emerged, a camp full of young men, several hundreds of them, licked into shape, made men of, made one, and they were informed they were off to another camp, west, while their training camp accepted another batch of recruits whom James’s lot looked on with compassion and ritualised jeering for form’s sake. ‘They don’t know what they’re in for, poor sods,’ etc, while they were marched off to buses and trains.
Before that there was a weekend leave at home, which James hated. He knew his father did, and suspected his mother did too. He tried to imagine what it could be like, seeing your precious young that you’ve fussed over for twenty odd years sent off to war as cannon fodder; but like many thoughts about his mother, he could not persist with them. They did not fall into the category of the mockeries that accompanied his days and nights at the way things were managed, the jeers at Authority - the soldier’s necessary offset to obedience. His mother’s life - oh, no, he didn’t want to think about it. He saw her on those evenings at home, sitting under the lamp, the radio jiggling or crooning away at her elbow, knitting a sweater. For him, he wouldn’t be surprised. Her eyes were lowered to her work: she didn’t knit automatically, as some women do, their hands apparently able to read patterns by themselves while their owners chat or even read. Or perhaps his mother kept her eyes hidden so people couldn’t see what she was thinking. What thoughts? And she looked defenceless, sitting there alone, her husband in the pub with his war pals, waiting up for him. It made James angry, but angry with what? This was not like being angry at the army or the sergeant. For twenty years his mother had sat there under the lamp alone, then his father would come in, smelling of beer, go and wash his face and brush his teeth, because she hated the smell, and the two went off to bed. Being angry with his father was hardly the point. But he could have taken a bayonet and stuck it into someone - who? Gone shouting about the streets, No, no, no, no.
Instead he kissed his mother goodbye, gave his father’s obdurate shoulder a friendly and filial clout, and went off to the West Country.
There, several hundred young men exercised and drilled, but not as obsessively as in the first camp. It was boring. In between the drills and exercises he lay on his bed and read poetry, and so did Paul Bryant. He had become for Paul what Donald had been for him. This man, who had left school at fourteen, took to poetry as James had done. He had more difficulty, though: long words were a problem. But James relived his own final intoxications with words when he saw Paul Bryant’s eyes shine, thanking him for the loan of a volume.
‘I like this one,’ he would say. ‘I do like this one …’What the coalman’s son who had scarcely been out of a town liked was poems about the country.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough or
‘Have you got any more like that?’ he would ask, shy, but determined, in a way that reminded James of his younger self, of a couple of years back.
They and a few others were luckier than the majority, who were bored, bored. There was nothing to amuse them. Not enough girls, and beer ran out in the pubs, when there were evening passes. Bored and frustrated young men, hundreds of them, but then began the war, which at first dawdled and delayed, but at last there was the first invasion of France, and off they went, to end on the beaches of Dunkirk. James missed it all. His knee had swelled up and he was in hospital, having it drained.
Of his platoon five were killed and two wounded. His platoon was merged with another, similarly diminished. His unit - his family - gone. And Haul, his friend, was in hospital with a head wound. James heard that Donald was wounded while in a boat coming back from Dunkirk. He got weekend leave to visit Donald, whose head was bandaged, and so was his arm. He looked pretty bad, but before James had even entered the ward the nurses told him that Donald was the life and soul of the place. ‘He keeps us all cheerful’ People came in to Donald’s room to joke, to have a laugh, and a youth was there when James arrived, and was there when he took his leave, sitting on a visitor’s chair watching Donald, bemused with admiration. James thought: that was me. Donald needs his acolyte, he needs someone to educate, well, fair enough.
He stayed as long as visiting hours permitted, watching his younger self, and admiring Donald, to whom he owed everything - so he reflected, while admitting that probably Donald never thought of him at all. But as James left, Donald did give him books and pamphlets.
The Battle of Britain began, Churchill made his stirring speeches, but things were not much improved in the camps of the West Country: the fighting was going on in the skies further over towards Europe. James could have gone into the airforce. Why hadn’t he? It was because his father had been a soldier, and it hadn’t occurred to him. If it had, he would probably be dead by now, or would be soon. Those fliers in the RAF were his age. By now he would have bought it over the sea, and been lost in the drink; he might have pranged over land and burned in a pyre of flesh and Spitfire. The RAF slang was now pervading language: a form of homage to dead heroes.
Because his father had been a soldier, he had become one. Because his father had not been an officer, he had refused to go to Andover to take the War Office Selection Board examination to find out if he was officer material. He had not wanted to leave his platoon, his mates, particularly Paul. It occurred to him that he must have been lonely, to feel that if he left his platoon he would be leaving his family.
James’s company, much changed from since before Dunkirk, heard a rumour they were to be sent off out of Britain into action, and home leave was announced and then cancelled. Instead of North Africa - not that they knew then North Africa was where the fighting was to be - they were despatched to a camp in Northumberland. The trouble was, too many men had been called up. Not knowing how the war was going to shape ‘They’ had overdone it. Hundreds of thousands of young men were in camps ready for action. The sergeants and corporals shouted that they didn’t know their luck: they could have been sent down coal mines. Would they have liked that better, perhaps? Had they fancied a career at the coalface? Well, then, count your blessings. Boredom. They were so bored that some believed they were ill. Boredom in some undefined and undiagnosed way undermines, slows minds, and skews thinking. Rumours, even the most stupid, flourish like newly evolved viruses.
Concert parties came to cheer them up. Vera Lynn’s voice solaced them from the radios in every hut. An Education Officer organised all kinds of useful lectures and everybody went because it was something to do. Again, there wasn’t much for them in the local town, when they were issued passes. In the half-a-dozen pubs, the beer was always running out. The cafes offered dubious sausages and scrambled eggs made out of dried egg from America. Some food was better, because of vegetables and fruit from the local towns: the countryside was close here. Paul would have liked that, but he had been posted to another company. Meat and eggs went to London, where rich people danced and ate in restaurants in which rationing was unknown. So they all believed. There were few girls. James’s first sexual experience was standing up with a landgirl against a wall in an alley. He hated it, the girl and himself, but this nasty little event made him dream more than ever of the real girl, his girl, who was waiting for him. He silenced his ever-ready mocking voice when it threatened his dreams of tenderness, and of a love that could not be anything like his parents’. Nor like the noisy combative marriage of Donald’s parents. No, like every soldier in that great camp of hungry young men, his girl was going to be different.
James had sometimes drunk a beer with his father or a sherry with his mother, but now he tried to drink to get drunk, and hated that too. ‘Not everyone is cut out to be a soldier, ‘jeered his inner interlocutor, while he observed his mates drinking themselves sodden, and taking anything they could get from the too few girls.
There was a pleasant interruption in the boredom. From the camp, soldiers who volunteered went to the local farms to help with farm work at harvest time. James always volunteered and wondered if his destiny was to be a
