Anyone can make a mistake I suppose. I’d just made mine, but next that same morning it was the corporal’s turn, for he screamed that immortal military phrase at me, ‘You dozy little man, what the fuck do you think you’re up to?’
Like most corporals, he had been promoted on account of the distance he could get his voice to carry, and as usual it was the word little that actually did it for me. They had probably heard him in Cairo. I had my back to him as I climbed down, so all he could see was a slightly undersized driver, dressed in clean but rumpled KDs. I reached into the cab for my old RAF peaked cap as I turned to him, and pulled it on, not with a flourish, but with that tug which says You’re stuffed, sonny. You should have seen his mug when his instincts kicked in. Bollocks, an officer! One of the Gunners went white and froze, and the other disappeared back inside again as fast as a ferret down a rabbit hole. I spoke quietly; that always sticks the knife in further. ‘If you ever speak to an officer like that again, Corporal, I’ll take your stripes and push them so far up your arse they’ll come down your bloody nostrils. Savvy?’
‘Yessir.’
‘And clear this fucking mess up.’
‘Yessir.’
The Austin was scraped but not bent, so I remounted. The corporal remained rooted to the spot until I beckoned him over and said, ‘One of your men made himself scarce as soon as he saw I was going to be awkward . . .’
‘Yessir.’
‘Get rid of him. You want someone who’ll back you up in a spot; not someone who scrams at the first sign of trouble.’
He blinked, said, ‘Yessir,’ again, and saluted. I touched the peak of my cap to him, and put the rusty old box into gear.
When I was out of sight of the camp, I stashed the RAF cap behind the passenger seat, and pulled on the Jerry job. I thought I looked quite dashing, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I had to sit at the end of our junction with the Ismailia–Suez road, and wait there for the rest of the convoy, which was late. They were running on Army time, which is not quite the same as yours.
When they turned up Sergeant Clare was in the lead jeep, which was a relief . . . and a fresh-faced second lieutenant sat alongside him, which wasn’t. Clare brought the convoy to a halt, but it was the officer who walked over to me. He was a lanky, bony specimen with a gangly walk. I imagined his joints spontaneously disarticulating, and him collapsing in an India-rubber heap on the road. I didn’t get down, so for once my conversation was conducted from the position of power: I began to understand how all those six-footers felt when they were dressing me down. His KDs looked new. They were immaculate.
He touched his immaculate cap with his immaculate leather-clad stick, and smiled an immaculate smile. ‘Smart-Watkins. Edward . . .’ Obviously he’d had problems with his English language lessons at school, since his sentences came out back to front.
‘Bonaparte-Bassett. Charles . . . you can call me Charlie.’ It did not raise a smile, except from the guy with the gun in the back of Clare’s jeep.
‘One of the French Bonapartes?’
‘No. One of the Belgian ones. We danced at the ball in Brussels on the eve of the battle of Waterloo, and then we left the French ones to fight it. They lost.’
‘I see. Jolly good.’
‘That’s what we thought, too.’
He had a curious little smile, which sat under a curious little moustache. Fussy. If I had been his CO I wouldn’t have let him get away with anything as daft-looking as that.
‘I’ll send over a driver . . .’
‘It’s OK, Edward . . . I can manage. Sergeant Clare taught me last month.’
He twitched. He definitely twitched, and lowered his voice so that we were the only two who could hear him, ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t use my Christian name in front of the men, Charles . . . technically I outrank you: it’s a matter of courtesy.’
‘I’m in a completely different service, but technically you could be right. What do you want me to call you then?’
‘I thought about that problem on the drive here. Perhaps we could call each other nothing: honours even.’
‘I still don’t need a driver.’
‘But I need you to need one. Officers don’t drive in our mob . . .’
‘Matter of courtesy again, I suppose?’
‘Precisely.’
He touched his cap peak with his stick again as he walked back to the jeep. I suppose that he’d won the first round. Roy Rogers had been climbing down from the back of one of the wagons anyway. I didn’t mind that. I shifted over to make room for him. He was wearing a regulation forage cap which looked old, but almost unused, and balanced precariously on his thatch. What had happened to the Afrika Korps?
‘Hello, Roy.’
‘Hello, sir. Ready to roll?’
‘Yes. Who is that guy?’
‘New officer sir. The Sergeant was asked to take him out and familiarize him with the terrain.’
‘He’s an idiot.’
‘I can’t argue with an officer, sir, an’ you’re an officer. The lads are saying he’s from that strange county in the middle of England, sir.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Cuntshire, sir.’ He made me laugh, and the laughter made my head ache, so I leaned back in my seat, and pulled my hat over my eyes. Trigger placed us in the middle of the small convoy. There was something deliberate about
