … drill… at a time like this. That’s not just different, that’s a clear case of deus quos vult perdere, dementat prius.’

  ‘What’s that?’ At the furthest end of the table Major Audley roused himself from the copy of The Field in which he had hitherto been buried. Of all the officers in the regiment, Major Audley was usually the most elegantly silent. At the same time, nevertheless, he had established a reputation for possessing vast knowledge, both military and general, of the sort which could only be acquired by a perfect balance of practical experience, expensive education and natural-born intelligence.

  ‘I said deus quos—‘ began Captain Willis.

  ‘Heard you. Euripides, Joshua Barnes’s translation is the best one.’

  It didn’t surprise Captain Bastable that major Audley could instantly identify Captain Willis’s Latin quotation, which his own eight agonized years of Latin had left him incapable of translating. Indeed, it surprised him less than the quotation itself, though as a former schoolmaster Captain Willis was full of quotations, and as he had been a classics master, most of them were in Latin or Greek, and all of them might just as well have been in Swahili for any sense Captain Bastable could make of them. (It was an added coincidence, and the only virtue he had yet found in Willis, that the man had numbered Major Audley’s only son amongst his pupils, and had spoken glowingly of the boy’s intellectual capacity; but that had merely confirmed Captain Bastable’s views on heredity—like father, like son, was the natural order of things; he himself, and the success and prosperity of Bastable’s of Eastbourne, was proof of that.)

  Major Audley squinted down the breakfast table. That pot … Cooper’s?’ he enquired.

  ‘It is,’ said Major Tetley-Robinson obsequiously. ‘Help yourself, Nigel. Here, Bastable—push it on down. There’s still a good scraping in it, round the sides.’

  Major Audley scrutinized the faces round the table. ‘Whose pot?’ he enquired.

  Bastable examined the crumbs of bread on his plate. It was certainly true that the mess cook’s attempts to turn French bread into toast had been disastrous. But the bread itself, although strange and foreign, was quite tasty when un-toasted. It seemed to him (although he knew he would never dare advance such a suggestion in public) that it was a mistake to attempt to convert French food into English food: when in Rome—even though the thought smacked of Captain Willis—it would be more sensible to eat as the Romans did. Or in this case the French, deplorable people though they were in most other respects.

  ‘Yours, Bastable?’ asked Major Audley.

  Bastable blushed to the roots of his hair: he could literally feel the blush suffuse his face. But he forced himself to look Major Audley in the eye because he did not wish the Major to think him a coward. ‘Do please help yourself, Nigel,’ he croaked, wondering only for a moment how Major Audley had identified him from the rest. But of course. Major Audley had identified him because Major Audley was Major Audley. The question contained its own answer, simply.

  ‘Thank you, Bastable.’ Major Audley applied the last of the marmalade to his bread. ‘Since I assume the rest of you gentlemen have consumed Bastable’s delicacy, then his drinks in the mess tonight are on you.’ He lifted the piece of bread in Bastable’s direction. ‘Meanwhile… your continued health, Bastable … the condemned man eats his hearty breakfast.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Captain Willis, with immense feeling, as though Major Audley had vindicated his protest. ‘Precisely!’

  Bastable experienced an indigestible mixture of conflicting emotions. Major Audley had acknowledged his existence, and in a most generous and gentlemanly fashion; yet he had done so in more words than were seemly, at least for him; and (what was worse) there had definitely been something in those words—a mere suggestion, perhaps, but an undoubted suggestion nevertheless—that his inclination was to support Captain Willis against Major Tetley-Robinson.

  Bastable frowned at his plate again. Beyond the fact that Willis didn’t want to drill his men he wasn’t at all sure what it was which was so aggravating the ex-schoolmaster. The majority of the recent replacements were little better than civilians in uniform, notwithstanding their yellow-and-grey lanyards, and drill was something they could do straight away which at least might make them feel more like soldiers.

  He clenched his fists under the table and nerved himself to speak.


  ‘What is it that you want to do, Willis?’ He couldn’t bring himself to give the man the inexplicable nickname which had attached itself to him. Everybody in the mess had either a Christian name or a nickname to distinguish him socially from the formal military world of ‘sirs’ and ‘misters’ outside—everybody, that was, except himself, who had somehow become frozen into ‘Bastable’ in the mess (and usually the more insulting variant rhyming with barstard); which was a source of constant, nagging, irritating, bewildering and unfair pain to him. ‘What’s mad about drill, man?’

  Captain Willis looked at him in surprise, as though he hadn’t expected the faculty of speech in Captain Barstable, but before he could reveal his heart’s desire the burly figure of the battalion medical officer filled the doorway beside him.

  ‘I don’t know what you want to do, Wimpy—and frankly I couldn’t care less,’ said Captain Saunders. ‘But I want my breakfast—Steward! Ham and eggs—three eggs—and don’t toast the bread … And send across to the café over the road for a large pot of coffee on the double—and say It’s for “M’sieur le médicin”, don’t forget that—a large pot!’

  Captain Willis chuckled dryly. ‘Trust the medical profession! I take it you have been feathering your nest with the locals, Doc? Touching up les jeunes demoiselles as part of the Anglo-French entente cordiale? ‘

  Captain Saunders reached across the table and tore a six-inch hunk from one of the long French loaves. ‘I have delivered a French baby—male. “Class of 1940” I suppose they’d call the poor little devil, when they finally call him up … in 1958 which they probably will.’ He ate a piece of bread from the hunk, without benefit of butter. ‘And the Germans are across the Somme, at Peronne.’

  For a moment no one at the table spoke, or even moved. The medical officer’s words seemed to hang in the air, like an unthinkable wisp of smoke over a dry cornfield on a still day.

  ‘What?’ said Major Tetley-Robinson.

  ‘Where?’ said Captain Willis.