The men round the table represented a galaxy of potent initials, D.S.D., A.G., Q.M.G., D.P.S., and more besides. These were no snowy-headed, muddled veterans of English tradition but lean, middle-aged men who kept themselves fit; men on the make; a hanging jury, thought Sprat, greeting them heartily.
The lieutenant-general in the chair said:
“Just remind us—will you, Sprat?—what precisely is your present strength?”
“Well, sir, there were the Halberdiers.”
“Not since last week.”
“And Hookforce.”
“Yes, Hookforce. What’s the latest from them?” He turned to a major-general who sat in a cloud of pipe-smoke on his left.
“No one seems to have found any use for them in M.E. ‘Badger,’ of course, was canceled.”
“Of course.”
“Of course.”
“Of course.”
“That is hardly their fault, sir,” said Sprat. “First they lost their commander. Then they lost their assault ships. The canal was closed when they reached Suez, you remember. They were put into temporary camps in Canal Area. Then when the canal was cleared the ships were needed to take the Australians to Greece. They moved by train to Alex.”
“Yes, Sprat, we know. Of course it’s not their fault. All I mean is, they don’t seem to be exactly pulling their weight.”
“I rather think, sir,” said a foxy brigadier, “that we shall soon hear they’ve been broken up and used as replacements.”
“Exactly. Anyway, they are M.E.F. now. What I want to get at is: what land forces do you command at this moment in U.K.?”
“Well, sir, as you know, recruiting was suspended after Hookforce sailed. That left us rather thin on the ground.”
“Yes?”
Hands doodled on the agenda papers.
“At the moment, sir, I have one officer and twelve men, four of whom are in hospital with frost-bite and unlikely to be passed fit for active service.”
“Exactly. I merely wanted your confirmation.”
Outside, in the cathedral, whose tower could be seen from the War Office windows; far beyond in the lands of enemy and ally, the Easter fire was freshly burning. Here for Sprat all was cold and dark. The hangmen of the departments closed in for the kill. The representative of the D.P.S. drew a series of little gallows on his agenda.
“Frankly, sir, I don’t think the D.P.S. has even quite understood what function the Commandos have which could not be performed by ordinary regimental soldiers or the Royal Marines. The D.P.S. does not like the volunteer system. Every fighting man shall be prepared to undertake any task assigned him, however hazardous.”
“Exactly.”
The staff officers pronounced judgment by turn.
“… I can only say, sir, that the special postings have put a considerable extra strain on our department…”
“… As we see it, sir, either the Commandos become a corps d’élites, in which case they seriously weaken the other arms of the service, or they become a sort of Foreign Legion of throw-outs, in which case we can hardly see them making very much contribution to the war effort…”
“I don’t want to say anything against your chaps, Sprat. Excellent raw material, no doubt. But I think you must agree that the experiment of relaxing barrack discipline hasn’t quite worked out. That explosion at Mugg…”
“I think, if you’ll allow me, I can explain…”
“Yes, yes, no doubt. It’s really quite beside the point. I’m sorry it was brought up.”
“If we could start another recruiting drive I am sure the response…”
“That is just what Home Forces do not want.”
“The Ministry of Information…” began Sprat desperately, most infelicitously. The doodling hands were still. Breaths were momentarily caught, then sharply, with clouds of smoke, expelled. “The Ministry of Information,” said Sprat defiantly, “have shown great interest. They are only waiting for a successful operation to release the whole story to the Press. Civil morale,” he faltered, “… American opinion…”
“That, of course,” said the chairman, “does not concern this committee.”
In the end a minute was drafted to the C.I.G.S. recommending that no steps were desirable with regard to Special Service Forces.
Sprat returned to his own office. All over the world, unheard by Sprat, the Exultet had been sung that morning. It found no echo in Sprat’s hollow heart. He called his planners to him and his liaison officer.
“They’re out to do us down,” he reported succinctly. He need not name the enemy. No one thought he meant the Germans. “There’s only one thing for it. We must mount an operation at once and call in the Press. What have we got that’s suitable for one rather moderate officer and eight men?”
The planners at H.O.O. were fertile. In their steel cupboards lay, in various stages of elaboration and under a variety of sobriquets, projects for the assault of almost every feature of the enemy’s immense coast line.
A pause.
“There’s ‘Popgun,’ sir.”
“ ‘Popgun’? ‘Popgun’? That was one of yours, wasn’t it, Charles?”
“No one was much interested. I always thought it had possibilities.”
“Remind me.”
“Popgun” was the least ambitious of all the plans. It concerned a tiny, uninhabited island near Jersey on which stood, or was believed to stand, a disused light-house. Someone on the naval side, idly scanning a chart, had suggested that supposing the enemy had tumbled to the tricks of R.D.F. this island and this ruin might be a possible choice of station. Charles reminded Sprat of these particulars.
“Yes. Lay on ‘Popgun.’ Ian, you’ll be up to the neck in this. You’d better get into touch with McTavish at once. You’ll be going with him.”
“Where is he?” asked Ian Kilbannock.
“He must be somewhere. Someone must know. You and Charles find him while I collect a submarine.”
*
While the first bells of Easter rang throughout Christendom, the muezzin called his faithful to prayer from the shapeless white minaret beyond the barbed wire: south, west and north the faithful prostrated themselves towards Mecca. His voice fell unheeded among the populous dunes of Sidi Bishr.
Already awake, Guy rose from his camp-bed and shouted for shaving-water. He was brigade duty-officer, nearing the end of his tour of duty beside the office telephone. During the night there had been one air-raid warning. G.H.Q. Cairo had been silent.
The brigade, still named “Hookforce,” occupied a group of huts in the center of the tented camp. Tommy Blackhouse was deputy commander with the acting rank of full colonel. He had returned from Cairo on the third day of their sojourn in Egypt with red tabs and a number of staff officers, chief among them a small, bald, youngish man named Hound. He was the brigade major. Neither in the Halberdiers nor in the Commandos had Guy met a soldier quite like Major Hound, nor had Major Hound met a force like Hookforce.
He had chosen a military career because he was not clever enough to pass into the civil service. At Sandhurst in 1925 the universal assumption was that the British Army would never again be obliged to fight a European war. Young Hound had shown an aptitude for administration and his failures in the riding-school were compensated by prizes at Bisley. Later in the drift of war he was found in the pool of unattached staff officers in Cairo when Hookforce arrived leaderless at Suez. To them he came and he did not disguise his distaste for their anomalies. They had no transport, they had no cooks, they had far too many officers and sergeants, they wore a variety of uniforms and followed a multitude of conflicting regimental customs, they bore strange arms, daggers and toggle-ropes and tommy-guns. They might have seemed outstandingly lawless but for the presence of fifty Free Spaniards who had drifted in from Syria and been inexplicably put under command; beside their anarchy all minor irregularities became unremarkable. The camp police were constantly flushing women in the Spanish lines. One morning they dug up the bod
y of an Egyptian cab-driver, just beyond the perimeter, lightly buried in sand with his throat cut.
When Major Hound left Cairo he had been told:
“There’s no place here for private armies. We’ve got to get these fellows, whoever they are, reorganized as a standard infantry brigade.”
Later a recommendation was made that Hookforce should be disbanded and distributed as replacements. An order followed from London to hold fast pending a decision at the highest level as to the whole future of Special Service Forces. Major Hound kept his own counsel about these matters. They were not communicated to him officially. He learned them in Cairo on his frequent trips to the Turf Club and to Shepheard’s Hotel in conversation with cronies from G.H.Q. He mentioned the state of discipline in camp, also unofficially. And Hookforce remained at Sidi Bishr declining from boredom to disorder and daily growing more and more to justify the suspicions of G.H.Q.
Guy remained Intelligence Officer. Five spectacled men, throw-outs from the Commandos, were attached to him as his section. In the employment of these men he waged a deadly private war with the brigade major. Lately he had shed them, attaching them to the signals officer for instruction in procedure.
Breakfast was brought him at the office table; a kind of rissole of bully beef gritty with sand, tea that tasted of chlorine. At eight the office clerks appeared; at a quarter past Corporal-Major Ludovic, whom Ivor Claire had succeeded in promoting to headquarters. He gazed about the hut with his pale eyes, observed Guy, saluted him in a style that was ecclesiastical rather than military, and began ponderously moving papers from tray to tray; not thus the brigade major, who arrived very briskly at twenty past.
“Morning, Crouchback,” said Major Hound. “Nothing from G.H.Q.? Then we can take it that the last cancellation stands. The units can get out into the country. How about your section? They’ve finished their signaling course, I think. How do you propose to exercise them today?”
“They’re doing P.T. under Sergeant Smiley.”
“And after?”
“Infantry drill,” said Guy, crossly improvising, “under me.”
“Good. Smarten ’em up.”
At nine Tommy arrived.
“More trouble with X Commando,” said Major Hound.
“Damn.”
“Graves is on his way to see you.”
“Damn. Guy, have you still got those obliques of ‘Badger’?”
“Yes, colonel.”
“Bung ’em back to G.H.Q. They won’t be wanted now.”
“You needn’t stay in the office while Major Graves is here,” said the brigade major to Guy. “Better get on with that drill parade.”
Guy went in search of his section. Sergeant Smiley called them hastily to their feet on his approach. Six cigarettes smoldered in the sand at their feet.
“Fall them in in a quarter of an hour with rifles and drill order, outside the brigade office,” he ordered.
For an hour he drilled them in the powdery sand. It all came back to him from the barrack square. He stood by the brigade major’s window, opened his mouth wide and roared like a Halberdier. Inside the hut Major Graves was telling his tale of injustice and neglect. Corporal-Major Ludovic was typing his journal.
“Man is what he hates,” he wrote. “Yesterday I was Blackhouse. Today I am Crouchback. Tomorrow, merciful heaven, shall I be Hound?”
“… The odd numbers of the front rank will seize the rifles of the even numbers of the rear rank with the left hand crossing the muzzles, magazines turned outward, at the same time raising the piling swivels with the fore-finger and thumb of both hands…”
He paused, aware of an obvious anomaly.
“In the present instance,” he continued, falling into a parody of his old drill-sergeant, “number two being a blank file, there are no even numbers in the rear rank. Number three will therefore, for the purpose of this exercise, regard himself as even…”
He concluded his exposition.
“Squad, pile arms. As you were. Listen to the detail. The odd numbers of the front rank—that’s you, number one—will seize the rifles of even numbers of the rear rank—that’s you, number three…”
The brigade major’s head appeared at the window.
“I say, Crouchback, could you move your men a bit further away?”
Guy spun on his heel and saluted.
“Sir.”
He spun back.
“Squad will retire. About turn. Quick march. Halt. About turn. As you were. About turn. As you were. About turn.” They were now fifty yards from him but his voice carried.
“I will give you the detail once more. The odd numbers of the front rank will seize the rifles of the even numbers of the rear rank…”
Behind their steamy goggles the men glimpsed that this performance was being played not solely for their own discomfort. Sergeant Smiley began to join his powerful tones to Guy’s.
After half an hour Guy gave them a stand-easy. Tommy Blackhouse called him in.
“Most impressive, Guy,” he said. “First rate. But I must ask you to dismiss now. I’ve got a job for you. Go into town and see Ivor and find out when he’s coming back.”
For a fortnight Ivor Claire had been absent from duty. He had led a party armed with tent mallets in pursuit of Arab marauders, had tripped on a guy-rope and twisted his knee. Eschewing the services of the R.A.M.C. he had installed himself in a private nursing-home.
Guy went to the car-park and found a lorry going in for rations. The road ran along the edge of the sea. The breeze was full of flying sand. On the beaches young civilians exposed hairy bodies and played ball with loud, excited cries. Army lorries passed in close procession, broken here and there by new, tight-shut limousines bearing purple-lipped ladies in black satin.
“Drop me at the Cecil,” said Guy, for he had other business in Alexandria besides Ivor Claire. He wished to make his Easter duties and preferred to do so in a city church, rather than in camp. Already, without deliberation, he had begun to dissociate himself from the army in matters of real concern.
Alexandria, ancient asparagus bed of theological absurdity, is now somewhat shabbily furnished with churches. Guy found what he sought in a side street, a large unobtrusive building attached to a school, it seemed, or a hospital. He entered into deep gloom.
A fat youth in shorts and vest was lethargically sweeping the aisle. Guy approached and addressed him in French. He seemed not to hear. A bearded, skirted figure scudded past in the darkness. Guy pursued and said awkwardly:
“Excusez-moi, mon père. Y a-t-il un prêtre qui parle anglais ou italien?”
The priest did not pause.
“Français,” he said.
“Je veux me confesser, en français si c’est nécessaire. Mais je préfère beaucoup anglais ou italien, si c’est possible.”
“Anglais,” said the hasty priest. “Par-là.”
He turned abruptly into the sacristy pointing as he went towards a still darker chapel. Khaki stockings and army boots protruded from the penitents’ side of the confessional. Guy knelt and waited. He knew what he had to say. The mutter of voices in the shadows seemed to be prolonged inordinately. At length a young soldier emerged and Guy took his place. A bearded face was just visible through the grille; a guttural voice blessed him. He made his confession and paused. The dark figure seemed to shrug off the triviality of what he had heard.
“You have a rosary? Say three decades.”
He gave the Absolution.
“Thank you, father, and pray for me.” Guy made to go but the priest continued:
“You are here on leave?”
“No, father.”
“You have been here long?”
“A few weeks.”
“You have come from the desert?”
“No, father.”
“You have just come from England? You came with new tanks?”
Suddenly Guy was suspicious. He was shriven. The priest was no longer bound by the seal of confession. The gr
ille still stood between them. Guy still knelt, but the business between them was over. They were man and man now in a country at war.
“When do you go to the desert?”
“Why do you ask?”
“To help you. There are special dispensations. If you are going at once into action I can give you Communion.”
“I’m not.”
Guy rose and left the church. Beggars thronged him. He walked a few steps towards the main street where the trams ran, then turned back. The boy with the broom had gone. The confessional was empty. He knocked on the open door of the sacristy. No one came. He entered and found a clean tiled floor, cupboards, a sink, no priest. He left the church and stood once more among the beggars, undecided. The transition from the role of penitent to that of investigating officer was radical. He could not now remember verbatim what had occurred. The questions had been impertinent; were they necessarily sinister? Could he identify the priest? Could he, if called to find a witness, identify the young soldier?
Two palm trees in a yard separated the church from the clergyhouse. Guy rang the bell and presently the fat boy opened the door, disclosing a vista of high white corridor.
“I would like to know the name of one of your fathers.”
“The fathers have this moment gone to rest. They have had very long ceremonies this morning.”
“I don’t want to disturb him—merely to know his name. He speaks English and was hearing confessions in the church two minutes ago.”