The Hour of The Donkey Read online

  ‘For Christ’s sake, old man—do listen to what I’m telling you,’ said Captain Willis. ‘The CO has agreed that we should motor over to the Mendips and try and pick up some armour-piercing ammo for the Boys rifles. Nigel Audley had to have a blinding row with the old buffer, but—thank God!—he’s a bit leery of Nigel ever since he discovered that Nigel’s a friend of the CIG’s brother, or sister or someone. And when we’re there I’m damn well going to pick up some gun-cotton and fuses to mine these bloody bridges of ours—the CO doesn’t know that, but what he doesn’t know won’t worry him. And my CSM reckons he knows how best to do the job—we’ve only got to sling the charges under the keystone of the main arch and push it upwards, and then the whole caboodle’ll fall down, he says—are you listening, old boy?’

  ‘Yes.’ said Captain Bastable shortly. ‘I’ve looked at my bridge.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘It’s pretty solid.’ Captain Bastable came to himself with a jolt. ‘Why is the CO sending two company commanders to get this ammunition? I don’t know about you, Willis—but I’ve got a job of work to do here.’ Bastable pointed to the indefensible bridge.

  ‘Don’t ask me, old boy.’ Willis shrugged. ‘He’s sending me because I asked for the stuff, and I can speak French. But he doesn’t trust me an inch, so maybe you’ve got to keep an eye on me. Or maybe Tetley-Robinson thinks we’ll lose our way and he’ll never see the pair of us again—maybe he thinks the Jerries will dive-bomb us both and blow us to kingdom come—God knows what goes on between Tetley-Robinson’s protuberant ears! Probably very little, judging by the state of the Prince Regent’s Own … But the sooner we’re on our way, the better. Because I want to be snug in my billet again tonight, not fumbling around French roads in the dark.’

  Bastable drew a deep breath. Ten months in the army had taught him that what could not be avoided was best done as quickly as possible—Willis was right there.

  ‘I give you best over the goat, though,’ said Willis with a sudden disarming smile. ‘It was a damn good shot—and you were quite right to give it to your chaps. It’ll buck them up no end, even though they’ll hate eating it—it’ll be tough as old boots.’

  Bastable frowned. ‘You’ve eaten goat?’

  ‘Oh, yes. North African goat—Serbian goat—Greek goat. Greek was the best, that was merely awful … Kid is delicious, but that was an aged, stringy old nannie you decapitated. I only wanted to baffle Tetley-Robinson’s dentures with it—rather naughty of me, I admit! But your chaps’ll think the world of you for giving it to ‘em … Even if they don’t like it they’ll give you the credit for foisting it on them—they’ll think you’re a crafty blighter if they don’t credit you with generosity. You’ll win either way, I tell you.’

  This was a world of complicated motives and machinations which Bastable had never considered. He believed the British soldier to be a simple soul, basically. The only difference between running C Company and Bastable’s of Eastbourne was—equally basically—that it was frequently necessary to turn a blind eye on the company’s attempts to ‘annexe’ material belonging to other companies, which could be safely left to the senior NCOs to discourage whereas the slightest evidence of dishonesty at Bastable’s resulted in instant dismissal without a reference.

  Nevertheless, Captain Willis’s approval was oddly —almost inexplicably—heartening. And the prospect of a trip in the only Bren carrier salvaged from the chaos of Boulogne was not without its attractions, particularly as there was a fair chance of finding out more about the course of the battle from the Mendips than the beak-nosed staff brigadier had known, or been willing to reveal.

  There was some essential work to be done first, however; and young Chichester was still conveniently to hand to do it, having been hovering in the background all this time, pretending not to listen to the affairs of his elders and seniors.

  ‘Mr Chichester —‘ the boy tautened up attentively, like a gun-dog called by its master, ‘—I’ve a job for you!’

  ‘Sir!’ Chichester almost saluted, and quite suddenly Bas table felt himself to be enormously older and senior, even if young Chichester did know a great deal more about the Boys anti-tank rifle.

  ‘What’s your Christian name, Chichester?’

  ‘My—Christopher, sir. Christopher Chichester … Or Chris, sir, for short. Sir.’

  ‘Chris … Well, our rule is formality in front of the other ranks and Christian names among ourselves and in the mess, Chris. And my name is Henry—‘ Just as suddenly Bastable knew that he had always disliked the name ‘Henry’, but had never been able to do anything about it—he had always been ‘Henry’ at home, and ‘Bastable’ at school. And—damn and blast it!—Barstable in the Prince Regent’s Own. But now, with this tall unfledged youth, he had a chance to start afresh. He had always wanted to be called ‘Ronald’, after Ronald Colman, who had always seemed to him the epitome of everything an English gentleman should be, and at least his carefully-trimmed moustache, neither too little nor too much, was authentic Ronald Comar. But he could not give himself a name which was not on his birth certificate.

  ‘Henry, sir,’ said Christopher—Chris—Chichester, with a look in his periwinkle-blue eyes which Captain Bastable had never seen before. It was—it was an adoring gun-dog look … except that Captain Bastable knew he had never looked into the eyes of an adoring gun-dog. In fact, that poor bloody white goat, minding its own business, munching its coarse French grass on its hillside four hundred yards away, was the first and only thing Captain Bastable had ever killed in anger.

  Fraud, fraud, fraud! Incompetent fraud!

  But not Henry. Not Henry Barstable. Never again Henry Bastable!

  . ‘Harry,’ said Captain Bastable. ‘My friends call me “Harry”, Chris.’

  ‘Harry.’ Second-Lieutenant Christopher Chichester pronounced the name as though it frightened him. ‘Yes —Harry.’

  ‘I never knew that,’ said Captain Willis. ‘Harry?’

  ‘Well, you know it now, Captain Willis,’ said Captain Bastable. ‘Now, Chris… I want you to go to Mr Waterworth—Lieutenant Waterworth—who is two i/c of the company, and tell him that the bridge is untenable … You’ll find him upstream, by the old watermill, with his platoon… Tell him to reconnoitre the trees on the ridge—we’ll have to defend the ridge first, whatever happens. And until I get back with the Boys ammunition the mortar section must cover the bridge, with PSM Gill’s platoon—do you understand that … Chris?’

  ‘Yes—Harry.’ Chichester nodded. ‘Understood.’

  ‘Off you go then.’ Captain Bastable smiled fraudulently. ‘Now, Captain Willis—where’s our carrier?’

  ‘”Wimpy” to my friends,’ said Captain Willis amiably. ‘Back in the Classical Sixth it was “Willy”—not to my face, of course … But now it’s “Wimpy”—thanks to Major Tetley-Robinson … Harry, old boy.’

  Captain Bastable could think of no reply to that.

  ‘And we haven’t got the carrier,’ added Captain Willis apologetically. ‘Major Tetley-Robinson would never give me the carrier… We’ve got the Austin Seven—with Fusilier Evans as driver—“Batty” Evans, as the most unkindest cut of all!’

  III

  OF ALL THE VEHICLES Captain Bastable had ever seen, the Prince Regent’s Own Austin Seven was the least military-looking.

  He could remember noting scornfully back in England that some less-favoured formations of the British Army had had to make do with transport which betrayed its recent and unsuitable civilian origin; and since arriving in France, on the one short expedition he had conducted beyond the immediate environs of Colembert to superintend the recovery of a broken-down ration truck, he had seem some French Army lorries which looked not so much as though they had survived the First Marne in 1914 as that they had been commandeered before that by Noah to victual the Ark.

  Yet the least warlike of those vehicles seemed positively aggressive in comparison with the Austin Seven, which its hurried coating of khaki-dra
b paint somehow rendered even more pathetic and unmilitary.

  Indeed, in the old halcyon days of less than a week ago, the Prince Regent’s Own would have rejected such an addition to its MT as unbecoming to the battalion’s dignity. But Folkestone had changed all that, and beggars who had arrived at Boulogne had ceased to be choosers: DPT 912 (its rear number plate was still readable under the khaki coating) had been scooped up with the rest of Old Mother Riley’s relics, and was now judged quite good enough for two company commanders on a mission of gravity.

  The trouble now, however, was not so much DPT 912 (which, to be honest, belied its appearance with a mechanical reliability not possessed by some of the other more imposing-looking relics), but its driver.

  OFFICERS WILL NOT DRIVE was a strict Prince Regent’s Own order, positively not to be disobeyed, ostensibly to free those officers for more important duties, but actually to prevent them killing themselves prematurely, rather than their men.

  The defect of this order was personified in the person of Fusilier Evans, however.

  It was not that Fusilier Evans was, like DPT 912, either pathetic or unwarlike; on the contrary, he was built like a steam traction-engine and aggressive with it. In repose he resembled nothing so much as King Kong with a yellow-and-grey lanyard; in simulated action his prowess with the bayonet on sandbags representing Germans was so destructive that he had been excused further bayonet-practice (his standard of musketry was correspondingly appalling; he had never been known to hit a target, either his own or anyone else’s; his natural weapon, according to his company commander—who was mercifully Captain Willis, and not Captain Bastable—was any smashing, crushing and skewering instrument from the Wars of the Roses); in drink,—and there had been three memorable occasions when Fusilier Evans had been officially ‘in drink’, which were part of battalion legend—he was the terror of the Regimental Police, who on the last occasion had deliberately found pressing duties elsewhere, so the legend had it; he was in fact only amenable to Captain Willis, who played the part of Fay Wray to Evans’s King Kong, controlling him by some strange personal magnetism possessed by no one else.

  In spite of all this, and particularly in spite of his manifest inability to drive any sort of vehicle. Fusilier Evans—‘Batty’ Evans to those who knew him—had become a driver. And now, because of Tetley-Robinson’s warped sense of humour, he was their driver.

  Lord Austin and his Birmingham engineers had never designed the little car to accommodate the British Army. Even a normally-developed British soldier found it difficult to enter the Seven when in light marching order, and sitting down in it wearing a light pack, water-bottle and bayonet was quite impossible; such soldiers would have been forced to remove their equipment before entering, and it was no surprise to Bastable that he had to share the back seat with three sets of ammunition pouches, small packs, water bottles, and a bayonet and rifle belonging to the driver; which, with his own and Captain Willis’s Webley revolvers and the packed lunches provided by the mess corporal, did not leave a lot of room for him.

  But fitting Fusilier ‘Batty’ Evans into the driver’s seat, even after he had been stripped clown to his unadorned battle-dress, was something different, and much more difficult; it could only be done by reducing the man to a constricted, almost crouching posture, with his knees jammed against the steering wheel and his face thrust down and forward towards the windscreen in a position which severely limited both his vision and his control of the vehicle.

  Captain Willis circled the little car before climbing into the relative comfort of the front passenger’s seat.

  ‘If only you were a bit bigger, Batty,’ he murmured, speaking more to himself than to anyone else, ‘we could open the sun roof and you could see out of the top. But you aren’t quite big enough … so you’ll just have to do as I tell you, right?’

  ‘Sir!’ said Batty, in his inappropriate falsetto.

  ‘So when I say “Slow down”, you come down to five miles an hour—that’s about double-time … understood?’

  ‘Sir!’ squeaked Elatty.

  ‘And when I say “Stop!” you jam the brakes on. And if you don’t watch out bloody quick then you’ll squash your face on the windscreen—understood?’

  Batty grinned amiably at his company commander. His face, thought Bastable, already looked as if it had been continuously and brutally crushed against a succession of windscreens, if not something harder.

  ‘Sir!’ The squeak cracked into hoarseness, which seemed to indicate that Batty regarded both the order and the advice as something of a joke.

  ‘Right. Maximum speed—thirty miles an hour when the road is clear. When any other vehicle approaches… and that includes horse-drawn vehicles and motor-cyclists and pedal-cyclists—understood?—Fifteen miles an hour. And also fifteen miles an hour at any corner where you don’t have a clear view of oncoming traffic—understood?’

  ‘Sir!’ Batty grasped the wheel in his huge hands as though he planned to rip it from the steering column.

  ‘I mean that, Batty,’ said Captain Willis mildly. ‘I shall be watching the speedometer—‘ he reached across and tapped the dial,’—and if you go faster than that… I shall be very annoyed.’

  Batty looked down at the speedometer in surprise, like a man who had discovered a revolutionary innovation which placed a new and unfair responsibility on him. ‘Sir?’

  Captain Willis sighed. ‘I shall say “slower” or “faster”, Batty. Just don’t take your eyes off the road in front for a moment—not for a moment. Don’t worry about your speed … just do as I say—right?’

  ‘Sir!’ Batty sounded much happier.

  ‘Right-o, then! You know the way to the crossroads —you’ve been there twice with Sar-Major Brotherton. It’s straight ahead, then turn right at the crossroads on the main road. And then five miles straight on, and we’re there. Right?’

  ‘Sir!’ Batty peered ahead uncertainly.

  Captain Willis swallowed nervously, and Captain Bastable remembered that Fay Wray had never really been comfortable with King Kong.

  ‘Very well. Then off we go—start the engine and try to engage the gear quietly, there’s a good fellow.’ Willis’s voice was beautifully steady. ‘Slowly through the town, now.’

  The gears crashed and the little car shuddered. And then began to move forward in a series of jerks.

  Captain Bastable observed several grinning fusiliers carrying sandbags towards the Mairie, which because of its cellars had been appropriated partially by Captain Saunders as the Battalion Aid Post. So far the only casualties had been mumps … and road injuries, he recalled uneasily.

  DPT 912 began to advance more smoothly—and also much faster. Another memorable phrase he had read somewhere popped inappropriately into his mind: faced with the prospect of sexual relations with her husband, Queen Victoria had allegedly lain back on her feather mattress and thought of England. At the time he had read it, it had occurred to him that she ought to have thought of the whole British Empire, rather than just England. But for now, England would have to be enough.

  ‘Slower,’ said Captain Willis.

  ‘More smoothly’ was relative. The streets of Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts were composed of pavé, a French road material inferior in smoothness to good British asphalt. So not all the juddering was due to Batty’s incapacity. ‘Good—well done, Batty,’ said Willis encouragingly.

  Captain Bastable decided to open his eyes again, and think of other things than England. After all, the northern exit from Colemberl was as straight as a Roman road, and if Batty could avoid the line of trees which shaded it—Major Audley’s trees, all ready for felling as an anti-tank obstacle—then they would soon be in open country.

  There were the trees—slipping by at double-time.

  And there were B Company’s defences—there was even a momentary glimpse of the slender barrel of a Boys rifle, poking out of a camouflaged firing position that covered the road and the open fields which made the northern appro
ach to the town so much more defensible than C Company’s bridge-and-ridge.

  ‘Faster,’ ordered Captain Willis. ‘That’s enough—hold her at that, Batty!’

  Captain Bastable settled himself among the weapons and equipment and packed lunches.

  Willis half-turned towards him, while keeping one eye on the open road ahead. ‘I know a bit more about those staff types at the Orders Group now, Harry—it was bloody brilliant, the way Nigel put down that hawk-nosed swine, don’t you think?’

  Captain Bastable—Harry Bastable—grunted to that. It wasn’t a regimental officer’s place to bait staff officers, but Nigel Audley had guts, undeniably.

  ‘Reconnaissance from GHQ in Arras, Dickie Davidson told me. He thinks things are really beginning to move now,’ nodded Willis. ‘I should guess we’re building up a major striking force there, for the big counter-attack. They’ll let the Germans stick their necks out, somewhere between Valenciennes and St Quentin—and Cambrai too, where our tanks hit ‘em in the last show—and then give them the bloody chop. Us and the French and the Belgians to the north, and the main French Army to the south. Gort and Gamelin have got a plan, he said—it seems Jerry is pushing on too far, beyond his supply lines … In fact, the younger chap practically spelt it out, Dickie said—we’re letting them have their head to finish him at one go—he’ll be in a huge salient, with his flanks open, trying to get to the sea. But the sea is our element, not Jerry’s—that’s the secret of it. With the Navy, we can come and go as we please. And when Jerry tries to swing his tanks northward, which he’ll have to do—then the French will go in! Like the Marne—‘

  ‘That’s what Tetley-Robinson said.’ Captain Bastable didn’t intend his interruption to sound like a criticism, but that was the way it came out.

  Captain Willis shrugged. ‘Well … the old bastard can’t be wrong all the time. And he did see the last lot out—he’s actually beaten them before, after all. He has to get something right, I mean!’