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
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.
