The '44 Vintage (6 page)

Butler closed his eyes for a moment and soared away on the wings of his own ambition. They had spoken, had argued and fenced with each other, as though he hadn’t existed; as though he hadn’t been standing there, three yards away from them, as patient as the ex-German army horse. And in the end he had almost forgotten that he existed himself.

Now he could feel the reality again. The field of intelligence had no particular attraction for him, the only field for a soldier was the battlefield and the only part worth playing on it was the infantryman’s— that lesson from the general he had learnt, and that was the lesson in which he believed totally.

But if there were spurs a French-speaking second lieutenant could win in this operation there ought also to be spurs which a German-speaking corporal could win.

And if there were, then Jack Butler was going to win them.

How Major O’Conor set a history test

BUTLER KNEW
exactly what was going to happen.

Or, since Major O’Connor was obviously not a conventional officer of the line, he didn’t know
exactly
what was going to happen, but he had a bloody shrewd idea.

One way or another young Mr. Second Lieutenant Audley was going to be put to the test, as Corporal Butler had been.

There was a part of him which was already protective of the subaltern, and sorry that he had had no opportunity to warn him of what was to come. Because that was what a good NCO should do—and because one day he hoped there’d be a good NCO to do it for him, the Second Lieutenant Butler of the future, God willing.

But there was another (and larger) part of him which awaited events with more than professional curiosity. Knowing one’s officer was almost as important as knowing one’s sergeant, and he had another bloody shrewd idea that there wouldn’t be much time to get the measure of Mr. Audley before life-and-death matters were put to the test. Because that casual banter between Colonel Sylces and the major about a “holiday jaunt” had had a distinct whiff of sulphur about it: they had been reassuring each other and lying to each other in the same breath, and both had known it—like a couple of RAF types he had once heard talking in a pub about a raid which was going to be “a piece of cake,” when the scraped white look on each of their faces had belied what they were saying.

He took a quick surreptitious look at Mr. Audley, whose black and white countenance had that same air-crew pallor.

Second Lieutenant Audley would bear watching. About the major he had not the very slightest doubt: he had seen it all and survived it all, and that talk of surviving at any cost had been just talk. But not all Mr. Audley’s injuries—the bandaged arm and the bruises—were on the outside, for a guess. And they might be the result of being blown out of his tank, which to be fair sounded like an uncommonly unpleasant experience—especially when he remembered all those knocked-out Cromwells along the way to the bridge. Yet they might also be the symptoms of that dreadful incurable disease the general had once spoken of which was stamped on the records of failed officers.
Lack of moral
fibre
.

If Second Lieutenant Audley suffered from LMF then it was better to discover it now, at the major’s hands, than later, at the Germans’.

One thing was for sure: Mr. Audley might be bulging with brains and scholarships, but he was bloody slow adjusting to the sergeant-major’s driving. Every time the jeep juddered over a pothole or skidded to the left (which was every time they came to a pothole, because the sergeant-major drove in a straight line, and every time they came to a corner, because he drove too fast, he rolled heavily against Butler.

Each time they collided Butler was enveloped in a mixed smell of carbolic soap and sweat, and had his hipbone gouged by the subaltern’s pistol butt.

Each time they collided Mr. Audley winced with pain and apologised.

And each time Butler couldn’t quite summon up enough courage to suggest that if Mr. Audley would just hold onto his side of the jeep the collisions would not be necessary.

The jeep lurched again, and Audley lurched with it.

Carbolic soap, sweat, and
ouch!

“Sorry,” said Audley for the twentieth time.

“Sir,” said Butler for the twentieth time.

The major turned in his seat and fixed his good eye on Audley. He hadn’t said a word since they’d set off, so it might be that he was coming to the same conclusions about his fluent French-speaking dragoon subaltern, thought Butler.

“Where did you pick up your French, David?” The major spoke conversationally. “School?”

“And F-France, sir,” said Audley, rubbing his shoulder.

“On holiday, you mean?”

“F-f-friends of the f-family, sir. I was b-billeted on them every summer holiday up to ‘38, to learn the language. W-wouldn’t say a w-word of English to me—bloody awful.”

“But you learnt the language, eh?”

Audley grimaced, which with his bruised face was easy. “It w-was that or starve to death, sir. W-wouldn’t even let the doctor speak English to me when I w-was sick—even though he spoke it better than I did.” He grinned suddenly. “Matter of fact, I’ve g-got a rotten accent—no ear for it. But I know the right words.”

“Well, that’s all we shall be needing.” Major O’Conor nodded at Butler. “Corporal Butler here wouldn’t pass for an
Obergefreiter—
not unless the Germans have been recruiting in Lancashire anyway. But he knows the words, I’ll say that for him.”

Butler’s cheeks burned as Audley turned to him. “Good show, Corporal,” said Audley.

Butler searched the white face for the patronising expression which ought to go with the words, but found only a polite innocence worn like a mask. Whatever Audley thought about his situation was locked up inside his head.

“You’ve got some German too, I gather?” said the major.

“S-school Certificate German. I can maybe read it a bit, but not much more as yet,” said Audley self-dismissively.

Butler bit his lip. Not so long ago the acquisition of School Certificate German had been the limit of his ambition, looming larger than anything else except the Army itself. But here was Audley shrugging it off as a thing of little importance.

“You have a history scholarship?” The major’s tone was casual. “Am I right there?”

Hände hoch!
thought Butler. The complete unimportance of Mr. Audley’s education could only conceal a hidden ambush to come—and there was nothing he could do to warn the subaltern.

“Yes, sir.” Audley relaxed.

“Oxford, I presume?”

“Cambridge actually. The climate in Oxford … it’s terribly muggy. I didn’t fancy it at all. I think Cambridge is much
healthier
.”

Butler was impressed. The subaltern might be exaggerating, but he had spoken as though he’d had a choice between the two ancient and exclusive seats of learning, and not even the great Dr. Fredericks of King Edward’s had ever boasted of that so far as he could recall.

“Besides, there was this fellow at Balliol who was mad keen for me to read Greats, and the truth is I’ve never been absolutely sold on the classics since—“

Butler had just worked out that “Greats” must be Latin and Greek when the jeep hammered violently over a pothole again, catching him unprepared and throwing him sideways against Audley before he could swing against the lurch. He felt the subaltern shrink away from him, and then tense up with pain as their shoulders met. “Sorry,” said Audley for the twenty-first time, automatically. Butler looked away, embarrassed. Ahead of them the road now arrowed towards a far skyline that was just beginning to blur with the haze of evening. They had left the Norman Switzerland behind them and were heading into a countryside untouched by war. But for the evenly spaced trees along the road and the hedgeless fields beyond them, it might almost have been the anonymous landscape of southern England he had glimpsed on the battalion’s journey southwards a month before. It hardly seemed possible that only a few days back this might-have-been England had been German territory.

Audley lapsed into silence, leaving the sentence unfinished, as though the pain had reminded him where he was. He had managed all those words, from “Cambridge” onwards, without a trace of a stutter, Butler realised.

“So you decided to study history?” The major seemed determined to drive the young officer from cover. “A more useful subject—eh?”

Audley gave the question some thought before answering. “I wouldn’t go so f-far as to say useful. I certainly d-didn’t find my knowledge of … W-William the Conqueror’s f-feudal administration in Normandy awfully useful in the
b-bocage
.” He made a ghastly attempt at a smile. “M-medieval history doesn’t help against eighty-eights, I found.”

“Medieval history?” The major’s good eye widened. “Now there you might just be wrong, young David, you know.”

“I b-beg your pardon, sir?” Audley looked at the major with a mixture of surprise and unconcealed curiosity.

“I said you may be wrong—eh, Sergeant-major?” The major sought confirmation from what Butler regarded as a most unlikely source.

The sergeant-major grunted knowingly.

“Sir?” Audley’s interest fluttered like a bird in a cage.

The major’s golden smile showed. “The name Chandos mean anything to you, my lad?”

“Chandos?” Audley repeated the name, frowning.

“That’s right And there was an Audley too in his time, I rather think—does he ring a bell with you?”

“Sir James Audley,” said Audley.

“An ancestor perhaps? That would be highly appropriate.” The eye closed for an instant “The O’Conors themselves were kings of Connaught in those days, would you believe it! But Chandos now—“

“Sir John Chandos,” said Audley.

“That’s the man. Chandos, Manny, Holland, Burghersh, Audley, Mowbray, Beauchamp, Neville, Percy—aye, and the Black lad himself … all names to conjure with, David. As fine a band of cutthroats as ever left home to make their fortunes at someone else’s expense! But Chandos first and last—and best.”

Butler looked questioningly from one to the other, completely at sea, and the major caught the look. “Never heard of Sir John Chandos, Corporal? What
did
they teach you at school?”

Butler flushed with shame at his latest display of ignorance. The full extent of his medieval history lay between the covers of E. Wilmot Buxton, but there had been none of those names in those pages; and the rest of his historical knowledge coincided exactly with the School Certificate syllabus, which had acknowledged nothing before 1815.

His tongue was like a piece of balsa wood in his mouth.

“Tell the man, David,” said the major.

Audley glanced at Butler sympathetically. “Hundred Years’ War and all that, Corporal—the Black Prince and the battle of Crécy, 1346—“ he blinked and cut short the recital of facts as though they irritated him.

“Go on,” the major urged him. “Sir John Chandos?”

Audley turned towards him. “What’s Sir John Chandos got to do with us … sir?”

“I said
go on
, Mr. Audley,” said the major. “And I dislike repeating instructions.”

Audley’s chin lifted. “I didn’t know it was an order, sir. Chandos was a fourteenth-century soldier, one of Edward III’s field commanders and a comrade of the Black Prince’s. That’s all I know about him—except that he was famous for his courtesy and good manners.”

Butler held his breath as the major’s good eye became as fishlike for an instant as the glass one. Then the corner of his mouth twitched upwards.

“Not just for his good manners, David,” he said coolly. “He was the greatest captain of the age—the complete fighting man, you might say. Crécy, Poitiers, and Najera, and a hundred skirmishes.”

Audley met the stare. “Yes, sir?”

He hadn’t actually said “So what?” but he hadn’t left it quite unsaid, Butler realised. It had never occurred to him that officers as well as other ranks should have mastered the art of dumb insolence—or it might be better described as dumb arrogance in young Mr. Audley’s case; and somehow he didn’t think that it was a newly acquired skill.

But at least the set of the subaltern’s jaw and the obstinate expression in his eyes settled one question: whatever there was wrong with Second Lieutenant Audley, it wasn’t LMF.

Suddenly the major grinned disarmingly, displaying the full range of gold in his mouth.

“Welcome to Chandos Force, David”—he took in Butler with the grin—“and you, Corporal.”

Butler kicked himself for a fool. He had quite forgotten that any test set by the major would be as foxy as the major himself.

Chandos Force?

“I—“ Audley’s jaw dropped. “Sir?”

“Chandos Force. Which I have the honour to command, and in which you have the honour to serve now—both of you.”

The jeep was slowing down. As Butler was grappling with the significance of what had gone before he was also aware that the sergeant-major was searching the line of trees on the left of the road.

The major looked ahead briefly. “Another two hundred yards, Sergeant-major—you’ll see the broken signpost on the opposite side.” He swivelled back to them. “And what is Chandos Force going to do, eh?”

“Yes, sir.” Audley sounded a little chastened.

“Naturally. Well, that one will discover in due course. But one is entitled to add two and two if one wishes—as I have … that is, if one is good at history as well as arithmetic.”

The test wasn’t over.

The jeep was crawling now, almost down to walking pace. But that didn’t matter.

“I thought code names weren’t meant to mean anything,” said Audley slowly. “But this one does—is that it?”

“So I am authoritively informed.” The major nodded. “It was apparently coined by a historian like yourself—with an historical sense of humour, so I’m told.”

The major was no historian obviously, thought Butler. But the major was the sort of man who would do his homework if he got half a chance, that was for sure.

“Then I presume we’re going to follow in Chandos’s footsteps, sir,” said Audley. “I seem to remember … he covered a lot of country in his time.”