War by Sebastian Faulks

Author:Sebastian Faulks [Faulks, Sebastian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2018-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

THE IDEA THAT you are winning or that ‘victory’ is soon to be yours was one I’d learned always to distrust. For perhaps twenty-four hours in the Dormitory, however, as we filled sandbags, dug defences, took in a ration party, it was possible to think that at least the plan had not gone wrong yet. I could even spare a section to help one of our mobile artillery pieces to set up and another to help the engineers lay tracks over the boggy ox-cart paths. I enjoyed these housekeeping exercises because I knew they wouldn’t last.

That night we came under fire from mortars and rifle grenades. We were well enough placed to repel it, but I thought it was worryingly close at hand. Donald Sidwell’s idea of leading a patrol to find out just how near the Germans were seemed not so mad after all. At dawn the next day, Richard Varian arrived by Jeep and told us the Dormitory would now become battalion headquarters.

‘And where will B Company headquarters be?’ said Vesta Swann.

‘That’s up to you. A suitable building in Aprilia. Up that way.’ He pointed towards the enemy line. ‘The division’s going to attack. We can’t wait any longer for the Americans while the enemy gets his reinforcement in place. In my view we could almost have been in Rome by now.’

Varian seemed pleased that the British were going it alone, and wanted our battalion to be prominent in the attack. He spoke to Sidwell, Pears and Passmore by radio, then told Vesta Swann that he had appointed me his adjutant, to replace Nichols.

I felt uneasy as I watched Bill Shenton organising the men of Three Platoon that night; I ought to have been blacking up to go with them. As I wished them good luck, Shenton muttered to me, ‘Perhaps he doesn’t know what a fighter you are.’ ‘Don’t worry, Bill,’ I said, ‘it’s not like a staff job. We’ll all be in action soon enough.’ But I was touched by his words; it seemed a long time ago that I had had to relieve him of his command on our first day in France.

While there was still time, I managed to get the Italian family on to an empty Bedford OY lorry going back to the port. God knows how they would get out of there with the Luftwaffe bombing anything that moved, but that was not my concern. Perhaps they could wait it out in a friend’s cellar. Private Jones, whom I had told to clean the small room they had been packed into, came out with two books they had left behind. One was a popular novel, the other appeared to be a journal; from the handwriting I guessed it belonged to the teenage daughter. I could understand almost nothing of it but put it in my pack in the vague hope of returning it to her one day. I often found myself making plans for reunions and revisits in a future peace – even in the chaos of Belgium and Tunis I had met people I would have wished to see again.

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