of artillery to remind him of the future. It was like your heartbeat, always there but so familiar you didn’t notice it until you remembered, and listened.
He dozed only briefly, fitfully, and by the time he was due to report felt even more exhausted.
Reform. Again. This time not just battle groups, but entire divisions. No one talked casualties in terms of numbers, but it was obvious they had been far greater than expected. Davis was uncertain how many fighting survivors there were left from his own regiment, but knew it wasn’t more than a dozen tanks; it was horrifying, unbelievable. Men he had worked and trained with for years, drunk with in the messes and bars, his friends, Sergeant Harry Worksop who had been the best man at his wedding… Colonel Studley, Major Fairly, Lieutenant Sidworth, Captain Willis, Lieutenant Burrows… Sealey… too many to name. Yesterday the operations officer had said perhaps they weren’t
‘Sir…’
‘Sergeant Davis…’ The lieutenant seemed as relieved as Davis to see a familiar face, and grinned a welcome.
‘Warrant officer, sir… promoted yesterday…’ Was it yesterday or the day before? Davis couldn’t remember.
‘Good man… I’m pleased.’ The lieutenant had two days’ growth of dark beard. Davis had watched him bring his tank in, its hull as scarred and blistered as that of his own Chieftain. ‘By the way, do you know where I can get POL?’
Petrol, oil, lubricants… and then ammunition; always the first thoughts in the mind of a good tank commander. ‘They’ve told us to wait, sir. There are a lot of infantry around… sleeping everywhere. They don’t want us moving our vehicles in the dark until they’ve got them all safely out of the way. There have been one or two accidents already. Have you reported yet, sir?’
‘No. I want to clean up a bit.’
‘There’s a lazyman boiler in the trees; over there… you can just see the glow.’
‘Thanks, Mister Davis.’ The lieutenant exaggerated the ‘mister’ slightly; it wasn’t meant as an insult, simply an acknowledgement of Davis’s promotion. Davis watched him go, collecting his crew from beside their tank. It was good to see faces you recognized.
Davis walked slowly back to his tank and shook the sleeping gunner. ‘Inkester… and you too, DeeJay… Spink. Up you get… come on, show a leg… come on lads, rouse yourselves.’ It was like trying to waken the dead, thought Davis. Left alone, they’d sleep here in the open for a full twenty-four hours. ‘On your feet!’
Spink groaned and then said, sleepily, ‘Go and get us a cup of tea, Dad.’
‘I’m not your bloody father, lad… up you get.’
‘Oh, God…’ DeeJay was stretching himself, a lean figure unfolding from his sleeping bag, rubbing his face with his fists like a child.
Am I their bloody father, wondered Davis? Sometimes it seemed he was. ‘Come on, lads.’ He spoke more gently. ‘You’ve got ten minutes to get yourselves washed up, then I want the tank cleaned.’
‘Christ!’
‘Properly cleaned, Inkester… bright, sparkling and Bristol-fashion, understand? Positively glowing. I’m not having any of us doing our fighting in a mobile shit-house, am I Spink?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Jump to it then, lad.’
‘I thought they were resting us, sir.’ Inkester was awake now, his voice resentful.
‘Sorry lad, they’re running thin on charity.’
DeeJay was already climbing on to the hull, a dark shadow silhouetted against the heavy sky. He steadied himself against the barrel of the gun. ‘Y’know something, sir? If we ‘ad a bloody trade union, they’d ‘ave us all out on strike by now.’
‘What did you think about Eric copping it?’ Inkester was trying to remove burnt explosive from the breech of the gun where it had become plated on to the metal by heat.
‘He didn’t really cop it,’ answered DeeJay. ‘Not like a real wound, anyway. He wasn’t shot or nothing. He just hurt himself.’
‘It’ll count as a wound, you bloody see. If we dished out Purple Hearts he’d get one for that. He’ll be allowed to wear a wound stripe. He got it in battle, in wartime.’ Fatigue had drained Inkester’s face and he was white in the lights of the fighting compartment. ‘Wonder what they’ll be like?’
‘What what’ll be like?’
‘Our medals!’
‘What fuckin’ medals? You aren’t half a git, Inky!’
‘War service medals. We’ll all get them. 1985 to whatever… victory medals… defence medals… just like the last war. They’ll look good alongside the GSM I’ve got.’
‘Bloody gongs… you’re pathetic. I’ll tell you what, I’d trade every one I’m ever likely to get for Eric’s Blighty. He’s a lucky sod!’
Spink was wiping oil from the faces of the Clansman’s instrument dials; it was surprising how dirty the inside of a tank could become, he had even found a potato crisp packet… must have been the delivery crew’s.
Inkester asked: ‘Were you scared, DeeJay?’
‘That’s a fucking daft question!’
‘Well, were you?’
‘Course I was bleedin’ scared. You’d be an idiot if you wasn’t.’
‘Stink was scared, weren’t you Stink?’ The loader didn’t answer. ‘Well, so was I,’ admitted Inkester. ‘You two thought how many of us there are left?’
‘Shut up, Inky… I don’t want to know.’
‘Well, ‘ave you seen
‘It’s bleedin’ dark out there… what d’you think I am, a bloody owl? They’ll be around.’ DeeJay didn’t want to think, didn’t want to start weighing up the odds of his future survival. He hadn’t lied when he had admitted being scared; there had been times when he had wanted to throw open the hatch, hurl himself out into the open, and run like hell as far away from the battlefields as he could get. The only thing that had stopped him was the realization his survival was less likely outside the hull of the Chieftain. And when there were lulls in the fighting it wasn’t too bad again, just so long as he didn’t think about it.
‘’Ere! Aren’t you getting married today?’
‘Oh, Christ, Inkester. Why don’t you belt up?’ The realization it was Saturday wrapped itself around DeeJay’s brain like a damp suffocating blanket. Saturday. He should have been in England… probably suffering from a Tetley’s hangover… no, he would be sleeping it off now, in his Mum’s house, his own bed; the bed he had slept in as a kid. Saturday. What was Cathy doing? She’d be asleep, too; her wedding dress hung in the stripped-pine wardrobe they had bought on his last leave. What the hell did she want with a stripped-pine wardrobe? They would be getting army furniture… quarters. Well, they’d have got them pretty soon, anyway. She’d been collecting things for ages, though; sets of pans from sales, bedding, a place setting of a knife, fork and spoon each week from her wages. Every time he went home on leave she would take him up to her mom and show him the things she’d added to her collection. As he thought of it, he realized he could actually smell her room, feminine, talcum powder. She used the perfume he had bought her in the Munster NAAFI, expensive, French, and it scented the bedroom, clinging to her sheets and pillows. They used the bed when her family were out. Old Daphne, her Mum, wasn’t a bad old stick, she damn well knew they slept together… she even sort of helped them, though she wouldn’t have liked it to be too obvious. ‘Come on Steve, leave ’em alone a bit, they haven’t seen each other for three months… you’ll be wanting to have a little chat with each other, won’t you? Your Dad and I will go down the pub. We’ll meet you there, about ten o’clock in the lounge… come on then, Steve… see you two both later then.'
‘Do you love me, Dave?’ The top of her head barely reached his mid-chest height, and she would be staring up at him with her wide blue eyes, trying to read the answer in his face. She would hold him extraordinarily tightly, pulling him against her until he could feel her breasts flattening against his body.
‘’Course I do. That’s why we’re gettin’ married.’
