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‘Captain Audley – ?’ For some unfathomable reason de Souza’s whisper out of the dark reassured Fred that things couldn’t be as bad as he had just feared. ‘David?
Freddie?’
‘Sir!’ Audley.
‘David – ’ With that calm voice there were people in the half-dark, and there was subdued activity all around them suddenly ‘ – this is Major Hunter, of the United States Army, with me.’
‘Hullo there, Captain Audley!’ Deep familiar American whisper, oddly comforting.
‘Oh!’ For an instant Audley was taken aback by the presence of the United States Army. But then he rallied. ‘Hi there, major!’
‘And Major Fattorini, Royal Engineers, major.’ De Souza’s voice became very British, almost parodying itself. ‘Major Fattorini has just joined us from the Middle East, major.’
‘Major.’ Fred wondered what the collective noun for
“majors” might be. “Majors” were the army’s alpha and omega: the last and highest rank for some (including all “hostilities only” officers like himself), but the “field rank” beginning of promotion to higher command, and fame and fortune, for the generals of the next generation. ‘Major.’ Major Hunter couldn’t see dummy4
Major Fattorini, so neither of them knew what sort of major he was up against.
‘Slight change of orders, David. But nothing to worry about.’ Wisely, Amos did not introduce Sergeant Devenish. ‘Major Hunter will be accompanying us. But I shall be looking after him. So you just watch out for Krausnick –eh?’
‘Right-oh, Amos,’ Audley answered lightly. ‘G-g-gettin’ to be quite a crowd of us. But the more, the merrier!‘
‘Now, major ... as I was saying ... we are going to the back entrance, which is in the angle of the wall, partly concealed by some bushes, so far as we can make out from the photograph – ’ De Souza’s words faded as he turned away to address the American, against the continuous background drone of the planes.
‘Shit!’ Audley whispered. ‘Nothing to worry about!’
‘No?’ As the young man put his head close, Fred picked up the familiar winter’s night smells of front-line Italy: wet uniform, sweat and alcohol, to which –
less familiarly, amongst the British anyway – this evening’s dinner had added an unBritish whiff of garlic.
‘The Yanks suspect we’re up to something ... or, rather, they don’t suspect – they know!’ The grip tightened.
‘Surprise, surprise!’
‘But I thought you already expected that, David?’
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Jollying-along depressed young engineer subalterns was another Italian memory: it came quite naturally to him to do the same for Audley. ‘Isn’t all this – ’ he almost said ‘ nonsense’ – ‘ – all this elaborate business a sort of smokescreen?’
‘Oh sure! But there’s so much bloody smoke about now that I can’t see either. Not that I ever can see much.’ The boy’s tone was bitter. ‘The trouble with the bloody army is that you never really know what you’re doing – I haven’t known for years ... or since last year, anyway.’ He sighed. ‘I thought I was liberating Europe and winning the war. But I wasn’t doing that at all, you know.’
It’s just he talks too much! So much the better! ‘Then what were you doing?’
‘Jesus Christ! You may well ask! God only knows!
Or . . . He probably doesn’t – only Brigadier Frederick J. Clinton knows – ’ Audley bit his tongue. ‘Do you really know what you are doing, Major Frederick Fattorini? I’ll bloody-bet you don’t, by God!’
Audley’s voice had been rising as he spoke. But it didn’t matter, because the engine-noise had been rising at the same time, from that steady drone to a drumming which Fred recognized for the first time: there was a pair of good old Dakotas out there, circling one behind the other in the darkness, separated by the diameter of their circles; and he had already survived one Dakota-dummy4
crash, outside the Bari, in which the pilot had ploughed neatly through two lines of poplars and an olive-grove, losing more and more of the aircraft at each obstacle –
wing-tips, wings and engines, and at the last even tail-planes –until only the fuselage had remained when it came to a halt, with its human cargo bruised and bloody, but unbowed. Good old Dakota!
And . . . what the hell was Audley complaining about?
He’d survived the war, when a million – or ten million
–better men hadn’t! Christ – what more did he want!
He could see the Dakota’s lights now, dead ahead through a gap in the trees, and almost level with him –
God Almighty! – almost below him as it roared up from the plain below the hills, so that he felt himself willing the pilot to pull the stick: Pull the stick, man!
Get the nose up – up, for Christ’s sake!
With an ear-splitting crash of sound, which made him duck instinctively, the Dakota was on them – and over them, and gone, sucking its noise after it.
‘God Almighty!’ he murmured – or not murmured, he realized, but shouted.
‘No. Not God Almighty, Fred – ’ Audley shouted back at him ‘ – that’ll be Our Jake – Jake Austin ... He likes low-flying, does Our Jake!’
‘ Ready, David?’ De Souza was almost shouting too, now: the sound of the second Dakota was increasing in dummy4
its turn. “Let’s go, then!‘
Suddenly everyone was moving, and it was all familiar: the shadow-shapes, and the nearer-sounds of heavy footfalls and the chink-chink of equipment –
sounds which he couldn’t really hear, except in his memory – all brought back the recent past, and he felt his blood pump as he became part of the movement forward and thought the old familiar prayer – sweet Jesus Christ! let it not be me tonight!
Then his heart lifted, and it was like – it was exactly like – waking from that old black examination nightmare, in which the terrible fear of total lack of knowledge and inevitable failing always enveloped him – waking to the sweet realization that it was all long in the past, and over-and-done-with: that he’d taken the exam long ago, and passed it ... and now this wasn’t Italy, but Germany with the war over-and-done-with-and-finished-forever, with no mines and booby-traps on the river bank, and no machine-guns and shells waiting to seek him out in the darkness ahead!
He giggled to himself with pure joy at the thought. He had been tired, and that was why his memory had played cruel tricks on him – tiredness notoriously distorted rational thought. But now he wasn’t tired at all. Which was funny – although not half as funny as the thought of Audley going into action umbrella-in-hand, just like his dragoon ancestor – that was funny –
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Thump!
He half-checked. But then knew he couldn’t stop –
Thump –
But then he identified the mortar-sound instinctively out of all the other sounds, and automatically threw himself full-length on the ground, and Sergeant Devenish tripped over him –
For a confused moment they were a tangle of arms and legs and equipment and breathless grunting. Then they pushed clear of each other, scrabbling for recovery just as the first parachut-flare burst into unearthly brightness far above them.
‘F-----’ Devenish started to swear, but then stopped.