‘Thanks.’
Les asked the American, ‘I suppose that some of them down there will be rustling up their breakfasts around now.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder, Mr Finnigan: but if they aren’t, I’ll get you into the chow line up the hill.’
Les gave him a salute. It was worse than one of James’s. He sort of touched the rim of his beret with his right forefinger: and that was it.
The main encampment was far enough above us for my knees to feel the strain. Oliver didn’t try to make conversation, which I appreciated. The biggest tents had huge white squares with red crosses on them: they were the field operating theatres. There were two sorts of wards, he told me: those for lying in, and those for dying in. He thought it would show solidarity with my Allies to visit the latter before I moved on.
About a dozen people, surgeons, nurses, attendants and patients, erupted from one of the operating tents just as we reached it. You couldn’t have mistaken it for a welcoming party. One patient was carrying his own drip, and still running. A nurse caught up with him, and took the drip. They ran on together, ignoring the mud. One of the docs must have recognized Oliver, who swore under his breath as the guy stopped, turned on him, and gulped, ‘Thank the fuck you’re here. There’s a mad bastard with a gun in there.’
I couldn’t resist it.
‘There are mad bastards with guns out here, too; thousands of them. Haven’t you noticed?’
The doc was a scrawny character, whose apron was covered in blood. He eyed me up and down, and panted, ‘A Chaplain: even better. Maybe he’ll listen to you.’
Me and my big mouth. A shot sounded from inside the tent, and its canvas near us was plucked momentarily outwards. When it fell back in place there was a hole in it.
Oliver told me, ‘You can wait out here for me if you like,’ and stepped up to the flappy thing that was pretending to be a door.
I said, ‘I’ll be safer with you: you’re probably the only man here who knows what he’s doing.’
I only said it to make him feel better, expecting him to refuse. He eyed me up doubtfully, said, ‘OK . . . let’s go,’ and moved.
At the far end of the tented room there was a patient on a table. His big toe twitched spasmodically, as if he was waiting for someone to scratch it. He’d have a long wait; there were few doctors, nor nurses that I could see. Those patients who could had got on the floor under their cots. There were a few who couldn’t do that, and most of those too far gone to care. One deranged-looking grunt was sitting up on one bed, with his back against a ridge pole. Three medics were kneeling on the floor, in the mud, in front of him. One Doc, one nurse and one SBA – a sick bay attendant. They had their faces close to the mud, and their arses in the air pointed at us.
Guns always look big in confined spaces, don’t they? He was holding one of those bloody great .45s, and there was that brilliant tang of gunsmoke in the air. The square gun barrel framing drifted in our direction as we neared him. The Provo didn’t hurry. No point in hurrying to get killed, is there? When we were so close as not to be mistaken Oliver asked, ‘Arnold? That you?’
‘They took my fucking leg, Jamie.’ The gunman had one of those soft Southern voices. I could see through the sheet over his lower body that there was something significant missing.
‘He would have died . . .’ That was the doc in the mud. It came out as a bit of a whine. Then he farted. I knew how he felt. The patient told him, ‘Shaddup. I weren’t talking at you. You stole my leg.’
We were at the end of the bed now. The GI said it again, ‘They took my fucking leg, Jamie.’ Then, ‘Who’s the guy with you?’
‘A limey Chaplain, a Padre.’
‘They took my fucking leg, Padre.’
‘You can get along without it,’ I told him.
‘You ever heard of a one-legged rodeo rider?’
‘Hopalong Cassidy?’ I tried.
I heard the Provo’s breath going in with a whistle. It got so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Then the GI laughed.
‘You ain’t no friggin’ hymn-singer, that’s fer sure. Why you wearing a gun, Father?’
‘Old Testament, son; an eye for an eye, and all that jazz . . . I didn’t want Jerry getting the wrong idea about peace and brotherly love.’
‘Should I be worried?’ he asked me.
I heard my voice saying it, but it wasn’t really me.
‘I’m really sorry, Soldier. Sorry about your leg; but you’ve got a lot of people scared and worried in here, and there’s a man on that table at the back bleeding to death because you have a gun in your hand. I may not be that John Wayne, but what I’m going to do is promise you that if you make me unbutton this holster I’ll try to kill you.’
Who was I kidding? It was my newly acquired Luger I was talking about. I didn’t even know how to fire the damned thing. Again, I heard that whistling sound as Oliver took a quick deep breath, and a muddy squelch as he stepped away from me.
Arnold One-Leg said, ‘Hot-damn!’ and then, ‘You can stop whistling, Jamie, I was never going to hurt no one; you know that.’ And then, ‘They took my fucking leg, Father, and didn’t even let me see it.’
‘You put the gun down, and they’ll fetch the leg.’ I was actually resting my right hand on the holster flap. I don’t know if I would have done it. He grinned, reversed his pistol, and handed it grip-first up to the policeman. The medics began to stir out of the mud.
I said, ‘Someone
