Chapter 23: At Large and Leisure
Chapter 25: The Sicilian Yacht
Chapter 28: The Secret Inscriptions
Our anchor has been plucked out of the sand and gravel of Old England. I shall have no connection with my native soil for three, or it may be four or five years. I own that even with the prospect of interesting and advantageous employment before me it is a solemn thought.
William Golding
Rites of Passage
‘Where the hell are they taking us?’ It was a good question.
No one could answer. The troop train wound its slow way northwards through England. The troops, crowded close in every compartment, set up a clatter as they divested themselves of their FSMOs (Field Service Marching Orders), their rifles, their steel helmets, their kitbags. Then silence fell. Some men read whatever was to hand. Some stared moodily out of the window. In the manner of troops everywhere, most men, when not being ordered about, slept. They had been up before the July dawn and parading by sunrise.
Nobody knew where they were going – ‘not even the driver,’ said one cynic. ‘The driver has sealed orders, regarding his destination, labelled NOT TO BE OPENED TILL ARRIVAL.’
The young soldiers, Scottish, Irish, English and Welsh, were dressed in drab khaki uniform. Although they had been trained not to feel – in the manner of soldiers through the ages – the high spirits of youth showed through: the wakeful ones smoked and joked. Nevertheless, knowledge that they were going abroad to fight induced a certain seriousness. When the round of jokes had died and the stubs of their Players and Woodbines had been stamped out, they seized on the opportunity to put their booted feet up. It would be a long journey.
Reveille had sounded in Britannia Barracks at four thirty. By the time it was light, platoons of newly trained soldiers were marching down to Norwich Thorpe Station. The ring of their steel-tipped boots echoed in empty streets. They piled into the waiting train, goaded on like cattle by their sergeants.
When the train pulled out of the station, wartime security ensured that it was for a rendezvous unknown. Also unknown to the men, impervious even to their imaginations, was how the operation in which they were involved was mirrored by another more sinister operation, taking place even then on the mainland of Europe. In the dawn light of many European cities, cattle trucks standing in railway sidings were being filled with
