The Oaken Heart by Margery Allingham

Author:Margery Allingham [Allingham, Margery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agora Books

Chapter Fifteen

Winter 1939 to Spring 1940

Apart from the Major up at The Court, Albert Clover was the only man in the Regular Army from Auburn when the war broke out; but his brother Sam was in the Reserve and he went off at once at the beginning of the war, and so did George Bouttell. The others went one by one, and the cricket team began to disappear fast. There was Joe, who after his medical was promptly put into the Guards and had some fine tales when he came back looking no longer a big but an enormous chap, although he showed Grog a photograph of himself with some of his mates in which he looked almost small. He had been on guard at Buckingham Palace and was fed and housed, so he said, like a lord. Fred Cockle went into the Air Force and injured his bowling hand almost at once; but when P.Y.C. and I met him in the bus some time later he said he reckoned it wouldn’t put him right out in the future. The others went as their time came. Alec got into the R.A.F., and so did Stan Goody and Geoffrey Townsend; while Mr. Ford, the newcomer to old Mrs. Seabrook’s house, had had two sons, one in the Fighter and one in the Bomber Command, since the very beginning. Later on more and more went; Fred Braddy from the cobbler’s shop, Smiler from the store and his brother Tiddles, Alf Goody who was a Warden, and Frank Hart from the station, and the Spooner who used to be the baker, and Harold Curtis and Mrs. Chaplin’s daughter’s husband.

George went, but had to come out again because he was wanted on the land, which was shorthanded enough before the big agricultural drive. There were the sailors too; Johnny Burmby, and Mr. Todd on a submarine, and Tony, the brother of Francis and Brian. He came home on leave when we were having first-aid lectures, and he came up to one or two of them. The ship was unknown to most of us then, and it would have sounded a strange outlandish name without the blaze of glory which now surrounds it. The Rawalpindi; an odd name for a ship.

Flinthammock, of course, is a nursery of the Merchant Navy, and the finest yacht crews in the world are born down there. Every day you heard of another boy gone off to help keep the North Sea clear.

The girls went too. They seemed to go first. Cis from the Lion went into Air Force blue, also Betty James, and so did Miss Smith from the Wick, while Cooee joined the A.T.S. as a transport driver.

P.Y.C.’s sudden decision to get into the Army was naturally the most important departure to me personally. The inactivity of the Wardens’ Service exasperated him. Our A.R.P.O. had gone back to his old job in the R.A.S.C, and P.Y.C. made up his mind to join him if he could. It was

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