‘I agree,’ replied Lord Harvey. ‘And I’d always thought so highly of the boy, which makes the whole damn business all the more distasteful.’
‘No one,’ said Sir Walter, ‘could have been prouder than I was, as chairman of the governors, when Giles was appointed head boy of Bristol Grammar School.’
‘I’d assumed,’ said Lord Harvey, ‘that he would put those remarkable talents of leadership and courage he displayed so often on the playing field to good use on the battlefield.’
‘The only good thing to come out of all this,’ suggested Sir Walter, ‘is that I no longer believe that Harry Clifton could possibly be Hugo’s son.’
Giles strode across the hallway, past the breakfast room and out of the front door. He climbed into his car and began the long journey back to the West Country.
The following morning, he parked the car outside a recruiting office. Once again he stood in line, not for the Gloucesters this time, but on the other side of the Avon, where the Wessex regiment were signing up new recruits.
After he’d filled in the form, he was put through another rigorous medical. This time when the doctor asked him, ‘Are you aware of any hereditary ailments or diseases in your family that might prevent you from carrying out active service?’ he replied, ‘No, sir.’
12
AT NOON the following day, Giles left one world and entered another.
Thirty-six raw recruits, with nothing in common other than the fact that they had signed up to take the King’s shilling, clambered aboard a train with a corporal acting as their nanny. As the train pulled out of the station, Giles stared through the grimy third-class window and was certain of only one thing: they were heading south. But not until the train shunted into Lympstone four hours later did he realize just how far south.
During the journey, Giles remained silent, and listened attentively to all those men around him who would be his companions for the next twelve weeks. A bus driver from Filton, a policeman from Long Ashton, a butcher from Broad Street, a builder from Nailsea and a farmer from Winscombe.
Once they disembarked from the train, the corporal ferried them on to a waiting bus.
‘Where are we going?’ asked the butcher.
‘You’ll find out soon enough, laddie,’ replied the corporal, revealing his birthplace.
For an hour the bus trundled across Dartmoor until there was no sign of houses or people, just the occasional hawk flying overheard in search of prey.
They eventually stopped outside a desolate group of buildings, displaying a weathered sign that announced Ypres Barracks: Training camp for the Wessex Regiment. It didn’t lift Giles’s spirits. A soldier marched out of the gatehouse and raised the barrier to allow the bus to continue for another hundred yards before coming to a halt in the middle of a parade ground. A solitary figure stood waiting for them to disembark.
When Giles climbed off the bus, he came face to face with a giant of a man, barrel-chested and dressed in a khaki uniform, who looked as if he had been planted on the parade ground. There were three rows of medals on his chest and a pace stick under his left arm, but what struck Giles most about him was the knife-edge crease in his trousers and the fact that his boots were so highly polished he could see his reflection in them.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ the man said in a voice that boomed around the parade ground; not someone who would find any use for a megaphone, thought Giles. ‘My name is Sergeant Major Dawson – sir, to you. It’s my responsibility to turn you from a shambolic rabble into a fighting force in just twelve weeks. By then, you will be able to call yourselves members of the Wessex, the finest regiment of the line. For the next twelve weeks I will be your mother, your father and your sweetheart and, let me assure you, I only have one purpose in life, and that is to make sure that when you meet your first German, you’ll be able to kill him before he kills you. That process will begin at five tomorrow morning.’ A groan went up which the sergeant major ignored. ‘Until then, I’ll leave Corporal McCloud to take you to the canteen, before you settle into your barracks. Be sure to get a good night’s rest, because you’ll need every ounce of energy you possess when we meet again. Carry on, corporal.’
Giles sat down in front of a fishcake whose ingredients had never seen salt water, and after one sip of lukewarm brown water, posing as tea, he put his mug back on the table.
‘If you’re not going to eat your fishcake, can I have it?’ asked the young man sitting next to him. Giles nodded, and they swapped plates. He didn’t speak again until he’d devoured Giles’s offering.
‘I know your mum,’ the man said.
Giles gave him a closer look, wondering how that could be possible.