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

range and further instructed in the use and care of a variety of pistols and automatic weapons and, for some reason he could not fathom, except that it was part of the set syllabus, how to charge fiercely with a bayonet. Despite his solid policeman's outlook, Ormerod was a sensitive man and, as many sensitive men have discovered, the shouting charge with a bayonet to stab a sack supposed to be an enemy was the most sickening experience. 'Do I have to shout?' he pleaded with the instructor, a fat, jolly fellow from Cornwall. I mean I thought the whole operation was supposed to be done on the quiet. It's secret. I can't see I'm going to have to shout under any circumstances. And where do I get the rifle and bayonet in the first place? I can't march through Occupied Europe with a rifle and bayonet now can I?'
    I don' know anythin' about your business, my old darlin',' said the instructor with a wide western smile. 'All I know is that
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    the use of the bayonet is in the course, so that's why we be a-doin' it, see? Now get the fuckin' thing stuck in that sack.'
    He was better with more stationary training, especially marksmanship. He had always enjoyed the special skill that went with drawing a line on a distant target, steadying the hand, the eye, the gut, the breath, and drawing the trigger. His marks were high. 'Keep it like that,' advised the pistol instructor grudgingly. 'It's the difference between life and death.' He paused and added: 'Yours.'
    One afternoon a week was devoted to camouflage and con cealment, a subject, Ormerod suspected, which again had to be included simply because it was in the manual, and the army stuck by the manual. He was taken to a path beside a Hamp shire field, scarred and muddy with the tracks of training tanks. It was as void and open as any field he had ever seen and after a lecture by two young officer instructors he was told to go anywhere within two hundred yards and lie low. They would then spot him and tell him where he had gone wrong.
    They had driven to the field in an army fifteen hundredweight platoon truck, which was standing a few yards away on the track, and while the instructors turned their backs and, in a curiously juvenile way, hid their eyes in their hands and coun ted to a hundred, Ormerod quietly climbed into the back of the truck and lay there. The counting completed, the instructors turned and, searching with their binoculars, went over every yard of the landscape of mud and coarse grass. They failed to find him. Eventually one said: 'That's bloody well impossible, Justin. No one could lie that flat. I think he may have buggered off.'
    'Let's see, Archie,' said Justin. He cupped his hands to his mouth. 'Righty-ho you can come out now!'
    Grinning, Ormerod rose from the truck only two yards in front of them. They stared at him in disbelief as if he were a spoilsport. 'Bang,' he said quietly. 'Bang.'
    He was given training in the use and maintenance of the portable wireless receiver and transmitter and spent an idyllic afternoon lying in a meadow of thyme and buttercups, relaying practice messages, gazing up at the enormous sky and listening to the lyrical larks.
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    There was an hour's physical training every morning, orches trated by a man with the leanings of a sadist, supplemented by a fierce course in unarmed combat under the charge of a blond boy whom Ormerod regarded with the gravest suspicion.
    'Do you know Mrs Sweetman?' smiled the instructor as the opening line of their first session.
    'No, can't say I do,' replied the mildly surprised Ormerod.
    'Well, I'm her son Charles.'
    'Oh, I see.'
    The young man almost simpered. 'I'm going to teach you silent killing.'
    Ormerod found the youth's scented hair almost too much for him in their close-in fighting and the instructor grabbed his testicles rather more times than he would have thought neces sary during the course of the training, but there was no doubt that Staff-Sergeant Sweetman knew his business. Ormerod's natural