‘I suppose so. Depressing, isn’t it?’
I asked him about his after the war. He said, ‘You’d probably laugh at me.’
‘So what? You laughed at me.’
‘There’s a small port near Chichester, in Sussex. All the yachty types anchor there in the summer: crumpet everywhere. It’s called Bosham; heard of it?’
‘No, James. Sorry.’
‘Don’t say sorry all the time. You don’t have to.’
‘Sorry.’
‘There you go again.’
I opened my mouth, but shut it again with a small pop. He said, ‘Don’t worry. Not many people know it: it’s where King Canute ordered the tide to turn. Anyway, I want to buy a small place there, and open a really good restaurant. I want to serve meals so good that people will talk about them the other side of the Empire.’ James added, almost as an afterthought, ‘You shouldn’t say Christ, no, you know; not while you’re a Padre. God won’t like it. Not seemly. Out of character.’
Before I could reply the tankie Captain mooched over. His name was Charteris, and naturally there was a white matchstick-man with a halo painted on the side of his tank’s turret. Before he could speak we were disturbed by the sounds of high-pitched aero-engines in the air near us. Until then the tank laager had had a languorous, sleepy air about it. Now everything changed. From the turret of the Judas Goat a head wearing a bugle poked up, and blasted a two-phrase bugle call: then it popped down again. Charteris spun to face the field, and used a fifty-foot voice.
‘Stand to! Stand to!’
He was behind the action though. Most of the tanks had Brens or Fifties mounted on their turret tops, and there were two on flexible mountings on the Kangaroo. Now each was manned by a trooper in a battle bowler. Some hadn’t had the time to put jackets on, but no one had missed his steel helmet.
They swept across the field: the three American Lightnings we’d seen the previous day. They were all hooked up with wings full of rockets. They were so low that when one of the pilots looked in my direction I’ll swear we had an eye lock. They were so low that they couldn’t miss the stars on the turret tops of the Comet tanks if they looked for them. In an eye blink they were half a mile away, but then they circled back.
‘They’re looking for something,’ Charteris murmured, but that was more for his benefit than ours. They circled slowly out of our Brens’ effective ranges, and when I sensed a relief and lessening of tension among the tank gunners, Charteris racked it up again by shouting, ‘Fucking stand to, I tell you.’
The Lightnings did another run near the field but their noses were angled up. Whatever their point was, it escaped me. When they were another blink away some nervous sod caught his finger in a trigger guard and pumped three or four rounds after them. Charteris said, ‘Bastard!’ and then bellowed, ‘Stand down! Stand down!’ in his parade-ground voice.
The bugle attached to a small head popped back up out of the Judas Goat again, and gave us the benefit of the two-phrase call once more. This time it held on to the final note until it died of air starvation. I could immediately sense things calming down. Except the fiery little Captain, who bellowed, ‘Sarn’t Cummings. To me. Sarn’t Cummings.’
Cummings, who’d been the first of the tankies to unwind to me, doubled over from a hedgerow Comet. He was obviously Charteris’s first man, even though there were two Lieutenants. Cummings skidded, and saluted.
‘Who was the cunt then? The one with finger trouble?’
Cummings looked pained; he blinked before he answered, ‘Trooper Wyatt, B troop, sir.’
‘Then Trooper Wyatt just became the Judas Goat, didn’t he? Get those bloody tanks switched over, if you please.’ He gave a quick little salute. Cummings didn’t move fast enough for him, so he said, ‘Sergeant?’
Cummings snapped out of it, saluted, and doubled away. By way of explanation, Charteris said, ‘Wyatt is Cummings’s gunner. Now he’s out in the middle until someone else drops one.’
James didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to respond with. The little Captain looked briefly puzzled. He muttered, ‘They were looking for something, you know.’
It may have been my imagination, but I thought that he looked at us with a quizzical interest . . . but the moment passed. Behind us Les let out another great snort in his sleep. He’d slept through the whole damned thing.
Some time later the Major fell asleep as well, his head on his chest. One crew scoured out the barrel of their tank’s gun with a solution of hot water and piss, and others slept by their tanks. Cummings walked around on an informal inspection. Someone had tuned in to the services station and Vera Lynn was quietly doing her stuff. I never liked her singing, but like everyone else I fancied her to death. That’s an unfortunate phrase for a serviceman, isn’t it?
After Cummings had returned to his own tank he couldn’t seem to keep still: every few minutes his head would stick out of the lid, screw three-sixty degrees around and then jerk out of sight again. After my second pipe of the morning I tapped it out on my heel. The saliva in the stem made a hissing sound as it ran into the hot bowl. I cleaned it out with a screw of grass, buttoned it into my jacket pocket, and wandered over to the Cummings vehicle. It had the name Fred painted on a cast steel wing above the track, alongside a cartoon picture of a hound with floppy ears. The dog appeared to be taking a crap. Cummings didn’t see me the next time his head popped up – he was looking north-east, towards the enemy. When it got round to me I said, ‘Hello,’ and he jumped out of his skin. I remembered then what Les had
