Soldier No More

'How did you come to meet him in the first place?'

Willis looked at him questioningly. 'I taught him—when he was at St. George's, Buckland—but you know that —'

'I meant the father.' Was that a simple misunderstanding, or was it deliberate?

'Oh, I'm sorry—I thought we were back with David ... I knew the family. And I got to know Nigel pretty well at Oxford, of course. I was at Univ—University College—he was at Balliol—

Eton and Balliol, like his father—' Willis caught himself '—

but you hardly want to know about that.'

'I think I want everything you can tell me.'

Willis shrugged. 'Oh ... he was killed in '17, on the Scarpe, commanding our old territorial battalion—the Prince Regent's Own. And Nigel was killed in '40, in the same battalion, not far away. . . that's all—history more or less repeating itself, don't you know.'

So David Audley must have felt a bit queasy, landing in Normandy in '44; or certainly after the break-out had commenced, which might have taken him back over the same ill-omened ground. With such a family tradition survival did indeed have great virtue.

'Why didn't David join his father's unit?' The question was hardly important, but there was something niggling in the back of Roche's mind.

'He couldn't have, even if he'd wanted to—it didn't exist any more. After it was massacred in '40 it was never dummy5

reconstituted. The nearest equivalent was the West Sussexes

—that's where they put me afterwards . . . But I suppose the armoured corps was more fashionable than the poor bloody infantry—blitzkrieg and Rommel and all that—more likely to take a young man's fancy.' Another shrug. 'I don't know—

what made you join whatever you joined, David?'

That was no joke—or no joke meriting the truth, anyway. 'I was too young to know any better.'

Willis nodded understandingly. 'Well, there's your answer.

And just as well, too, because war's a young man's sport, and it relies on a high degree of stupidity—like volunteering for air crew. He was prime cannon-fodder, young David—he didn't know any better . . . Whereas Nigel and I—we were almost too old, we were a different sort of fool altogether: a

'no fool like an old fool' variety, trapped by foolish patriotism in the 1930s.' The corner of Willis's lip drooped. 'But there we were in '39 and '40—in the front line, and far too old to be there. And after that, the ones who survived—like me—we were the veterans, we were.' He grinned at Roche.

'I even commanded a battalion for one brief, utterly unmemorable spell in '45—not for long, because they're not that stupid, the brass-hats—not for long ... but I remember in

'42 and '43, some of my young fellows were quite apologetic about my being there—and even more in '44, as though I'd arrived on the battlefield by some ghastly administrative accident.'

How old was he, then? With a little bouncy fellow like this—

dummy5

plenty of healthy sport divided by a substantial intake of alcohol at the local pub made it hard to judge, and the Audley file had had nothing to say on his legal guardian's curriculum vitae.

'Yes . . . but, of course, the truth was, we were too old—and Nigel was even older than I was when he copped it—far too old for playing dangerous games like that! Fair enough if you're on the jolly old touchline, urging the team on and shouting instructions—'tackle him low, you stupid boy'. But to be actually on the field, getting wet and cold and muddy—

and not only that, to have people shoot real bullets at you into the bargain—that's really monstrously unpleasant, you know.'

Roche cursed his inability to stem the flow, aware at the same time that there was something the schoolmaster had said that he wanted to pull him back to—what had it been, though?

'He must have married very young—Nigel Audley?' he cut in quickly, as Willis opened his mouth to expatiate further on the horrors of war.

'Eh?' Willis stared at him vaguely for a moment, as though he found it difficult to withdraw from his memories. 'Oh, I suppose so. Does it matter?'

'David Audley must have been a honeymoon baby, practically.'

Must he?' The vague look was tinged with irritation. 'I can't dummy5

say I've ever bothered to work it out, you know.' Willis shrugged dismissively. 'But I hardly see what that's got to do with you. Or me.'

“What was she like? The mother?'

“She died when he was a baby.'

'Yes, I know. But what was she like?' Roche didn't know why he was pressing the question, only that it was there in his mind.

'Oh ... she was . . . very young.' Willis fished in his pocket again, for his pipe.

'Yes?'

Willis jammed the pipe between his teeth. 'Yes what?'