'So it is, Colonel. But is it all correct?' She didn't really know what she wanted.
'What d'you mean - correct?'
'Well - ' How could she explain that whatever she wanted, whatever it was, could hardly be in the public library, if Oliver St John Latimer wanted it? 'For example, the Rangers landed at a place called "Pointe du Hoc".'
'That's right. That was the place Maurice saw them practising cliff-climbing for. There was supposed to be a German battery there, which had to be taken out somehow - like the Major's battery at Merville, which was beyond the eastern flank of the British landing beaches. They both flanked the landing areas. In fact, I think the Pointe du Hoc guns could have taken in the Utah beaches as well, actually. They couldn't be left to get on with the job, Miss Loftus.'
'But there weren't any guns on Pointe du Hoc, Colonel.'
He nodded cautiously. 'No… as it happened, there weren't. The Germans had prudently pulled them back to a new position.'
'Which wasn't manned?' But if there was a mystery here, why should it interest the Deputy-Director?
'True. But things always go wrong in battle.' He shrugged. 'That whole area was heavily bombed - and bombarded. But, in any case, a Ranger patrol still found the guns and disabled them. And that was even before they'd finished with the garrison at Pointe du Hoc, if I remember correctly.'
Major Birkenshawe nodded agreement. 'They were good men - I told you, eh? Proper desperadoes - gangsters, I shouldn't wonder - probably all enlisted in Chicago!'
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The Colonel cast a sardonic glance at his friend. 'I rather think the Rangers were more like the old frontiersmen, with their fieldcraft and initiative - ' He caught himself, as though he suspected that he had been sidetracked. ' - what exactly is it that you want, Miss Loftus?'
They were back to that, thought Elizabeth. 'You know that in Chester Wilmot's book - and in another one I've looked at - the name isn't spelt correctly: it says "Pointe du Hoe" , not Pointe du Hoc"?'
'Is it the Pointe du Hoc you're interested in?' The Colonel's voice was too casual.
'Isn't that where they've just been junketing?' the Major intervened. 'One of the places, anyway - read about it recently - Her Majesty the Queen and the President - that actor chappie - and the Frogs. Kept the Germans out, for some reason - ?' He frowned. 'Read something else, too. Just yesterday - in the Telegraph - ' He became aware that the Colonel was quelling him with a look. 'Sorry! Pointe du Hoc, you were saying - ?'
If the Colonel was close to anything, he was too close, decided Elizabeth. 'The Rangers landed elsewhere, did they?'
'Yes.' The Colonel was only slightly diverted from his suspicions. 'There were two battalions of them.'
'Yes?' Elizabeth could see professional memories weakening him.
'They took heavy casualties. Fifty per cent or more in some companies.' He drew a breath.
'Lack of specialized armour, that was largely due to… and a predilection for frontal attacks on strong points - not the way to use elite troops. They should have been infiltrated through the weak points.' He caught himself again. 'The main force was supposed to swing west, and link up with their comrades on the Pointe du Hoc, you see, Miss Loftus.'
'Hah!' exclaimed Major Birkenshawe. 'Now that was a strong-point, guns or no guns!' Then he shook his head. 'She doesn't understand, y'know!'
'That was the correct use of Rangers, actually.' Colonel Sharpe watched Elizabeth, and ignored the Major. 'Only the best troops could have got up there - and then caused all the trouble they did. I was attached to that American division, and we were expecting a strong counter-attack that first evening - or the next morning. The Germans had a good division in that sector - better than the one our chaps had to deal with on the British beaches, actually. Though of course their tanks were closer to us. If there'd been armour close to Omaha on D-Day as well, God only knows what would have happened… Anyway, we'd been arguing about the position of that good division before D-Day, but we didn't get confirmation until far too late. And there were several battalions in reserve - so, with the dummy2
way things were on the beaches, we were expecting to get hit any moment. But there weren't any tanks. And the Americans had made a pretty amazing recovery, actually.'
The Major started to cough politely, but inadvertently took in too much of his own bonfire, and choked frighteningly for the best part of a minute, to everyone's embarrassment.
'Sorry about that, Liza.' He wiped his face with what appeared to be a square of torn sheet.
'But do you understand a word of all that?' He cocked a huge eyebrow at her. 'Divisions and battalions - all that stuff?'
'Yes, Major.' For one fraction of a second Elizabeth began to hit back, irritated alike by his pipe and his assumptions, and sickened by the torn sheeting; but then she remembered that she actually loved the Major, who had always treated her with courtesy and who had now unearthed Colonel Sharpe for her, when everyone else had failed her. 'Yes, I think I do, that is.' She smiled at him, then at the Colonel, as though she was stretching her knowledge to its limits. 'So what did these Rangers do on the Pointe du Hoc - or whatever it's called?'
'Hah! I rather suspect they did what they were originally recruited and formed to do, Miss Loftus. Which happened far too rarely with the American Rangers - and with other elite formations I could mention.'
Elizabeth waited. When a man wanted to give distilled wisdom to the world, it was better to let him have his way without side-tracking him with too many intelligent unwomanly questions.
'Half the time they were squandered on conventional warfare. They threw away a whole Ranger battalion after the Anzio landing.' The Colonel drew a reminiscent breath, and gave the Major a nod. In another moment he'd be fairly launched.
'Huh!' This could have been the right moment for the Major to cough usefully. But instead he nodded back wisely. 'Half the time they should never have been formed in the first place.' He blinked at Elizabeth, as though surprised that he had formulated a complete sentence. 'Stripped the rest of the army of good men - ours as well as the Yanks. Never enough good line NCOs - off swanning around on hair-brained schemes in private armies.
Could tell you a tale or two about that!'
'Yes.' The Major's threat concentrated the Colonel's mind wonderfully, so that he refocused on Elizabeth. 'Pointe du Hoc - as I was saying… When they'd finished their business there, there weren't many of them left. But then, being Rangers, I rather suspect they got up to all sorts of mischief, which probably pulled the Germans away from the right flank of Omaha.
God knows what they did - we certainly didn't know exactly, in the Command Post, even dummy2
though they sent a staff officer off, to try and find out. But I never saw him again - they probably shot him, because the Rangers hated staff officers.' He smiled at Elizabeth. 'But then I had to go back to report to Monty -I was his spy, you see.'
The Deputy-Director sat up, one podgy hand still fumbling in the wreckage of his chocolate box. 'How's that again, Miss Loftus - Elizabeth?'
'How's… what?' He waved the hand vaguely - insultingly - as though he hadn't really been listening, but then she had said something of unexpected interest, against the odds. 'This fellow you talked to - ?'
She had to reel back. What she had just said had come just before Colonel Sharpe had discoursed at length on Field Marshal Montgomery, and then on the use (and misuse) of elite soldiers, which had ranged all the way from the Rangers on the Pointe du Hoc, forward to the Green Berets in Vietnam (and the Paras in the Falklands), and back to the Spartans at Thermopylae, almost two-and-a-half thousand years earlier.
'Well… I think he was attached to the Americans so that he could report back to the British