The Hour of the Donkey

Mendips, and that young officer, whose name he could no longer remember; and also of the men of his own company—

young Chichester, and poor frightened, incompetent little Mr Waterworks, and old sweats like Sergeant-Major Franklin and CQMS Gammidge, and Corporal Smithers, the ex-boxer whose prowess in the ring had won him his stripes.

It was painful to imagine them now, mostly as prisoners, shambling to the rear of the enemy, dishevelled and exhausted, but some of them inevitably dead, like Nigel Audley—young Chichester would be dead for sure in that damned badly-sited slit-trench by the bridge, firing that damned useless ammunition from that damned anti-tank rifle in full view of the ridge.

Damn, damn, damn! He should never have sited the slit-trench there, by the bridge, like a grave ready to receive its occupants. Whoever had died there, he had killed them with his stupidity and inexperience as surely as if he had pulled the trigger on them himself—

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Not that it would have made any difference. They had all been lambs for the slaughter, doomed from the start, from the moment they joined the wrong convoy, for the wrong place.

No! He mustn't think like that!

Thinking like that betrayed his own military inexperience, even more than the badly-sited slit-trench by the bridge. Just because he and his battalion had happened by accident to be in the direct line of the German spearhead—just because the Allies had been forced to retreat at that point—he was demoralizing himself with defeatist thinking.

It had happened like this before.

It always happened like this—

It had happened like this in 1914, when the Germans had smashed through Belgium in just the same way. And now, the very speed of their advance in open country—Wimpy's Panzer commander had said he hadn't fought anyone yet—

meant that the Allied armies must still be intact and undefeated.

Their tanks will be running out of fuel, and their infantry will be dead on its feet now. And that's the moment that the French will counter-attack. It'll be the battle of the Marne all over again!'

The Prince Regent's Own didn't matter.

The only thing that mattered, so far as he was concerned was that he must get through to someone in authority with his dummy4

information about the false Brigadier before the false Brigadier could betray any more Allied plans. It was as simple as that.

Wimpy was coming back, at the double.

'It's okay!' he shouted. 'The road's clear at the moment.'

Relief flooded over Bastable, washing away the sludge of defeatism which had settled over his sense of duty while he had been in Colembert. He was not alone, and they were not so many miles from Arras. With the right mixture of caution and luck—if the Germans were still pushing to the west—they might still get past them, to the north.

Jerry's been on the road,' said Wimpy breathlessly. 'He's cleared all the refugee stuff off the road into the ditches, to give him a clear run, I suppose. But there's nothing moving on it at the moment.'

He seemed a bit brighter too, thought Bastable gratefully, watching him reclaim the Norton. And if that was just the fellow's natural ebullience coming to the surface again, for once it could pass as a virtue. A little ebullience was what they both needed now.

'Where's my bloody battledress blouse?' Wimpy looked at him accusingly, pointing to the metal carrier which had served Bastable as a pillion-seat.

'Oh . . .' The carrier was bare. It had been uncomfortable when he had first sat on it, on top of Wimpy's old blouse. It dummy4

had become more uncomfortable as they had bumped over the scattered debris of Colembert, and the field, and round the obstacles on the road, but he had expected that and had been much too busy holding on for dear life to notice any change in the degree of discomfort.

Wimpy stared back the way they had come. 'I suppose the damn thing's back there somewhere . .. Oh well—I had two hundred francs in my wallet—but I'm damned if I'm going back to look for it ... and I don't suppose money's much use in France at the moment, anyway, come to that—oh well. . .'

He shrugged at Bastable. 'That means you owe me two hundred francs and a pair of field-glasses, old boy.'

Yes—Wimpy was definitely almost back to normal. And so now was the time to transmit his own bad news.

'Audley's dead.' For a fraction of a second he had searched for some way to wrap up the bad news, but instinct told him that it would be a fruitless exercise.

Wimpy looked at him.

'He died ... in my arms.' That wasn't quite the way it had been, but it was close enough.

The corner of Wimpy's mouth twitched. 'Did he say anything?'

The ruined room filled Bastable's memory: the fallen chandelier and the smashed china, the tattered curtains and the rich brocade of the settee, the litter of plaster everywhere in the half-light.

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'He said ... they drove off the first attack. Then they were dive-bombed . . . Then the tanks attacked.' Bastable moistened his lips. 'I think ... I think he was buried in the rubble, and this woman found him and dragged him into