was back on form.
The American took the hand. 'Frank Winston . . . late Combat Engineers, I guess.'
'Ah—so you're the river-crossing expert!'
'Some crossing!' Sergeant Winston grimaced. 'I'm a demolition specialist actually . . .' He pointed to Audley's cap badge, with its prancing horses. 'So you're a horse soldier?'
'I w-wish I w-was,' said Audley, reminding Butler of the fisherman on the bridge in Norman Switzerland. 'But up to n-now I've been more of a d-demolition specialist.' He paused. 'And this is Corporal Butler, late of the Lancashire Rifles.'
Sergeant Winston looked at Butler curiously. 'With a nose for Germans, huh?'
The jeeps ahead were starting to move, and not before bloody time, thought Butler.
'Ye-ess . . .' Audley was also regarding him thoughtfully. 'You were
'I heard the mortar, sir.' The lie came out automatically; lying was a reflex like any other, once the right stimulus was applied.
The jeep moved forward smoothly.
But Audley was still watching him. 'You did? I could have sworn you were reaching for that Bren even before I heard it, you know . . . and I also could have sworn Corporal Jones wasn't on that boat-thing of the sergeant's— there were just the three Americans and Colonel Clinton when I drove onto it.'
Sergeant Winston nodded. 'That's the way it was.'
Suddenly Butler knew how tired and wet and frightened he was. And he was aware also that the weight of fear and knowledge—knowledge that he didn't understand and which made no sense to him—was greater than he could bear.
Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
'No, sir—he wasn't,' he said. 'And those weren't Germans who machine-gunned us, either.'
10.
They travelled half a mile along the road before Butler realised that they weren't on the proper bank of the Loire at all, but on another flood embankment matching the one they'd crossed on the friendly northern shore.
Which wasn't friendly any more, with what he'd left behind him half-buried in the sand for the next passer-by to see . . .
He thrust the foul memory into the back of his mind before it could panic him and concentrated on his new surroundings: this was enemy country at last, in which every piece of cover might conceal a German, and he must keep his wits about him.
The jeeps were turning sharply, one after another, onto a narrow track which twisted off the embankment road down its landward side. Sergeant Winston swung their vehicle after the jeep ahead of them, spinning the wheel with a skill Butler envied. At the bottom of the track they passed a small farmhouse shuttered like the ones on the far bank, its ancient paint flaking from the woodwork.
Whatever the French were like, they weren't house-proud like back home, where a scrubbed step and a well- polished door-knob mattered more than a threadbare coat and a patched elbow.
It didn't surprise him that there was no sign of life to be seen: the rattle of those machine guns and the thump of the mortar bombs would have sent sensible civilians into their cellars, to pray that they hadn't drawn the card in the lottery that decreed which house should be smashed to rubble and matchwood and which should be left without a scratch.
The jeep turned again sharply, manoeuvred between two more blankly shuttered houses, and set off down a long, straight road in a dead flat countryside of small fields and lines of poplar trees. It was like the landscape he had glimpsed in the misty half-light on the nightmare side, only now he could see that the strange dark balls in the trees weren't bee swarms at all, but some sort of parasitic vegetation . . . and the fields—vines and vegetables and orchards—were as well tended as gardens: it was funny that the houses should be so unkempt but the land so cherished.
Audley swivelled in his seat. 'All right, Corporal,' he said conversationally, '
'Yes, sir . . .'
But when it came to the ultimate point, he found he didn't know what to say, or even how to start.
Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
'Come on, Corporal—they weren't Germans? Well, who the hell were they, for God's sake?'
That was the end of the story, not the beginning of it. But where was the beginning?
'I don't know how to start, sir,' he said.
'Just tell it like it was, man,' said Sergeant Winston.
Butler gritted his teeth. 'I've got this trouble with my foot, sir—it's called 'athlete's foot', sir—'
'What?' said Audley incredulously.
'Let him tell it his way,' said Sergeant Winston.
He started to tell it like it was.
The jeep in front slowed down again and finally pulled in alongside others parked on the edge of a small copse.
Sergeant-major Swayne came down the road towards them, accompanied by a soldier Butler didn't recognise.
