The land between Borth and Ynyslas is taken up by a golf course and we strolled gently between the rough of the links and the smooth of the ocean. Fifty yards ahead of us a lone figure could be seen tramping through the knee-high grass. His tattered army greatcoat and forlorn demeanour marked him out as one of the veterans from the war in Patagonia in 1961. We stopped walking and watched his slow, dreamy progress. Patagonia: the Welsh Vietnam. Even after a quarter of a century the scars on the collective heart had still not fully healed. Patagonia, a harsh tract of land on the tip of South America, a world of searing beauty and withering cold; difficult to find on an atlas and known only because Welsh settlers went out there in the nineteenth century. A story that began in adversity and ended in tragedy seventy years later when the Indians turned against them. It was a war of independence that soured a generation and left behind the legacy of the Vets: soldiers in a ghost army that haunted the lanes of West Wales. Each carrying in his heart the story of a military adventure that no one wanted to hear.
He was looking for lost golf balls which he could sell for his evening's meal. There was a sudden shout, a sharp crack, and the old soldier spun to the ground; felled by a golf ball. We ran towards him and from the fairway the party responsible for his misfortune came over at a more leisurely pace.
He was sitting up rubbing his head when we arrived.
'Are you OK?' said Myfanwy putting her hand on his shoulder.
'Sure, sure,' the soldier said distantly. 'Not the first time I've been hit by a golf ball.'
As he spoke we looked up to watch the arrival of the golfers. There were five of them, although we could only see four because the fifth was inside a sedan chair. The Druidic crest at the front told us it belonged to Lovespoon. The first of the party to arrive was Pickel who cartwheeled towards us like a circus tumbler. Behind him came Valentine in tartan slacks, three-tone golfing brogues and a sleeveless diamond motif sweater over a floral pattern shirt. He was pulling a squeaking trolley. At the back of the group, standing by the sedan chair, was the school games teacher, Herod Jenkins.
'I think he may be concussed,' I said looking up.
'Bloody idiot!' Valentine spluttered. 'I'll give him thomething to be concuthed about. Tell him to move his arse tho we can get on with the game.'
'He needs to rest a while.'
'Not here he doesn't.'
Myfanwy spoke: 'You should say sorry to him, you could have killed him.'
'You can shut your mouth you little tart!' said Pickel.
'Why don't you try and make me you smelly little piss-pot!'
'OK, OK,' I cried trying to wrest control of the situation. 'This man is injured —'
'Well he shouldn't go jumping in front of golf balls, then, should he?'
'Oh he jumped did he?'
'Of course he did, didn't you thee? He dived, tho he could make an inthurance claim or something.'
'Does he look like the sort of guy who has insurance?'
'Don't you be fooled by him, I know his sort —'
There was a sharp clicking sound and we all looked round to the sedan chair. A hand protruded through the curtains, like that of a Bourbon monarch. The hand waved impatiently and Valentine hurried over and poked his head inside. An uneasy silence ensued, broken occasionally by the sound of Herod Jenkins cracking his knuckles. I found myself unable to resist staring at him. Even after twenty years the sight of the man who sent Marty to his death on that cross-country run sent tremors of fear through my soul.
Valentine returned and spoke to me. 'Mr Lovethpoon extends his compliments and has asked me to remind you of the deadline we agreed for thunthet this evening. He says the thun thets at 21.17.' Then, turning to the rest of the party, 'OK, we'll drop a thtroke and move on.' They sauntered off.
'Ooh they give me the creeps!' shivered Myfanwy.
The soldier sat up and crossed his arms over his knees. His coat was torn and stained and his hair long and matted, splaying out from beneath the famous green beret.
'Thanks for your help. My name's Cadwaladr.'
'Louie and Myfanwy.'
He nodded. 'I know, the singer. I've seen the posters.'
Myfanwy smiled. 'Are you feeling all right now?"
'Oh sure. It was only a little knock.'
'It sounded pretty loud to me,' I laughed.
'No, no. It was nothing. It was the hunger that did it, y'see. I fell over from weakness, not because of the golf ball.'
There was a moment of puzzlement until we realised that the old soldier was staring longingly at the hamper.
'Of course!' I reached inside and broke off a chicken leg and handed it to him.
'No no!' he protested. 'I didn't mean that. I wouldn't dream of taking your picnic.'
'It's all right,' said Myfanwy, 'honestly it is!'
'Yes, please be our guest.'
'Absolutely not,' he insisted, 'I won't hear of it; although if it's all the same to you I wouldn't mind just trying the chicken to remind myself what they taste like. It's been so long you see.'
Myfanwy and I exchanged glances.
'Well, I suppose here is as good a place as anywhere.' We dragged the hamper off the fairway and up to the top of one of the dunes. Then we found a sandy spot with a commanding view of the ocean and began our picnic. Cadwaladr ate with the hunger of one who no longer has to worry about keeping the wolf from his door, because the beast has grown so thin you can fend him off with a stick. Chicken and bread, champagne, strawberries, ice cream and gateaux, it all disappeared.
'That Welsh teacher,' said Myfanwy after she finished eating, 'he really thinks he's something.'
I laughed. 'That's because he is something. Grand Wizard on the Druid council, head-teacher, prize-winning poet, scholar . . . war hero as well, so I hear.'
Cadwaladr spat out a piece of chicken gristle. 'War hero my foot!'
We both looked at him.
'I fought alongside him in '61. I don't remember him being carried around in a sedan chair then. He was just like the rest of us, a scared, skinny kid who just wanted to go home to his Mam.'
'It must have been terrible,' said Myfanwy.
The old soldier nodded. 'I was seventeen at the time, never been further than Swansea before, and then only to see Father Christmas. The thing I remember most is the cold. And the food - all that school potato.' He laughed bitterly. 'As a gesture of solidarity the school kids at home were going without their dinners so they could send them to us. Until we wrote asking them to stop.'
He chuckled and took out a scrap of newspaper and some tobacco and proceeded to roll a cigarette.
'Lovespoon won the Cross of Asaph, didn't he?' said Myfanwy brightly.
The soldier nodded. 'For sitting on his backside the whole war in a plane.'
'He won it for the raid over Rio Caeriog.' A shadow of pain passed across the soldier's face on hearing Myfanwy's words and she added quickly, 'We ... we ... we did it in school.'
Cadwaladr laughed bitterly. 'I bet they didn't teach you my version of it.' He paused, as if about to recall the bitter events of those far-off times, and then thought better of it. He shook his head and said in a tone of remote sadness, 'No, I bet they didn't tell you that one.'
He didn't say any more and concentrated his attention on the cigarette. The rolling paper added a faint rustling to the sighing of the wind in the marram grass. We stared at the old soldier and Myfanwy gave me a helpless look, angry with herself for having mentioned the one battle that no one wanted to talk about. Rio Caeriog, a slowly meandering river in the foothills of the Sierra Machynlleth mountains. The most famous or infamous battle of the conflict. They said it was a great victory and handed out medals like sweets. But no one who came back ever wanted to talk about it.