Ormerod's Landing by Leslie Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

really pleased about that.'
    'Right,' said Clark holding out his hand. 'You're a great chap Ormerod. This war will be won by men like you. Within days you will receive further orders. You'll have to go down to Ash Vale in Hampshire for your training and detailed briefing. After that it could happen any time.'
    Shaking the outstretched military hand, Ormerod said: 'I won't have to parachute, will I sir? I don't fancy parachuting.'
    'Oh no. It will be a sea landing, I imagine.'
    'I get seasick,' said Ormerod. 'But I'd rather the sea than the sky. The sky always seems so empty.'
    'Yes it does a bit,' said the Brigadier as though it had never occurred to him before. He looked out of the window and examined the sky. 'Jolly empty,' he agreed. 'A long drop.'
    He led Ormerod to the door. The busty girl had again knocked the paper clips on the floor and had just finished gathering them. I must get that magnet,' she smiled at Ormerod. 'It was a very good idea.'
    'I'm full of them,' said Ormerod flatly.
    'Did you like the tea?'
    37
    'Delicious,' said Ormerod. 'Best thing that's happened to me all day.'
    The girl went into the inner office to collect the cups. Clark leaned confidingly towards Ormerod's ear. 'The junket hasn't got a classified codename yet,' he said. 'Purely privately, I'm calling it Ormerod's Landing.'
    'Oh, you've named it after me,' said Ormerod, trying to sound pleased.
    'But it's only for the present. It will get a proper code later and you will have a codename. It won't do to use your real name. If you die on this sort of jaunt, it's better that you die anonymously.'
    three
    After a week in the special camp at Ash Vale, near Aldershot, Ormerod could still scarcely credit what was happening to him. At night he would lie staring at the ceiling of the small room which had been allocated to him at the remote end of the empty army hut, wondering, and not the first man to do so, whatever was to become of him in the following weeks. For him, with his personal sense of isolation from the war, it was an accentuated doubt. It was as if he was being thrown into a serious conflict that was nothing whatever to do with him. Even the thought that he was to be given the chance to seek out the shameful Albert Smales had lost a proportion of its previous attraction. He looked at the map of France and realized how many miles it was overland from the Normandy coast to Paris. Somehow he had to get back as well. With Smales. He groaned in the darkness, slept fitfully, and woke to bare daylight with the English birds singing beyond the cold-eyed window.
    A cheerfully grubby private in an ill-defined regiment brought him a mug of tea every morning, whether from friendship or duty Ormerod never discovered. He drank half the tea and used
    3?
    the rest as shaving water, as advised by the soldier, because there was no hot water in the taps of the elderly latrines of his empty billet. At the end of the week he had a brown chin from the tannin.
    'Everything all right then?' the private would say ritually every morning. 'Treating you okay, are they?'
    'Great,' nodded Ormerod grimly. 'Wonderful.'
    'What will you be doing today then?'
    'Deserting.'
    'Can't do that, mate. They'll only catch you. I kept hopping off and I'm more or less on permanent jankers. The only chance I've got of getting out of this bloody hole is if the Germans come and get me.'
    'Just like me,' agreed Ormerod. 'It's a rotten choice.'
    'Cheer up. It'll be all over when we're dead.'
    'Thanks. You make it seem all worth while. Now sod off.'
    Wearing an anonymous army battledress he spent his days in the study of maps and photographs and films of Normandy from the Manche département on the coast to the Perche country inland, half the way to Paris. He sat solitary, in a lecture hut like a dull and lonely child kept after school, while two instructors took it in turn to teach him the geography, topography, history, industry and humanity of the region.
    He was taken to a small arms