Weaver

VI

3 July

The marshalling area for the British Second Army was south of Guildford.

It was late afternoon when Gary reached Guildford, having been driven down from Aldershot with Willis Farjeon and Dougie Skelland and the rest of their platoon in the backs of studebakers. When they got there a river of men and machines was pouring through the town's old centre. MPs and NCOs stood at every junction, directing the flow according to some complicated scheme. Even the roads had had to be rebuilt to take the traffic, bridges strengthened, junctions widened, the tarmac reinforced to withstand tank tracks. Gary could smell the fumes of the engines, like a vast traffic jam.

It was like this all the way along the Winston Line, from coast to coast.

South of the town, as they neared the marshalling area, the spectacle was even more amazing. The column broke up, and the vehicles swarmed off the road looking for a bit of hard standing to park up. From the elevation of his troop carrier Gary saw vehicles crowding as far as he could see, their backs glistening green or American olive in the dusty afternoon sunlight, with men moving everywhere and dumps of weapons and ammo covered in camouflage netting. There were more complicated machines too, such as the bridge-building gear of the Royal Engineers, who had been training to provide roadways over the concrete trenches of the Winston Line. Tanks moved through this crowd like elephants at a waterhole. Gary recognised the profiles of Shermans and Centaurs, and even a few squat Soviet T-34s; the Russians had insisted on making a contribution to this crucial push in the west. All this was going on under a cloud-littered sky through which fighter planes soared, Spits and Hurricanes and Mustangs and a few Soviet MIGs, there to deter the Luftwaffe from any ideas it might have entertained of disrupting the build-up. It was a spectacle that battered all the senses.

There was no secrecy now, no creeping around in the dark. Gary, lost in the middle of it, had a sense of huge energies gathering, a vast coiled spring about to be released. The war had turned. The Germans had been defeated in Africa and at Stalingrad, the Allies were wi

And here in Britain Operation Walrus was ready to be launched. Gary knew there had been plenty of muttering in the British press about the time it had taken to get the Nazis out of England. But you wanted to assemble an overwhelming force before you could consider such an operation. Here, today, was the result. And it was remarkable to think that all this was just a prelude to the main event, when England would be used as the platform to launch the invasion of Europe itself, next year or the year after.

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 ma

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 ma

'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 Joh

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 gri

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.'

Da

'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-'