up. But I'm afraid that's all finished now, though they must have put up one hell of a fight, the Mendips—there was a lot more dive-bombing at one stage. Real Stuka stuff.. . while I was face-down in another ditch, naturally, quietly shitting myself.'
Bastable had missed that. Or, he had been quietly dying under the carrier at the time, anyway. Time and Harry Bastable, and the German Army and Captain Willis, had all been inextricably mixed up yesterday afternoon and evening, more than somewhat at cross-purposes.
'Me, actually,' he said.
dummy4
'What do you mean 'me actually'?' queried Wimpy.
'They were after me, I think,' he said. 'Not you.'
At that moment the front nearside wheel on Alice's pram came off, and Alice's rabbit jumped out of her grasp.
Naturally she began to cry.
VII
They knew there had been trouble a mile or more before they reached Colembert.
The first signs were clear enough to Harry Bastable, he could recognize them very well from his own limited military experience. Where soldiers passed through the countryside in any numbers there was always mess and minor destruction. Even back in England, the inevitable aftermath of any field exercise involving more than a dozen men was a rich crop of complaints from the farmers whose land they had crossed. It was only natural that where German troops were crossing the lands of their hereditary enemy their passage would be even more evident.
So all in all, it was just as well that he had been reduced to carrying little Alice in his arms, even though her dampness was beginning to penetrate the double-thickness wrapping of the shawl now, thought Bastable. The pram, even in its prime, had never been designed to cross the ruin of the road-bank which had been crushed into the road, which he had just negotiated; or the fallen branches of the young tree over dummy4
which he was now stepping.
Wimpy came back down the road towards him. Bastable was glad to observe that he was returning from his scouting expedition confidently, not furtively. Indeed, allowing for the appalling state of his uniform, he really did appear quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as he would hardly have done if the woods ahead were crawling with Germans.
Alice continued to sleep peacefully, thumb and rabbit in their regulation positions. One of the rabbit's ears tickled Bastable's chin slightly, rasping against his unshaven stubble. It embarrassed him to think what a sight he must look, not only filthy and dishevelled, but bare-headed and blue-chinned against the strictest PRO regulations. The obstinate growth of black stubble on his chin had always been a source of irritation to him, and whenever possible he had shaved twice a day for fear of Major Tetley-Robinson, so now he could only hope and pray that Wimpy's more outrageous appearance would take the first cutting-edge of the Tetley-Robinson tongue.
Wimpy grinned at him, and lifted something grey and black—
a garment of some sort—which he had been carrying in his hand, trailing it in the dust behind him.
'Battle trophy!' he lifted it for Bastable to see. 'One SS tunic, complete with Lightning and Skull and Crossbones slightly shop-soiled.'
Bastable observed with a sick feeling that the tunic was dummy4
soaked with dried blood.
'They came round from the west and attacked from the north, so far as I can make out,' said Wimpy. 'And— that was Nigel Audley's sector— and by God they must have taken one hell of a pasting . . . Attacked with infantry and armoured cars
— no tank tracks that I can see. And then pulled out again double-quick, it looks like. One up to Nigel, if you ask me!'
Harry Bastable breathed a sigh of relief. Alice was safe, and so was C Company, and those were the only two things he cared about. And, while he had no doubts about Alice's abilities to face up to the harsh world, he had had the gravest doubts about C Company's capabilities, under that overlooking ridge and in the care of the diffident Lieutenant Waterworth. Even young Chris Chichester would have been a safer acting-company commander than little Waterworks, as Tetley-Robinson had dubbed him.
But that was an illusory worry now, thank God!
'I met an old Froggie peasant in the woods,' said Wimpy. 'He was picking over the remains of their forward Aid Post—
blood and used bandages and field dressings everywhere!
That's where I picked up this—' he lifted the battle-trophy again,' —I nearly brought along a very nice camouflaged cape . . . But then I thought—if I wear it I could get myself shot by Nigel's chaps . . . See the Lightning badge—that's the SS badge. Adolf's own special thugs—and the good old PROs scuppered them, by golly! Blood everywhere—great pools of it
— '
dummy4
His enthusiasm for blood was positively ghoulish. 'And the Germans have gone?' Bastable held Alice protectively.
'No Germans in Colembert—that's what the Froggie said.
Only British ... Typical Froggie—picking over the remains, like the Belgian peasants after Waterloo.'
'You think he was telling the truth?'
'Well... I put the fear of God up him—or tried to.' Wimpy nodded. 'I told him we were the advance-guard of the British Expeditionary Force, coming to drive the Germans out of France—with the help of the glorious French Army ... And if he didn't speak the truth I would personally see that his own people would put him up against the nearest wall, and—
