The Hour of the Donkey

her house, somehow . . . afterwards.' He still hadn't got round to telling Wimpy what he belived had happened to the battalion, the words kept escaping from him.

'Yes...' Wimpy nodded, as though he already knew what that

'afterwards' concealed: that Audley had been left behind by the victors only because they hadn't found him. Though, with those wounds, it wouldn't have made any difference, either way.

'Then he died ...' That also wasn't quite how it had been. But this wasn't the moment to pass on the dying man's rambling, incoherent message to Wimpy about his son David.

Wimpy was staring at him with that same look, white under dirt. He had been a friend, possibly even a family friend, of Major Audley's. Only, there was no room for friendship now.

'He's dead, anyway,' said Bastable brutally. 'And the battalion

—the battalion—'

'They're dead too,' snapped Wimpy suddenly.

'What d'you mean?'

'What do I mean?' Wimpy's voice rose uncharacteristically,

'What do I mean? I mean what I say—what else should I mean? I mean they're dead— the battalion's dead— the Prince Regent's Own South Downs Fusiliers is dead— they're dummy4

all dead... All except you and me, Harry—and A Company back in that other Colembert of theirs— and Lance-Corporal Jowett, back there in our Colembert . . and he'll be dead before long, if I'm any judge of wounds—they're all bloody well dead, Harry—that's what I mean.'

Bastable opened and shut his mouth without managing to get any words out of it.

'They're dead, Harry,' said Wimpy. 'They're all dead.'

'But—' the words when they finally came were as shrill as Wimpy's'—but they can't all be dead. There must have been prisoners— and the wounded?'

'Oh, there were—yes, there were—prisoners and wounded.'

Wimpy had recovered his voice, or something like it. 'Not a lot of them, Jowett said. The bombing and the machine-gunning had already knocked out a good many—the Aid Post was full before the tanks attacked ... But they did their best, all the same—they fought the bastards, Harry, they fought them . . . They couldn't stop them, but they fought them—

there's even one of their light tanks knocked out on the approaches to your bridge—God only knows how your chaps knocked it out, even though it's only a little one, but they did, somehow . . . But they couldn't stop them.'

Professionals—

A bloody shambles, naturally!

'The ones who were left—the ones who could—fell back into the town, towards battalion headquarters, Jowett said. He dummy4

was one of them. And Nigel's chaps came from the top of the town to reinforce them. But with the tanks, they didn't stand a chance—they were just too damn good, the Germans, he said—'They went through us like a dose of salts,' he said—'

Professionals.

Professionals versus Amateurs.

'So they surrendered. There wasn't anything else they could do, because there was a tank in the street outside, and another at the back ... There were about fifty of them, plus the walking wounded who hadn't reached the Aid Post. And more of them turned up afterwards—he reckoned there were about seventy or eighty there in the end —'

In the end?

The Germans weren't bad to them—then. There was a bit of pushing and prodding, but nothing to speak of. One of them even gave Jowett a cigarette ... And then they herded them down to the river, first—Jowett thought that was while they searched the town, because they brought in some more prisoners while they were sitting there, beside the bank.

'And then some more Germans came up, in a car—different ones from the fellows who had done the fighting ... Or different uniforms, anyway. Officers, of some sort, Jowett thought. And they talked to the officers who were already there. He couldn't understand what they were saying, of course, but at first it seemed friendly, and then suddenly they were arguing—and the new lot, particularly one of them, dummy4

started to shout at the ones—the officers—who had been in the fighting.

'Then some lorries came down the hill, full of more soldiers

—'

THE SURVIVORS' STATEMENTS TO THE JUDGE

ADVOCATE GENERAL'S OFFICE

William Mowbray Willis

I, William Mowbray Willis, formerly of the Prince Regent's Own (South Downs) Fusiliers andlatterly of the 2ndl8th Royal West Sussex Regiment (Army Number 1047342) and now discharged from the Army and resident in South Ampney, Sussex, make oath and say as follows: