Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

He wonders if the others hear it too, or if perhaps they’re just attending to the faint sounds of themselves, their hearts, their stomachs, their throats, listening to their own breaths and feeling grateful for them.

And then, in the watery half-light of dawn, with the salt rime already beginning to crust their uniforms, they see what they’ve been waiting for all along: a line of men, mostly regular infantry by the look of them, hands raised, coming towards them over the flattened dune grass. They hurry to the fence, straining to recognize faces from their own unit. There’s a sense of safety, if not strength, in numbers, Karsten supposes, and despite himself he feels his spirits rise. It’s as if they’ve been marooned, the three of them, and now glimpse a sail in the distance. Even another wreck is to be welcomed, apparently. But as he watches, the line keeps coming and he begins to wonder how far back it stretches. It seems a skinny, ragged parody of the British column moving the other way.

Heino starts to wave his bandaged hand, but Karsten pulls it down. There are no familiar faces that he can see, and beyond that gnawing disappointment, he’s suddenly wary of these strangers, the way they eye him stonily as they file in — thirty or more in the end — and gather at the far side of the stockade. Several of them fall to the sand, exhausted. The British pass in canteens, but no food, and Karsten and the others sling them over their shoulders, hand them out among the new men.

“It’s not so bad, mates,” Schiller tells them.

“That so?” A burly figure detaches himself from the crowd and faces them. “Maybe we wouldn’t be here at all if not for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Heino asks, a little shrilly.

“Leave it,” Karsten whispers, taking his arm. There are no officers, he realizes — the British must be holding them separately — and the group has the desultory surliness of enlisted men when no higher ranks are present.

“It means,” the fellow says, setting himself, “if you hadn’t saved your own skins, we’d have had a better chance.”

The boy makes to lunge at the man, but Karsten holds him.

“Leave it!” he repeats, and then more loudly: “These will be answering the same question soon enough to the next bunch.”

“Defeatist!” the burly man snaps. “That’s the kind of talk put us all here.”

Karsten feels sand grind between his molars, tastes salt. He wants to spit, but doesn’t. Instead, he and Schiller pull the struggling boy away, the man’s voice following them, taunting: “How much ammunition did you have left, you shits? How many bullets, how many grenades?”

“Let me go!” Heino snarls, and when at last they do, he jerks away, glares at them as if he’d strike out, but finally throws himself on the sand.

Karsten feels the burden settling over them. This is what it is to be the first; all the rest can blame them. And they, in turn, can blame him, who led them in surrender. Schiller won’t meet his eye, and Karsten sees Heino edging away in the sand. He hisses the boy’s name but Heino won’t look at him, and eventually Karsten stops, not sure who is more ashamed, he or the boy.

Over and over he pushes his hands into the sand, clenching them and pulling them out, watching the sand drain from them however hard he squeezes.

Finally, at full dawn, Karsten notices the guard being changed, and jumping to his feet, he hurries along the fence after a lieutenant and his sergeant, his boots sinking in the light sand. “Excuse me. Excuse me.”

Without breaking stride, the ruddy-faced lieutenant looks over at his sergeant wearily. “What’s he want, Sergeant?”

“What do you want?”

“The men could use some food,” Karsten tells him uncertainly, adding a “sir” in the direction of the lieutenant. “Some of us haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.”

“Jerry’s a mite peckish, sir.”

“Really.” The lieutenant looks thoughtful. “And what does Jerry eat, do you think? What do you think he’d fancy, Sergeant? Humble pie?”

“Or a nice bit of crow, sir.”

Karsten pulls up and watches them go, kicking up sand.

When he slumps down beside Schiller, the other tells him, “I don’t have any English, my friend, but if you want to talk to their officers, do me a favor. Do it far away from me.”

Karsten turns to stare at him, and Schiller glances away over his shoulder. Karsten waits until he looks at him again.

“You were happy enough I spoke English when it saved your neck,” he says tightly.

“I’m still thinking of my neck,” Schiller tells him.

KARSTEN KEEPS to himself after that, though in truth none of them talk much that morning, just watch the long columns of Allied troops march past them, the second and third waves of the invasion. The enemy are so many, Karsten thinks, through the night and now the morning, still marching out of the sweeping surf. The prisoners drowse and wake and drowse and wake, and no matter when they awaken, no matter how many hours have passed, there is the enemy column moving up the beach. And offshore the smoke of countless ships; overhead, hour after hour, the drone of planes. It’s astonishing, Karsten thinks, a staggering sight, the kind of manpower that built the pyramids or the Great Wall, the wonders of the world.

All these men, he thinks, and yet if he could, if he’d had the ammunition, if the pillbox could have held out, he’d have slaughtered them all, wouldn’t he? Hundreds, thousands. For as long as they’d have kept coming. Until their bones covered the beach like rocks. The thought makes him sway with exhaustion, and for the first time he feels a flicker of relief to have been captured, shudders as if to shake it off.

Yet another landing craft disgorges it’s men. His eyes follow them up the beach, past the stockade, towards the dunes, and he feels an odd pull, a tug towards the horizon. All those men flowing in one direction. He yearns to look over the dunes, as if he has no idea, no recollection, of what’s there. It comes to him that he’s behind enemy lines, but the shifting geography seems unreal, as if the earth has turned under his very feet. This was German territory and now it’s British, but he can’t see how it has changed. He pictures the maps he’s seen, imagines the fields beyond the dunes tinged the faint dawning pink of empire. And he wishes he could follow that column of men, feels powerfully as if he’s falling behind, he who could march faster and farther than anyone.

HER FATHER’S ACREAGE includes the steep slope above the camp, but by bike it’s a long ride round the mountain and through the village to the farmhouse. Esther pedals hard for the first mile, keen to put the camp behind her, but before long she’s laboring. She makes it up the slope to the pub, her breath coming in short, hard pants, but leans over the handlebars, spent, to coast through the quiet village. At the foot of the last long hill home, she squeezes the brakes in defeat, steps down, and wheels the bike. It’s spokes tick quietly beside her, holding the rushing silence of the night at bay. Her father turns in early, but tonight she wants to be sure he’s asleep. She doesn’t want to face him, to answer any questions, at least not until he comes stumping into the kitchen with the morning’s pail of milk and she can put his breakfast, two thick “doorstep” slices of bread and butter, in front of him.

She tries to think about Colin, to order her thoughts, make sense of what’s happened, but finds each time her mind darting off, turning instead to Eric, their first evacuee. He’d just turned fourteen when he arrived in 1940, a year older than she, but a townie, so clueless in the ways of the country (the first time he watched the milking, he blanched, asked her shakily, “Milk is cow’s piss? ”) that she felt his equal. An only child, she’d been thrilled at the prospect of another youngster about the place — even a boy, as her father insisted it must be, “so he can earn his keep.” She pulled on her mother’s arm all the way down to the station, only to grow shy when they entered the waiting room, where the new arrivals were lined up as if for inspection.