Under the periscope

by Mark Herbert Joseph Bennett

Next day Carruthers and Johnson went out on patrol, and in the late afternoon a new boat arrived, fresh and hot from the dockyard, commanded by one Singleton, an officer well known to the boat captains of the Parentis.

Raymond and Austin had a day off, rather an unexpected favour in the case of the former, who had only just returned from re-fit, and decided to spend it in the country. They left early and caught a train after breakfast for the sleepy little town of Langton, some twenty miles distant. After the noise and bustle of a shipbuilding and mining centre, the pleasant peace of the English country came as a welcome change, and they lay back in their carriage and drank in great gulps of the fresh morning air as the local rattled sedately on. A fine summer day and the hedges alongside the railway, and the fields all gold, brown, and green, with little cottages nestling among them, and level crossings with children who waved sitting on the gates, and horses grazing, and reaping machines, and white high loads. Hayricks and little villages, small woods and distant spires. Imagine all this under the heel of an invader! The woman in the blue print apron standing outside the cottage, the children playing with the farmer’s old dog among the barley sheaves, imagine them with the Germans in possession ... butchery, rape, and at the best robbery and ill-treatment, and yet Belgium....

It didn’t bear thinking of. There was no possibility of invasion or wanton destruction. It hadn’t happened for hundreds of years, but then ... it must have been the same when the horsemen rode in and the old muzzle-loaders blared out, and men died and women shrieked and children clung to their mothers’ skirts, wide eyed and amazed.

It might happen, it might come to pass, and the very security of England was the worst danger of all. A hundred thousand troops landed overnight and the result ... fields laid waste, and killing and disasters, the soul of the English country changed to its very core. It might have happened two years ago, but not now. At a moment’s call the sleeping country could spring to life, and armed men, as if born of dragons’ teeth, would appear to repel the invader, armed not with shields and stabbing spear, but with machine-guns and the deadly howitzer. England had found herself. Not for a hundred years had she so proved her soul to herself and to the world. The call came, and slowly but surely the old spirit, latent for a century, revived and had its being, openly once more and for all the world to see....

The train drew up with a jolt, and Austin broke the silence with a casual remark.

‘Pretty little station. See those wild roses growing by the lamp-post there. Reminds you of pre-war days, doesn’t it?’

Outside, the good old-fashioned station fly rumbled them over the cobbles and into the High Street, where the women stared at the uniforms, and a small boy shouted something and ran after them. Then lunch at the one and only, called rather grandly the Imperial Hotel, albeit an old place, relic of the coaching days, though with a new master and up-to-date methods. Old prints on the walls of the ‘Fox Hunt,’ old furniture, and beer in pewter tankards reminded one of the ancient glories of the place, when the London mail would roll in with a tootling of horns and shouting of postboys, and be off again amid good-byes and handshakes, and ‘Write soon when you get to London,’ from mother, and a ten shilling tip from father, while little Alfred sucked his finger and stared.

The lunch consisted of the cold roast beef of England, and salad and cheese and fruits, and afterwards they wandered out into the sunshine, and up the High Street, tenanted now by only a few loafers, outside the Red Lion, and a boy or two on bicycles by the local post office.

The market square offered but few attractions, and the friends wandered through the town, which ended as abruptly as the bow of a ship, and out into the country beyond.

After his recent experiences Raymond found the situation almost too deep for words, and they trudged on, smoking their pipes, for the most part in silence.