The Golden Virgin (28 page)

OPERATION ORDER NO. 1 (Part 1)

“It’ll be altered, of course. More and more bumff keeps coming in from Brigade. We’re doing another practice rehearsal tomorrow, that’ll make five so far. When you’ve got the general idea, I’ll show you your platoon, and your sergeant can give you the dope. By the way, who’s senior between you two blokes?”

Cox, who was sitting in a canvas chair, reading a letter from home, eye-glass in eye, looked up promptly and said, “I am”.

“I had an idea you were, Phil?” said Bason.

“No, it’s the other way about, skipper,” said Cox. “Catch!” He threw over a packet of cigarettes.

Phillip knew that he was senior to Cox by ten days, but did not like to say so. Bason took a cigarette, and flipped back the yellow packet.

Cox is a liar, thought Phillip; and went on reading.

I’ll wear a tommy’s tunic, thought Phillip, thank God. That will give me an even chance.

He read the next paragraph, and then sat very still, feeling that Bason must hear the thudding of his heart.

He looked across at Cox, sitting cross-legged in his canvas chair, swinging his whangee cane, and knew that Cox had read his thoughts when he said immediately, with an eye-glassy stare, “Go on, you one piecee bad boy, read the rest of it! Gasper?” He threw over the packet of Goldflakes.

Like bloody hell it is, thought Phillip, recalling to mind “Spectre” West’s company of Gaultshires hung up by wire in front of Lone Tree.

Where will the ladders come from, and what about the jam-up they will cause in the jumping-off trench? And who will place them in position? The Angels of Mons? He saw again the chalk-filled bags of the parapet at Loos before Zero, torn by machine-guns to ragged ears of hessian.

“What sort of attack is it to be, I mean how wide is No-man’s Land, d’you know, skipper?”

“Varies between six and eight hundred yards opposite our sector. Why?”

“That means nearly a quarter of a mile for the first two waves to go, after the first advance. What is the rate of advance, is it at the double?”

“What, with over sixty pounds per man of clobber we’ll have to carry? Give us a chance, old sport! At present it’s a hundred yards every two minutes.”

“That’s less than two miles an hour. Rather slow, isn’t it, to go a quarter of a mile under fire.”

“There won’t be a Boche left alive after the bombardment, old sport.”

Phillip picked up the pages, and glanced through half a dozen more. An item caught his eye.

There were many other paragraphs, including RATIONS, WATER DUMP, REGIMENTAL AID POST; and then his gaze fastened on something which accentuated his thoughts.

He put this bunch of papers down, then took up OPERATION ORDER No. 2, which consisted of four cyclostyled pages. Then OPERATION ORDER No. 3, which was of three pages; followed by OPERATION ORDER,
Amendment
No.
2, and OPERATION ORDERS,
Additions
and
Amendments
No.
3.

*

“Cox, here’s the Imprest Account for the company’s pay tomorrow. You’ll find the Field Cashier at Querrieu. Now don’t go to Amiens with the cash and paint the place red, will you?”

“What, with my missus expecting a baby next month? No damned likelihood of that, skipper!”

When Cox had gone, Bason said, “Cox likes to think he is very much the family man these days. Now I’ll take you to your platoon, and introduce you to their feet and kits. The usual inspection. Then you’re free till tomorrow. I’m going down to Amiens this evening, to get a bath, and then a bite at the Godbert. How about coming? We can ride over, it’s only ten kilometres. Are you on? Good. Remember when we used to go up together to Baker Street from camp, and our long walks back after midnight? Good old days. We had some sport, not half we didn’t!”

They walked down to the company lines. Phillip was taken to his platoon sergeant, a small alert, wiry man.

“You’ll find him a good chap,” said Bason, aside. “Between you and me, he asked to be transferred away from the platoon last week, under Wigg. You remember the old lizard? Fortunately for us, Wigg’s just got himself another job.”

“What kind of job, skipper?”

“Acting Area Commandant—and I hope he stays there—we don’t want him back. All the other chaps in the company are keen as mustard.”

“For the attack, you mean?”

“What else? It will be a cakewalk, with one howitzer for every forty yards of Hun front, and one field gun to every twenty-five! That’s in addition to gas, smoke, all the trench mortars—light, medium and heavy—Stokes, Christmas Puddings, Flying Pigs, all going the bundle! We’ll all be home by Christmas, old sport, I’ll take a bet on it. How about a bradbury, level betting?”

“Do you think the war will be over by then?”

“I’ll make it five to one, that it’s over by Christmas! Are you on?”

“All right. Only it will be like robbing an incubator.”

the words flashed in his head as he reversed his puttees preparatory to riding into Amiens for dinner with Bason. Followed by two grooms, they avoided the main road, with its heavy traffic, and went along a track which passed away from the practice area of facsimile German trenches. He had a 16 h.h. chestnut, with a white blaze down its face, and a hard mouth; temporary gentleman with temporary charger’s mariners. However, behind Captain Bason bumping up and down on a bay mare, like the Galloping Major of the song, he felt like a cavalry wallah. His mount kept shaking its head. He dismounted to loosen the curb-chain, which had been hooked too tight under the animal’s jaw. The groom didn’t know his job.

“Two fingers should slide easily between jaw and curb, like this!”

“Very good, sir.”

The wind-waves were upon the corn. Larks sang in the sky. There was no other sound save the clop of hooves, the creak of leather, an occasional clink of the loose curb-chain, as the chestnut behaved, he thought, with gratitude.

*

Thus began one of the most pleasant periods of Phillip’s military life, brief as it was. It was a time given not only to the practice assault, but to sport. There was cricket in the long evenings between the companies, and inter-platoon football matches. Running events, too, and boxing. The company boxing instructor
was Phillip’s platoon sergeant, an alert, cheery man with a brown face and pale blue eyes, part Welsh and part Devon, coming from a village inland from the Exmoor coast—so he and Phillip soon had plenty to talk about. Davy Jones gave him boxing lessons, using patience and kindness, and away from the men, because Phillip was shy of his inability, at first, to avoid blows, which wove around and under and through the almost static guard of his right arm. He used the posture taught him years before by his father, left arm straightly extended, right arm covering chin, with no idea of working the forearm to divert blows. But he persisted, and learned the elements of countering, the use of his toes and calves when striking—it could not be called punching.

The frame of Davy Jones was spare and hard as the ash handles of the shovels, paring hooks, mattocks, and picks he had used since boyhood with precision. Phillip persisted, and the exercise gave him confidence and some sort of belief in his body powers. He went for long runs, loping along, mile after mile with the athletes of his platoon, and practised deep breathing in the early morning and at night.

This was after Sergeant Jones had said, “I’ve been a-listening to your breathing, sir. It’s in-out, in-out, like putting three inches of the bayonet in a sack. Lungs is like bellowses, sir, they work best with deep draughts, in and out at the same rate, slowly. Town people don’t know how to use bellowses,” he went on scornfully. “They puff and blast away, scattering the embers, instead of fanning them, sir, to give them new flame with the air in equal proportions, if you understand my meanin’. There’s so much power in an ember, and no more is gained by blasting it to sparks, when its heat is wanted to bake a stick, then fire it. And ’tes the same wi’ breathing, a lung is nothin’ but a bellows. Take in slowly, like, and let out slowly. I breathe eight to a minute, and can expand my chest five inches. I’ll show you.”

And putting a piece of string round his chest, Davy Jones asked Phillip to tie it tight, with a double knot. When this was done he said, “Now watch me!” and with his eyes fixed on Phillip’s he drew in breath slowly, more and more, until the string broke. Holding up a hand for silence, he completed his act, letting out air slowly as he had drawn it in.

“Twenty seconds you’ll find that took, and I could run a mile without breathing any faster if I’d a mind to!”

After parades, in the calm summer evenings, there was the
bioscope, with one riotous night, a Charlie Chaplin film. In another barn in Querrieu was the Ah-Rays concert party, run by some gunners. This, like the mobile cinema, was also packed every evening. Some of the actors dressed up as girls, with various types of wigs. Each man in the audience dwelt upon the plaits, golden curls and rouged faces, upon the eyes made large, liquid, and luring with red specks of paint in the corners and crowsfeet of black extending the lids made shadowy with blue powder. Each herded man in the audience was fascinated, filled with longing, stirred by lust which made him shout or grin or hide his facial feelings according to the experiences, or lack, of his body.