The Hour of the Donkey

'Field hospital, as quick as you can, Colonel. He needs surgery, but any of your field hospitals can do it.' He held up his hands apologetically. 'I can't do it here—my hands aren't up to it after coming off the motor-cycle, anyway. But the pain's still generalized over the abdomen, and so he should be all right until it localizes over the—ah—the area of the trouble.'

'And . . . just what is the trouble, Doctor?'

Wimpy assumed his Aesculapian expression. 'Simple dummy4

appendicitis, Colonel. He has all the classical symptoms—the generalized pain is quite normal, and the vomiting . . . and the furred tongue and the stinking breath— foetor, Colonel, foetor — from the Latin, naturally ... and finally I was able to tweak the offending object from the back, of course:. You can't always do that, sometimes it's tucked out of the way, but in his case it was just ready and waiting to be tweaked.'

He nodded wisely at the Colonel. 'I trust you have a field hospital to hand—or a French hospital will do, you should be in a position to insist on immediate surgery. Because if you don't the lad will die of peritonitis in due course, inevitably.

Your medical officer will confirm all this, I'm sure— 'He frowned suddenly. 'Where is your medical officer?'

'The British killed him, Doctor,' said the Colonel. He swung on his heel and snapped an order at the NCO. The stretcher-bearers lifted their burden obediently and trotted down the road, away in the direction from which they had originally come.

The NCO started to move, then stopped in front of Wimpy and gave him a smart salute. Wimpy acknowledged the salute gravely.

'Accidentally, of course,' said the German Colonel. 'One of your bombs—outside Maubeuge.'

'I'm sorry,' said Wimpy.

'There is no need to be. It was an accident, as I have said . . .

And we shot down the bomber.' He flicked a glance at Bastable, then came back to Wimpy. 'I thank you for your dummy4

service, Doctor.'

Bastable watched him continue on his way until he passed out of sight between the lorries, followed by his entourage, rippling his men to attention as he passed them. Wimpy could be right about the fellow, at that; what was certain was that it was a good motorized battalion, this one, smart and soldierly and keen—and, what was more, with men in it who weren't in a hurry to report sick when they had stomachache, who would rather stay and fight. . . If there were too many battalions like this one, then the Allies were really in trouble.

'Phew!' whispered: Wimpy, breathing out deeply and then drawing in his breath again. ' Phew!'

Bastable looked at him for a long moment. 'Did he really have appendicitis?'

Wimpy raised his eyebrows. 'How the hell do I know?'

Bastable stared at him wordlessly.

'At least he had all the symptoms, old boy,' said Wimpy.

'Those . . . were the symptoms?'

'Of course they bloody were! Did you think I made them up?'

Again, no words presented themselves to Bastable.

'I had appendicitis when I was young... I can't remember much about it. . .' Wimpy drew another deep breath. 'But ...

when I was acting-housemaster at school the year before last, we had a boy go down with it in the middle of the night—I was terrified he was going to die on me... but I remember dummy4

how the doctor came out to us, and stuck his finger up the poor little blighter's arse. And he gave me a running documentary on what he was doing, too— I'd clean forgotten all about it... except about foetor, he insisted that I should have a smell of it, because I was the boy's Latin master— they have the smell of shit, on their breath.... And he had the same smell too, that's what brought it all back to me.'

He looked at Bastable in silence for a second or two. Then he half-grinned. 'If you want my opinion, old boy... I think we were lucky, and that young fellow wasn't—or maybe he was, at that: I mean, I think my diagnosis was spot on ... And if it wasn't—well, Harry, you could say I've inflicted my first casualty on the enemy. Besides which, it isn't everyone who gets the chance of sticking his finger up a German and lives to tell the tale—eh?'

It was about ten minutes later, no more than that, when the German Colonel came back to them. Only this time he was alone.

Wimpy rose from where he had stretched himself out by the roadside near Bastable.

'Doctor . . .' The Colonel glanced at Bastable. 'Are you able to walk, Captain?'

Bastable swallowed. 'Yes, sir—I think so.'

'Very well. We shall be moving on in ... not a long time. So it is ... not convenient that you remain with us— either of you.'

dummy4

'Sir!' protested Wimpy. 'You said, sir, that we were prisoners of the German Army.'

The Colonel lifted a gloved hand. 'So you are, Doctor. And so you will remain. I am sending you to the north, towards Arras

—'