Abbeville—?
'I saw these Jerries in the wood—they were coming towards the wood, that is—after you left me, old boy ... Not the ones on my bridge, that was later on ... they were in the fields, and there were tanks behind 'em. So I scampered back towards the car at the double, and I'd just about reached it when I heard firing from your way, up in the trees.' Wimpy looked at Bastable apologetically. 'Frankly, after what I'd seen I thought you'd bought it for certain . . ' He paused. 'So I ran for it.'
Wimpy still looked uncomfortable, almost guilty, and in doing so reminded Bastable of Batty Evans's fate.
'I couldn't have got back to you anyway.' He shrugged. 'Had to beat it smartly in another direction.'
Even that didn't assuage Wimpy's discomfort completely. 'To dummy4
be honest, old boy ... I was into that little car and away like a streak of greased-lightning. I've never been so scared in my life!'
At least the disgrace was shared, then! So it was a proper moment for confession. 'I'm afraid I lost Fusilier Evans, Willis. That is to say ... I told him to follow me, but he didn't.'
Wimpy accepted the loss of Fusilier Evans philosophically.
'Batty never was very quick on the uptake, you can't blame yourself for that—it would have happened sooner or later.
We should never have taken him in the PROs— another of that old swine Tetley-Robinson's errors of judgement.' He nodded to himself. 'Like taking on damn useless schoolmasters ... you know, you're absolutely right—she is a good baby. See how she's got her thumb in her mouth and her arm round that kangaroo!'
'Rabbit,' corrected Bastable automatically.
'Rabbit, is it? So it is, by golly! Alice's White Rabbit—we shall have to call her "Alice", Harry. Poor little Alice . . .' He trailed off. 'I just hope he got close enough to them to use his bayonet. That was all he ever wanted, poor old Batty —just to take one with him. I hope he got his chance.'
Under the cold-bloodedly philosophical Wimpy, so sharp and eloquent, there was another one he had never glimpsed before until now, thought Bastable. But there was nothing to be gained by mentioning that final burst of small-arms fire if that was the way of it.
dummy4
Abbeville.
'You were under this bridge—?'
'Culvert.. . yes.' Wimpy pulled himself together. 'I drove out of the wood like the clappers, over the next rise .. . And as I was going down the other side I saw a Jerry tank on the next skyline—a Mark Two—so I knew I wasn't going to make it.
Thank God, he didn't see me ... But when I pulled up at the bottom I could hear the blighters, they seemed to be all around me by the sound of them. So I whipped out of the car.
But then I didn't know which way to go—the fields were so damn open ... And there was this stream ... Or it wasn't really a stream, it was just where the rainwater comes down under the road in winter, I suppose, and takes off down the lowest part of the land—that was open too, they'd have seen me for sure. I really didn't know where to go, as I said . . . but I naturally jumped straight into the ditch . .. And there was this culvert, under the road. So I thought "The blighters haven't seen me yet, but they'll see the car any moment now, and if there's no one in it they'll think the driver has run away. So I'll just crawl into the culvert and keep my fingers crossed." And I did. And they did, thank God!'
He drew a deep breath, almost a sigh.
'What actually saved me, you know, was these two Jerry officers, though . . . One of them was brass, and the other one sounded like a very young regimental commander—a real fire eater. He was the one who wanted to go like hell, a proper cavalry-type. The older was more cautious, he said "Just dummy4
because you haven't had anyone to fight, you think war is all roses." Or something like that—they were pacing up and down right over my head. And the younger one said "When I find someone to fight, then I'll fight him. I'm only trying to find someone.'"
Another deep breath.
'During which I was lying in the mud with all my fingers crossed, hoping that it wasn't me the blighter was going to find —I was praying that he would win the argument—by that time they were arguing about how much fuel there was, and where the fuel-tankers were, I think . . . They lost me there rather . . . But I was hoping the young one would convince the old one quickly—and I was bloody lucky that he didn't. Or not right at that point, because —
He took a deep breath, and little Alice sucked furiously at her thumb, her eyes closed tight, aid hugged her white rabbit, oblivious of British and Germans.
'Because . . . then there was this sound of boots running on the road, and a new argument started with someone else—
another officer. And the older fellow finally shouted "No, no, no! We have been here all the time, you fool! Go away, and don't bother me!" And then they went back to the original argument, and finally the older one gave in and said "All right, all right! Go and find someone to fight—and find this English officer for that idiot—he'll be out there somewhere, running like a jack-rabbit"—'
Harry Bastable stared down at Alice's rabbit. That was just dummy4
about how he had been running at the time, the description tallied exactly.
'Which was me, of course,' said Wimpy. 'Except I was burrowing into the mud by then—'
'Me, actually,' murmured Bastable.
'—right under their feet. And then the whole bloody Sixth Panzer division and half the Luftwaffe came over. I was stuck there for hours, I tell you—'
By which time I was safe under a Bren carrier, thought Harry Bastable, and dead to the world and the German Army both.
'After which I had other adventures too boring and horrendous to relate. I could write a definitive monograph on the nature of French ditches and water-courses, Harry, I tell you. I even got quite close to Belléme before I gave up. But I'm afraid that's all finished now, though they must have put up one hell of a fight, the Mendips—there was a lot more dive-bombing at one stage. Real Stuka stuff.. . while I was face-down in another ditch, naturally, quietly shitting myself.'
Bastable had missed that. Or, he had been quietly dying under the carrier at the time, anyway. Time and Harry Bastable, and the German Army and Captain Willis, had all been inextricably mixed up yesterday afternoon and evening, more than somewhat at cross-purposes.
'Me, actually,' he said.
dummy4
'What do you mean "me actually"?' queried Wimpy.
'They were after me, I think,' he said. 'Not you.'
At that moment the front nearside wheel on Alice's pram came off, and Alice's rabbit jumped out of her grasp.
Naturally she began to cry.
VII
They knew there had been trouble a mile or more before they reached Colembert.
The first signs were clear enough to Harry Bastable, he could recognize them very well from his own limited military experience. Where soldiers passed through the countryside in any numbers there was always mess and minor destruction. Even back in England, the inevitable aftermath of any field exercise involving more than a dozen men was a rich crop of complaints from the farmers whose land they had crossed. It was only natural that where German troops were crossing the lands of their hereditary enemy their passage would be even more evident.
So all in all, it was just as well that he had been reduced to carrying little Alice in his arms, even though her dampness was beginning to penetrate the double-thickness wrapping of the shawl now, thought Bastable. The pram, even in its prime, had never been designed to cross the ruin of the road-bank which had been crushed into the road, which he had just negotiated; or the fallen branches of the young tree over dummy4