‘I hope you told them I am not either.’
‘They wonder how can a man spend the night lying in a ditch when he has a woman to keep him warm.’
‘I was up a tree, actually,’ Cal replied, rubbing an ache that came from the position he had been obliged to adopt and maintain, while wondering if the complaint was her own.
‘And now you want these boys to run around and play at soldiers?’
‘Before you become a soldier it helps to play, Florencia. You learn how to stay alive. Shall I explain what we are trying to do?’
She shrugged. ‘If you like.’
‘We have a body of young men who, in the parlance of the British army, do not know their arse from their elbow.’ There was a pause while Florencia filed that away; she was a keen collector of idioms in English, and in the past had made Cal write them down for her. ‘Now, when it comes to tactics, some of them will be clever and some of them will be idiots, and the first trick is to make sure in a battle it is the clever leading the idiots and not the other way round.’
He nearly added that in most armies, not least the one he had served in, you found out, especially after a long period of peace, that the reverse was generally the case, viz. that pompous idiot who had led his men out of the Parque Barracks. Putting that thought aside he pointed to a party moving along a drystone wall at a crouch.
‘What we are trying to do is to spot the natural leaders.’
‘You lead them, and your Vince.’
‘We can’t be everywhere, so we will break our group into five units of ten men, four of which will be rifle squads, each with a leader and an assistant, the rest we will use as a reserve under my personal supervision, also as messengers, medics and reinforcements. If we get machine guns, and I hope we do, each rifle squad will have a two-man gun team.’
The one leading the squad being put through its paces had reached a corner and peered round, his hand held up to stop his companions. They obeyed, but one of the lads could not resist raising his own head to look, which occasioned a furious bark from Vince, who then walked over to the leader and spoke quietly.
‘Vince will be telling him that in such a situation he should have added a gesture to keep their heads down, not just signal to stay still. Come on, let’s get closer and listen in.’
‘OK,’ Vince said, loud enough to be heard even before they got close. ‘All have a shufti and tell me, once you leave the protection of this wall, where would you go?’
Cal pointed to the low rise on which he had spent the previous night, talking quietly. ‘For the purposes of this, we have said that is where the enemy is and the task is to take possession of it. That’s part of the basics whichever side you’re on, always seek to dominate the ground.’
Ask a question of those without experience, as Vince was doing now, and not everyone will answer. The ones who do, at the most basic level, are the lads you want to sort out, as long as their answer isn’t downright stupid, which is what came from one of Vince’s boxers, a spotty-faced kid called Sid, who picked out an area of sparse trees with gnarled but thin trunks in an open field. The response took Cal back to his own basic training.
‘A million sperm,’ Vince sighed, with a shake of the head, ‘and the egg got you.’
‘What aboot that wee gully o’er there?’ suggested a youngster who had been sent to the Olympiad by his local East Lothian mining branch.
Vince nodded. ‘And how, Jock, would you get from where you are to where you need to be?’
‘Am’ no sure, Vince, ’cause I think if we just rushed we aw’ get shot.’
‘You’re right, so let’s sort out how to do it.’
Vince got them back behind the wall, with the kid called Jock at the apex, where he crouched down himself to speak to him. ‘What you do, as the squad leader, is stay still and select the pair you’re goin’ to send ahead first. The squad will go two at a time. The rest you tell to give covering fire, but you must say where the target is and how many rounds to fire, understand?’
Young Jock nodded nervously as Vince demonstrated the necessary hand signals and verbal commands, adding, ‘Look, son, this is an exercise, not the real thing. Nobody gets killed if you get it wrong. OK?’ Another nervous nod followed. ‘You send two men at a run, with four selected to give covering fire. Nobody moves till everybody knows what’s happenin’ and has made it plain they understand. On your command they move and at speed. Now, who would you select to go first?’
There was a pause, before Jock replied, ‘Tommy and Ed are hundred-yard sprinters.’
That got an upraised thumb. ‘Covering fire?’
That occasioned another pause before he tapped the last line of stones and Vince was patient. ‘The last four in the group, ’cause the buggers will be watching the corner.’
A nod. ‘Then let’s try it.’
‘How many rounds, Vince?’
‘Three rapid, but you have to tell them the target and where it is.’
Vince addressed them all, his hand, jabbing like an axe, pointing in the direction of the mound, with Jock watching him intently.
‘It’s a small hill and you’ve got to keep the heads down of anybody up there; a kill is a bonus, so you’re aimin’ for the line where the earth joins the sky. Furthest left takes furthest left and so on across to the right, which falls to the last man. Tommy, Ed, once you are in position stay in sight of your squad leader if possible, and when he signals the movement of the next pair of runners, your task is to split the defensive fire. Everybody clear?’
The nodding was less than hearty, and if what followed in dumbshow looked impressive to Florencia — especially the speed at which the boys moved over about twenty-five yards of ground — it was less so to Cal and Vince, who knew that much of what they were saying and seeking to impart was massively oversimplified.
Tactics were things you worked on again and again, not once or twice. It took months to properly train an infantryman, not a morning or a few days, and then they had to learn to work as part of a single unit, before combining to become an element of an effective company, going through the various stages of dumbshow — firing blanks and harmless explosions — to the actual experience of the sound of live fire. This lot would have, he suspected, to learn on the job, but at least they were fit, which was not the case with any new recruit he had ever encountered.
Young Jock did a reasonable job of orchestrating the supposed firefight, a bit messy but promising. He had to be told to order an immediate reload, never just leave it, never to assume, to always give the necessary orders even to trained men, to keep a check on your ammunition levels because the worst thing you can do is to get into a situation where you find you are in peril and running low.
‘Right,’ Vince called to the other groups of ten, who had been watching. ‘Let’s see how you do.’
The next sermon, given by Cal, was about the need when moving forward to use cover, and if that was sparse, to seek to avoid standing upright, making a particular point about the excellent protection afforded by the seemingly ubiquitous drystone walls. Using them was not always possible, nor was it always the case that you knew you had an enemy to root out, so it was essential if you had to move quickly over open ground not to bunch up, but to advance in extended order.
In another situation — broken ground, woods or approaching a building — two men should scout forward covered by their mates. If a threat developed, think about what support you can call on, like heavier weaponry, before advancing. Was it essential that the position be taken? What about going round, which could be as good as going through?
Sat in a circle they listened as it was drummed home that a good squad commander never left anything to chance, supervised every move and issued continuous hand and verbal instructions, while always looking for ways to use his men to maximum effect, as well as seeking to minimise casualties when attempting to take an enemy position. Cal did not say that sometimes it was not possible; you don’t.