Thomas - The Dearest and the Best

After a deep and bitter winter, the worst of the century, April of 1940 was chill and rainy in the South of England, but during the first days of May the weather altered and a pale, early summer arrived.

On the morning of 3 May, at five o'clock, a grey ship was off the estuary of the Thames, passing the Nore Light, moving delicately between minefields, in fragmented mist. Windows ashore caught the first brushes of the sun, flashing the reflections back out to sea like morse lamp signals. A few of the soldiers, weary and crammed on the deck, cheered untidily.

'London,' announced one of the men to his neighbour. He pointed towards the hazy mouth of the river as he might indicate a vague and distant road. 'Just up there.' All night they had sat, propped against each other, exchanging no more than a grunt. Neither knew the other's name; they simply belonged to the same defeated army. The second man had lost three fingers in Norway, and he now stared at the bandages as though contemplating an ice-cream cone. 'Can't say I ever wanted to go to London,' he answered.

'Where you from then?' asked the first soldier, surprised. After the night of silence he seemed set now on making conversation.

'Hampshire, I'm from.' He said it as if it were a farcountry. 'In the New Forest. I'm a dairyman.' He regarded his hand again. 'I'm going to find it hard milking with these.'

'How many did you lose?' asked the first soldier. He looked at the other man sharply. 'Mates, I mean, not fingers.'

'Oh, men. I don't know, rightly. Everybody got split up. Half the others, I don't even know where they got to in the end.'

In the next space along the deck, wedged between depth charges and a lifeboat, was a group of Scottish infantrymen. One of them, his rifle still on his large shoulder, began to play a small squeeze-box concertina, slowly, as if it were an effort. It was a song they had sung on the outward voyage, 'Norraway O'er the Foam'. No one sang it now. The tune idled while the destroyer slid through the dull silver water. It had become a lament. Odd ones among the crouched and khaki men began to feel the growing sun, undoing the ponderous greatcoats and the thick necks of their battledress blouses. Gratefully they squinted up at the watery warmth. There were the old soldiers, soused in experience, who had fashioned enough room on the hard plates to stretch fully out and lay like dead. The real dead were three decks below. Rifles had been religiously stacked but scattered about were other ragged mounds of equipment; packs, ammunition boxes, and strange salvage for an evacuating army, buckets, footballs and an occasional flag or banner. There were Frenchmen aboard also, Alpine soldiers of the Blue Brigade, their skis piled, and Polish infantry, sharp-cheeked with flat eyes. Purkiss, the man from the New Forest, hadwondered, but only vaguely, how the Poles had got to Norway. His knowledge of geography was thin and he thought they might even have walked there when the Germans bombed and occupied their homeland.

Every man knew that things had gone badly wrong, that they had been mismanaged to the point of betrayal; fools had told them where to go and what to do and they had trusted as soldiers trust. 'Be glad to see my old woman,' said the Londoner, still eyeing the horizon as if he expected to spot her waving.

'So will I,' agreed Purkiss. 'I don't know what she'll say about coming home without these fingers. I know'd men get fingers and toes cut off in the fields, even fishing at sea, but frostbite... I never know'd anybody to have frostbite.'

After half an hour the wide entrance of the Thames lay shining astern, and as the morning expanded, the vessel edged along the low Kent coast and turned into the River Medway. Sly patches of mist loitered on the channel and a flight of herons moved over the ship like silent bombers. Purkiss pointed them out with his bandaged hand and smiled a mute recognition. 'Geese,' said the Londoner firmly.