Marshalling Area A-C, only a few miles north of the great gash of the Winston Line itself, consisted of two camps set out to either side of Quarry Street, the main road that led south out of Guildford and on to Horsham. The camps were surrounded by triple fences of barbed wire, and the troops, lugging their gear, were marched through gates manned by American guards. The sappers had colonised Pewley Green to the east of the road and a golf course to the west, and in the distance Gary saw water glisten; the camps tapped into the River Wey. NCOs directed the troopers through a city of tents clustered around central wooden buildings. Everything was green and brown, canvas and khaki and paint, the colour of the English ground.
They found the bell tent Gary was to share with Willis and Dougie Skelland. Inside, duck boards covered the grass, and there was a tortoise stove. The three of them dumped their gear. 'This isn't bad,' Willis Farjeon said. He inspected the stove. 'Anybody got any water left? We could have a quick brew up.' The others handed over their canteens.
Dougie Skelland already had his boots off, and a fag in his mouth. Dougie was a veteran of campaigns in Africa and the Middle East. He'd been reassigned after a spell at home recovering from malaria. His skin was weather-beaten dark, with ingrained dirt that didn't seem to shift no matter how hard he washed, and his eyes were narrowed from too much wind and sun, so that he had an oriental look about him. They were all misfits, in a new battalion welded together from survivors of other, long-disrupted units: Gary the Dunkirk veteran, Willis a POW escapee, and Dougie who had fought with Montgomery. Dougie didn't seem to care where he was sent, save that he was aggrieved to have missed el Alamein, which the commentators all called the first great victory of the war. But he could get his boots off and a fag in his mouth faster than any other man Gary had ever met.
'Americans manning the fence,' Dougie said now. 'See that?' He had a faint Scottish lilt. 'Security over W-Day, see. The Yanks don't trust anybody.'
'Who cares?' Willis asked. 'In American camps you get the best, that's what I heard. A great big NAAFI.'
'P X,' Gary murmured. 'They call it the PX.'
'Briefing halls like theatres. Hot showers. Cinemas!'
Dougie growled, 'You really are a wanker, aren't you, Farjeon?'
'I sure am,' said Farjeon cheerfully. 'But it's a big camp. I'm hoping for a bit more action tonight than Johnny Five-Fingers, frankly. I hear some of the Poles are up for it for the price of a packet of fags.' He winked at Gary. 'Just like the stalag.'
Dougie looked disgusted.
Gary shook his head. 'Don't let him get to you, Dougie. He just says this shit to wind you up.'
'The trouble is,' Dougie said coldly, 'I don't know if you're a bloody sodomite or not, Farjeon. I saw you trying to pull those Yank bashers in Aldershot. What do you want a bird for if you're a shirt lifter?'
'He goes both ways,' Gary said.
'Well, I've never heard of bloody that,' said Dougie.
Willis grinned. 'Don't they have people like me in Edinburgh, Dougie? I'm a breaker of hearts. And of sphincter muscles.'
Gary said, 'It's all just a game to you, isn't it, Willis?'
'I've seen men like him,' Dougie said. 'Who can kill a man hand to hand and make a sport of it. Arseholes like him don't live long in combat. That's what I've seen.'
Willis laughed at him. 'I'll remember that when I'm singing Auld Lang Syne" and shovelling dirt on your cold dead face, Dougie. Give me your mugs.'
Danny Adams stuck his head into the tent. 'Evening, ladies. I see you're settling in.' Gary had known Adams since the stalag, from which the former SBO had escaped in 1942 with Willis; his accent was as broad Scouse as ever.
'Could be worse, Sarge, could be worse,' said Willis.
'Shut up, Betty Grable. Right, two things you need to know. This is a sealed camp. That means if General Brooke himself tried to leave he'd get his arse shot off by the US Army. Security. Got that?'
'Noted,' said Gary.
'Second. You'll get your final operational instructions in briefing marquee F.' He waved vaguely in the direction of the golf course. 'You'll find it, just follow the other ladies. Eighteen hundred, and if you're late I'll shoot your arse off. Oh, and at twenty hundred the padre is coming round. Any questions?'
'Yes,' Willis said. 'Come on, Sarge. What's the plan? Now we're all tucked away inside the barbed wire-'
Adams gave him a look. 'Well, it's simple. In the west you've got us, the British Second Army and the Canadian Third, under General Brooke. In the east, the US First and Third under Hodge. We'll skirt the high ground, cutting south of the Weald, and meet up somewhere near Hastings, us coming from the west, the Yanks from the east. A pincer movement, see? With the Nazis cut off from the ports, and the air forces and the Navy already battering them, it will just be a question of mopping up. First one to Hastings gets the beers in.'
'Let's hope it's the Americans then,' Willis said.
'Don't forget to take your malaria pills, Skelland. And don't be late for the briefing.' He ducked out of the tent.
'Yes, Mother,' Dougie said.
'What an exciting time we have ahead of us,' Willis said drily.
'Kursk,' said Dougie Skelland reflectively. 'Now that's the place to be if you want a bit of drama. A million men on each side, a single battlefield bigger than Wales. It's in the east this war will be decided, not in this tin-pot operation.'
Willis said, 'Let's just be glad we can leave that to Uncle Joe, then.' He pulled his boots off with a grunting effort.
VII
4 July
Few of the men in the slit trenches had been able to sleep that night. You could tell from the soft voices in the dark.
As dawn neared, Ernst huddled with Heinz Kieser and Carl Fischer. Heinz smoked obsessively, clutching the cigarettes between the stumps of his ruined fingers, hiding their light with his good hand. They were not far south-east of the First Objective at a place called Shamley Green, on a straight line between Guildford and Horsham. They were in a scrap of forest, and a mild breeze rustled the branches of the trees above them. Everything was dark, with not a scrap of torchlight to give away their positions.
Though it was a summer night, and though they had had the time to line their trenches with bits of wood and corrugated iron, Ernst felt cold, and he was grateful for the warmth of the other men close to him. It had been like this night after night, as they waited for the Allied push.
At about five they were served stew and soup, brought up by runners. The field kitchens were so far behind the lines the stew was always lumpy and cold by the time it got to you. The men ate the stew with their Kommisbrot, hard Army bread, their murmured conversation counterpointed by the clink of tin spoons in bowls.
'Listen to them,' murmured Fischer. 'The men. They fret, you can tell. They know they need to sleep. When the Americans come, who can say when any of us will sleep again?'
'If,' growled Heinz. 'If any of us will sleep again.'
'And they become anxious when sleep does not come. In a way all the inactivity, all the waiting, makes it harder.'
This was Fischer being typically soft about the state of his men's mood. But Ernst knew it was true. There was only so much trench-digging you could do, so many telephone cables you could lay, only so many times you could polish your leather boots and belt.