CHAPTER 6
We kept rolling. They kept shooting, but we weren’t losing mates quite as often now. The days were getting shorter, but the weather was usually fine, which made the waste of July and August so dreadfully clear.

We were in Belgium by September, and after we got past the Seine we saw more and more farmers at work. Normandy had been different. The thing I learned about Normandy after the war was that it wasn’t just a place of burning men and burnt tanks but of orchards and cattle, a cuisine based on cream and apples. We had seen the cattle, usually lying on one side, legs sticking out stiffly as the gases of decomposition bloated the corpse, but now we were seeing dairy herds that were being milked rather than dismembered, grain that was being harvested by scythes rather than Spandaus. Jerry was running and Christmas was ahead. We were even getting mail.

“Ey up, Ginge!”

“What’s up, Wilf?”

“Got any of that brandy still stashed in the gash locker? Got some news”

I rummaged in the little box on Stan’s starboard side. “Aye, got a couple of bottles left”

Wilf called out to the rest of the lads. “Grab your mugs, boys! Here…”

He picked up a letter with a grin and I swear just a hint of moisture in his eyes. “Ready?”

Mugs were offered, the bottle splashed, and Wilf raised his hand for silence. “Seven pounds and 6 ounces, lads! We need a name!”

Bob laughed happily. “Wilf, son, we need a bloody idea of boy or girl first!”

“Ee, Bob, son, aye?”

Harry was grinning. “Well, we all know what you were up to that New Year’s leave, then. How about the obvious? Stanley sound good?”

Wilf looked at the great lump of metal we lived in, and his face fell slightly. “Harry, aye, nice idea but… well, afterwards, after we finish this, I was sort of hoping to forget about it. Look, I don’t mean about, well, THIS”

He waved his mug to encompass our crew. “I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, forget you lads, aye? How could I do that? What you’ve got me through… Harry, your driving. Ginge, Ernie, couldn’t think of anyone sharper. That Tiger, I were shitting myself, all up front like I am, aye? Bob… Sergeant, without your nous, none of us would be here.”

Bob sniffed. “Bit formal, Wilf?”

“Aye, suppose so. Just trying to be a bit more serious than I am normally, like. Just… you’re the best mates any man could ever hope for, the truest, strongest pals, and it’s different now. I’m a dad. Got a son to teach football to, take fishing, all the rest of being a dad. Makes all this rubbish with Jerry that bit more personal, bit more dunno. More at stake, aye?”

Bob smiled as gently as he had held me in the long, bad nights of my terror. “Aye, lad, it does that. You get someone you care about, you see there is something to lose, you don’t want to lose it. Can’t see them letting you transfer, though”

Wilf found his laughter again. “Fuck off, Bob! Leave you lot? Ey up, lads, I give you a toast: Wilfred Ernest Robert Gerald Harold Braithwaite!”

We drank. Ernie was grinning now. “And if the missus says no to all that?”

Wilf sobered once more. “She already knows. I gave her the idea for the names, and told her why, and she’s a grand lass is our Minnie. No jokes, lads, I am so lucky to have her, and she’s stuck true to me all through this. Other lasses, well, all those bloody Yanks about back home, you know what I mean. Come on, sup up and I’ll get us tea on”

Utter genius, that meal. We’d found…. We’d acquired a couple of chickens from, well, places where chickens are kept, and it was amazing how Wilf’s mind saw what to do. We dug a trench and laid half an old petrol tin in it and filled it with wood. Over one end, Wilf set a biscuit box from our last issue, and then heaped soil over the top of it. Bob and Ernie had drawn and ploated the birds, and from somewhere Wilf had found some herbs. A rub of some butter we’d stumbled across, and two hours later I was finishing the best roast dinner I could ever remember eating.

Bob sucked the last of the meat from a wing. “Wilf, lad, where did you learn that little trick?”

“Mate, it was in a Boy Scouts book”

“You were a Boy Scout?”

Wilf laughed happily. “No such luck, Bob! Dad wouldn’t, couldn’t, be doing with all that expense. Uniforms, jack knives, funny handshakes. Said it made them sound like the masons. I found a book once…”

There was a little hint of shame there. Ernie pounced. “Found one? Like we found those birds?”

Wilf grunted. “Aye, just like that. I were just a kid, and it had all sorts of stuff in, everything from how to describe faces to what sort of fire to build when you’re without a tent. It were all the stuff I dreamt of when I were a mite, like. All the stuff I never got to do in Leeds, and now here I am, bloody recon troop. Scouting for men, this time”

“Eh?”

“That were first book, ‘Scouting for Boys’, made us lads laugh when we were older. Just, I don’t remember the bloke who wrote it putting anything in about Tigers and Moaning Minnies”

I started to laugh at that. “Wilf, please tell us you don’t call your missus that!”

A raised eyebrow. “Depends on her moods, aye? I’ll get another brew on, then turn in. Got me eye on some of those fields over there. Think one of them’s got some spuds about ready to be freed from brutal occupation”

Bob finished his wing. “And what if their owner objects? This isn’t Germany yet, son”

Wilf’s face fell. “I don’t think they can any more, Bob. The East Riding lads, one of them told me the Germans had, well, bugger it, he and his mates gave them a decent grave at least. Lads, this isn’t what I’ve brought a son into it, is it? We’re going to make it better?”

Bob reached out for his hand. “We already are, son, we already are. Ernie, first stag, aye? Back up the line tomorrow, we need a decent kip”

It was like that for the next few months, but the easy ride turned nastier as Jerry found his feet again. We got sniped a few times, Bob almost falling on me once when a round hit the hatch top as he was having a quick look round, but the savagery of the fields around Caen seemed long gone. I heard rumours, though, and the news reels we occasionally got to see were clearly being censored. It seemed the Canadians were having a lot of shit north and west of us, for whoever decided on taking the port of Antwerp seemed to have ignored the fact that it lies deep inland, reaching the North Sea by way of a river, and if we didn’t hold the river, we couldn’t use the port. The Germans had ruined Calais, Boulogne and Cherbourg, so most of our provisions were being brought up by truck all the way from the bloody beaches we had first landed on. It was a miracle Wilf had got his news, but that was one thing the Army did at least try and get right.

The days got even shorter, and I realised Christmas wasn’t that far away. We got the first snow, and bugger me was it cold. Living in a big metal box it gets cold very quickly, especially if the engine isn’t running, and I was not just touched but actually grateful when Mam sent me a small parcel.

It’s a joke now that Christmas is a time when men get socks as a present, but she had knitted three pairs of worsted wool socks and a balaclava helmet. By the end of November, I had the balaclava on most days, and our tank was gathering more and more odd rolls and packages on the track guards as we picked up every spare bit of bedding we could find. Wilf was as sharp as ever, and one day he even brought us a goose, and the biscuit box came into its own again. This time, he made something up with biscuits and the goose fat, and even cold the flavour was just what we needed with a cuppa on a cold watch. He might not have paid for his Boy Scout book, but by God had Wilf read and inwardly digested the whole thing.

Ernie surprised us a few days into December. The day after Minnie’s picture of herself and the little one had arrived. We were almost stationary now, somewhere near a place called Namur, and the snow was settling and staying with us.

“Wilf?”

“Aye, Ernie?”

“Made you this for the littl’un”

It was a drawing, a cartoon I suppose, and it was of Stan, with each of our heads in caricature sticking out of a hatch smiling, Ernie standing by Stan’s starboard side about to pass up a wrapped present. Each of us was clearly recognisable, our names inked beside us. Over the top of the picture, in Holly-leaf lettering, it read ‘Happy Christmas’, and below the picture, in which the Christmas sleigh was shown departing stage left, it read ‘To my son and his mother, with love, from Dad and all his mates. Next Christmas together’

Ernie was blushing. “Just thought, like, you could send her this, her and your son like, and she might not feel we were all such strangers, and… and he’d know who his names are”

We all signed, and it went off for the censor and the postal service.

The Germans attacked the next day