The Hour of the Donkey

Wimpy bent over Bastable, spreading out the blanket as he did so.

Do be a good fellow and stop talking about the Fat Boy, and try to look as though you're dying, Harry,' he murmured conversationally.

'What d'you mean 'the Fat Boy'?' said Bastable, outraged.

'That's what they call him—our esteemed and revered C-in-C

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—'Fat Boy',' said Wimpy. 'Didn't you know?'

'But—but he isn't fat—' Bastable moved from certainty to doubt in one bound as he tried and failed to recall General Gort's measurements from the newsreel and newspaper pictures which were the closest he had come to his commander '—is he?'

'Don't ask me, I don't know. But that's what they call him, according to Nigel Audley anyway.' Wimpy started to push him back ungently.

'But—'

'Forget about him. Lie back—' Wimpy increased the pressure on his chest and lowered his voice to a whisper '—lie back and be a casualty, for God's sake!'

Bastable surrendered to the urgency in the whisper rather than to the awful possibility that his tiger might be... portly.

It was probably only a nickname, anyway: lots of people had nicknames, and the names were not always accurate, as Wimpy's was—they were often deliberate reversals of the truth, like that which had been fastened on one of his own fusiliers, a six-foot-six beanpole of a man who answered more readily to 'Shorty' than to his own name. Indeed, nicknames could also be signs of affection and good fellowship among equals (unlike Wimpy's). In his own heart of hearts he had always hankered after one like that as a sign that his brother officers accepted him as one of them, and because he could then reassure himself that he was not a dull nonentity.

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'That's better,' continued Wimpy softly, pretending to busy himself with making his patient comfortable. 'I don't think either of these two fellows can understand English, but I'm not prepared to bet my life on it.'

Bastable looked up at him questioningly.

'We've got to get out of this quam celerrime—' Wimpy seized Bastable's wrist and went through the motions of taking his pulse'—because I do rather suspect we're in a damn tricky situation, Harry old boy. In fact, I'm bloody sure of it!'

'What?' Bastable floundered. 'But why—'

'Ssh! No need to shout.' Wimpy's lips hardly moved. 'Why d'you think our good Colonel shunted us off double- quick to this tame general of his? Who is by way of being an old friend-of-the-family, if I've understood our talkative guard's obscure German dialect aright... Can't you guess, old boy?'

'They were moving out, weren't they? He said—'

'Poppycock, Harry. They didn't show any signs of that—apart from what he spelt out himself very loud and clear ... No, old boy—we were just too hot to handle. Or you were, at any rate, Harry—too hot for a mere colonel, but maybe not too hot for a brass-hat like this Rommel-chappie—don't you realize?'

Bastable rolled his eyes helplessly.

They knew my name, man—for God's sake— they knew my name and my initials,' hissed Wimpy. 'Don't you understand what that means? Don't you understand why they bloody-well wiped out the battalion?'

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The truck lurched and bumped bone-jarringly over a pothole in the road.

'We've had it all back-to-front—' Wimpy dropped the wrist and applied a sweaty palm to Bastable's forehead '—We've been trying to get your information about that fucking bastard of a Brigadier back to our people ... But— can't you get it through your head, Harry— can't you understand that the Germans are trying just as hard to stop us doing just that?'

He nodded and grinned reassuringly—incongruously— as he delivered this information, and Bastable was aware of one of the guards looming up behind him. Prisoners who talked too much—and they couldn't know that Wimpy always talked too much—even doctors who talked too much to their wounded—

were obviously cause for concern.

Wimpy grimaced at the guard and rubbed his chest and stomach meaningfully. 'Hauptmann ... internal injuries ... der

—der ribs—' he pointed to his ribs'—der ribs kaput, bitte?'

With his free hand he pinched Bastable painfully, and Bastable winced in support of the diagnosis, his eyes clamped on the muzzle of the sub-machine-gun which pointed unwaveringly in Wimpy's direction.

'Groan, old boy, groan,' murmured Wimpy.

The German snapped out a harsh order.

Bastable groaned, and arched his body as he remembered Wimpy's previous patient had done, and closed his eyes.

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Wimpy's words fed the groan—

My initials?

The battalion—

The battalion was a genuine agony: he had thought of Fusilier Dodsworth—'Shorty' Dodsworth—in the presen tense, but that was just another pathetic attempt to refuse a truth too crushing for acceptance: that the whole of the Prince Regent's Own was gone—Telsey-Robinson and the CO, Captain Harbottle and Corporal Smithers and