“Ack, Beer, Charley, Don…Hullo Lulu, Koko calling; acknowledge my signal; Lulu to Koko ? over.”
They had marched forward all the preceding night. When they arrived at the cave Cedric had first been hot and sweaty, then, after they halted in the chill of dawn, cold and sweaty. Now with the sun streaming down on them he was warm and dry and a little sleepy.
The enemy were somewhere beyond the farther hills. They were expected to appear late that afternoon.
“That’s what they’ll do,” said the Colonel. “Make their assault in the last hour of daylight so as to avoid a counterattack. Well, we can hold them for ever on this front. I wish I felt sure of our left flank.”
“The Loamshires are falling back there. They ought to be in position now,” said the Adjutant.
“I know. But where are they? They ought to have sent over.”
“All this air activity in front means they’ll come this way,” said the Adjutant.
“I hope so.”
The high school finished its exercise, took up formation in arrow shape and disappeared droning over the hills. Presently a reconnaissance plane appeared and flew backwards and forwards overhead, searching the ground like an old woman after a lost coin.
“Tell those bloody fools to keep their faces down,” said the Colonel.
When the aeroplane had passed he lit his pipe and stood in the mouth of the cave looking anxiously to his left.
“Can you see anything that looks like the Loamshires?”
“Nothing, Colonel.”
“The enemy may have cut in across them yesterday evening. That’s what I’m afraid of. Can’t get brigade?” he said to the signalling Corporal.
“No answer from brigade, sir. We keep trying. Hullo Lulu, Koko calling, acknowledge my signal, acknowledge my signal; Koko to Lulu ?over…”
“I’ve a good mind to push D Company over on that flank.”
“It’s outside our boundary.”
“Damn the boundary.”
“We’d be left without a reserve if they come straight down the road.”
“I know, that’s what’s worrying me.”
An orderly came up with a message. The Colonel read it and passed it to Cedric to file. “C Company’s in position. That’s all our forward companies reported. We’ll go round and have a look at them.”
Cedric and the Colonel went forward, leaving the Adjutant in the cave. They visited the company Headquarters and asked a few routine questions. It was a simple defensive scheme, three companies up, one in reserve in the rear. It was suitable ground for defence. Unless the enemy had infantry tanks ? and all the reports said he had not ? the road could be held as long as ammunition and rations lasted.
“Made a water recce?”
“Yes, Colonel, there’s a good spring on the other side of those rocks. We’re refilling bottles by relays now.”
“That’s right.”
A Company had been bombed, but without casualties, except for a few cuts from splintered rock. They were unshaken by the experience, rapidly digging dummy trenches at a distance from their positions to draw the fire when the aeroplanes returned. The Colonel returned from his rounds in a cheerful mood; the regiment was doing all right. If the flanks held they were sitting pretty.
“We’re through to Lulu, sir,” said the signalling Corporal.
The Colonel reported to brigade Headquarters that he was in position; air activity; no casualties; no sign of enemy troops. “I’ve no contact on the left flank…Yes, I know it’s beyond the brigade boundary…I know the Loamshires ought to be there. But are they? Our…Yes, but that flank’s completely in the air, if they don’t turn up…”
It was now midday. Battalion Headquarters ate some luncheon ?biscuits and chocolate; the Adjutant had a flask of whisky. No one was hungry, but they drank their bottles empty and sent the orderlies to refill them at the spring B Company had found. When the men came back the Colonel said, “I’m not happy about the left flank. Lyne, go across and see where those bloody Loamshires are.”
It was two miles along a side track to the mouth of the next pass, where the Loamshires should be in defence. Cedric left his servant behind at Battalion Headquarters. It was against the rules, but he was weary of the weight of dependent soldiery which throughout the operations encumbered him and depressed his spirits. As he walked alone he was exhilarated with the sense of being one man, one pair of legs, one pair of eyes, one brain, sent on a single, intelligible task; one man alone could go freely anywhere on the earth’s surface; multiply him, put him in a drove and by each addition of his fellows you subtract something that is of value, make him so much less a man; this was the crazy mathematics of war. A reconnaissance plane came overhead. Cedric moved off the path but did not take cover, did not lie on his face or gaze into the earth and wonder if there was a rear gunner, as he would have done if he had been with Headquarters. The great weapons of modern war did not count in single lives; it took a whole section to make a target worth a burst of machine-gun fire; a platoon or a motor lorry to be worth a bomb. No one had anything against the individual; as long as he was alone he was free and safe; there’s danger in numbers; divided we stand, united we fall, thought Cedric, striding happily towards the enemy, shaking from his boots all the frustration of corporate life. He did not know it but he was thinking exactly what Ambrose had thought when he announced that culture must cease to be conventual and become coenobitic.
He came to the place where the Loamshires should have been. There was no sign of them. There was no sign of any life, only rock and ice and beyond, in the hills, snow. The valley ran clear into the hills, parallel with the main road he had left. They may be holding it, higher up, he thought, where it narrows, and he set off up the stony track towards the mountains.
