The '44 Vintage

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

The '44 Vintage

ANTHONY PRICE

For who is he whose chin is but enriched

With one appearing hair that will not follow

These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France? —Henry V

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. —Battle Hymn of the American Republic

I. How Corporal Butler was saved by his boots

The toes on Corporal Butler's left foot were bright purple.

He remembered, as he almost unfailingly did when he peeled his sock off, that purple was the chosen colour of kings and emperors in the olden days: he had read in a history book somewhere that "to assume the purple" was for them the very act of putting on their power and glory.

The trouble was that whatever it had meant in those old palaces and courts it told a very different tale in the Mill Street elementary school and in King Edward's Grammar School: there it was a mark of shame indelibly painted on dirty boys who had dirty diseases.

Dirty boys from dirty families, publicly disgraced by the disfiguring patches of colour on their faces and on the shaven areas of their heads and condemned to sit by themselves in a leper-group at the back of the class. For it was common knowledge that where purple was to be seen there were also probably fleas and nits and bedbugs lurking unseen, eager to crawl across the intervening desk spaces onto clean boys from respectable families.

Onto clean boys like Jack Butler.

From dirty boys like Sammy Murch.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Corporal Butler sighed at the memory. Sammy Murch had been a good friend of his until the morning Sammy had arrived at school with the purple patches, when Butler had shunned him like all the other clean boys. And that had been the end of friendship.

And maybe more than the end. Because it had been next year that he'd won his scholarship, and the year after that Sammy had been up for breaking into Mr. Burns's sweetshop on the corner; which hadn't surprised him one bit, because theft seemed a natural progression from impetigo contagiosa. In fact he'd been much more surprised when his dad had gone to court to speak for Sammy—though of course he hadn't done that so much for Sammy as for his father, who had been with him in the trenches and come back with a lungful of phosgene, and his two uncles, who hadn't come back at all.

He stared at his toes with disgust, deciding as he did so that Sammy Murch had been nicely avenged even though it wasn't impetigo—and even though vengeance had come too late for Sammy to enjoy since the Germans had caught the Spartan off Anzio.

He lowered his foot into the stream. Fresh water probably wouldn't do it much good—sea water, the book said, but against all expectation and hope he'd come ashore dry-shod and there'd been no time for paddling after that. But it was cooling and cleansing, and that was better than nothing ("Look after your feet and they'll look after you," his dad had said that last time, old-soldierly).

He reached down and unbuckled the gaiter on his right ankle. For some obscure reason his right foot had resisted the infection of Epidermophyton inguinale, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Gaiter, boot, grey woollen sock: he stacked them carefully on the bank above the ledge where the rest of his equipment was piled, then bent over the foot to search for the faintest telltale signs between the fourth and fifth toes.

EPIDERMOPHYTOSIS or Athlete's foot is a condition of ringworm of the skin between the toes, usually between the fourth and fifth (He knew the hated details in Pearce's Medical and Nursing Dictionary by heart now)—

It is due to a fungus—

The thought of a fungus attacking him, a loathsome fifth column in his boot, was frightening and disgusting.

He wrinkled his nose as he gently parted the toes, as the breeze reminded him that there was something else disgusting not far away from where he was sitting, upwind from him.

Something not alive, like the fungus, but disgustingly dead.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

It had come to him a few minutes before, on the first breath of the breeze, as he lay in the tall grass of the roadside verge a dozen yards away, half dozing and half watching a formation of high-flying Mustangs. He had just finished reasoning out their presence as cover for an earner flight of rocket-bearing Typhoons when the smell had blotted out the sound, telling him that there was dead flesh at ground level nearby that was as high as the Mustangs.

It was, he had nearly convinced himself, a poor dead cow, probably lying bloated and stiff-legged in the field beyond. He had already seen and smelt such cows, and this was close enough to the smell of recent memory. What was certain was that it was a very bad smell, although if his father was to be believed horses would smell worse than this and mules were in a class of their own.

With a conscious, deliberate effort he breathed in the corrupted air. What was even more certain was that there would be many more bad smells, and a good soldier simply took them for granted.

More than anything else in the world Butler wanted to be a good soldier.

So—the cow was dead and he was alive, which was better than the other way round; and he would worry no more about rotting cows than live cows would worry about dead and rotting soldiers.

Also he could see that his right foot was still clear of infection under its purple dye, which was a positive cause for rejoicing. Because despite Sister Pearce's claim that this condition is easily treated the raw cracks between the toes on the other foot had so far obstinately refused to heal; though to be fair to the Sister he lacked the permanganate of soda and the chlorinated soda and boric acid which she prescribed; and even if he had possessed them he would never have been able to find a way of soaking his feet in her weak solution of those chemicals. He just had his handy bottle of gentian violet.

He reached over to his left-hand ammunition pouch and carefully extracted the precious bottle from its nest of cotton waste between the Sten magazines. The luxury of privacy was another thing to be thankful for. This time at least he would be free from the humiliation of painting his feet while others were watching.

He set the bottle on the ledge beside the boot, noting as he did so that it was still nearly half full. With a little luck it could still outlast the fungus if used sparingly, with no need to report sick . . .

He stared down with concentrated hatred at his left foot through the distorting glass of the cool water, wishing irrationally that it was acid which might burn and cauterize both the infection and the treacherous toes. The colour was a filthy, degrading colour, and the toes were his enemies—he, who had always been the smartest and the cleanest man in the platoon. And they, the toes—his own flesh, they were the source of his waking and sleeping nightmare of being unfit for duty when at last there was real duty to be done.

He could hear his father's voice in his inner ear:

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Look after your feet and they'll look after you.

And—

Trench feet? The bad battalions had it, but not the good ones.

He didn't even know what trench feet were. But they had to be something like this.

Something had moved in the corner of his eye. Or maybe it was a slight sound, or a shadow, or the warning of a fifth sense that told him he was no longer alone.

He reached for the bottle of gentian violet, to hide it away in his ammunition pouch.

"Hände hoch, Tommy!"

Butler froze, unable to believe his ears, his hand halfway towards the little bottle.

"Hände hoch."

The impossible words came from behind him, quite close. But where they had been almost conversational the first time, more a suggestion than an order, now they were a harsh command which made his back a yard wide.

Butler raised his hands.

"Gut. Steh jetzt auf."

The words banged against each other in his brain like goods wagons in a shunting yard, their meaning clanging out loudly.

He stood up in the stream, feeling the water crawl up his legs to soak his trousers below the knee.

The meaning expanded. First, it wasn't possible: this was ten miles, more than ten miles, behind the front line of a retreating enemy.

And then, because it was happening, it was no longer impossible, only cruelly unfair.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

It must be an escaped prisoner ... or maybe a bailed-out Luftwaffe pilot?

No, hardly an airman. Because he hadn't even heard a German plane, never mind seen one, in the last twenty-four hours. But if an escaped soldier . . . that was a frightening thought, because the shambling prisoners he had seen had seemed relieved to be out of their defeat alive. Anyone determined to fight on would have to be a hard man, most likely a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi from the SS units.

" Dreh dich um . . . langsam."

Langsam? Butler scrabbled desperately in his German vocabulary, fear sharpening his memory to a razor-edge.

Slowly.

He turned round slowly.

To his surprise there was no one to be seen. The strip of rough pasture between the stream and the hedgerow was empty, and the open gateway to the road through which he had entered the field over the tank-crushed remains of the gate was empty too.

"Gut. . . zuwelchem Truppenteil gehörst du, Tommy?"

The voice seemed to come out of the thin air of the gateway, for choice from the left of it where the vegetation was thickest.

Butler licked his lips nervously, sorting out the words for their meaning and trying at the same time to divine the intention behind that meaning. The German obviously wanted to know his prisoner's unit as a prelude to asking if he was alone. But why should an ex-prisoner want a prisoner of his own when he ought to be avoiding all contact with his enemies?

The answer came back frighteningly quickly: the uniform he was wearing was what the German wanted.

A nice clean British uniform, without holes or bloodstains—which was why he was using words and not bullets.

" Zuwelchem—Truppenteil—gehörst—du . . . ?" The German spaced the words patiently, as though he had all the time in the world.

Butler was suddenly and shamefully aware that he was sweating profusely. Fear wasn't cold, like the books said, but hot—and he was bathed in sweaty fear. It was running off him and down him like water.

He was going to die.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

In ten minutes' time the major would arrive to find him naked and dead beside the stream.

With purple feet.

No, his brain screamed at him.

"Tommy—"

" Nein," said Butler.

His own voice surprised him—it didn't sound like his voice: it was someone else's voice in someone else's language. But it also roused him to fight for his life with the only weapon he had. His eye fell on the Sten gun lying on the ledge in the bank, beside his boots and equipment. But that wasn't his weapon

—yet.

His weapon was time.

" Du hast"— he fumbled for the right word—" du hast überhaupt keine Chance." It was the first German sentence he had ever spoken to a German—it was like firing the first shot in anger. " Du hast überhaupt keine Chance—meine Kameraden werden bald zurückkommen."

"Eh?"

That had given the bugger something to think about, thought Butler —the confident assertion that he had no chance because the place would soon be crawling with British troops.

" Deine Kameraden?" The German seemed surprised.

" Ja." Butler nodded vigorously. But then the thought hit him sickeningly that he had maybe given his captor a bloody good reason for pulling the trigger straight away and then getting clear as fast as he could.

He had said exactly the wrong thing, bugger it.

" Deine Kameraden?" the German repeated.

Think. Say something. Say anything.

" Ja . . ." The words dried up in Butler's throat. He must give the man a reason not to fire.

If he fired they would hear it.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

" Ja. Wenn du mich tötest—" To his horror Butler discovered that he couldn't remember the German word for hear. All he could think of as an alternative was to make a direct threat: if the German killed him then his mates would extract vengeance. " Wenn du mich tötest, werden sie dich sicher töten."

The hedge was silent, and as the seconds ticked away a small flame of hope kindled inside Butler. Every second was a small victory advancing him towards the rendezvous hour.

Always supposing this Major O'Conor was a punctual man— God, please make Major O'Conor a punctual man!

The German chuckled nastily—it was the dry, contemptuous chuckle of the confident man who held all the cards in his hand and didn't care who knew it.

"Kummere dich nicht um mich, Tommy. Komm heraus and argumentiere nicht."

The flame was gone as though it had never been. Instead there was only another wave of dead cow to remind him that in the moment he stepped out of the stream, away from the Sten, he was as dead as the cow.

Dead with his purple feet for the German to laugh at.

Dead without his boots on.

His boots.

From his hiding place in the hedge all the German could see of his equipment was a pair of boots—the rest was out of sight on the ledge. And what he couldn't see he couldn't know about.

What was the German for "boots"?

Stiefel.

That one word carried Butler from despair to resolution.

" Meine Stiefel . . ." He tried to sound abject. " Aber lass mich meine Stiefel aufnehmen."

" Deine Stiefel?" Another chuckle. " Ja, ja! Also—nimm deine Stiefel auf."

The contempt in the man's voice was the final spur Butler needed. He took a step sideways, settling his feet firmly on the bed of the stream, and bent over slowly as though to pick up his boots. Then, in the Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

very instant that his right hand seemed about to close on them he doubled up below the lip of the bank.

The fruits of a hundred weapon drills were harvested in seconds: cocking handle slammed back to

"safety"—magazine from the open pouch snapped firmly home—stud on "automatic"—cocking handle off "safety"—

Now it's not meine Stiefel, you bugger—it's meine Sten!

Viewed from where he knelt in the water the stream was a wide, shallow trench meandering across the open field roughly parallel to the hedge and the road beyond. To his right the bank was open, but six yards to his left there was an enticing clump of willows. That was the obvious place to head for—but that was also the way the German would expect him to go—

And if the German had a grenade—

A grenade?

Butler's nerve snapped and his instincts took over: before he could stop himself he had straightened up and loosed half the magazine into the hedge. Dust and fragments of wood splattered around the foot of the gatepost in the opening.

"All right, Corporal Butler—cease fire!"

Butler was turned to stone.

"Put it on 'safety,' Corporal—d'you hear?" The voice came from the hedge where the German had been.

"Put it on 'safety' and then I'll come out. . . and if you shoot me I'll never forgive you—d'you hear?"

Butler stared at the hedge uncomprehendingly.

"This is Major O'Conor speaking, Corporal. I'm ordering you to put that Sten on 'safety'—d'you understand?" the voice barked, with exactly the same shift in tone from the conversational to the peremptory which had characterised the original German order to surrender.

The same tone—and the same voice.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

There was another sound too now, of a rapidly approaching vehicle. As Butler struggled to make sense of events a cloud of white dust rose from behind the bocage and a jeep skidded to a halt in the gateway.

The dust cloud swirled around the vehicle, enveloping its khaki-clad driver momentarily. Until it settled he sat like a statue, still grasping the steering wheel with both hands as though he was holding an animal in check.

"All right, Sergeant-major." The voice from the hedge was almost back to conversational level. "No damage, no casualties."

"Sir!" The sergeant-major killed the engine, twisted towards Butler— and stiffened. ' You—" he shrieked, stabbing his finger after the word, " don't point that machine carbine at me! What d'you think you're playing at?"

The familiar formula broke Butler's trance. He lowered the Sten shamefacedly, automatically pulling back the cocking handle into the safety slot as he did so.

"That's better!"

Butler was suddenly aware that he was no longer hot—he was deathly cold. There was a jumble of other feelings churning around inside him, some of which could not safely be expressed aloud in the presence of an officer—a field officer—never mind a sergeant-major. He was conscious that he had been cruelly and unfairly treated; that he had been the subject of some sort of joke which had been no joke at all, and which could have ended in tragedy. But chiefly he was conscious of feeling cold—the top half of him cold and clammy, the bottom half cold and soaking wet.

And he had also made a perfect fool of himself.

He set the Sten down on the bank beside his boots and reached for one of the magazines which had fallen into the muddy edge of the stream. As he did so he noticed the bottle of gentian violet still standing on its ledge, safe and sound. . . . Well, that at least was a mercy. There was no question of continuing the treatment here and now, but there would be other opportunities. He would beat that fungus if it was the last thing he did—

"Well now, Corporal Butler—"

Butler straightened himself into attention as best he could—it wasn't easy to smarten up while standing up to one's knees in muddy water and trying to conceal the telltale bottle at the same time—and steeled himself to look Major O'Conor straight in the eye.

In fact he found himself looking directly at Major O'Conor's fly, two buttons of which were undone. It Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

occurred to him irrelevantly that the major hadn't appeared as soon as the sergeant-major had arrived because he had been pissing in the hedge—and that might be why the sergeant-major had sat rigidly to attention in the dust cloud.

He raised his gaze to an angle of forty-five degrees.

Major O'Conor's eyes were a pale, washed-out blue, slightly bloodshot. Or at least one of them was—the kindlier of the two; the other was cold and fishlike in its intensity.

And the major was tall and thin and leathery and grey—grizzled . . . though the greyness might simply be due to the fine coating of dust that covered him.

And the major was also bleeding from a cut on his cheekbone; as Butler watched a small bright ruby of blood rolled down the major's cheek, slowing down as it gathered dust until it was caught in the grey stubble on his jaw.

"Hah!" The thin lips, dirt-rimmed where the dust and spittle had mixed, opened to reveal a glittering array of gold teeth. "Nearly got my bloody head blown off—that's what the sergeant-major's thinking, isn't it, Sergeant-major?"

The sergeant-major came into Butler's range of vision beside the major, half a head shorter and half a body wider.

"Sir!" said the sergeant-major neutrally.

Eyes slitted under bushy eyebrows and a Guards moustache under a squashed-in red nose was all Butler had time to assimilate before the major spoke again—except that the sergeant-major exuded disapproval like body odour. It was going to take more than one lifetime to live down that improperly pointed Sten.

"And quite right too." The major nodded at Butler. "Nearly did get my bloody head blown off—and serve me jolly well right—the sergeant-major's also thinking that ... eh, Sergeant-major?"

"Sir!" The sergeant-major had obviously perfected that neutral tone over long years of unanswerable questions.

"But . . ." The major's left eye blinked while the fishlike right one continued to stare through Butler.

"But we do know he really can speak German—we know that now, don't we, Sergeant-major? And we also know that he can lie in it when he has to, by God!"

This time the sergeant-major let the echo of his previous answer do the work. The major nodded again, but more appraisingly.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"Wouldn't pass for a German, though—not unless they have Germans in Lancashire."

Butler's cheeks burned. He had worked for two years to eliminate that accent, and to have it betray him in a foreign language was galling.

"Lancashire—yes," repeated Major O'Conor contentedly. "But he wasn't taught by a Lancashireman—or by a German either, come to that." He paused, pursing his lips for a moment. "By a Pole, I'd say . . .

Remember that fellow in Mersa—the big chap with the fair hair . . . can't recall his name—couldn't pronounce it if I did—but I never forget a voice."

"Sir." There was a fractional variation in the sergeant-major's own voice.

"I knew you'd remember him. First-rate interrogator. Exactly the same German accent—minus the Lancashire, of course." The major turned away from Butler at last, towards his sergeant-major. "Stand at ease, Corporal."

Butler twitched unhappily, unsure of himself. The major had stared at him and spoken to the sergeant-major. Now he was looking at the sergeant-major, but not talking to him.

"Are you hard of hearing, Corporal?" snapped the sergeant-major.

Butler stood at ease so quickly that he almost lost his balance in the mud.

"How old are you, Corporal?" As he spoke the major swung towards him again, his left eye blinking disconcertingly. In anyone else that might have been a wink, but it just wasn't possible that—

A glass eye—he had a glass eye!

"Are you dumb as well as half deaf?" The sergeant-major paused for a half second. "Answer the officer!"

"Nineteen, sir." Butler's voice cracked. "And a half."

"And a half?" Major O'Conor smiled. "And have you ever fired a shot in anger . . . other than just now?"

Butler clenched his teeth. "No, sir."

"How long have you been in Normandy, Corporal?"

"Th-three days, sir."

"Three days . . ." Major O'Conor nodded. "Well, there's nothing wrong with his reflexes, Sergeant-Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

major. He ducked down like a jack rabbit—and came up like a jack-in-the-box. And nothing wrong with his guts, either."

Butler warmed to the major, all his hatred transferring itself in that instant to the sergeant-major. The major was eccentric, but some officers were eccentric, it was a fact of life. And the major was also old —

that grey stubble on his bloodstained cheek was grey with age, not dust—but he was also wise and as sharp as a razor, the insight into his German accent proved that.

His eye was caught by the faded double strip of colour on the major's left breast: and the major was also brave. The blue-red-blue and white-blue-white which led other ribbons he had no time to distinguish were the badges of courage he coveted and dreamed of and honoured—He had seen them before, on another uniform . . .

The major had seen service, had fired shots in anger—had led men in battle.

The thing Butler desired above all things stood before him, the thing Butler wanted to be with all his heart.

And to be led by such a man was the next best thing to that, because by observing him he could learn how the thing was done. Learning was no problem—learning was the easiest thing in the world; and learning by example, as he had expanded his German by listening to the Polish sergeant in the NAAFI night after night, was the easiest way of all.

"Except that if I had been a German he'd be dead, of course," said the major. "Because he popped up in exactly the same spot as he went down, and Jerry would have been waiting for that. But next time he'll move first, Sergeant-major—he won't forget that next time, I'm willing to bet, eh?"

"No, sir," said Butler.

"'Willing to learn by his mistakes'—mark that up, Sergeant-major. . . . And taught himself German."

Major O'Conor wagged a thin finger at the sergeant-major. "He'll do. He'll do."

At that moment whatever it was the major wanted him to do—whatever it was he had been taken from his friends and his battalion to do, even if it had involved charging a regiment singlehanded—Butler would cheerfully have done.

"Let's have you out of there, Corporal," said the major, leaning forward to offer Butler a hand.

In the instant that Butler reached for the hand with his own free left hand—the bottle of gentian violet was still palmed in the right one —he remembered his purple feet. But there was no possible way of rejecting the bony fingers which fastened on his wrist in the very next instant; all he could do was to try and hold that one good eye with his own, and let himself be heaved up the bank.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Even that was a failure: the major released his hand and looked him up and down—down to his feet.

And then up again—

"All right, then. Get yourself cleaned up, and we'll be on our way again." The major nodded and turned away as though there had been nothing to see, leaving Butler with his mouth open.

The sergeant-major leaned forward. "Get that carbine of yours unloaded, Corporal," he hissed. "And don't you ever point it at me again—unless you intend to shoot me with it. ... Is that clear?"

"Yes, Sergeant-major." Butler fixed his eyes on an imaginary block of concrete three inches above the sergeant-major's head.

"I hope so—for your sake, Corporal." The sergeant-major's gaze moved inexorably downwards, his nose wrinkling. It could be the cow to begin with—the poor rotting beast seemed to have ripened measurably in the last quarter of an hour. But at the end it would be the feet, thought Butler despairingly.

"And get those feet of yours cleaned up ... on the double!" concluded the sergeant-major.

Butler looked down at his feet in surprise. They were encased in thick brown mud.

2. How the corporal missed the battle of Normandy

There hadn't been much room in the back of the jeep even before Butler had added himself and his belongings to its cargo, but that didn't worry him; in exchange for the privilege of not having to march he was prepared to adjust himself to almost any discomfort. What shocked him now was not the amount of the cargo but its nature: it looked most suspiciously like plunder.

Then shock became instant embarrassment as the major swiveled in his seat to catch the expression naked on his face.

"Not for us, Corporal, I'm sorry to say. Not for us." The major shook his head and grinned at him, the gold of his smile matching exacdy the gold of the serried ranks of botde tops. "Besides ... it wouldn't taste very good in this heat, you know. Chilled is the only way to drink it." Butler stared fascinated at the bottle tops. Champagne, it must be, and that was one drink he'd never had the opportunity of trying. Or, to be honest, one of the many drinks; he'd not even had the chance of any of the cider for which this bit of France was supposed to be famous, like Somerset back in England—He felt the major's eyes on him.

"Yes, sir." He found himself automatically copying the sergeant-major's impassivity. "No, sir."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"No—" The jeep jerked forward sharply and widiout warning under the sergeant-major's hands, cutting off the major's sentence and nearly dislocating Butler's neck with the whiplash. As with men, so with machines, he thought critically: both were there to be driven hard. But with the major it would be different.

"No, indeed." The major had the trick of riding the sergeant-major's driving, rolling easily with each jar and bump. "You see, Corporal, this is a trading mission we're on now. And these"—he patted the champagne bottles—"these are the trade goods for our next port of call."

The sergeant-major grunted—it was the most eloquent sound he had made yet—and swung the jeep regardlessly off the track onto the main road in a cloud of dust, tyres squealing, missing by a full yard the burnt-out hulk of a Sherman which had been shunted into a gateway almost opposite the junction. In the very nick of time Butler tensed himself and leaned into the swerve, pressing against the side of the jeep to counteract the force which threatened to hurl him at the Sherman. He had just been getting the hang of the major's easy riding technique—Trading mission?

The major took in his bafflement. "He wants to know what we're trading in, Sergeant-major," he murmured. "The old merchandise, that's what—the old merchandise . . . not sandalwood and cedarwood, or emeralds and amethysts ... or cheap tin trays either . . . just the old merchandise, the perishable goods, that's what."

He flicked another quick glance backwards, and then shrugged away a second before Butler could find his wits and give him some sign of recognition.

With a cargo of ivory

And apes and peacocks,

Sandalwood, cedarwood,

and sweet white wine—

He flushed with annoyance at his slowness in meeting the challenge, even though it wasn't fair expecting him—expecting anyone—to pick up poetry straight off in this place, at this time—

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir—

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

The verses, hard-learned under the eagle eye of the Third Form English master at King Edward's, came back now to mock him as he stared at a German Mark IV stranded in the cornfield just ahead on his left, its long gun drooping submissively. That corn had been harvested after the tank had been knocked out, he could see that from the thin screen of standing stems along its side: the farmers had come back after the battle and—

It wasn't fair. And it was doubly unfair because he wasn't used to being talked to like this by anyone, least of all by an officer—and a field officer too, a major.

But that was this officer's way of going about things, he told himself grimly, to test men with the unexpected to gauge their capabilities. Where the sergeant-major was looking for the exact performance of a man's duties, the major was looking for something more.

Looking—and not bloody well finding this time, he thought bitterly.

He had been tested once, in oral German, and he had passed by the skin of his teeth. But he had failed the cultural test and the major would have him tagged as a German-speaking clod with quick reflexes.

And it was far too late now—and he was far too shy anyway—to tap the officer on the shoulder and say

"John Masefield, sir, that was, sir." All he could do was to learn his lesson and be ready for—

Ready for what?

Detached for Special Duties.

The words had made him gawp at the RSM for a moment like a recruit who didn't know his left foot from his right. And then, in sinking through to the first layer of his understanding, they had made him do something which two moments before he would never have dreamed of doing in his wildest fantasy: he had questioned the RSM's order.

"What duties, sir?"

He heard the question after he had spoken it, it had hung in the air between him and the RSM, surprising both of them.

The RSM had looked at him, and he had the feeling that he was really being looked at by the RSM for the first time as a person, not as 944 Butler J., Corporal, "B" Company.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

The RSM sighed. "Corporal . . . ask me no questions, son, and I'll tell you no lies." And then he had paused, and had looked down at the papers on the table as though to recall himself to the matter in hand.

"Ten minutes—you have ten minutes to get your kit together and report back here on the double—ten minutes. And then regimental transport will take you to a point one mile south of—of"—he looked down again uncertainly—"Meznil—lez—Bockage . . . that's it—Meznil-lez-Bockage . . . where you will rendezvous with a Major O'Conor at precisely eighteen hundred hours." He had looked up at Butler, eyes opaque. "Is that clear, Corporal?"

It had been all too clear then; it had been appallingly clear; it had been Detached for Special Duties.

"But, sir—"

"Ten minutes. By which time the relevant documentation will have been completed."

The finality of the RSM's voice had broken through the final layer. The words on that piece of paper were chiselled in stone.

"Away from the battalion?" It hadn't really been a question, and it certainly hadn't been addressed to the RSM; Butler had simply been talking to himself.

But it had been spoken aloud.

"Away—?" The RSM had started to speak sharply; but then, as the cry from the soul had registered, his expression had changed. Loyalty to the battalion was something he took for granted, but it was still not a quality to be spurned. It was something which merited an answer.

"Now then, son . . ." The RSM had struggled briefly with the problem. "You do speak German—you are proficient in that language, aren't you?"

Butler swallowed, unable to deny what he was so proud of. "Not ... I wouldn't quite say that, sir."

" Proficient." The RSM held on to the word. "That is what the record says . . . and there is a requirement for a German-speaking noncommissioned officer."

Butler's heart had beaten faster then. The requirement was not for him—not for 12048944 Butler J., Corporal, 2nd/4th Royal North-East Lancashire Rifles. Nor was it for a red-haired soldier suffering in secret from Epidermophyton inguinale, who had been born in Jubilee Street, Blackburn, nineteen and a half years before. It was just for an NCO who could speak in German. And that could be—anyone.

"With respect, sir—I'd like to stay with the battalion, sir."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

The RSM had frowned at that "What you'd like—and what you don't like—don't come into it, Corporal."

The frown had frightened Butler. But the prospect of what was proposed for him had terrified him beyond fear: his instinct made him fight before his reason had time to instruct him otherwise. "I've been with the battalion for two years, sir." The frown had deepened. Two years or ten minutes—two years and ten minutes—it was all the same to the RSM. He needed a better reason than that.

"The battalion's just about to go into action, sir," he had said. Slowly the frown had cleared, until the face was expressionless again.

"My ... my father was with the regiment in 1916, sir."

Now there was an expression, but he couldn't identify it. "Aye, I know, son." The RSM had nodded slowly. "And he was RSM, 1st Battalion, at Ypres in '18."

It had been Butler's turn to frown then. Because that knowledge had been just too exact, too precise. It had been all very well for "the record," whatever it was, wherever it was, to note that he could speak German. He had never concealed that—he had been proud of it. But how could the RSM—?

The question answered itself before he had finished formulating it in his mind. Somewhere, wherever that record was, probably far away back in the regimental depot, there was a sheet of that thick white writing paper which General Sir Henry Chesney always used ... he could almost see the beautiful copperplate writing on it There was a sheet of the same paper, with the same copperplate, in his pocket now—

Dear Jack,

By the time you receive this letter I expect you will be in the thick of it—

It would be like the general to do his best for him, unasked, with just such a letter of recommendation.

And it was—what was the word, "irony" was it?—an irony if that recommendation was now taking him away from the battalion.

Unless—the thought had come out of nowhere and he had clutched it desperately—unless they were now giving him a chance to distinguish himself, perhaps?

In that instant he had stopped fighting and had started to think about a Major O'Conor who required a German-speaking NCO for Special Duties.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

His eyes had met the RSM's. "I'll get my kit, sir," he had said then.

Ready for what?

They were driving steadily southwards; or perhaps, from the position of the earty evening sun, south inclined a few degrees eastwards. But then the road had twisted and turned so many times that they could just as easily have drifted westwards first . . . the three-tonner which had carried him away from battalion headquarters had certainly left Caen—or the rubble that had once been Caen—on a more or less southwesterly route.

Butler's head swam with the effort of trying to work out where he was and where he was heading. He had studied a map of Normandy carefully back in England only a week before, but that seemed a very long time ago, and it hadn't been this part that he'd concentrated on—at least, so it seemed to him now, because the names on the signposts were all strange and new to him.

And the places themselves, they were all the same, most of them fearfully knocked about, some of them no better than Caen itself; blank empty windows and smashed-up churches with holes punched methodically into their towers where the snipers had been.

And the civilians ... he had half expected, even more than half expected, that there would be cheers and flowers for liberation, or at least that some pretty girl would wave at him. But he hadn't heard a cheer or seen an arm raised, never mind a pretty girl. Half the time they didn't even look at him, any of them, and he didn't blame them a bit now for that, with their homes in ruins.

But, one thing, the country was different here. Not flat and open, but closed into small fields with high earth banks out of which the trees and hedges sprouted, and rolling up and down into deep litde valleys full of trees.

And the fighting, although it had passed now—away almost due east, so far as he could judge the sound

—it had been bad here. In one place they passed three British tanks, Cromwells all of them, blackened and burnt and shunted into a twenty-yard stretch of ditch; and he caught a glimpse of others, one with its turret lying beside it, through a gap in the earth bank on his left.

"Getting warm," said Major O'Conor. 'Take the left fork at the next junction, Sergeant-major. If there's a sign it'll be for St Pierre-sur-Orne, most likely."

Butler blinked and stared at the weatherbeaten back of the major's neck. The Orne flowed northwards into the sea from Caen, but before that . . . where did it come from?

And now the sound of the distant guns seemed to be coming more from the southeast than the east . . .

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Butler shivered. Whatever it was doing, it wasn't getting warm at all, it was almost chilly. Or maybe the sight of those burnt-out Cromwells had chilled him.

The major twisted in his seat. "Been admiring the scenery, Corporal?"

"Yes, sir," said Butler.

"Quite right too. Lovely countryside, and we're just getting into the best of it. And you know what they call it?"

Butler thought of the Cromwells again, and then with a start realised that he was about to be told where he was.

"No, sir."

"La Suisse Normande, Corporal—'the Norman Switzerland.' Actually, it's nothing like Switzerland, but it's the nearest thing they've got, and the food's a lot better." The major looked around proprietorially.

"Not a place to fight in, of course ... if you've got to do the attacking, that is ... but fortunately, Jerry has pressing business elsewhere and other things in mind, so we don't have to worry about that."

So the Germans really were retreating, thought Butler. All the rumours were true after all.

"Sir?" he inquired hopefully.

The major smiled. "Another five or ten minutes, and you'll be able to stretch your legs. And then after that I fancy you'll be able to travel more comfortably too."

He turned away, leaving Butler not very much the wiser. La Suisse Normande might be anywhere; it certainly wasn't a name he'd seen on any map. But the Germans had retreated through it, and the major obviously wasn't contemplating attacking them.

Yet in the last second before he turned away, the major's medal ribbons had again caught his eye. Blue-red-blue, white-blue-white, and then faded red-white-blue—he knew them all, and they did leave him wiser, and not a little confused.

The major was a proven soldier, they told him that, the first two of them—a fighting soldier for sure with that white-blue-white to prove it. But the faded red-white-blue, faded and fading off into each other, that also made him an old soldier, older even than he looked. For though Butler was no judge of age, and the older the more inaccurate, he knew a 1914-18 Victory Medal when he saw one. Both his father and the general had that one in their collections.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

It was strange how he could never think of either of them now without the other intruding almost immediately.

No, "intruding" was the wrong word, he decided. They had become inseparable antagonists inside his head, just as they were in real life, but he could never make them act out of character there.

Sometimes he had tried hard to imagine them arguing over him, about what he was resolved to do with his life. He had done—or tried to do—this not because he wanted it to happen (the very thought of it doing so was painful to him), but because it seemed to him that if he could eavesdrop into such a fantasy he might be able to understand better why he felt the way he did.

But not even in his imagination could he make them say anything more to one another than he had heard them do in reality.

The general would always speak first: "Good morning, Mr. Butler," he would say politely, with just a touch of briskness, raising his bowler hat as he did so.

"Good morning, sir," his father would reply, just as politely, touching his cap in a gesture of recognition to the raised bowler.

Other people would say "Sir Henry," or occasionally "General," but his father would never say more than "sir" and the general would never say less than "Mr." which he rarely did for anyone else.

For a long time this exchange of greetings had baffled young Butler. When the owner of Chesney and Rawle's met the secretary of the Graphical Association union branch (and father of the Union Chapel at C & R) there should have been a certain wariness; when the president of the local Conservative Association met the chairman of the local Labour Party there ought to have been a clear antagonism; and when the man whose influence and organising ability had helped to break the General Strike in the town met the man who had been one of the strike's leaders, there could only be bitterness. Butler himself had been not two years old then, and this December he would be twenty; but there were still men who wouldn't talk to those they felt had betrayed them then, or at the most not a word more than was needed to get the job done.

Yet when the General and his father met, there was neither wariness, nor antagonism, and not a hint of bitterness.

It had been in Coronation Year—the year after he had won the scholarship—that he had caught a glimpse of the explanation.

The year he had gone to work for the general.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

He had known without a word being said that his father expected him to take the paper round which had become vacant and which was his for the asking. And he had also known that although this was required of him as his proper contribution to the family income, they had in fact managed perfectly well since his mother's death and its real purpose was "to keep his feet on the ground" (as Uncle Fred put it) now that he was a scholarship boy at the Grammar.

But he had also known, above all, that he had not the slightest intention of taking the paper round. He didn't like papers (or printing, for that matter), and he would sooner go kitting milk than delivering them.

So when Mr. Harris the maths master had let slip that the general's head gardener was in the market for a part-time boy, the nod was as good as a wink and he was off like a hare after the last lesson to the big house in Lynwood Road.

It never occurred to him that he might not get the job. Rather, he regarded his successful application as already assured. For the general and he had already met, and the general would certainly remember the boy to whom he had last year awarded the Scholarship prize (E. Wilmot Buxton's The Story of the Crusades, a splendid, gold-embossed book which Butler treasured) in the final term at North Mill Street Elementary.

It had simply not dawned on him that it would not be the general, but the head gardener, who didn't know him from E. Wilmot Buxton, who would be conducting the interviews for the part-time boy; nor had it occurred to him that others might have learnt of the vacancy, and that one in particular, a large boy with a BSA bicycle, would easily outdistance him to Lynwood Road.

All this became apparent in quick succession, first the bike propped outside the back entrance, then the large boy with a smug look on his face, and finally the head gardener himself, who obviously could not know of his special relationship with the general.

He had been in front of the head gardener, out of breath and near to weeping for this lost certainty, when there had come a shadow and a sound behind him in the doorway of the greenhouse. The head gardener had looked over his shoulder and stood up deferentially, and Butler had known instantly who was there and had heard the tap of the general's stick sound as sweet inside his head as the distant trumpets of the relieving force to the last survivor of a beleaguered outpost.

But at first the general didn't seem to recognise him in the cool green light of the potting shed; he had looked questioningly at the head gardener.

"The part-time boy, General," the head gardener had reminded him. "Ah, yes." The general had nodded and had turned to consider Butler properly.

But then, to Butler's surprise, he had not said "Of course—you are the Scholarship boy from North Mill Street Elementary to whom I presented E. Wilmot Buxton's The Story of the Crusades last year."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"You are Mr. Butler's son," the general had said.

"Yes—" Butler had floundered for a moment, unable to decide how to address the general. The head gardener had said "General," but outside St. Michael's Church on Sundays and in front of the War Memorial on November 11 his father had never used that rank. "Yes—sir."

"You remember RSM Butler, Sands," said the general to the head gardener. "At Messines with the 1st/4th—and he was also with me at Beaumont Hamel the year before . . . before you joined the battalion ... he was one of my platoon sergeants then." He pointed at Butler's head. "The same red hair, man—and the same look in the eye, too by God!"

The head gardener stared at Butler. "Aye, you're right, General," he agreed finally, in a voice which suggested that maybe not all his dealings with RSM Butler had been happy.

The general had chuckled. "D'you know anything about gardening, boy?"

Butler thought of his father's allotment, but the easy lie choked in his throat. "No, sir."

"What about your father's allotment?" The general seemed to have a way of reading his thoughts. "Don't you help him with that?"

Butler felt committed to the whole truth now. With that sharp eye on him nothing else would be of any use anyway, he suspected. "He likes to do it himself, sir."

"I see. And of course you've been busy studying, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"And how are you going to continue studying and work for me at the same time now?"

"I can make the time, sir."

Nod. "See that you do, boy." The general's eyes lifted away from him to the head gardener. He knew that he'd got the job, but there was no longer any particular triumph in the knowledge now that he was aware his father had more to do with his success than E. Wilmot Buxton.

He thought irrelevantly how very blue the general's eyes were for such an old man. Snow-white hair—

and bushy white moustache in the middle of a brick-red face. But bright blue eyes. Except that red, white, and blue were proper colours for a general.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

And that red, white, and blue ribbon.

"Here we are," said Major O'Conor.

3. How Colonel Sykes lost his rugby team

The major was right: this Norman Switzerland wasn't at all like the real thing, or not like the full-page colour photographs of it in the Q to Z volume of his father's Illustrated Encyclopaedia of World Geography; if anything, it reminded Butler of the foothills of the Lake District at home, where he had camped with the school scout troop in the last year before the war.

There were cliffs, certainly—he could see them rising out of the thick woods across the valley into which they were descending. But there were no snow-capped peaks and the trees weren't Swiss firs. The Orne (presumably it was the Orne, anyway) rippled over its rocky bed just below him now, with a group of Frenchmen fishing in it, quite unconcerned by the jeep's noisy approach. There were even a couple further down watering their horses in the shallows, in the shadow of a high-arched stone bridge which joined the tree-lined road embankment—

A high-arched stone bridge—

The incongruity of the scene suddenly hit Butler. The trees shouldn't have been nodding gently in the breeze, they should have been lying in a tangle across the road ahead, blocking the approach to the gaping ruins of that bridge, the demolished stonework of which should be choking the river twenty feet below; or, at best, the shattered trees should have been bulldozed over the embankment to make way for the Bailey bridge across the ruins.

Instead it was all as peaceful as a picture postcard—as peaceful as Switzerland or the Lake District—

with the picturesque bridge, and the fishermen—there were more of them fishing happily from the bridge itself—and the horsemen watering their horses. For a moment the war was a million miles away and it was hard to imagine that this same river flowed through the stinking ruins of Caen to the invasion beaches.

There was a tank under the trees just across the river. And another just beyond it. And another—

The jeep squealed to a halt in the middle of the bridge, beside the first fisherman.

"Second South Wessex Dragoons?" barked the sergeant-major.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

The fisherman turned, took in the front-seat occupants of the jeep, and straightened up, one hand still grasping his home-made rod. He wasn't likely to catch anything from the bridge, thought Butler—and certainly not with that apology for a fishing rod.

"That's right, sir," said the fisherman.

"Colonel Sykes, we're looking for," said the major.

"Sir." The fisherman turned away to scan the riverbank below him. Suddenly he pointed. "Down there, sir—just getting off his horse, sir—besides Major Dobson and Mr. Pickles."

His horse? Butler craned his neck to follow the pointing finger. The two horsemen who had been watering their horses had been joined by a third, who was in the act of dismounting. All three were wearing riding breeches, booted and spurred. Butler goggled at them.

"I see—thank you," said the major politely. Then he smiled. "The regiment's getting horsed again, then."

The fisherman regarded him stolidly. "Be an improvement if it was, sir," he observed, unsmiling.

Butler frowned and looked away, back down the river. Beyond the horsemen and the anglers on the bank there was a group of naked soldiers skylarking in the water with a makeshift ball. The Wessex Dragoons evidently weren't taking their war very seriously, so far as he could see.

"Ah—it would that!, sir," murmured one of the other anglers.

"And where did you acquire the—ah—the remounts?" inquired the major.

"German Army, sir."

The major nodded approvingly. "Jolly good. Drive on, Sergeant-major. We'll park down the road there, just after the end of the parapet."

The sergeant-major crashed the gears brutally, but managed to coax the jeep another twenty yards without mishap.

"Fine . . . Now if you'd guard our other possessions, Sergeant-major . . . and the corporal would help me . . ." the major trailed off. .

Butler looked at the sergeant-major, bewildered.

"Get those cases out of the vehicle, man," snapped the sergeant-major. "And don't you dare drop them."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

His eyes dropped from Butler to the boxes with the champagne, and then lifted back to Butler. All was at last revealed in that look, and Butler's faith in both men was restored: trade goods and a trading mission, the major had said, not for us. So if the bottles were plunder they were at least not to be used improperly, but in the line of duty to obtain some necessary item from the dragoons in exchange; and it did look as though they were the right sort of trade goods for such a unit—the major and the sergeant-major might disapprove, but they knew what they were about.

What the old merchandise, the perishable goods were, was not yet clear, but would no doubt be revealed soon enough. What was obvious was that protocol would not permit the sergeant-major to carry the trade goods when there was a junior NCO present to do that work, which meant that the sergeant-major must stay and protect the jeep from the thieving hands of soldiery and civilians, who would strip anything left unattended.

He balanced the cases carefully on top of one another and set out after the major, peering round them as best he could to see where he was going. It was going to be tricky though, getting down the embankment to the water-meadow below.

The major came to his rescue, thoughtful as ever.

"Here, Corporal . . . there's a bit of a path just here . . . mind how you go ... left a bit—that's right . . .

steady, steady . . . you can rest up against that tree if you like."

Butler was sweating. "I'm all right, sir."

"Just this last bit, then . . . well done!"

At last the ground was flat again under his boots, though they were still under the canopy of the trees which grew thickly all the way down the embankment. Butler stopped to get his breath.

Suddenly there was a thud—or a cross between a thud and a thump—away to his left somewhere. To Butler's ears it sounded suspiciously and horribly like a two-inch mortar going off, and a moment later he was aware of something descending through the leaves and branches above him to confirm his horrible suspicion.

Time slowed almost to a standstill as he stood, rooted to the spot, clasping the major's cases of champagne to his chest.

"Sir!" He appealed helplessly, trying to catch the major's attention.

But the major's attention was already caught: he was staring upwards into the branches as though to judge the line of the mortar bomb's descent—indeed, judging by the movement of his hands, almost as Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

though he intended to catch it.

Butler closed his eyes in the very instant that something crashed through the branches almost directly above them. There was another thump—

This time more a slapping thump than a thudding one—and then a second or two of silence finally broken by the distant whinnying of a horse.

He opened his eyes again.

The major was now holding a rugby football in his hands.

"Hmm . . ." he said, raising the eyebrow over his good eye at Butler. "In my young days it was hunting, fishing, and shooting they played at. Now it seems to be hunting, fishing, and rugger. I suppose they've had a bellyful of shooting for the time being, poor devils. . . . Come on, Corporal."

As they came out of the shadow of the trees a hulking young soldier, naked to the waist, appeared out of a gap in the bushes just ahead of them. If this was the rugger player, his side had been the losing one, thought Butler critically: he sported a great purple-black bruise on his left cheekbone, and another on his shoulder to match. There was a rather bedraggled field dressing on his right forearm.

He stopped abruptly as he saw the major, blinked in surprise, and opened and shut his mouth as though the first words he had thought of were not the ones he now wanted to say.

"Speak, thou apparition," said the major.

The young soldier blinked again, and then produced a nervous half-smile. Under the tousled thatch of light brown hair his face was dead white, except for dark rings under his eyes, the angry bruise of his cheekbone, and an acne rash on his chin.

"C-can we have our b-ball b-back, sir?" he stuttered in an exaggerated public-school drawl.

Butler's normally dormant class prejudices stirred. The apparition was an officer, for all its appearance, which was not improved by a suggestion of pale stubble on its chin—though to be fair that might be due to the acne.

And, to be fair also (when the prejudices stirred Butler instinctively leaned over backwards to silence them), he wasn't a chinless wonder of the Guards variety; the stubbly chin was square and hard, and the pale blue eyes were hard too. It was a rugger player's face, and the physique below it was built to match.

It was the dead-giveaway voice, the arrogant stutter, which nettled him, reminding him that cavalry Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

regiments notoriously recruited just this type of subaltern, at least in the old days. In the Royal Lanes the officers were, with exceptions, gentlemen, and none the worse for that (and one day Butler himself intended to be one of them, and no exception). But in at least one of the county's yeomanry regiments the commissions before the war went exclusively to the gentry, to men with land under their belts (as his father put it), or to their sons and brothers. Even the general had counselled him against volunteering for that regiment, though he had produced other reasons for his counsel.

"By all means," said the major suavely, tossing the ball to the apparition. "Come on, Corporal."

As he strode past the young officer, the crowns on his shoulder seemed to register for the first time, and the boy stiffened. "Thanks most awf'ly, sir," he called after the major's back. "I'm afraid I sliced the k-k-kick rather b-b-b"—he paused to concentrate on the word, looking blankly at Butler—"rather badly," he concluded with unnatural emphasis.

A very strange character, thought Butler as he stumbled past, aware that his arms were beginning to ache painfully under their burden. But then it seemed a rather strange unit, so no doubt the strangeness of its officers passed unremarked.

Something squashed under his right boot, and the rich smell of horse manure rose to his nose, reminding him sharply for a second of General Chesney's rose garden, onto which he had forked tons of the stuff.

Then, just as sharply, he was aware that the major had stopped just ahead of him, and that they had reached the horsemen.

He peered cautiously round the cases, wondering as he did so whether it would be safe to put them down. Better not, he decided; his arms were now locked in position, at the limit of their sockets. If he did put them down he might not have the strength to pick them up again.

"Willy, my dear fellow!" The third horseman—the one who had dismounted and who therefore must be Colonel Sykes, appeared from between the horses. "So you found us all right."

Colonel Sykes shook the major's hand warmly.

"No problem at all." The major cocked his head on one side. "The trail was . . . unmistakable."

"Hah!" Colonel Sykes shook his head. "Yes ... I suppose it must be, at that."

"It looked as though you've been having a rough time, Chris."

"Perfectly bloody, not to put too fine a point on it. All the way from just south of Caumont—perfectly bloody, Willy. If it wasn't Tigers it was damned self-propelled guns, and this bocage country is no place to fight either of them, especially with these wretched Cromwells. So ... we've been swapping at about the rate of six to one half the time."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

The colonel stroked his horse abstractedly, and the two men shook their heads at each other. Butler forgot about his arms and thought instead of the anglers on the bridge, and also of the burnt-out tanks they'd passed along the way. There had been rather a lot of them, he remembered now.

"And here am I, come to deplete your strength further," said the major apologetically. "I'm sorry about that, Chris."

"My dear fellow!" Colonel Sykes raised his hand to cut off the apology. "Think nother of it. Fact is, it's all the same to me now—we're being disbanded, you see."

"Good Lord! I'm sorry to hear that. That's damn bad luck." The major managed to make the banal phrases sound sincere, Butler thought. But if the two were old friends, maybe he really meant them. "No good crying about spilt milk. The same thing's happening to the 2nd Northants, they've caught a packet too . . . once you go beyond a certain point it's the best thing to do, really." Colonel Sykes shrugged. "So I'm off to 21 Army Group and the rest are mostly going to the 7th Armoured—they've got Cromwells too, poor devils . . . No, as a matter of fact, Willy, you're doing me a good turn if what I hear is true."

The major half-turned, and for the first time since the conversation had started Butler could see his face.

But then he saw it was still only the blind side, which never seemed able to betray any emotion.

"What do you hear?" The major's question was as devoid of curiosity as the blind side was of expression. "What's that, then?"

"Well, Brigade made it sound like a holiday jaunt—a sort of tourist excursion to some desirable resort, with no Tigers or such things in attendance," said the colonel airily. "Didn't say what it actually was—

that was all hush-hush as usual. But they made it sound like just what the doctor ordered for my lad, certainly."

"What the doctor—?" The major sounded wary now. "Come on, Chris—you're not giving me walking wounded, are you?"

"I don't mean literally what the doctor ordered." Colonel Sykes swung on his heel, taking in the whole scene: the anglers, the bathers, the horsemen who had mounted up and were cantering away over the meadow. "They're all a bit battered, but there's nothing wrong with any of them. Tanks—third-rate; morale—first-rate, you might say. Could give you any one of them, and you'd have a bargain. Fact is, I'm giving you one of the best . . . absolutely bulging with brains, almost too much for his own good."

"I want one bulging with French, Chris. Not brains, just French."

The colonel waved his hand. "Fluent, even though he's a history scholar—French, Latin, Greek—

Russian too, for all I know. Even a bit of German."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"Just French."

Butler was beginning to think faster. There had been a requirement for a German-speaking NCO; presumably there was also a requirement for a French-speaking one too. On a holiday jaunt, a tourist excursion.

"Speaks it like a native, Willy. I've heard him myself—he was apologising to an old Frenchwoman who came out of her front door with a bottle of calvados and a Union Jack thirty seconds after we'd put a burst of machine-gun fire through her bedroom window." Colonel Sykes stared past Butler across the field. "I sent young Pickles to rout him out, so he should be appearing any minute now—" He broke off, staring this time directly at Butler.

The major followed the stare and started guiltily as he set eyes on Butler. "Good God, Corporal—put those cases down at once! They must be killing you!"

Butler lowered the cases to the ground. He hoped devoutly that no sort of introduction requiring a salute would now take place, or at least not until he had the use of his right arm again.

But the major merely gestured towards the cases. "Present for your mess, Chris—in exchange for one guaranteed French-speaker. Top case is champagne, courtesy of the German Army. The rest is scotch, which is said to have fallen off the back of an American half-track ... I heard tell you were living on cider and army rum."

"My dear fellow—too kind! We have been rather short just recently —ah, here he comes now—"

Butler was standing at ease, with his hands clasped behind his back, which was about the most comfortable position his arms had been able to find. But as the major stared fixedly over his shoulder—

the good eye appeared as fixed suddenly as the false one, so that for a moment he couldn't make out which was which—he couldn't resist turning himself to get a look at his comrade in good or bad fortune, the French-speaking NCO.

He understood instantly why the major was staring. Of course, no one had actually said the French-speaker was to be a two-striper like himself, he had simply assumed it to be so. And he had assumed wrong.

Even in immaculate Canadian battle dress, trouser creases knife-edged from the iron, pistol at his hip, there was no mistaking the Apparition. If anything, the smart black beret, its prancing horses badge catching the red of the setting sun, emphasised the black and white of the face.

"Ah, David . . . good of you to join us"—Colonel Sykes acknowledged the OCTU-fresh salute—"David, this is Major Willy O'Conor, to whom you are being lent for the time being, as I explained to you this Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

morning . . . Willy, this is David Audley, my best French-speaker— and the best-educated officer in the regiment, come to that, I shouldn't wonder, so take good care of him."

Audley saluted again, and then accepted the major's hand.

"We have met, actually," said the major. "But we didn't get round to introductions."

Colonel Sykes looked at his subaltern inquiringly.

Audley's blackened left cheek could betray nothing, but there was a suggestion of colour in the undamaged right one. "I'm afraid I nearly b-b-brained the m-major with m-my"—Audley paused as he had done before, as though he could see the words ahead like tests in an obstacle course and was gathering his strength to meet them—"my—my rugby ball."

"I see." Colonel Sykes smiled. "David has a mighty right foot, Willy. He never missed a penalty and the regiment carried all before it back in England—didn't it, David?"

Audley's good cheek twitched. "I'm a bit... a b-bit out of practice now." He eyed the major searchingly.

"D'you want me to t-travel light, sir?"

Presumably people with their own twenty-seven-ton transport travelled with more worldly goods than the poor bloody infantry, thought Butler enviously. Then the memory of the blackened Cromwells reasserted itself, and the envy evaporated.

"As light as you reasonably can, David," said the major. "Ten days, we're reckoning on. Possibly less.

But we'll be travelling by jeep all the way."

All the way. Butler packed the words away with the other information he had in store. But all the way where?

"Five minutes, and I'll be ready, sir," said Audley.

"Right. We'll meet you on the road, at the end of the bridge, then." The major nodded.

For a few seconds they watched the apparition stride away, then the major turned to the colonel. "I'm afraid I'm weakening your all-conquering rugby team too," he said, the regiment's disbandment apparently forgotten.

The colonel was still watching the departing figure. "No, not weakening it, Willy—finishing it off," he said softly. "Young David is the sole survivor, as it happens."

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"Hmm ... he looks a bit shaky to me."

The colonel turned towards the major. "He's all right."

"For a holiday jaunt, you mean?"

"I mean ... all right for duty." Colonel Sykes's voice had hardened. "I told you I'd given you a good one, and I have. But he's been unhorsed three times in a fortnight, and the last time he was blown clean out of his tank by a Tiger."

"He's lucky then." The major's voice was harder too.

"Luckier than the rest of his crew—yes." The colonel paused. "But if he reckons he's on borrowed time it isn't surprising. So what I'm relying on you for, Willy, is to borrow him another fortnight with this special operation of yours while I pull a string or two to get him where he can do the job he's best fitted for, with his brains."

"Uh-huh? Which is some form of intelligence, I take it?" Suddenly the major's voice was soft as silk. "In which cushy billet he can survive the war to help build a land fit for heroes?"

The silken covering didn't conceal the bitterness from Butler's ear. It might have been his father talking, in a different accent about a different war, but with the same meaning.

"Better him than superannuated cannon fodder like us, Willy."

The major gave a short laugh. "Speak for yourself, my dear chap."

"Very well! Superannuated cannon fodder like me—and a bloodthirsty old bandit like you. We've been on borrowed time since '40. That's what I mean."

"Hah! And I fully intend to stay on it—that's what I mean—" The major checked himself. "But don't worry, Chris. I'll try to include your protégé in my survival plans. In fact, if all goes well with our little jaunt, I shall be giving him the chance of winning his spurs in the field of intelligence, I shouldn't wonder."

Butler closed his eyes for a moment and soared away on the wings of his own ambition. They had spoken, had argued and fenced with each other, as though he hadn't existed; as though he hadn't been standing there, three yards away from them, as patient as the ex-German army horse. And in the end he had almost forgotten that he existed himself.

Now he could feel the reality again. The field of intelligence had no particular attraction for him, the Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

only field for a soldier was the battlefield and the only part worth playing on it was the infantryman's—

that lesson from the general he had learnt, and that was the lesson in which he believed totally.

But if there were spurs a French-speaking second lieutenant could win in this operation there ought also to be spurs which a German-speaking corporal could win.

And if there were, then Jack Butler was going to win them.

4. How Major O'Conor set a history test

Butler knew exactly what was going to happen.

Or, since Major O'Connor was obviously not a conventional officer of the line, he didn't know exactly what was going to happen, but he had a bloody shrewd idea.

One way or another young Mr. Second Lieutenant Audley was going to be put to the test, as Corporal Butler had been.

There was a part of him which was already protective of the subaltern, and sorry that he had had no opportunity to warn him of what was to come. Because that was what a good NCO should do—and because one day he hoped there'd be a good NCO to do it for him, the Second Lieutenant Butler of the future, God willing.

But there was another (and larger) part of him which awaited events with more than professional curiosity. Knowing one's officer was almost as important as knowing one's sergeant, and he had another bloody shrewd idea that there wouldn't be much time to get the measure of Mr. Audley before life-and-death matters were put to the test. Because that casual banter between Colonel Sylces and the major about a "holiday jaunt" had had a distinct whiff of sulphur about it: they had been reassuring each other and lying to each other in the same breath, and both had known it—like a couple of RAF types he had once heard talking in a pub about a raid which was going to be "a piece of cake," when the scraped white look on each of their faces had belied what they were saying.

He took a quick surreptitious look at Mr. Audley, whose black and white countenance had that same air-crew pallor.

Second Lieutenant Audley would bear watching. About the major he had not the very slightest doubt: he had seen it all and survived it all, and that talk of surviving at any cost had been just talk. But not all Mr.

Audley's injuries—the bandaged arm and the bruises—were on the outside, for a guess. And they might be the result of being blown out of his tank, which to be fair sounded like an uncommonly unpleasant experience—especially when he remembered all those knocked-out Cromwells along the way to the Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

bridge. Yet they might also be the symptoms of that dreadful incurable disease the general had once spoken of which was stamped on the records of failed officers. Lack of moral fibre.

If Second Lieutenant Audley suffered from LMF then it was better to discover it now, at the major's hands, than later, at the Germans'.

One thing was for sure: Mr. Audley might be bulging with brains and scholarships, but he was bloody slow adjusting to the sergeant-major's driving. Every time the jeep juddered over a pothole or skidded to the left (which was every time they came to a pothole, because the sergeant-major drove in a straight line, and every time they came to a corner, because he drove too fast, he rolled heavily against Butler.

Each time they collided Butler was enveloped in a mixed smell of carbolic soap and sweat, and had his hipbone gouged by the subaltern's pistol butt.

Each time they collided Mr. Audley winced with pain and apologised.

And each time Butler couldn't quite summon up enough courage to suggest that if Mr. Audley would just hold onto his side of the jeep the collisions would not be necessary.

The jeep lurched again, and Audley lurched with it.

Carbolic soap, sweat, and ouch!

"Sorry," said Audley for the twentieth time.

"Sir," said Butler for the twentieth time.

The major turned in his seat and fixed his good eye on Audley. He hadn't said a word since they'd set off, so it might be that he was coming to the same conclusions about his fluent French-speaking dragoon subaltern, thought Butler.

"Where did you pick up your French, David?" The major spoke conversationally. "School?"

"And F-France, sir," said Audley, rubbing his shoulder.

"On holiday, you mean?"

"F-f-friends of the f-family, sir. I was b-billeted on them every summer holiday up to '38, to learn the language. W-wouldn't say a w-word of English to me—bloody awful."

"But you learnt the language, eh?"

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Audley grimaced, which with his bruised face was easy. "It w-was that or starve to death, sir. W-wouldn't even let the doctor speak English to me when I w-was sick—even though he spoke it better than I did." He grinned suddenly. "Matter of fact, I've g-got a rotten accent—no ear for it. But I know the right words."

"Well, that's all we shall be needing." Major O'Conor nodded at Butler. "Corporal Butler here wouldn't pass for an Obergefreiter— not unless the Germans have been recruiting in Lancashire anyway. But he knows the words, I'll say that for him."

Butler's cheeks burned as Audley turned to him. "Good show, Corporal," said Audley.

Butler searched the white face for the patronising expression which ought to go with the words, but found only a polite innocence worn like a mask. Whatever Audley thought about his situation was locked up inside his head.

"You've got some German too, I gather?" said the major.

"S-school Certificate German. I can maybe read it a bit, but not much more as yet," said Audley self-dismissively.

Butler bit his lip. Not so long ago the acquisition of School Certificate German had been the limit of his ambition, looming larger than anything else except the Army itself. But here was Audley shrugging it off as a thing of little importance.

"You have a history scholarship?" The major's tone was casual. "Am I right there?"

Hände hoch! thought Butler. The complete unimportance of Mr. Audley's education could only conceal a hidden ambush to come—and there was nothing he could do to warn the subaltern.

“Yes, sir." Audley relaxed.

"Oxford, I presume?"

"Cambridge actually. The climate in Oxford . . . it's terribly muggy. I didn't fancy it at all. I think Cambridge is much healthier."

Butler was impressed. The subaltern might be exaggerating, but he had spoken as though he'd had a choice between the two ancient and exclusive seats of learning, and not even the great Dr. Fredericks of King Edward's had ever boasted of that so far as he could recall.

"Besides, there was this fellow at Balliol who was mad keen for me to read Greats, and the truth is I've Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

never been absolutely sold on the classics since—"

Butler had just worked out that "Greats" must be Latin and Greek when the jeep hammered violently over a pothole again, catching him unprepared and throwing him sideways against Audley before he could swing against the lurch. He felt the subaltern shrink away from him, and then tense up with pain as their shoulders met. "Sorry," said Audley for the twenty-first time, automatically. Butler looked away, embarrassed. Ahead of them the road now arrowed towards a far skyline that was just beginning to blur with the haze of evening. They had left the Norman Switzerland behind them and were heading into a countryside untouched by war. But for the evenly spaced trees along the road and the hedgeless fields beyond them, it might almost have been the anonymous landscape of southern England he had glimpsed on the battalion's journey southwards a month before. It hardly seemed possible that only a few days back this might-have-been England had been German territory.

Audley lapsed into silence, leaving the sentence unfinished, as though the pain had reminded him where he was. He had managed all those words, from "Cambridge" onwards, without a trace of a stutter, Butler realised.

"So you decided to study history?" The major seemed determined to drive the young officer from cover.

"A more useful subject—eh?"

Audley gave the question some thought before answering. "I wouldn't go so f-far as to say useful. I certainly d-didn't find my knowledge of ... W-William the Conqueror's f-feudal administration in Normandy awfully useful in the b-bocage." He made a ghastly attempt at a smile. "M-medieval history doesn't help against eighty-eights, I found."

"Medieval history?" The major's good eye widened. "Now there you might just be wrong, young David, you know."

"I b-beg your pardon, sir?" Audley looked at the major with a mixture of surprise and unconcealed curiosity.

"I said you may be wrong—eh, Sergeant-major?" The major sought confirmation from what Butler regarded as a most unlikely source.

The sergeant-major grunted knowingly.

"Sir?" Audley's interest fluttered like a bird in a cage.

The major's golden smile showed. "The name Chandos mean anything to you, my lad?"

"Chandos?" Audley repeated the name, frowning.

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"That's right And there was an Audley too in his time, I rather think—does he ring a bell with you?"

"Sir James Audley," said Audley.

"An ancestor perhaps? That would be highly appropriate." The eye closed for an instant "The O'Conors themselves were kings of Connaught in those days, would you believe it! But Chandos now—"

"Sir John Chandos," said Audley.

"That's the man. Chandos, Manny, Holland, Burghersh, Audley, Mowbray, Beauchamp, Neville, Percy—

aye, and the Black lad himself ... all names to conjure with, David. As fine a band of cutthroats as ever left home to make their fortunes at someone else's expense! But Chandos first and last—and best."

Butler looked questioningly from one to the other, completely at sea, and the major caught the look.

"Never heard of Sir John Chandos, Corporal? What did they teach you at school?"

Butler flushed with shame at his latest display of ignorance. The full extent of his medieval history lay between the covers of E. Wilmot Buxton, but there had been none of those names in those pages; and the rest of his historical knowledge coincided exactly with the School Certificate syllabus, which had acknowledged nothing before 1815.

His tongue was like a piece of balsa wood in his mouth.

"Tell the man, David," said the major.

Audley glanced at Butler sympathetically. "Hundred Years' War and all that, Corporal—the Black Prince and the battle of Crécy, 1346—" he blinked and cut short the recital of facts as though they irritated him.

"Go on," the major urged him. "Sir John Chandos?"

Audley turned towards him. "What's Sir John Chandos got to do with us ... sir?"

"I said go on, Mr. Audley," said the major. "And I dislike repeating instructions."

Audley's chin lifted. "I didn't know it was an order, sir. Chandos was a fourteenth-century soldier, one of Edward III's field commanders and a comrade of the Black Prince's. That's all I know about him—

except that he was famous for his courtesy and good manners."

Butler held his breath as the major's good eye became as fishlike for an instant as the glass one. Then the corner of his mouth twitched upwards.

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"Not just for his good manners, David," he said coolly. "He was the greatest captain of the age—the complete fighting man, you might say. Crécy, Poitiers, and Najera, and a hundred skirmishes."

Audley met the stare. "Yes, sir?"

He hadn't actually said "So what?" but he hadn't left it quite unsaid, Butler realised. It had never occurred to him that officers as well as other ranks should have mastered the art of dumb insolence—or it might be better described as dumb arrogance in young Mr. Audley's case; and somehow he didn't think that it was a newly acquired skill.

But at least the set of the subaltern's jaw and the obstinate expression in his eyes settled one question: whatever there was wrong with Second Lieutenant Audley, it wasn't LMF.

Suddenly the major grinned disarmingly, displaying the full range of gold in his mouth.

"Welcome to Chandos Force, David"—he took in Butler with the grin—"and you, Corporal."

Butler kicked himself for a fool. He had quite forgotten that any test set by the major would be as foxy as the major himself.

Chandos Force?

"I—" Audley's jaw dropped. "Sir?"

"Chandos Force. Which I have the honour to command, and in which you have the honour to serve now

—both of you."

The jeep was slowing down. As Butler was grappling with the significance of what had gone before he was also aware that the sergeant-major was searching the line of trees on the left of the road.

The major looked ahead briefly. "Another two hundred yards, Sergeant-major—you'll see the broken signpost on the opposite side." He swivelled back to them. "And what is Chandos Force going to do, eh?"

"Yes, sir." Audley sounded a little chastened.

"Naturally. Well, that one will discover in due course. But one is entitled to add two and two if one wishes—as I have . . . that is, if one is good at history as well as arithmetic."

The test wasn't over.

The jeep was crawling now, almost down to walking pace. But that didn't matter.

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"I thought code names weren't meant to mean anything," said Audley slowly. "But this one does—is that it?"

"So I am authoritively informed." The major nodded. "It was apparently coined by a historian like yourself—with an historical sense of humour, so I'm told."

The major was no historian obviously, thought Butler. But the major was the sort of man who would do his homework if he got half a chance, that was for sure.

"Then I presume we're going to follow in Chandos's footsteps, sir," said Audley. "I seem to remember ...

he covered a lot of country in his time."

The jeep turned off the road, though mercifully it was moving so slowly that there was no danger of a twenty-second collision in the back. Ahead of them Butler saw a track leading across open fields towards a low huddle of farm buildings from which several slender columns of smoke rose vertically in the still air, pale blue in the evening light.

Cooking fires, decided Butler hopefully.

"Very good, David! All you need now is the right word," said Major O'Conor.

The right word? There were vehicles under camouflaged netting among the trees ahead—the right word?

" Chevauchée," said the major. “We're going on a chevauchée, my boy."

"A chevauchée?" The incredulity in Audley's voice helped Butler to concentrate on his ears rather than his eyes. They would reach the buildings soon enough.

"One of Chandos's specialities. You know what it means?"

"Well ... in modern French it's ... 'a ride,' I suppose," said Audley pedantically. "But in medieval French ... it was a raid—and more than a raid."

Audley had known more about the Hundred Years' War than he had admitted, but the major let that pass.

"Yes, David?"

Audley drew a deep breath. "It was the classic English tactic for taking what they wanted—take and capture, or rape, burn, pillage, and plunder on the march. That is, unless the people agreed to s-s-submit to their rightful lord, King Edward. But our chaps usually forgot to ask first."

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There was a bearded man in a check shirt just ahead. He had a machine-pistol slung round his neck and a cigarette in his mouth.

"Yes . . . well I can't promise you all of that, though we'll do our best of course," said the major. "But we are going to take something, certainly."

The check-shirted man gave them a cheery wave without removing the cigarette. He wore khaki battle-dress trousers and army gaiters, Butler noticed with sudden surprise.

The farm buildings looked up ahead.

"What are we going to take?" asked Audley.

Major O'Conor chuckled. 'Why—a castle of course, just as Chandos would have done. Except we're going to take it from the Germans, naturally."

5. How Second Lieutenant Audley chanced his arm

The men of Chandos Force shuffled into the barn in ones and twos for their final briefing.

From his chosen spot in the darkness just beyond the dim circle of light cast by the hurricane lamp Butler watched them with a sour mixture of contempt and disapproval.

The mixture embarrassed him, and also confused him because he couldn't square it with his impression of either Major O'Conor or Sergeant-major Swayne, who belonged to the world of soldiering which he understood. But these men—the major's men, the sergeant-major's men, and also (Jesus Christ!) his new comrades—came from another world altogether, and one which he did not understand at all.

He knew he was green and raw and wet behind the ears, and that the memory of the only shots he'd ever fired in anger—at the major himself—made his cheeks burn at the very thought of it And he knew that first impressions could be false impressions—

Must be false impressions.

It had looked more like a bandit encampment than a unit of the British Army about to go into action.

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Not so much the weird assortment of non-uniforms—of knitted cap-comforters instead of berets or steel helmets, of flak jackets and camouflage smocks instead of battle dress, of bandoleers and belts of ammunition instead of standard webbing pouches. . . .

Not so much even the weirder assortment of weapons—machine pistols and automatic rifles, and LMGs which looked suspiciously German but just might be American; the anti-tank rocket launchers stacked by the farm gateway were certainly American; but there was not a Bren or a Sten to be seen, never mind an honest-to-God Lee Enfield rifle. . . .

No, not the dress and not the weapons . . . but the savoury cooking smells and the card games and the dice; and the casual greetings—no salutes—and the laughter in the background, all of which he had smelt or heard or glimpsed during the last half hour. All it had needed was a girl or two—say Dolores del Rio in a low-cut dress, with gipsy earrings— to complete the picture.

Chandos Force.

The Chandos Gang—

Must be false impressions.

Butler struggled with the evidence of his senses and his limited experience, as the sudden glow of the half-smoked dog-end in the mouth of the next man to enter the barn caught his eye. As the man stepped briefly into the lamplight Butler saw that he sported an Uncle Joe Stalin moustache.

In the Lancashire Rifles no rifleman or junior NCO dared to grow a moustache. In the Lancashire Rifles men stood close to their razors every morning without fail.

And when the ACIs were pinned on the notice boards appealing for volunteers for the paratroops or any other strange and wonderful units like this one, Lancashire Riflemen did not volunteer—the senior NCOs saw to that, their official reasoning being that anyone wishing to quit the best battalion in the finest regiment in the whole British Army must be bloody mad, and it wouldn't be right and proper to saddle other units with such madmen, particularly units which must already have more than their share of thugs, misfits, and criminals.

Over two happy years of mastering the basics of the only trade he had ever wanted to learn, Butler had become convinced of the inner truth of that simple logic. Everything he was told and everything he learnt fitted in with everything he had ever read and with those things which General Chesney had told him: that the highest moment in war was the ordinary line infantryman setting his face and his best foot toward the enemy in battle. All the rest—all the tanks and artillery and planes and staffs and generals—

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were but the means and the auxiliaries to that end.

He had tried to prepare himself for the ugly facts of pain and discomfort and dirt and smells which he knew would mask this truth. But he discovered now that he had relied far more on the shelter of the battalion itself: he had not prepared himself for this kind of war in this kind of unit.

He wasn't afraid, he told himself. Because this wasn't the feeling he had had by the side of the stream, when the major had shouted at him in German.

But he was alone, and he was unutterably and desolately lonely.

A sudden stir among the bandits, and then a spreading hush of their muttered conversations, roused him out of self-misery.

The sergeant-major strode into the lamplight and glowered around him into the darkness. He was still wearing his leather jerkin, but had forsaken his beret for a knitted cap-comforter.

"Purvis!" he barked into the gloom.

"S'arnt-major!" One of the bandits barked back.

"Everybody here?"

"S'arnt-major." Purvis paused. "One extra."

The sergeant-major frowned for a moment. "Corporal Butler!"

"Sergeant-major!" Butler attempted to bark, but his voice cracked with the effort.

"Right." The sergeant-major swung round towards the doorway, his hand coming up to a quivering salute. "All present and correct, sir!" he roared into the darkness.

Second Lieutenant Audley stepped cautiously through the doorway into the circle of light, stooping to avoid the lintel.

The bandit in front of Butler inclined his head towards his neighbour. "Cor, bleedin' 'ell," he said in a deliberate stage whisper.

It was true that Audley looked absurdly young, despite his size. Indeed, his size seemed to emphasise his Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

youth as he blinked nervously around him, with the squatter but menacing figures of Purvis and the sergeant-major on the edge of the light on either side of him, like wolves bracketing a newly born bull calf.

" 'E wants 's mummy," stage-whispered the other bandit.

Bastards— Butler thought of the burnt-out Cromwells— bastards.

The sergeant-major swung sharply towards the direction of the whisper, his chest expanding. But Audley forestalled him.

"All right, Sergeant-major Swayne," he said softly. "Let it ... be."

He stared around him slowly, no longer blinking, as though his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and he could see every last cobweb in the barn. The bruise on his cheek seemed larger and blacker, brutalising one side of his face.

Maybe not a bull calf after all, thought Butler, but some other animal. Or at least not a newly born bull calf, but a young bull not so easily to be taken for granted.

Then the spell was broken as the other officers of Chandos Force came out of the darkness behind him, two of them almost indistinguishable from the rank-and-file bandits, but the third contrasting strangely with them because of his conventional smartness—Three pips for a captain—Butler craned his neck and strained his eyes—by God! not three pips, but a crown and two pips—a full colonel, and with ribbons to match too! So Major O'Conor wasn't in command of Chandos Force after all. . . .

But it was the major who came in last, and it was the major who took the centre of the lamplight, with all four officers joining his audience.

The glass eye glinted unnaturally in its fixed stare as the good eye ranged among them fiercely for a moment or two.

"All right, then"—the eye stopped for an instant, then darted again left—right—left—"what I shall say now I shall say once and once only, as is my custom . . . which all of you know—and some of you know to your cost."

No one laughed. So that wasn't a joke, thought Butler; so perhaps the bandits knew more about discipline than he had thought on first sight.

"All except two." The major paused. "Mr. Audley you have just seen. He comes to us from the South Wessex Dragoons and he speaks fluent French." He paused again, and Butler tensed himself just in time.

"Corporal Butler—come here!"

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Butler shouldered his way to the light, managing in the process to tread heavily and satisfactorily on the foot of the bandit who had whispered about Audley's mother.

"You see now Corporal Butler." Butler glared into the darkness—it was surprising how this one dim light could be so blinding. "The corporal comes to us from the Lancashire Rifles and he speaks fluent German—right, Corporal."

Butler made his way back to his original position. This time the bandit was ready for him, but this time he trod on the other bandit's foot "Mr. Audley and Corporal Butler are replacements for Mr. Wilson and Sergeant Scott. As such they have no formal duties at present—"

Butler frowned in the darkness, wondering what had happened to Sergeant Scott. Possibly his German hadn't been fluent enough for Major O'Conor's purposes?

"—with me—right." The all-seeing eye settled on Butler, as though the major knew that his attention was straying from the words which were only going to be said once. With an effort he shook himself free from Sergeant Scott.

The eye left him. "Now I am fully aware that there's only one damn question you want answered—

namely, why we should have been transported across the length of Europe from our own private war into someone else's fight . . . particularly when our war was taking such a . . . promising turn.

"I am also fully aware that you are now confidently expecting the usual pack of lies which is the staple diet served to us by the Gadarene swine at GHQ."

Butler stole a glance at the bandit beside him. Somewhat to his surprise he saw in the dim light that the bandit was grinning; evidently the major was running true to form.

"However ... in this instance the answers I have been able to elicit may actually bear some resemblance to the truth . . . indeed, even more incredibly, they show some faint glimmering of rational thought and old-fashioned common sense—to our advantage."

There was a slight ripple of movement among the bandits—either it was the word "advantage" or they knew that the preamble was over. What was certain, though, was that the major and his men understood each other perfectly.

"I say 'answers' because there are two of them.

"And the first one is that greater events swallow up smaller ones." The major smiled. "By which I mean that while we have been busy bringing aid and comfort to an ungrateful collection of Communist Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

cutthroats, the Allies have been winning the war."

Butler frowned into the darkness. There had never been any doubt in his mind about that, not even in the blackest days of 1940 when he had known no better. Even when the Hood had been sunk his schoolboy confidence had only been shaken momentarily. It seemed more than unnecessary to restate the obvious now, deep in France in 1944—it almost seemed bad form.

The major rocked on his heels. "Ah . . . now I think you may be in danger of mistaking me ... I cannot see all your expressions, but judging by the look on Sergeant Purvis's face—am I boring you, Purvis?"

All Butler could see of the moustachioed sergeant was his back, which was now rigid beneath its enveloping smock.

"Sir?" Purvis temporised. "No, sir."

"Perhaps you think I am making a patriotic address—do you think that, Purvis?"

"No, sir." This time there was no hesitation.

"I should damn well think not!" The major paused. "However, I can imagine that some of you may find it difficult to grasp literal truth when it is plainly stated. . . . Mr. Audley there, for example—his regiment has been mixing it with Panzer Group West and the German Seventh Army, who have no doubt been giving as good as they got."

Audley's chin lifted. "R-rather b-b-better than they g-got, actually," he said defiantly.

"Indeed?" The major's eye lingered momentarily on Audley. "Well then—I have good news for you, Mr.

Audley"—the eye lifted—"and for all of you. Within the next forty-eight hours Panzer Group West and the Seventh Army will have ceased to exist—what's left of them will be in the bag just south of Falaise, caught between our army and the Americans. And it'll be the biggest bag since Stalingrad."

He paused more deliberately this time, to let Stalingrad sink in.

"But that isn't the point. The point is that there is no German army between Falaise and the Seine. And there is no German army behind the Seine ... in fact, gentlemen, there is no German army between this barn and the river Rhine."

The place names bounced off Butler's understanding. The Seine was remote enough. But the Rhine—

that was a river on another planet.

"What it amounts to, quite simply, is that the German front in France has collapsed," went on the major Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

in a flat, matter-of-fact voice. "Last night a special light reconnaissance unit of the American Army crossed the Seine west of Paris, and they crossed unopposed. Their armoured columns are already beyond Chartres and Orleans—they delayed at Chartres to spare the cathedral, but elsewhere they're meeting virtually no opposition. Some of their tanks are making sixty miles a day—their main problem is petrol, not Germans. According to the Air Force, there isn't a single major enemy unit moving west.

What there is that's moving ... is heading east, towards the Fatherland, as fast as it can go."

The Rhine—No German army between this barn and the Rhine—Sixty miles a day— The Rhine.

The sense of what the major was saying finally penetrated into Butler's brain and exploded there.

The literal truth: the German front in France had collapsed.

"It's 1940 all over again," said the major. "Only this time they are on the receiving end, and they've no Air Force left and no Channel to hide behind. And there are ten million Russians breaking down their back door."

The literal truth: the Allies have won the war. The full extent of the catastrophe overwhelmed Butler.

The war was ending too soon for him—it was ending and he would have no part in it. While the Rifles were advancing to victory, he would be pissing around interrogating prisoners for Major O'Conor, far in the rear. He would wear a Victory Medal, and all it would mean was that he had passed School Certificate in German. Peace loomed ahead of him like a desert.

"Very well, then!" The major's tone became brisker. "The first answer leads to the second. To the north of us our armies and the Americans are tidying up. To the west they are taking the ports of Brittany. To the east they are in open country. To the south they have stopped along the line of the river Loire from the sea to Orleans." He was playing with them, thought Butler bitterly. "We are going south, across the river."

Butler's heart sank. If there was any real fighting left it would be to the north and the east. The south could only be a backwater.

There was a slight stir in the darkness to his right, and the sound of a throat being cleared.

Major O'Conor picked up the signal. "Yes?" he challenged.

The throat was cleared again. "I was just wondering, sir . . ." The sing-song Welsh voice trailed off hesitantly, but Butler guessed instantly the question which must be uppermost in the Welshman's mind: there must still be a lot of unbeaten Germans south of the Loire who might not yet have heard that the war was over.

"Yes, Corporal Jones—you were just wondering?"

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"Yes, sir—I was just wondering, see ... would that be where the wine comes from, in the south like?"

"The wine?" The major was as unprepared for the question as Butler was.

"Yes, sir. Lovely stuff it is, the French make—much better than the Eyeties even. But they don't make it round here—no grapes, see—and I was thinking . . . not warm enough here. But down south, that would be where they would be making it." Corporal Jones sounded well pleased with his reasoning. "And a lot of it, they make, too," he added. "So I believe."

"Then we must hope the Germans haven't drunk it all," said the major dryly.

"Oh . . . now I hadn't thought of that, sir." The corporal took the hint obediently. "Would there be enough of them to do that then, sir?"

Butler watched the major intently. Every good unit had its self-appointed funny man, and although he himself was frequently unable to see the humour in the jokes they revelled in he had learnt from his platoon sergeant that they performed a useful function in relieving tension. The Welshman was a cut above most of them too: he had let the major call him back to the serious matter in hand without conceding that large numbers of Germans were more important than large quantities of alcohol. Now it would be interesting to see how the major handled his question, because clever officers never attempted to beat such men at their own game.

"Yes . . ." The major pretended to give the question serious consideration. "Well now, perhaps Colonel Clinton could answer that one for us?" He turned slowly towards the little group of officers.

Good, thought Butler. The best way of all was to play humour straight, as though it was perfectly serious.

The full colonel stepped into the light and swung on his heel towards the audience. In catching his badges of rank Butler had missed his face; now he saw that he was youngish for that extra pip and that he didn't have the look of a regimental officer. The first of his three ribbons was a DSO certainly, but that could be won from a chair by brains or cunning. Only he also didn't have the sleek authority of the staff officer . . . more a hungry, almost suspicious look which Butler hadn't encountered before.

"Yes . . . well, it isn't easy to say with any certainty what the present strength of the German First and Nineteenth armies is." Colonel Clinton's voice wasn't regimental either; it was educated, but classless and quite different from both the drawl of Audley's colonel and Audley's own public-school stutter.

"Ten weeks ago they fielded thirteen infantry divisions, including five training divisions, plus three Panzer divisions and one Panzer grenadier division. But they've been bled white since then. Today . . .

maybe eight infantry divisions, all well under strength and including Russian and Polish ex-POWs. Plus one first-class Panzer division—the 11th." Colonel Clinton gazed into space for a moment, as though Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

mentally adding long field-grey columns of figures. "With a substantial noncombatant military element . . . say a quarter of a million uniformed personnel."

The figure of a quarter of a million hung in the darkness and silence of the barn. Butler hadn't thought to count Chandos Force, but he knew it couldn't be much over thirty.

"Thank you, sir," said Corporal Jones. "Thank you very much, sir." Military intelligence, thought Butler.

Only military intelligence would have figures like that, down to divisional numbers, at its fingertips.

"Quarter of a million men"—as though by tacit agreement Major O'Conor took over again—"who are not of the slightest interest to us."

It occurred to Butler that it was the Germans' likely interest in Chandos Force, not Chandos Force's lack of interest in the Germans, which was of more pressing concern; but nobody—not even Corporal Jones—

seemed disposed to raise that point.

"Nor will we be of the slightest interest to them—certainly not since oh-eight hundred hours this morning"—the major paused very deliberately—"when the American Seventh Army and the French Second Corps landed in the South of France."

There was a stirring of excitement in the barn, and Butler closed his eyes. He had already accepted the bitter truth— the Allies have won the war—but the acceptance was still raw enough to render each piece of confirmation painful.

"So as of this morning what fighting strength they have will be drawn southwest, to delay the Americans and the French while the rest of the ragbag heads for home.

"We're not going to hinder them—we're not going to lift a finger against them—and provided we can reach our objective without getting in their way, there's no reason why they should want to lift a finger against us. All they want is a clear road to Germany, and we're not going to knock down any signposts—

is that clear?"

For a moment there was silence. Then Audley made a curious hissing noise.

"Ssss . . ." The young subaltern fought the stutter briefly, shaking his head against it. "S-supposing we do run into them?"

The major smiled. "That's a fair question from a newcomer. And the answer is that we're here now because we're experts in not running into Germans behind their own lines. We've been doing it for six months in Jugoslavia in rather more difficult circumstances, and the powers-that-be reckon we can do it in France too. Does that answer your question, Mr. Audley?"

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Butler found he could guess very well why Audley of all people would have found that fear uppermost in his mind: his whole brief military experience in the bocage country consisted of running headlong into Germans, with unpleasant results.

"Yes, sir," said Audley manfully.

"Good. Now—are there any other questions?"

Sergeant Purvis's back straightened again. "Sir!"

" Yes, Sergeant?"

"The objective, sir."

Major O'Conor's last remark in the jeep flashed into Butler's memory: We're going to take a castle from the Germans. But that didn't quite square with not lifting a finger against them, somehow.

The major looked towards Colonel Clinton. "Sir?"

The colonel nodded. "The exact nature and location of the objective is still a classified secret, Sergeant.

All I can tell you is that... we are going south of the Loire to repossess certain items of property belonging to His Majesty's Government . . . extremely valuable property. You will be told the location when we are closer to it, but I'm afraid that I am not at liberty to reveal what the property is."

Not a castle, but property, thought Butler quickly.

Or ... property in a castle.

Repossess. That was a black word in his vocabulary: it was what the bailiffs did at home when someone fell too far behind with the rent.

The thought of home reminded Butler again that he was in the midst of strangers. And yet when he thought about his homesickness he realised that he wasn't homesick for home, but for the comradeship and comfortable certainties of the battalion, where briefings were clear and concise, and objectives unclouded by mysterious secrets.

He was aware at the same time that he was desperately thirsty and lightheaded with hunger, and that the infection between the toes of his foot was itching abominably again. In the scale of his present unhappiness the first two weren't at all serious: he had water in his water bottle and plenty of his favourite oatmeal blocks, which were the unexpected delicacy of the twenty-four-hour ration packs. But that treacherous foot presented a real problem now, after he had missed out on the last treatment and Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

might not have any privacy for some time to come. Opportunities for foot and sock washing, not to mention the application of the gentian violet, would probably be few and far between once Major O'Conor's chevauche'e had begun.

"From whom, sir?" said Audley.

Butler couldn't make sense of the question, and from the look on his face neither could Colonel Clinton.

"From whom, Mr. Audley?" He repeated patiently. "What d'you mean—from whom?"

Butler felt sorry for the young officer. Whatever he was after, that patient tone made him look a fool.

The odds were that even if he did get an answer now it would be a humiliating one.

"Y-yes, sir." Audley swallowed, swayed nervously—but stuck to his guns. "You said . . . r-repossess His Majesty's . . . property," he said, fighting the words with obstinate deliberation.

"So I did—yes, Mr. Audley," the colonel admitted.

"Will the ... French Resistance . . . forces be co-operating with us in the ... operation, sir?"

That was an unexpected question, but only because it didn't seem to follow from the previous one. It was also a disappointingly unimportant line of inquiry; maybe Audley wasn't so full of brains after all, but merely liked the sound of his own voice in spite of his stutter.

"No, Mr. Audley, they will not be." The colonel's tone was sharper now. 'This is a strictly British military operation. We shall be travelling across the American Third Army zone—the Americans will assist us as necessary and will pass us through their southern flank info enemy territory. After that we will be on our own. We will thereafter use any local intelligence the French may be able to give us, but nothing more than that. Our only allies are speed and surprise. We're going in quickly and we're coming out quickly."

He raised his eyes from Audley to include everyone in the barn. "I was coming to this part of the operation later, but I may as well deal with it now. I don't need to spell out what will happen if you get caught—the rules are the same here as they were where you've come from. It's up to you whether you want to be brave or not, but if you decide to talk . . . when you talk your cover story is that you are reinforcing an SAS party in the Morvan Mountains between Nevers and Dijon, but you've been airdropped prematurely because of engine failure. Your code name is Bullsblood, which they will have reason to believe because we've already planted it, and your rendezvous is at the old viaduct five kilometres south of Sauleuf. Your mission is to interdict the main road to the west—they'll believe that too, for the sufficient reason that the SAS is already at work there."

Buther wondered what the rules were that the colonel didn't need to spell out. But he could ask about Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

them later, even though he had the feeling that he wouldn't like the answer.

"The difference this time is that your cover story goes for everyone you meet across the river, not just for the enemy. If you get separated and the Resistance or anyone else picks you up you are still Bullsblood, bound for Sauleuf. As far as you're concerned Chandos doesn't exist— you've never heard of it and you don't want to join it." The colonel's gaze returned to Audley. "Does that answer your question, Mr. Audley?"

For a bet it had answered it more fully than Audley had expected, Butler thought grimly.

For a moment Audley said nothing. Then he nodded his head. "Not exactly, sir. . . . B-but I can add t-two and two."

There was an undisguised note of arrogance in the subaltern's voice that turned the words into a challenge. Butler had never heard a second lieutenant speak to a really senior officer like that—he had never heard anyone speak to a superior like that. Either Audley was unbelievably innocent or after having had three tanks blown from under him he just no longer gave a damn for anyone.

The colonel looked at Audley curiously. Possibly he wasn't sure he'd heard the challenge—that his ears had deceived him. But the silence in the barn must surely confirm his suspicion, thought Butler: no one wanted to breathe for fear of missing his reaction.

"Two and two"—the colonel's curiosity got the better of him—"Mr. Audley?"

"Yes, sir. We're not going to fight the Germans—and we're not going to tell the . . . French. So ... neither of them . . . knows about it— the property, I mean." Audley paused. "Not yet, anyway. So we're just going to nip in and p-p-p-pinch it from under their noses."

Bulging with brains, decided Butler.

And arrogance.

And innocence.

He stared at Colonel Clinton quickly—

The colonel was smiling. Or at least half smiling.

"Well ... I hope you're right." The colonel shook his head. "Because if you aren't, then Chandos Force is going to have to fight an awful lot of Germans and Frenchmen during the next week."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

6. How Corporal Butler tasted the wine of Touraine

Sergeant Purvis shouldered his way through the crowd towards Butler.

"Harry Purvis," he announced, thrusting out a large hand.

The voice and the hand were friendly, which was a double relief when the two bandits on whose feet Butler had trodden had been watching him with what could only be hostile intentions.

"Jack Butler, Sergeant." He released his equipment for a moment in order to accept the hand.

"Harry," the sergeant corrected him. "Glad to meet you, Jack. Here —give us that"—he reached down and lifted the tangle of webbing pouches and pack before Butler could stop him—"and come along with me. Have you had anything to eat yet?"

Butler began to feel better. Irregular units like Chandos Force were bound to be informal, and no doubt Sergeant Purvis had been told to look after him. But this easy comradeship was morale-raising. "Not since this morning," he admitted.

"Christ! You must be bloody starving. We'll soon put that right," Harry Purvis nodded encouragingly.

"And thirsty too, eh? Well, Taffy will fix that double quick."

Better and better, Butler congratulated himself as he strode through the bandit encampment beside the sergeant. Obviously he had let appearances deceive him; he should have known better that a man like Major O'Conor wouldn't run a sloppy show. Misfits they might be (his Rifleman's lessons couldn't be unlearnt in an hour), but the excellence of their commanding officer was bound to rub off on them as it did in any unit.

"That young sprig of yours—with the stutter—he's a bloody caution," confided Purvis, steering Butler round the corner of the barn towards the back of the house. "Does he always chance his arm like that?"

"I don't know," said Butler. "I only met him for the first time this evening. He's supposed to be very clever."

"Too clever by half, if you ask me. Lucky for him he was cheeking that colonel they just sent us, and not our Willy—he'll take a joke with the best of 'em, Willy will"—Purvis pointed to a doorway—"but he can't abide clever buggers. ... In here, Jack."

Butler pushed open the door and stepped into a large lamplit room. The farmhouse kitchen it must be, he thought, as the warmth he always associated with kitchens engulfed him. The scrape of his iron-shod Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

boots on the stone floor and the glint of lamplight on pots and pans hanging on the wall confirmed the thought.

There was a group of bandits clustered round something at the far end of the room to his right—

clustered almost guiltily, like schoolboys, so it seemed to him as they turned towards him. Harry Purvis came from behind him, and the schoolboys relaxed. "What the hell are you lot up to?"

"Trying to get a cork out of a bottle without a corkscrew, boyo," said Corporal Jones.

"What have you done with the corkscrew?"

"Our Willy's taken it, that's what," said Jones with feeling. "And a couple of bottles to go with it, too."

Judging by the number of bottles at Jones's feet generosity was not one of his virtues.

"Well, push the bloody cork in then—haven't you got any sense?" snapped the sergeant. "Jack here's got a terrible thirst on him."

"Push the cork in? Man, you can't do that! This here is good wine—Grand Vin de Touraine, it says. You can't treat it like it was London beer, that would be a crime. Besides, it doesn't pour properly if you do that."

Butler felt in his pocket for his clasp knife. "I've got a corkscrew," he said. "It's not a very good one, but . . ."

"No such thing as a not-very-good corkscrew." Jones advanced towards him. "Jack is it? Well, I can see you're a man to know, Jack boyo. A man to keep in with ... so you shall have the first drink from this bottle, by God!"

There was nothing Butler wanted less than alcohol on an empty stomach; what he had been thinking of longingly was a huge mug of hot, sweet tea. But it would clearly be a bad mistake to reject the Welsh corporal's offer in the circumstances, when he had made such a good beginning.

"There now!" Jones drew the cork and poured a generous measure of wine into a tumbler. "Grand Vin de Touraine—which is where we're going to, so nothing could be more fitting for the occasion. Like a taste of things to come, you could say, eh Jack?"

He offered the glass to Butler.

Which is where we're going?

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Harry Purvis was off the mark a second later. “What d'you mean, Taf—where we're going?"

"What I say, that's what I mean, Harry boyo." Jones drove the corkscrew into another cork.

"You know something I don't, then."

"I shouldn't wonder at all." Jones drew the next cork, put the bottle on the table beside him and seized another bottle. "I know a lot of things you don't, and that's just one of them."

Butler put his glass to his lips and sipped cautiously. The wine shone pale yellow-gold in the lamplight, and it tasted pale yellow-gold too, light and dry and infinitely refreshing. It was the heavy red wines that must be dangerous, he decided—this was little more than a fruit juice. He drained the glass thirstily.

"That's the spirit!" Jones filled his glass again, nodding his head approvingly. "This Touraine is going to be a bit of all right, I'm thinking." He lifted a glass of his own.

"Who told you it was Touraine?" asked Harry Purvis.

"Who told me? Who told me?" Jones drank, winking at Butler as he did so. “Why, man, our Willy told me, that's who. Who d'you think I get my information from, eh?"

"When?"

"Just now he did—just before you came in, when he took our corkscrew." Jones snapped the clasp knife shut and returned it to Butler. "Nothing wrong with that, Jack, so you look after it carefully. I had a little knife like that once—stolen by an Albanian it was. He didn't call it stealing though, 'redistribution of property' he called it, and he was a terrible redistributor of other people's property until the Eyeties caught him at it. Then they redistributed him. So I got myself a bigger knife from one of his friends, but it doesn't have a corkscrew, I'm sorry to say."

Harry Purvis sighed. “What did our Willy say?"

"I was just telling you. Came in looking for a corkscrew, he did. And then he spotted these here bottles, and he said 'I'll have a couple of those, then,' bold as brass." Jones shook his head. "Of course, I didn't say anything, but he saw the look in my eye and he says 'Is there anything the matter, Corporal?' as though he doesn't know perfectly well that I had a whole case of red wine sent to the officers' mess. And so I said, 'I thought you liked the red better than the white, sir'—which is nothing less than the truth, although it wasn't what I'd had in mind when he laid hold of our bottles, I can tell you.

"And he said 'Aye, so I do. But this that you've kept for yourself, Corporal, comes from where we're going, and I've a mind to try it'— now, isn't that what he said, lads?" Jones appealed to the other NCOs.

There was a chorus of agreement.

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"Not that I disagree with him, mind you." Jones splashed some more wine into his glass and then into the empty glasses which were stretched out towards him. "Knocks spots off what we've been used to, and that's a fact—here, Jack, you're missing out, and there's plenty more where this came from."

Butler's glass had emptied itself again somehow. Two pints of beer was his self-imposed limit, but: this wasn't in the same class as beer. And besides, he hadn't had half a pint of it yet, so far as he could judge, so he could take no very great harm from another cup or two.

Jones nodded encouragingly as he filled the glass. "There now . . . so it's Touraine for us then, wherever that is. But if there's plenty of this"—he raised the bottle—

"And no bloody Germans," said someone.

"All, now there"— Jones pointed the bottle at the speaker—"now there you have put your finger on a matter of greater interest to us, I'm thinking."

"But they're all buggering off home, Taf. Our Willy said so."

"So he did, boyo, so he did. And maybe it's true, and maybe it isn't."

"Oh, come on, Taf! If the Yanks are over the Seine—"

"And we've landed in the South of France, Taf—" Jones raised the bottle to silence them. "All right! If it's all the Gospel truth then it's in a mean, nasty, and disinheriting mood they'll be in, I'm thinking—

remember those Waffen SS troops that chased us that time? The ones out of Sarajevo? Nasty, they were . . . and I can't see them going home without a fight, either, no matter what."

"But they're in Jugland, Taf."

"Those ones are. But what about the ones that are here, eh?"

Jones shook his head mournfully, reducing the company to silence in contemplation of unpleasant possibilities. Butler was reminded suddenly of Colonel Clinton's reference to the rules which didn't need to be spelt out.

For once his curiosity was stronger than his shyness. "What happens if we get captured?" he inquired. "I mean ... I know what the officer said, but . . ." he trailed off helplessly.

"Get captured?" Taffy Jones seemed highly amused. "Name, rank, and number—and just leave the rest to them." He put the bottle down on the table and drew his finger across his throat, grinning horribly.

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"Put a sock in it, Taf," said Sergeant Purvis sharply. "We don't get captured, Jack—that's the short answer."

"Ah—but he wants the long answer, Harry," said Jones, unabashed. "And the long answer is ... make sure that you're taken by the proper German army, boyo. Not bad fellows they are—just like you and me . . . shoot you, they will, most like—just like we'd do in the same place —unless you're a very good liar, that is . . ."

Butler stared at him.

"But that's all they'll do," continued Jones. "But now ... if it's the Abwehr or the Feldgendarmerie—what are like our Redcaps, the Feldgendarmerie—if you're lucky then they'll shoot you too. But you've got to be lucky, mind."

He picked up the bottle and filled Butler's glass.

"It's the SS you've got to steer clear of. Because they don't take name, rank, and number for an answer, they don't. They like a lot more than that, and they aren't fussy about how they get it, either. So with them it's like Harry says: you don't get captured." He smiled. "It's like at the pictures, with the cowboys and the Indians—you save the last bullet for yourself, see?"

Butler was appalled.

Sergeant Purvis shook his head in exasperation. "I didn't mean that at all, and you know it full well, you stupid Welsh git." He turned towards Butler. “With the major running things we just don't get caught, that's what I mean, Jack. It was that bloody colonel—what's-'is-name—who started that bloody hare, because he doesn't know any better. Our Willy's always one bloody jump ahead of everyone—the bloody SS included, you take it from me, Jack. Otherwise we wouldn't be bloody here, and that's a fact."

The chorus erupted again—

"Aye—"

"You're dead right there, Harry—"

"You silly sod, Taf—"

—reassuringly. Butler smiled foolishly, ashamed of his momentary cowardice. Every unit had its Taffy Jones. What he must remember was that every unit did not have its Major O'Conor.

"All right, all right, all right." Taffy Jones acknowledged defeat. "In any case, that's not what's really Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

important—not what's really interesting."

He was changing the subject now the joke had gone sour on him, thought Butler. One beneficial effect of a glass or two of wine was that it sharpened the wits: he could see clear through the little Welshman

— and out the other side.

"What's so interesting?" he asked magnanimously.

"Ah—I can see you know, Jack," said Jones, first pointing the empty bottle at Butler, then sweeping it round to include the other NCOs. "But they don't—they haven't thought of it even!"

"And what's that then, Taf?" Someone caught the Welsh intonation, saving Butler from having to reveal that he was as much at sea as the rest of them.

"Why, man—His Majesty's extremely valuable property, of course." Jones looked round triumphantly.

"What is it that we're going to ... repossess? That's what I'd like to know, eh."

His Majesty's extremely valuable property . . . the Welshman was right at that—it was interesting. Butler found himself exchanging a glance in silence with Sergeant Purvis, and for a moment it was like gazing into a mirror revealing his own mystification.

Jones's eyes settled on him. "Now you, Jack . . . you've been with our Willy all the afternoon. So it's wondering I am whether he maybe let slip a little something, eh?"

Butler scratched his head. “Well, Corporal—"

“Taffy's the name, Jack boyo."

"Taffy . . . well, all he said was we were going to take a castle from the Germans—" he began doubtfully.

"Ah—from the Germans. So we are going to fight them!"

"Not necessarily," said Sergeant Purvis. "Could be that they're going to move out and then we're going to move in—before the bloody frogs do, like."

Jones gestured with the bottle. "Now, you could be right there, Harry—that fits in with it nicely, that does. If we're not going to have anything to do with the Frenchies, that could mean we're more worried about them than about the Germans—and that also explains why we've to nip in quick-like, before they can do the same." He nodded at the sergeant. "Ye-ess, Harry boyo—that would account for it."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Butler frowned. "Does that mean we may have to fight them?"

"Won't be the first time if we do, Jack." Jones looked at him seriously. “Terrible funny lot, the Frenchies are—proud, like."

"But . . . we're on the same side."

"Oh yes—we're on the same side. But they're not on our side, see. They're only on their side."

"Like Wales, Taf," said one of the NCOs. "You're not fighting for the ruddy English, are you?"

"I am not," Jones said with a flash of anger. Then he smiled. "Except that somehow you've got the whole bloody world fighting for you. . . . But I'm right about the frogs. They don't love us, and that's the truth.

Not since we sank those ships of theirs after Dunkirk—in North Africa somewhere." He nodded, turned the nod into a shrug, and then turned quickly towards Butler. "And that was all he said, our Willy, Jack?"

"Aye." Butler concentrated on the valuable property problem. "Couldn't be a secret weapon of some sort, could it?"

The sergeant pursed his lips for a moment, but finally shook his head. "No, I shouldn't think it's that. Bit late in the day for secret weapons now . . . and . . . 'certain items of property' was what the man said.

That doesn't sound like a weapon to me."

"Valuable,' he said too," said Jones. " Extremely valuable."

"Sounds like money to me," said the man who had ribbed Jones.

"Or gold and jewels," said a tall, hatchet-faced man. "Like the crown jewels, maybe. Or old pictures, like they have in the museums—and that sort of stuff. Some of it's worth a fortune—it must be, because they have burglar alarms and people watching over it all the time."

"Now that's what I call good thinking, Vic." Taffy Jones produced another uncorked bottle from somewhere and filled everyone's glass. "Because that's the way I was thinking. See, there was something in the way the colonel spoke made me think this stuff's been there a tidy old time—in Jack's castle—

maybe ever since 1940, say. And what I was thinking was that it 'ud make sense if they couldn't get it out of France then to hide it away somewhere safe-like, just so the Germans didn't get it, whatever it is.

But now maybe the Frenchies have got wind of it, see."

"But if it's British property—the property of our government—" Butler protested.

"British property? British property?" Taffy Jones repeated the words, his voice rising incredulously.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"Boyo, you know what we are?" he tapped his chest with the new bottle.

"We—are?" Butler blinked. 'Well. . . we're Chandos Force."

Jones tutted sarcastically. "No, no—we're the British Liberation Army, that's what we are. And the French, they are the French Liberation Forces. And this"— he put down his glass and his bottle carefully on the table beside him and pulled back his cuff—"what do you think this is?"

"It's a watch," said Butler.

"It's a gold watch—a liberated gold watch. I know, because I liberated it myself. And I hope to liberate a lot more before I'm finished"— Jones picked up the glass and the bottle again—"like liberating this Grand Vin de Touraine."

Butler couldn't help smiling back at the grinning Welshman. The doctrine was familiar—everything that wasn't screwed down was fair game, and there were plenty of men like Taffy who also carried screwdrivers; even the general had praised the Aussies as being the finest thieves in the 1918 army as well as the best assault troops. But this was still accepting robbery on a grander scale than was right and proper.

Sergeant Purvis clapped him on the back, laughing. "You stick close to Taf, Jack—he's born to be hanged. . . . But the little bugger's right: the bloody Germans had been stealing the bloody frogs blind, so you can't blame them for trying to do the same to us. Only I still want to know where this Touraine place is, that's what I want to know."

"Now there you have me," said Taffy Jones. "If it was Koritsar, or Monastir, or Gostivar . . . but Touraine

—" He looked at Butler questioningly. "You have the sound of an educated man, Jack. Or maybe you have a map of France in your pocket like you have a corkscrew, eh?"

Butler grinned back a little foolishly. He was far from the bit of western Normandy he'd studied back in England, and School Certificate geography had left him no memory of the different parts of France. But Touraine sounded as though it was connected with Tours, which so far as he could recall was a city right in the middle of the country—a city on the river Loire, which they were about to cross. "I think it's just across the river—the river Loire," he said hesitantly.

"Go on! Maybe we're not going to have to travel so far, then!" said Jones enthusiastically. "I don't really like all this driving down roads like we owned the place—it's all very well for our Willy, he travels in the middle, like. But I always seem to be in that front jeep, clinging onto a bloody great machine gun—I think the Swine's got it in for me, you know." He wagged his head at Butler. "That's our good friend Company Sergeant-major Swayne, in case you haven't met him, Jack."

"I have met him," said Butler. For once his shyness had deserted him, he felt. But then it was impossible Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

to be shy in this friendly company. "I pointed a Sten at him, and he didn't like it."

"What happened? Did it jam?" said someone.

"Of course it jammed," said Jones. "Here now—we'll give you something better than a Sten, you don't want that cheap mass-produced rubbish." He reached under the table and produced a stubby submachine gun with a wooden stock, quite unlike anything Butler had ever seen. "Beretta .38—best little gun ever made, you take it from me, Jack. None of your Thompsons or Schmeissers, so-called. That's real high-quality steel, that is, machined the hard way. You wouldn't get better stuff out of Ebbw Vale than that—

that's made to last, that is."

The Welshman stroked the gun with the same reverence he had earlier bestowed on the wine bottle. His enthusiasm was clearly split fifty-fifty.

"Did you really point a Sten at the sergeant-major?" asked someone.

"Well—not deliberately—" began Butler.

"Swayne by name and swine by nature," said Jones to no one in particular. "But a good soldier, I'll give him that"

"Wonder what he'll do now we've won the war."

"They'll send him to fight the Japs."

"Buggered if I'm going to fight the Japs. He's welcome to them."

"The Americans'll fight the Japs."

"What about the 14th Army in Burma—they're fighting the Japs. I've got a brother in the RAF there. He says they call it 'the Forgotten Army'."

"Ah—well that must be why I'd forgotten about them, then."

Everyone laughed, and Butler found that he was laughing with them. It was a good joke, that one: the forgotten Forgotten Army.

Taffy Jones tugged at his sleeve. "Have you that corkscrew of yours handy?" He upended the bottle he was holding in order to illustrate his need.

Butler fumbled in his pockets, eventually found the knife and promptly split his thumbnail prizing open Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

the corkscrew.

"All in a good cause," said Taffy, spearing the cork. "And what are you going to do after the war then, Jack? Smart lad like you will have a cushy billet lined up, I'll be bound."

It seemed unreal, talking about the war's end. Everything he had planned had been based on the war giving him the training and the professional polish he needed. Now that it was ending prematurely he could no longer see his way clearly.

He held out his glass. Taffy Jones filled it carefully and then stared at him across it. "Don't look so miserable, boyo. With just a bit of luck we're not going to have to do any more fighting. Our Willy'll see to that, and he's a man you can rely on."

"That's just it," confided Butler miserably. "I was relying on taking part in the fighting."

"Now—there you surprise me." Taffy looked around for his glass and finding nothing in reach drank from the bottle. "It's a nasty rough business, fighting is. Fighting"—he tapped Butler on the chest

—"fighting should be left to soldiers."

Butler frowned at him, remembering his recent testimonial for the little Italian submachine gun. "But we are soldiers," he said stupidly.

"No, we're not." The finger which had tapped Butler's chest now waved in front of his eyes negatively.

"We're civvies in uniform. I was a tool-maker before the war—a trained tool-maker. You were—

whatever you were." The Welshman took another swig from the bottle. "And after the war we'll go back to civvy street, and they'll expect me to be a tool-maker again . . . and you'll be—whatever you were before."

"No," said Butler, thinking of his school blazer, which had been too small for him during the whole of his last year. "No."

"Yes. When I say 'soldiers' I mean professional soldiers."

"But that's what I want to be—a professional soldier," said Butler.

Taffy Jones stared at him incredulously. "Go on? You want to march up and down in a red coat, all bullshit and saluting? Never!" He blinked. "How long have you wanted to do that?"

"Ever since I was a little lad. Ever since I saw our county regiment march through the city with fixed bayonets and drums beating—it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen—" Butler stopped abruptly, shocked by his own words. He had never told anyone that, not even the general. He'd never even put the thought into words before.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Taffy scratched his head. "And what do your da and your ma say to that? If I'd have told my da I was going for a soldier he'd 'uv tanned my arse for me."

"My mum's dead. And my dad doesn't know." It was easier to speak now; it was almost a relief. "He'll be wild when he does find out. He thinks the Army is there to hold down the workers—like in the General Strike."

"Dead right he is too." Taffy nodded vigorously. "That's what they did in Wales, by God—Winston Churchill sent them down to do it, and he'll send them down again without a second thought, I shouldn't wonder . . . and then will you fix your bayonet on your own da, Jack?"

Butler tried to thrust the image out of his mind. "It won't happen like that again—things have changed since then." He reached for something to obliterate the image, since it wouldn't go away. Anything would do. "I'm going to be an officer, too. My company commander says he'll sign my WOSB

application. It's a good career, the Army is. You know where you are in the Army."

"Jesus Christ!" Taffy Jones's face seemed to float away. "D'you hear that, Harry?"

Butler was flustered by Sergeant Purvis's presence at his shoulder. He had the feeling that he'd been talking too quickly and too loudly— and saying too much. It didn't seem to matter that the Welshman had heard him, somehow; but the thought that anyone else had overheard him was embarrassing.

"Not going to put the bayonet into his da, he isn't—he's only going to give the order for it," said Taffy.

"Jack, boyo, I'm disappointed in you, I am."

"Well, I'm not," said Sergeant Purvis. "It's the right place to be—giving the orders. And the right place to be giving them is in the Army, too. You're the bloody fool, Taffy—not Jack. He's the smart one."

"What d'you mean?"

"I mean, you bloody Welshman, that it isn't going to be all beer and skirts in civvy street after this little lot. It's going to be hard work and ration cards if you're lucky, and the dole queue and a small packet of Woodbines if you aren't." Purvis looked at Butler. "Unless you've got a nice fat nest egg tucked away somewhere, which none of us have—and I don't mean the demob gratuity they've promised either, because no one's going to get fat on that."

Butler frowned at him.

"The best place to be is in the Army of Occupation and an officer, like Jack says," Purvis continued.

"That way you'll get the best of everything—the best food and the best drink and the best women."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Butler was disappointed in Sergeant Purvis. He was also aware for the first time that he was a little lightheaded, so that he couldn't think of the right word with which to express his feelings. The trouble was that he had clean forgotten to eat anything—that was the trouble.

"The thing you've got to worry about, Jack," said Purvis, "is whether you really can get that commission of yours, because as of now they're not going to be so easy to pick up, once they start cutting the Army down. The bastards are going to be able to pick and choose from now on—and they'll pick bloody hah-hah jobs like your Mr. What's-'is-name with the stutter."

Taffy nodded his agreement. "You're dead right there, Harry. It'll be like before the war—not what you are, but who you are. And not what you know, but who you know."

Butler looked from one to the other. They were good blokes, he decided—the best, in fact. But they were absolutely wrong.

The only problem was that he couldn't remember why they were wrong any more.

"Influence in high places, that's what you want," said Taffy Jones wisely. "Influence in high places—and that's what you and me haven't got, boyo." Influence—Suddenly it all came back to Butler with a rush, why it wouldn't be the same as last time.

Because this time there were the Russian Communists—millions and millions of them, all armed to the teeth. That was why there'd be a big Army still, and a place for him in it.

The arguments were all there now, at his fingertips. But they were jumbled up like the pieces of a jigsaw. It hadn't been his father who had said that about the Russians, for all that he loathed the Communists and was always scheming to keep them out of the union's affairs. They weren't to be trusted

—the general said the same thing, and when his father and the general agreed on something then it had to be true, he felt that in his bones. The general!

He pointed triumphantly at Jones. "But that's just it, Taffy: I have got influence in high places—I've got the general-in-chief of the regiment, who is a colonel. . ." That didn't sound right. "... I mean, the colonel-in-chief of the regiment, who is a general—he's a very good friend of mine. A friend of the family. My father was his sergeant-major."

He found to his surprise that he was looking at the end of his finger, which was waving in the front of the blur of Taffy Jones's face. He noticed that he'd broken the nail on something.

Someone took his arm—it was Sergeant Purvis.

"What you need, mate, is something solid in your stomach," said Purvis distantly. "Taffy—there's some Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

cold stew in the pot. Get it heated up."

Butler had just been thinking happily that the irritation between his toes had entirely disappeared—he couldn't feel a thing even when he stamped his foot. But now there was something very strange and unpleasant going on in his stomach—something the mention of cold stew was causing to rise—

"No—" he began thickly, as the room started to tip up under him.

7. How Corporal Jones answered a civil question

The darkness was thick and warm, and it revolved around Butler not in a circle but in a great swirling ellipse. He steadied in it and was sick.

Then he was on his knees, the sweat clammy on his face, and he was being sick again. And again.

Now there was a hand on his shoulder.

"That's right, boyo—get it off your chest—that's right . . . Now, put your finger down your throat—go on . . ."

Butler leaned forward until he lost his balance. His head struck something hard and rough, preventing him tipping over altogether. It was a stone wall, and he felt grateful to it for being there.

Then he was sick again, and this time his stomach hurt with the spasm of it. He'd made a terrible fool of himself, but the sickness mattered more than the foolishness.

Then he felt a little better.

"Jack?" A hand touched his shoulder.

Feeling better made the foolishness matter more than the sickness. He pretended not to hear the voice.

"He still out?" Another voice, harsher and further away.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"Doesn't know whether it's Monday or Christmas. Proper waste of good wine."

Taffy Jones.

"But you got what we wanted?"

Harsher voice.

"Oh yes . . . spilled the beans he did, before he spilled his guts. Like taking chocolate from a baby."

Taffy Jones's voice grew fainter. "I tell you—"

A wave of nausea cut off the fading words. There wasn't anything left inside him to throw up, but his stomach was still behaving as though there was. More than that though, he was angry that he was missing what was being said about him. Beans and chocolate weren't things he wanted to think about, but there was something there which he must try to remember, and already he was beginning to forget it.

The stone wall was hurting his head, so he put his hands flat on it and took the strain.

That was better. And he wasn't feeling so bad now either—he was just feeling awful.

Also . . . there was something he had been meaning to ask Sergeant Purvis, and he had forgotten to ask it, and now he couldn't remember what it was. Or he'd meant to ask somebody, and Sergeant Purvis would be more likely to give him a straight answer than Taffy Jones.

Because like the Communist Party, Taffy Jones wasn't to be trusted.

The voices were coming back.

". . . get him put together. He can't travel like that."

The harsh voice again—he couldn't place it.

Taffy Jones said something he couldn't quite catch. Then— ". . . we can put him in the truck to sleep it off."

Grunt. "So long as he don't vomit over the equipment."

Butler closed his eyes in the darkness. That grunt had been expressive of complete contempt. If there was anything worse than getting what one didn't deserve, it was getting in full what one did deserve, he reflected miserably.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

A flashlight threw his shadow against the wall.

He heard noises, voices.

"Come on, then," said Taffy Jones. "Let's be having you."

Butler sat back on his heels.

"Drink this."

He was about to protest that he didn't want to drink anything when he felt the heat of the mug which was thrust into his hands.

"Drink it up."

Not tea but coffee. Scalding-hot unsweetened coffee, black in the light of the torch. It burnt his mouth.

"It's too hot."

"Shut up—and drink up. We're moving out, man."

"W-what?"

"Drink."

Butler drank, feeling the fierce heat course down into him, cauterizing as it spread.

"Get up."

He was past arguing. The cup was taken from his hands. His equipment was draped over his shoulders.

First the webbing belt was clipped together, then his shoulder flaps were unbuttoned to receive the cross-straps and then buttoned over them. He was being put together again. Finally his Sten was hung round his neck and something was pulled down roughly on his head—whatever it was, it wasn't his steel helmet.

"Come on, then." A hand propelled him.

"Where are we going?" he asked hoarsely.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"To the Promised Land. And you're going to travel there in style, boyo. So make the most of it."

The torch flashed ahead of him and he saw men moving in its beam. Men loaded with equipment.

Engines started up all around him. The light picked out a truck directly in front, a small three-quarter-ton weapons carrier. The tailboard was down and the canvas flaps thrown back to reveal its load of miscellaneous equipment and jerrycans.

"In you go, then," said Jones briskly, directing the torch beam into a small space between the jerrycans.

The night air and the walk and the coffee were working inside Butler to restore him to the human race.

He could even feel a stirring of anger now; chiefly it was directed against himself for the sort of behaviour he had hitherto observed with contempt in others. It was true that he hadn't set out to drink too much, as they so often did on a Saturday night with such mindless enthusiasm. But it was also true that he didn't even like alcohol very much—and more, that he had been warned against it by both his father and the general, each in his different way. It was the general's more oblique warning which hurt him more now, because in cautioning him to watch out for the untrust-worthiness of men who drank too much the old man had taken for granted that he would never be such a man.

"Go on," urged Jones, more impatiently, taking his arm.

Butler shook the hand away. A little piece of that anger tarred his father and the general for not warning him more strongly when to beware the demon, but a much larger one blackened Taffy Jones, who had filled him up with wine and then betrayed him.

But there was nothing he could do about that now, when he was in the wrong himself. That accounting would have to wait.

He reached forward and took hold of the side of the truck. As he lifted his leg to lever himself aboard his knee struck the butt frame of the Sten, driving the gun upwards. Somehow the sling had twisted during the walk in the darkness and the movement of the gun tightened it round his neck, half choking him and throwing him off his balance.

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" exclaimed Jones.

Butler untangled the Sten with clumsy fingers in the light of the torch, grasped the side of the truck once more, and attempted to hoist himself up. But this time, just as his foot was settling on the floor, he felt Jones pushing him from behind. His boot skidded along the metal, bounced off a jerrycan and lost its foothold altogether.

Meine Stiefel, he thought irrelevantly. Meine bloody Stiefel.

Jones gave an exasperated growl. "For fuck's sake," he hissed at Butler, "get into the bloody truck, man!"

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Butler started to move again, and then stopped.

Meine Stiefel!

He turned towards Jones. 'What happened to Sergeant Scott?" He stared blindly into the torch's beam.

"And Mr.—Mr. Wilson—the men we're replacing?"

There was noise and movement all round him, he could sense it in the darkness. But he could also sense the silence behind the beam of light which blinded him.

Then the light left his face. "None of your business, boyo," said Jones, reaching forward to push him towards the truck again. "None of your business."

Butlers anger erupted. Before he could stop himself he had swept Jones's arm out of the way and had grabbed the little Welshman by the throat with one hand while the other spun him round against the tailboard. The man's cry of surprise, half stifled by the choking hand at his neck, turned to one of pain as he was bent backwards into the jerrycans.

"I said—what happened to Sergeant Scott?" Butler brought his knee up into Jones's crotch menacingly as he felt a hand clawing at him. The hand went limp.

"Arrgh-arrgh-arrgh," mouthed Jones.

Butler slackened his throat-grip, at the same time grasping the free hand which had tried to claw him and slamming it hard against the truck.

"You f— ahhh!" Whatever Jones had planned to say was cut off by renewed pressure. "You're breaking my—breaking my back."

"What happened to Sergeant Scott?" Butler repeated, wishing he could see the Welshman's face.

Jones whispered something, but Butler resisted the temptation to lean forward to catch the words. The strength of his grip depended on his straight arm; once he bent his elbow he would also bring his face into range of a head-butt, which was the oldest last resort of all.

"Speak up, you little bugger," he snarled.

Jones relaxed. "Accident," he said hoarsely. "Had—an—accident."

"What sort of accident?"

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Jones lay very still. "Shot himself."

"How?" Butler frowned in the darkness. He hadn't expected this answer, but when he thought about such an accident it wasn't so very surprising, particularly with the outlandish selection of weapons favoured by Chandos Force.

"Cleaning his rifle," said Jones.

Butler was disappointed. "And Mr. Wilson?"

This time Jones seemed unwilling to remember. Butler lifted his knee a little to jog his memory.

"Accident," said Jones quickly.

"Cleaning his revolver?" Butler kept the knee in position.

"No. Stepped on a mine." Jones's voice rose plaintively.

" Corporal Jones!" The sergeant-major's shout was unmistakable.

Jones struggled convulsively.

" CORPORAL JONES!" The shout was louder and nearer.

Butler held him down. "Next time I ask a civil question, you give a civil answer—remember that," he said, quickly letting go of the Welshman and stepping smartly to the side out of his reach as he did so.

The sergeant-major loomed up in the darkness just as Jones had managed to straighten himself. "Are you deaf, Corporal Jones?"

"Sergeant-major!" Jones's voice cracked.

"Well—get that man into the truck double-quick and then report to Sergeant Purvis on the double, Corporal!"

Butler didn't wait to be helped. Pushing Jones out of the way he hauled himself up among the jerrycans.

" Tailboard!" roared the sergeant-major.

Jones slammed the tailboard up and groped in the darkness for the locking pin. He had lost his torch, Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

thought Butler with malicious satisfaction. Serve the little bugger right!

"Remember?" Jones hissed at him. "I'll remember, boyo—you can bet on that."

"You do," said Butler.

"Don't you worry"—the little man was clumsy with rage; Butler could hear the pin scraping as he searched for the hole—"don't you worry about that"

"I won't," said Butler.

"No. You worry about having another accident—you worry about that, boyo . . . just you worry about that."

The truck rocked as its crew came aboard. Away to the right a motorcycle was kicked into life. The shaded headlights of first one jeep, then another, then others, were switched on.

Chandos Force was going to war.

"You all right back there?"

Butler grunted and settled himself as best he could among the jerrycans. He wasn't at all sure that he was all right. He wasn't even sure why he had lost his temper with Jones like that; it had been as though there was someone else inside him. That was what drink did to a man, of course: he had remembered that simple question, the one he'd wanted to ask about Sergeant Scott, and—

The truck jerked forward, bumping over uneven ground and then tilting steeply up an incline before turning sharply onto a smoother surface. He watched the jeeps' headlights buck and tilt as they crossed the same ground, then flicker on and off as the trees of the farm track obscured them. They were heading for the main road—

He stared at the lights, hypnotised by the return of his memory. The simple question had not received a simple answer: Taffy Jones had been by turns unwilling to speak, and then frightened, and finally threatening. Yet even before that, when he had been throwing up the contents of his stomach against that stone wall—Spilling the beans?

"Did you get what we wanted?"

That harsher voice questioning Jones—the voice he couldn't place at the time, but which now seemed oddly familiar.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

" Yes. . .spilled the beans he did. . ."

What beans?

What did "we" want?

Who were "we"?

Too many accidents—

The truck swung sharply to the left, then slowed as the driver crashed the gears. They had reached the main road.

"Keep it moving, buddy!" shouted a rich American voice.

Chandos Force was going to war.

But there was something very wrong with Chandos Force.

8. How Corporal Butler heard, of his death

Butler munched an oatmeal block and tried to analyse why he felt much better than he had any right to feel.

It was true that he still felt thirsty, even after having drunk at least a quarter of the precious contents of his water bottle, so that he had decided to forgo the extra pleasure of a couple of boiled sweets from his twenty-four-hour pack, since they were notorious thirst-increasers.

It was also true that he had slept most of the night away in spite of his cramped position, with only the haziest impression of numerous stops and starts, several rumbling Bailey bridge crossings, and shouted American exhortations at intervals to keep closed up and to keep moving.

But the fact remained that when he shook his head vigorously—he shook it again just to recheck the evidence—there was no headache, and the oatmeal block was expanding comfortably inside him.

Indeed, if anything he was feeling rather better than he usually did before he had had the chance of a wash and a shave.

Maybe it was because he didn't feel as awful as he deserved that he was feeling better. But it was more likely, he decided dispassionately, that he had been lucky enough to be very sick before all the alcohol in Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

that deceptively innocent wine could infiltrate his bloodstream. In fact he could recall now (and too late) that according to the hardest drinker in the platoon at the Depot the secret of heavy drinking lay in the proper defensive preparation of the lining of the stomach. Once the alcohol had advanced through that lining into the bloodstream then resistance was in vain, according to Rifleman Callaghan, who was accustomed to fortify himself in advance with a huge, greasy fry-up of sausages and chips before drinking all comers under the table—a sovereign recipe he claimed to have had from a quartermaster who had devoted a lifetime to the study of the subject.

That problem resolved to his satisfaction, Butler felt ready to tackle two more pressing ones.

Viewed from the vantage point of a clear head after several hours' sleep, the previous evening had the unreal shape of a nightmare. What was certain was that he owed an abject apology to Corporal Jones, who had encouraged him to be sick and whom he had rewarded with weird suspicions and physical assault, the very memory of which now made his flesh creep with embarrassment.

He swallowed the last of the oatcake and decided not to eat another. Instead he took an extra swig of water.

So the first thing to do was to apologise to the Welshman.

The second thing was to find a private place and treat his left foot with gentian violet. He could already feel the sharp irritation between the toes—after missing the treatment for a full twenty-four hours it was noticeably worse, not very far from being actually painful; which was hardly surprising since regular application was the key to the treatment

He leaned forward and parted the canvas flap. The pitch blackness of the hour before dawn had passed, and he could feel the coming of daylight even though he couldn't yet see the division between land and sky. He sniffed at the air, but there was no strange smell other than exhaust fumes and warm rubber, which were familiar now. Yet there was still something disquieting to his senses.

Suddenly he knew what it was. Beyond the sound of the engines of the truck and the jeeps there was no sound. No distant gunfire, no drone of aircraft—nothing.

No flashes either—he stood up and twisted his neck to get a look ahead—and no flashes in that direction. He had had the distinct impression during the moments of half-consciousness on the journey that they had been travelling at breakneck speed, far too fast for safety, as though the Americans were determined to deliver them on time for some impossible pre-arranged zero hour. But it looked as though they hadn't come nearly as far south towards the river as he had estimated —that they were still in the middle of nowhere in the newly conquered territory of the Third Army.

Which was disappointing. They'd never manage a dawn crossing of the Loire now, which was the obvious moment to slip across the river and through the German lines.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Someone was coming, he could hear the sharp tap of metal heelplates on the tarmac.

"Five minutes . . . five minutes . . ." The voice that went with the metallic taps was Sergeant Purvis's.

"Five minutes . . ."

Butler ducked down inside the back of the truck. Sergeant Purvis was one man he was ashamed to meet after his performance of the previous night.

"Five minutes"—the flap was jerked aside—"are you awake in there, Corporal Butler?"

"Yes, Sergeant," said Butler quickly.

A torch shone into his face. "How d'you feel, lad?" asked the sergeant, not unkindly.

"Okay, Sergeant."

"Then you must have a head like a bloody rhinoceros," said the sergeant. “We'll be stopping here for five minutes, anyway. So if you want a quick shit, now's your chance."

Butler thought of the water he'd just drunk. "Right, Sergeant."

Purvis watched him as he climbed out of the truck, which reminded him of the trouble he'd had getting into it. If Jones had told the sergeant about it, then this might be the occasion when the sergeant would choose to dress him down for his behaviour. Or he might be just checking to see that he was in a fit state for duty.

He stamped his feet and pulled his equipment straight. His knees ached a bit, but the ground had a good firm feeling to it. He reached back inside the truck and lifted out his Sten.

The sergeant was still watching him.

"Anything the matter, Sergeant?"

"Here, lad—" Sergeant Purvis handed something to him—it was smooth and cold. It was a bottle. "The hair of the dog ... if you're feeling as rough as I think you are that'll set you up again."

Before Butler could reply the sergeant had turned on his heel and continued down the road.

"Five minutes . . . you've got five minutes—"

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

He hefted the bottle in his hand. It was about half full, he judged, and there was nothing in the world he felt less like than drinking. But in this darkness that at least was no problem. He made his way cautiously off the road onto a grass verge beside which a big motorcycle was parked. He had the vague impression that there was a field of low bushes, maybe waist-high, beyond it, but as he was about to cast the bottle into the bushes there was a movement among them. A moment later a string of curses in an exasperated American voice issued out of the darkness and a match flared among the bushes.

For a bet, that must be the owner of the motorbike, decided Butler. And for another bet, the owner of the motorbike would know where the convoy was heading.

The flame kindled again—it was a cigarette lighter, not a match—and there came a satisfied grunt with it: the Yank had found whatever it was he was looking for. Butler waited patiently beside the motorbike, listening to his precious minutes tick away, until a darker nucleus loomed up out of the field.

"Who's that?" said the Yank

"A friend—British," said Butler. "Would you like a drink, Yank?"

The figure approached him. 'What you got?"

Butler remembered that Americans were devoted to whisky. "Only wine, I'm afraid," he answered apologetically.

"Hell, mac, that's better than nothing. I've swallowed enough dust, my mouth's like the bottom of a birdcage."

"Help yourself then." Butler thrust the bottle into the American's hands. "I'll be back in a minute."

"Okay. But watch yourself down there . . . and don't eat any of those goddamn grapes—they'll give you the runs."

Grapes! So the low bushes were vines, Butler realised—and so they had indeed come far south of Normandy. He strained his eyes into the darkness as he unbuttoned his fly. He could just see—or now imagined he could see—a faint difference between the blackness of the sky and that of the land. But it was impossible to estimate how big the vineyard was—if it was a big one then the Loire couldn't be too far away.

He made his way back to the road.

"Thanks, mac," said the Yank.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"Keep the bottle, Yank," said Butler. 'Where I'm going I'm told there's more of it."

"Uh-huh?" The American chuckled. "Smoke?"

It was on the tip of Butler's tongue to admit he didn't smoke, but then he remembered what he was about.

"Thanks."

"Keep the pack. One thing we've got plenty of—and you won't find more of them where you're going, that's for sure."

"Thanks." Butler extracted a cigarette from the packet and leant forward towards the flame extended to him. He must remember not to inhale the smoke, which would make him cough if he did—

Christ! The broad white stripe and the white letters "MP" on the American's helmet were momentarily illuminated in the light of the flame: he had cheerfully offered illicit alcohol to a Military Policeman in a forward combat area!

The smoke found its way into his lungs and set him coughing. If anything, American cigarettes tasted even fouler than British ones.

But the American MP seemed as friendly as ever, the red tip of his cigarette glowing bright as he drew on it. "Ranger outfit, are you, mac?" he said amiably.

Butler managed to find his breath. Maybe American MPs were less bloody-minded than British ones; or maybe they took a more lenient view of foreign allies. "Ranger?" he repeated stupidly.

"Aw, hell—what d'you British call 'em—Commandos, that's it."

Butler thought of the brigands he had seen the previous night, and wasn't sure whether he was flattered or not. “Well—sort of, yes," he admitted.

"Uh-huh." The red tip flared. “Well, you should be okay getting across down there. There's a bunch of kraut infantry about five miles up river, where the bridge was—there was a couple of days back, anyway. But we haven't seen anything on this stretch so far. Real nice and quiet, it is."

Butler stiffened. The way the American talked, the Loire was not far away, but right there in front of them in the fast dissolving darkness.

"We're near the river, then?" he asked, casually.

The cigarette glowed. "Uh-huh."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"How far?"

In the distance Sergeant Purvis's voice started up again: " Mount up . . . mount up."

"How far, Yank?" Butler repeated the question.

"Mount up."

"Four-five miles, maybe." The cigarette glowed and then out' into the vineyard. "Couple of miles from here, we drop down into the flood plain. Another two, there's a levee—that's where the 921st is, the bottom land there this side of it."

"Mount up."

"What's the river like?"

The American glugged the last of the wine and then heaved the bottle carelessly among the vines.

"Nothing special. Wide, sandy bottom, lots of little islands covered in brush—not much water coming down now, so most of the channels are dry . . . pretty much like rivers back home, I guess: mean in the spring, but kind of lazy in the summer, 'cept where the current is." He grunted reassuringly. "No sweat crossing, that's for sure. I heard tell the 921st got a patrol on the other side a couple of days ago—no trouble. So you should get over real easy."

The Americans hadn't let the grass grow under their feet, thought Butler approvingly. But that had been what the general back home had said about them out of his experience in the great battles of 1918, when he had had a regiment of them attached to his division: what they lacked in experience they made up for in enterprise.

"How far did your patrol go?"

"Aw, not more than maybe five-six miles." The American paused. "Where you heading for, mac? You going far?"

It was annoying not to be able to answer that question. If this was the Loire just ahead and Touraine started on the riverbanks, then they could be quite close to their objective. But if Touraine was the size of Lancashire or Yorkshire . . . ? "I wish I knew," he began apologetically. "But I think—"

" Corporal Butler!" Sergeant Purvis's voice came sharply from just behind him.

Butler snapped to attention. "Sergeant!"

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"Are you all right, Corporal?"

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Right. Fourth jeep in the rear, you'll find Mr. Audley. You'll be his driver from here on—understood?"

"Yes, Sergeant," answered Butler automatically. Then a hideous thought struck him. "But, Sergeant—"

"Don't bloody argue, man— move!" Sergeant Purvis banged the side of the truck with his fist. "Mount up!"

"But, Sergeant—" Butler trailed off as he realised he was no longer talking to anyone. Even the American had turned away towards his motorbike. He was alone with his problem.

Leaden-footed—and the treacherous left one was reminding him again of its troubles, he realised bitterly

—he made his way down the line of vehicles. As he passed each one he could feel the eyes of the occupants on him in the fast-dissolving darkness.

That's Corporal Butler—the one that was pissed out of his wits last night, the silly bugger . . .

He came to the fourth jeep, which had only one occupant.

"Corporal B-Butler?"

"Sir." Butler gripped his Sten with one hand and saluted with the other. "Sergeant Purvis sent me down ... to be your driver, sir."

"Righty-ho. Climb aboard, then, Corporal."

Butler stood his ground, at a loss to know how to say what had to be said.

"What's the m-matter, Corporal?" Audley sounded worried.

"Sir"—Butler despised himself—"I can't drive, sir."

Audley sat back. "Oh, is that all? Well, that's no problem—I'll drive. You come round this side and I'll move over."

When they had rearranged themselves they sat in silence, Audley lounging comfortably, Butler sitting stiffly. He felt he ought somehow to apologise for his incapacity, except that apologies usually made things worse. Also it was possible that Audley already knew about his disgraceful performance of the Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

previous night—from the tone of that first worried question and the relief implicit in his reaction to the answer that seemed more than likely.

The thought made him squirm inside with shame. Then his resolve hardened: if Audley didn't know it would be better to tell him—and if he did know there was nothing to be lost in the telling. "Sir—"

"Yes, Corporal?"

"I got drunk last night, sir. On wine, sir."

Audley was silent for a moment. "Tricky stuff, wine."

"Yes, sir." Relief suffused Butler.

Audley was silent again. Then—"But you haven't drunk anything since last night?" he inquired casually.

"Sir?" Butler was puzzled by the question.

The young officer turned towards him. "Have you had anything to drink this morning, Corporal?" he asked.

"No, sir." Butler heard his own voice rise. "Except water from my water bottle."

"No wine?"

"Sir?" Butler frowned in the half-light. "No, sir—of course not. I—I couldn't stand the sight of it."

Puzzlement gave way to a quick, cold suspicion. "Has someone—" he broke off, appalled and confused at the same time by the suspicion.

Audley looked away. "No, I didn't somehow think you had been." Then he turned again towards Butler.

"And . . . yes, Corporal Butler, someone has."

They stared at each other in silence. Away somewhere, far to the north, there came a distant drone of aircraft engines.

"In fact, for the last hour I have been regaled with a c-catalogue of your . . . vices, Corporal," continued Audley. "Including a ... warning that you were probably on the b-bottle again by now."

Butler was outraged. It was Corporal Jones, for sure it was Corporal Jones.

"That's a lie, sir," he spluttered. "A rotten lie!"

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

And it must have been Jones who had given Sergeant Purvis the bottle, too; which was a filthy trick, though perhaps understandable as revenge for what he'd done the night before. But what wasn't understandable—what was unforgiveable—was that Jones should then have betrayed him to an officer.

"Yes, I rather think it was," said Audley.

The drone of the engines was louder now. And there was activity along the shadowy line of vehicles.

One of the men in the jeep just ahead of them had lifted a small, square box from the back of the vehicle.

He bent over it and for an instant his face was illuminated with a ghastly green light.

"Now that's interesting," said Audley. "Marker lamps." He swivelled in his seat to stare up into the lightening sky. "I think we have friends up above."

The drone had turned into a steady beat. It seemed to come slightly from the right now, but as the green lamps went on it appeared to turn towards them.

In a flash Butler understood. "The river's just ahead of us, sir," he said. "They're going to cover the sound of our engines with the plane, I think, sir."

Someone in the distance shouted "Start up!" and the call was taken up ahead of them.

"I think you're right, Corporal," said Audley. "Full marks. And it is rather comforting to know that somebody's got himself properly organised."

"That'll be Major O'Conor, sir," said Butler.

"Yes, I think you're right again. The major did strike me as being"— Audley started the jeep—"a downy bird."

"'Downy,' sir?"

"Downy—yes." Audley launched the jeep with a jerk that reminded Butler of the sergeant-major. "You must forgive my bad driving. I completed the carrier and light tank course at Sandhurst with a Grade Three pass, which is the lowest one available—I never got round to telling them that I'd never actually learnt to drive ... I presume Sergeant What's-'is-name didn't get round to asking you whether you could drive either, Corporal?"

"No, sir." Butler warmed to the young officer.

“Well, that's the Army for you. Round pegs and square pegs, and square holes and round holes. And the Army just hits the pegs until they fit the holes. It's a splendid system if you don't weaken. . . . How far to Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

the river, did you say?"

"Four or five miles. We come off a ridge of some sort, and then there's a flood plain . . . and then a flood embankment of some sort."

Audley nodded. "Yes, that's the Loire right enough. . . . Did you know, Butler, that there are two rivers hereabouts with the same name, almost? . . . There's Le Loir, which is masculine and not very big, and La Loire, which is feminine and can be a perfect bitch in flood—never mind the Germans. Which only goes to show that the female of the species can be more dangerous than the male, eh?"

It was funny that he wasn't stuttering at all, thought Butler. "It isn't in flood now, sir. And there aren't any Germans behind it, so I've been told."

Audley braked sharply as the jeep ahead loomed up close. They were beginning to drop off the ridge, Butler sensed.

"No Germans?" Audley twisted the wheel. "I'll believe that when I'm the other side of the river. . . . And what makes you think there are no Germans, Butler? Who told you that?"

"A Yank, sir. One of their motorbike MPs."

"He did? And what did you tell him in exchange?"

The question floored Butler. "I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Did he ask you any questions? Like where you were going?"

Butler blinked. "Yes, he did. But I don't know where we're going."

"Ah-hah!" The noise of the plane was so loud Audley almost shouted the sound.

"He said they'd reconnoitred the other side, sir," shouted Butler. "They've patrolled about five miles, and there weren't any Germans. He said we'd have an easy crossing."

The light was growing. He could make out fields and even occasional buildings, dead and shuttered as diough they were derelict for all that the fields had a carefully tended look about them. And there were tall trees with strange black balls in them which reminded him of the swarm of bees which had once settled on one of the general's apple trees . . . except that they couldn't all be bee swarms, and they were too big anyway.

"So they've reconnoitred the crossing for us ... Let's hope they know their business," shouted Audley.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Tanks ahead, canted on the side of the road. And beyond them American half-tracks . . . and American soldiers, groups of them, some smoking, some squatting—one of them even waved a jaunty thumbs-up sign at Butler. This must be part of the 921st the MP had spoken of. He was sorry for them, that they just had numbers instead of proper names like the British Army; surely they'd much rather go into battle with the pride of a known locality to support them instead of a number . . . Texans and New Yorkers, say.

And then the thought of his own regiment, somewhere back on the river Orne a million miles away, twisted inside him—the Lancashire Rifles, which was the best regiment in the Army, with battle honours to prove it from Busaco and Ciudad Rodrigo and Waterloo to Mons and the Somme and Ypres—and Normandy. Except that once upon a time the Rifles had only had a number too, which was there on their cap badge still, and maybe these Yanks didn't all come from the same country—and when he thought about it there were Riflemen who came from Scodand and even Ireland, and didn't know Blackburn from Bolton—

The jeep tilted up steeply and he could see the line of a great embankment sweeping away to disappear among the trees on his left. Then came a wide road snaking along the top of the embankment, which they left immediately for another slip road, narrower and unmetalled, on the river side. But there was no river to be made out in the half-light, only a tangle of undergrowth mosdy made up of tall willows which rose out of a lattice of their own fallen branches. The night was making its last stand in the undergrowth, but a pale mist was already replacing the darkness up the track ahead.

River mist, thought Butler gratefully—that must be what the major was relying on to cover the crossing.

Noise up above and mist below as a double precaution in spite of the American patrol's report.

Suddenly the jeep ahead braked to a halt, and the tyres of their own vehicle slithered on the loose sand under them as Audley jammed his foot down. Someone came striding back down the track, pausing at each jeep. It was Sergeant Purvis.

The sergeant halted beside Audley. "Fifty yards ahead, sir—sharp left and you're down on the river bed.

Bank's a bit tricky, so you better take it easy there, but the going's good after that. Follow the jeep in front to the next lot of trees and then switch off the engine—there'll be someone to direct you."

"What's happening, Sergeant?" said Audley.

Sergeant Purvis looked at the subaltern irresolutely for a moment, then up and down the line of jeeps as diough he was weighing the delay to his orders against the possible consequence of telling a second lieutenant what to do with his curiosity.

"Sergeant?" Audley prompted Purvis with a sharpness which suggested to Butler that he had met the same problem in the dragoons and didn't intend to let it spread to Chandos Force.

"Sir . . ." Purvis just managed to prevent himself shrugging. "The major put three recce patrols from the advance party across the river about an hour ago."

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

"I thought the Americans were patrolling the other side."

Purvis shuffled his feet. "They have been, sir. But the major wanted to look-see for himself, like we always do."

"When are they due back?"

This time Purvis did shrug. "I dunno, sir—pretty soon, I'd say. But you'll have to ask the major."

Audley accepted that with a nod. "Righty-ho, Sergeant. Carry on."

Purvis swung away and Audley turned to Butler. "So he doesn't trust our American friends, then. And come to that, he probably doesn't trust anyone else much either ... a downy bird, as I said, Corporal."

There was just enough light now for Butler to see that he was grinning. " 'Downy' meaning 'crafty'—you don't remember your Kipling, then?"

"Only Kim and The Jungle Book, sir—and some of the poetry, like If . . . and the Barrack-Room Ballads, sir." This time Butler was determined not to be thought an illiterate, even at the risk of seeming to show off.

"Good man! But this is from Stalky,"— Audley reached towards the gear lever as the jeep in front started to move—"you should read that. There's a touch of Stalky about the major, I'd like to think."

The sergeant's fifty yards seemed more like two hundred, but at length the vehicles in front turned sharply before a wall of tangled branches. As Audley followed, Butler saw a wide expanse of open ground walled in by mist in which he could make out the vague outlines of men and vehicles.

"Hold tight," said Audley.

The front wheels of the jeep fell away into nothing and they half-drove and half-slithered down a steep, sandy bank already deeply rutted by other wheels. For a moment or two the tyres spun sand, lost their grip, found it again, lost it, and finally pulled forward onto a firmer track between two brackish lakes of green-scummed water. As they moved out into the open, Butler saw a line of jeeps drawn up nose to tail, and behind them tree tops growing out of the mist. They must now be in one of the dry channels of the river, behind one of the islands the American MP had spoken of.

Audley followed the jeep ahead into the line and switched off the engine. Behind them the last two jeeps pulled into position. Chandos Force was on its start-line at last, thought Butler. Now the worst time would begin, the waiting time.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

A figure materialised out of the mist ahead of them, tall, thin, and unmistakable.

It paused at the jeep in front. "Morning, Bassett—morning, Mason . . . stretch your legs, have a bite to eat. We've a few minutes in hand, so make the most of them."

"Morning, sir."

"Yes, sir."

Major O'Conor advanced towards them, grinning broadly. "Ah, the modern languages section! Bonjour, David—guten Morgen, Oberjager Butler." He raised his ashplant stick in salute.

" Bonjour, mon commandant," said Audley.

Butler couldn't bring himself to play silly games. "Sir," he said. "Good morning, sir."

The major nodded. "Well, so far it does look like a good morning, I'm happy to say. We've had three patrols on the other side, and so far two have reported a clear run, so we shall probably go in about fifteen minutes." He looked up into the lightening sky, from which the noise of engines had now diminished to a distant hum. "When we shall summon back our RAF friend, don't you worry."

"Do we have any air support today, sir?" asked Audley.

"Oh yes. If we get into real trouble—which we won't—but if we do, we've access to a limejuice strike of our very own, David."

Audley took a deep breath. "Well, that's a relief, sir—limejuice saved our bacon several times back in Normandy."

"Oh, we shall be all right, don't you fret," the major reassured him. "The Hun's thin on the ground, where we're going—plenty of back roads, thick, wooded country. We've operated in far worse than this . . .

Anyway, stretch your legs while you can, both of you. Just don't stray too far. Wouldn't want to lose you just when the fun's beginning, eh?"

They watched him move on down the line, silent for a moment. Then Audley took another deep breath.

"Phew! Looks as if we're playing for the First Fifteen after all, with a limejuice of our own, by God!"

"'Limejuice,' sir?"

"Rocket-firing Typhoons—ground-strafing experts. When we ran into anything we couldn't handle—

which was anything bigger than a German with a pea-shooter in a biscuit tin, if the FOOs couldn't get Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

their guns on it they'd give us a limejuice." Audley's face clouded suddenly, and he seemed to be staring at something in the mist beyond Butler's right shoulder. "Last time they did it, it went wrong. The Germans shot down our spotter plane, and the Tiffies couldn't find the target . . . and then the Germans made mincemeat of us." He swallowed, shook his head and focussed on Butler again. "That's water under the b-b-b-bridge now, anyway. So let's stretch our legs like the man said, Butler."

"Yes, sir." Butler stepped out of the jeep and was reminded immediately by his left foot of just how he ought to be making the most of these last precious minutes. This was not only the last opportunity he might get but also the last time he might have anything like privacy for what had to be done. "If you'll excuse me for a minute or two, sir—"

"Okay, Corporal." Audley had produced a dog-eared paperback book from inside his battle dress and a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles from his breast pocket. He looped the spectacles over his ears and settled them far down his nose—presumably he was farsighted—and then started to walk up and down, oblivious of everything and everyone around him.

Butler strolled down the line of jeeps. The bandits seemed to have taken the major's advice in a variety of different ways: several of them were brewing up on a small primus stove; one was pumping up the tyres of one of the bicycles which were among the unit's stranger items of equipment, while another loaded a big .50 Browning machine gun. At the end of the line a man was shaving.

Rubbing his hand over his own chin, Butler felt a fine sandpaper of stubble. It wouldn't show yet, that was one small advantage of his red hair. But even if it had been black as night he wouldn't have wasted any of his precious water on it—that was reserved for his treacherous foot. It was a pity there was no acceptable water close to hand, but the river (which he supposed lay on the other side of the island) was hardly safe, and he didn't fancy the slimy green pools he had passed a few minutes earlier.

What he needed now was a little cover, and there ahead of him now lay just the place.

The spring floods had gouged a miniature cliff in the side of the island, and in so doing had undermined the roots of a tall willow and brought it down into the channel. Later floods hadn't been quite powerful enough to wrench it out altogether but had festooned it with drifted branches and feathery debris. Behind that he would be snug as a bug in a rug.

He stepped carefully over the outflung branches and settled himself down on a little beach of fine sand which had gathered under the overhang behind the broad trunk of the willow. It was a relief to loosen his equipment, and an even greater relief to take his boot off and trickle water over his foot.

He examined his toes with familiar distaste. Beneath the faded purple the skin was crinkled and unwholesome, and the gentian violet stung as he dabbed it into the raw slits which the fungus had opened between them.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

As always, he thought of Sammy Murch again as the purple stain spread over his skin, and the thought was more painful than the sting of the gentian violet. He would never be able to make it up with Sammy now: Sammy would be only another name chiselled on the town war memorial, which already had the names of two of his uncles from the previous war. One of them had been killed in the very last week of the war, he remembered, after three years in the trenches; which everyone agreed was rotten bad luck.

Then a colder thought struck him. If what the major had said was true they were getting near the end of this war too, but there was still time for more names to be added to Sammy's. So with the same bad luck he might meet Sammy again after all. He might meet him this very day, even this very hour.

But that was a contemptible and unsoldierly thought, he told himself savagely. It was no good worrying about a thing like that—the general had warned him against it specifically: people who worried too much about themselves soon got themselves killed, the general had said, and what was worse they got other people killed with them. So he would think of something else—He would think of ... of food.

The second oatcake he had taken out to eat in the truck was there waiting for him still, and it would be prudent to eat it now. So he would let his toes enjoy the fresh air while he ate it, at least until the RAF

noise-maker returned.

He corked up the gentian violet bottle carefully and packed it back into his ammunition pouch. Then he set his back comfortably against the cliff and unpacked the oatcake. He would savour each separate mouthful, and he would take one small swallow of water to every two mouthfuls. And as a bonus he would also eat a slab of ration chocolate. It was a pity he hadn't got a book to read, like Second Lieutenant Audley. It would be interesting to know what Audley was reading—it would be something strange and scholarly probably, because Audley was strange and scholarly—

As he lifted the oatcake towards his mouth a cascade of sand and small stones tumbled from the cliff overhang above him, pattering onto his feet.

"This will do, Sergeant-major."

Butler went stiff with horror. It was happening again—it wasn't possible, but it was happening again.

" Sir!"

"Keep your voice down, man, damn itl"

Butler stared at one purple foot and one booted foot. Very slowly he began to draw them in— 'Yes, sir—

sorry, sir."