Free Soldier No More by Anthony Price

to the more difficult ones?” he countered as gently as he could.
    Willis stared at him, at first vaguely then focussing exactly. “T ouche … ” he nodded, accepting the rebuke. “You made me remember things I’d forgotten—I’m sorry—you’re quite right, and you have your job to do … Yes, in 1940, when the skies were falling in on us—in 1940, in France.”
    And he hadn’t told everything, either: because in one particular respect, and the most important one, he had already indicated that the paragon wasn’t a paragon.
    But that could wait for the right moment.
    “How did you come to meet him in the first place?”
    Willis looked at him questioningly. “I taught him—when he was at St. George’s, Buckland—but you know that—“
    “I meant the father.” Was that a simple misunderstanding, or was it deliberate?
    “Oh, I’m sorry—I thought we were back with David … I knew the family. And I got to know Nigel pretty well at Oxford, of course. I was at Univ—University College—he was at Balliol—Eton and Balliol, like his father—“ Willis caught himself “—but you hardly want to know about that.”
    “I think I want everything you can tell me.”
    Willis shrugged. “Oh … he was killed in ‘17, on the Scarpe, commanding our old territorial battalion—the Prince Regent’s Own. And Nigel was killed in ‘40, in the same battalion, not far away… that’s all—history more or less repeating itself, don’t you know.”
    So David Audley must have felt a bit queasy, landing in Normandy in ‘44; or certainly after the break-out had commenced, which might have taken him back over the same ill-omened ground. With such a family tradition survival did indeed have great virtue.
    “Why didn’t David join his father’s unit?” The question was hardly important, but there was something niggling in the back of Roche’s mind.
    “He couldn’t have, even if he’d wanted to—it didn’t exist any more. After it was massacred in ‘40 it was never reconstituted. The nearest equivalent was the West Sussexes—that’s where they put me afterwards … But I suppose the armoured corps was more fashionable than the poor bloody infantry—blitzkrieg and Rommel and all that—more likely to take a young man’s fancy.” Another shrug. “I don’t know—what made you join whatever you joined, David?”
    That was no joke—or no joke meriting the truth, anyway. “I was too young to know any better.”
    Willis nodded understandingly. “Well, there’s your answer. And just as well, too, because war’s a young man’s sport, and it relies on a high degree of stupidity—like volunteering for air crew. He was prime cannon-fodder, young David—he didn’t know any better … Whereas Nigel and I—we were almost too old, we were a different sort of fool altogether: a ‘no fool like an old fool’ variety, trapped by foolish patriotism in the 1930s.” The corner of Willis’s lip drooped. “But there we were in ‘39 and ‘40—in the front line, and far too old to be there. And after that, the ones who survived—like me—we were the veterans, we were.” He grinned at Roche.
    “I even commanded a battalion for one brief, utterly unmemorable spell in ‘45—not for long, because they’re not that stupid, the brass-hats—not for long … but I remember in ‘42 and ‘43, some of my young fellows were quite apologetic about my being there—and even more in ‘44, as though I’d arrived on the battlefield by some ghastly administrative accident.”
    How old was he, then? With a little bouncy fellow like this—plenty of healthy sport divided by a substantial intake of alcohol at the local pub made it hard to judge, and the Audley file had had nothing to say on his legal guardian’s curriculum vitae .
    “Yes … but, of course, the truth was, we were too old—and Nigel was even older than I was when he copped it—far too old for playing dangerous games like that! Fair enough if you’re