Yet the least warlike of those vehicles seemed positively aggressive in comparison with the Austin Seven, which its hurried coating of khaki-drab paint somehow rendered even more pathetic and unmilitary.
Indeed, in the old halcyon days of less than a week ago, the Prince Regent's Own would have rejected such an addition to its MT as unbecoming to the battalion's dignity. But Folkestone had changed all that, and beggars who had arrived at Boulogne had ceased to be choosers: DPT 912 (its rear number plate was still readable under the khaki coating) had been scooped up with the rest of Old Mother Riley's relics, and was now judged quite good enough for two company commanders on a mission of gravity.
The trouble now, however, was not so much DPT 912 (which, to be honest, belied its appearance with a mechanical reliability not possessed by some of the other more imposing-looking relics), but its driver.
OFFICERS WILL NOT DRIVE was a strict Prince Regent's Own order, positively not to be disobeyed, ostensibly to free those officers for more important duties, but actually to prevent them killing themselves prematurely, rather than their men.
dummy4
The defect of this order was personified in the person of Fusilier Evans, however.
It was not that Fusilier Evans was, like DPT 912, either pathetic or unwarlike; on the contrary, he was built like a steam traction-engine and aggressive with it. In repose he resembled nothing so much as King Kong with a yellow-and-grey lanyard; in simulated action his prowess with the bayonet on sandbags representing Germans was so destructive that he had been excused further bayonet-practice (his standard of musketry was correspondingly appalling; he had never been known to hit a target, either his own or anyone else's; his natural weapon, according to his company commander—who was mercifully Captain Willis, and not Captain Bastable—was any smashing, crushing and skewering instrument from the Wars of the Roses); in drink,
—and there had been three memorable occasions when Fusilier Evans had been officially 'in drink', which were part of battalion legend—he was the terror of the Regimental Police, who on the last occasion had deliberately found pressing duties elsewhere, so the legend had it; he was in fact only amenable to Captain Willis, who played the part of Fay Wray to Evans's King Kong, controlling him by some strange personal magnetism possessed by no one else.
In spite of all this, and particularly in spite of his manifest inability to drive any sort of vehicle. Fusilier Evans—'Batty'
Evans to those who knew him—had become a driver. And now, because of Tetley-Robinson's warped sense of humour, dummy4
he was their driver.
Lord Austin and his Birmingham engineers had never designed the little car to accommodate the British Army.
Even a normally-developed British soldier found it difficult to enter the Seven when in light marching order, and sitting down in it wearing a light pack, water-bottle and bayonet was quite impossible; such soldiers would have been forced to remove their equipment before entering, and it was no surprise to Bastable that he had to share the back seat with three sets of ammunition pouches, small packs, water bottles, and a bayonet and rifle belonging to the driver; which, with his own and Captain Willis's Webley revolvers and the packed lunches provided by the mess corporal, did not leave a lot of room for him.
But fitting Fusilier 'Batty' Evans into the driver's seat, even after he had been stripped clown to his unadorned battledress, was something different, and much more difficult; it could only be done by reducing the man to a constricted, almost crouching posture, with his knees jammed against the steering wheel and his face thrust down and forward towards the windscreen in a position which severely limited both his vision and his control of the vehicle.
Captain Willis circled the little car before climbing into the relative comfort of the front passenger's seat.
'If only you were a bit bigger, Batty,' he murmured, speaking more to himself than to anyone else, 'we could open the sun roof and you could see out of the top. But you aren't quite big dummy4
enough ... so you'll just have to do as I tell you, right?'
'Sir!' said Batty, in his inappropriate falsetto.
'So when I say "Slow down", you come down to five miles an hour—that's about double-time . . . understood?'
'Sir!' squeaked Elatty.
'And when I say "Stop!" you jam the brakes on. And if you don't watch out bloody quick then you'll squash your face on the windscreen—understood?'
Batty grinned amiably at his company commander. His face, thought Bastable, already looked as if it had been continuously and brutally crushed against a succession of windscreens, if not something harder.
'Sir!' The squeak cracked into hoarseness, which seemed to indicate that Batty regarded both the order and the advice as something of a joke.
"Right. Maximum speed—thirty miles an hour when the road is clear. When any other vehicle approaches... and that includes horse-drawn vehicles and motor-cyclists and pedal-cyclists—understood?—Fifteen miles an hour. And also fifteen miles an hour at any corner where you don't have a clear view of oncoming traffic— understood?'
'Sir!' Batty grasped the wheel in his huge hands as though he planned to rip it from the steering column.
'I mean that, Batty,' said Captain Willis mildly. 'I shall be watching the speedometer—' he reached across and tapped the dial,'—and if you go faster than that... I shall be very dummy4
annoyed.'
Batty looked down at the speedometer in surprise, like a man who had discovered a revolutionary innovation which placed a new and unfair responsibility on him. 'Sir?'
Captain Willis sighed. 'I shall say "slower" or "faster", Batty.
Just don't take your eyes off the road in front for a moment—
not for a moment. Don't worry about your speed . . . just do as I say—right?'
'Sir!' Batty sounded much happier.
'Right-o, then! You know the way to the crossroads —you've been there twice with Sar-Major Brotherton. It's straight ahead, then turn right at the crossroads on the main road.
And then five miles straight on, and we're there. Right?'
'Sir!' Batty peered ahead uncertainly.
Captain Willis swallowed nervously, and Captain Bastable remembered that Fay Wray had never really been comfortable with King Kong.
'Very well. Then off we go—start the engine and try to engage the gear quietly, there's a good fellow.' Willis's voice was beautifully steady. 'Slowly through the town, now.'
The gears crashed and the little car shuddered. And then began to move forward in a series of jerks.
Captain Bastable observed several grinning fusiliers carrying sandbags towards the Mairie, which because of its cellars had been appropriated partially by Captain Saunders as the Battalion Aid Post. So far the only casualties had been dummy4
mumps . . . and road injuries, he recalled uneasily.
DPT 912 began to advance more smoothly—and also much faster. Another memorable phrase he had read somewhere popped inappropriately into his mind: faced with the prospect of sexual relations with her husband, Queen Victoria had allegedly lain back on her feather mattress and thought of England. At the time he had read it, it had occurred to him that she ought to have thought of the whole British Empire, rather than just England. But for now, England would have to be enough.
'Slower,' said Captain Willis.
'More smoothly' was relative. The streets of Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts were composed of pavé, a French road material inferior in smoothness to good British asphalt. So not all the juddering was due to Batty's incapacity. 'Good—well done, Batty,' said Willis encouragingly.