The Hour of the Donkey

'I mean that, Batty,' said Captain Willis mildly. 'I shall be watching the speedometer—' he reached across and tapped the dial,'—and if you go faster than that... I shall be very dummy4

annoyed.'

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

Captain Willis sighed. 'I shall say 'slower' or 'faster', Batty.

Just don't take your eyes off the road in front for a moment—

not for a moment. Don't worry about your speed . . . just do as I say—right?'

'Sir!' Batty sounded much happier.

'Right-o, then! You know the way to the crossroads —you've been there twice with Sar-Major Brotherton. It's straight ahead, then turn right at the crossroads on the main road.

And then five miles straight on, and we're there. Right?'

'Sir!' Batty peered ahead uncertainly.

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

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

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

Captain Bastable observed several grinning fusiliers carrying sandbags towards the Mairie, which because of its cellars had been appropriated partially by Captain Saunders as the Battalion Aid Post. So far the only casualties had been dummy4

mumps . . . and road injuries, he recalled uneasily.

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

'Slower,' said Captain Willis.

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

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

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

And there were B Company's defences—there was even a momentary glimpse of the slender barrel of a Boys rifle, poking out of a camouflaged firing position that covered the dummy4

road and the open fields which made the northern approach to the town so much more defensible than C Company's bridge-and-ridge.

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

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

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

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

'Reconnaissance from GHQ in Arras, Dickie Davidson told me. He thinks things are really beginning to move now,'

nodded Willis. 'I should guess we're building up a major striking force there, for the big counter-attack. They'll let the Germans stick their necks out, somewhere between Valenciennes and St Quentin—and Cambrai too, where our tanks hit 'em in the last show—and then give them the bloody chop. Us and the French and the Belgians to the north, and the main French Army to the south. Gort and Gamelin have got a plan, he said—it seems Jerry is pushing on too far, beyond his supply lines ... In fact, the younger chap practically spelt it out, Dickie said—we're letting them have their head to finish him at one go—he'll be in a huge salient, dummy4

with his flanks open, trying to get to the sea. But the sea is our element, not Jerry's—that's the secret of it. With the Navy, we can come and go as we please. And when Jerry tries to swing his tanks northward, which he'll have to do— then the French will go in! Like the Marne —'

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

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

Bastable felt comforted. His morning-of-truth with C

Company did apply only to C Company—or, at least, to the drill-obsessed Prince Regent's Own. There were dozens of other battalions—brigades, divisions even . . . and regular battalions too, at that. . . plus the whole French Army, to prove him a Doubting Thomas. And, after all, his total experience of the British Expeditionary Force in France had been limited to one demoralized evening in Boulogne, a single night's drive to the wrong Colembert,