Sergeant Devenish appeared out of nowhere, on the other side of the German.
‘Come on now, sir – let’s do like the officer says then, shall we?’ The sergeant addressed the German in a voice quite different from any he had ever used before in Fred’s hearing: unhurried, gentle, almost as though wheedling a frightened child. But without the slightest effect, nevertheless.
‘Right, then – ’ Devenish spoke the two words to himself, and then his chest expanded ‘ – take my weapon, if you’d be so good, sir – ’ he thrust his gun into Fred’s hands a second time across the inert body ‘
– LET’S BE HAVING YOU THEN, YOU BUGGER!’
Whether it was the effect of the sudden transition from gentleness to roaring anger, or the grasping hand-on-the-collar with every ounce of the sergeant’s muscle-power in the lift, or both, Fred never knew. But in the next second Corporal Keys was on his knees, and in the second after that he was moving, even before his legs were fully straightened, with one of Devenish’s hands still grasping the collar, and the other pulling his battle-dress blouse.
‘Fred!’ Audley gesticulated as he came alongside Devenish. ‘The other one – bring him!’
Fred followed the direction of the boy’s hand. Major de Souza’s prisoner, who had been lately Sergeant Devenish’s, was now all alone in the open and in the dummy4
glare of the searchlights, hunched under his blanket and imprisoned by the same fear which had rooted Corporal Keys to the ground.
‘Right!’ He heard his forced acknowledgement of the boy’s order, and felt angry with himself for the inadequacy of his performance so far, for which the excuse of six peaceful months in Greece was no bloody excuse at all – damn, damn and damn!
The prisoner was no more than half-a-dozen yards away — the prisoner who, for a guess, didn’t matter a damn, compared with Corporal Keys – damn, damn and damn! But at least he’d get this right, damn it!
‘Come on!’ The wretched fellow had rolled sideways, into a twitching blanket-covered ball, even as he covered the distance between them. But Audley’s much-admired Sergeant Devenish was his model now, even though he couldn’t match either of the sergeant’s voices. ‘Get up!’
A bare foot, emaciated and filthy-white in the unnatural light, kicked out from under the blanket.
‘Damn you – GET UP!’ Fred seized an edge of the blanket and ripped it aside. ‘ DAMN – ’ But then the Devenish-words died on his lips as he saw the blood, black as ink, bubbling out of the man’s mouth and streaming to join the great spreading wound on his chest – God!
dummy4
The man was trying to say something, but he was gargling and choking as he tried to speak, and he wasn’t even looking at Fred – he was arching his back and looking up into the dark sky, at nobody and nothing, as he died.
‘Fred – Fred?’ He heard Audley’s voice in the distance. ‘What the devil are you playing at – ?’
Audley’s voice was one sound. And he could still hear the slaughter-house-din muted from the wrecked building behind him. And there was the roar of generators powering the false daylight, which blackened the man’s blood as his eyes rolled upwards and the breath rattled finally in his throat.
‘ Christ!’ exclaimed Audley, above him.
That, among the other words of the ancient formula, was what Father de Vere had said over his dying sappers in Italy, Fred remembered. So, with no more time left, it would have to do for this poor unknown, who had just joined them. And, anyway, the exact words didn’t matter, Father de Vere always said.
He straightened up. ‘Come on, David.’
Audley looked at him. ‘What – ’
‘Let’s go.’ For the first time he felt their roles reverse, and age and rank take precedence, together with self-preservation. ‘He’s dead. So he won’t mind.’ That last consideration hardened him: they were both still alive, dummy4
but in the open, where it wasn’t safe. ‘Come on!’
Without waiting for Audley he ran towards the safety of the trees.
PART THREE
A Free Man
In the Teutoburg Forest,
Germany, August 7, 1945
I
As they drove northwards, Fred slept the sleep of exhaustion. But, unmercifully, it was not dreamless: rather, it was full of images – sharp images, but disjointed and unconnected, of things and people . . .
and even words.
Or a word –
Wildschweinrücken —
In Audley’s jeep, at first, he slept almost upright and very uncomfortably, with his chin down on his breast, so that his neck stretched and stretched as his head dummy4
rolled first one side, and then the other, over every pothole. And there were hundreds of potholes –
thousands, millions, billions ... an infinity of potholes, into which Audley deliberately and maliciously drove, out of the last vestiges of night, into a grey, cloud-swept day –
Wildschweinrücken –
There were, at irregular intervals, villages untouched by war. Then there were towns: towns of rubble, with tall chimneys standing in the ruins . . . buildings –
burned, because they were not built to burn . . . but chimneys were built for fire, so they didn’t burn – that was the rule!
And then there were long stretches of flattened open countryside, so often like, and yet unlike, bits of the English countryside he remembered, out of another world, in August – another August, long forgotten –
He had taken the men, one day in that other August long ago, to a farm, where they were harvesting.
And ... it was wheat – stiff, heavy-eared wheat, deep yellow-gold . . . but also with a fine crop of thistles in it, which made the men swear, who had never before taken hold of a wheat-sheaf let alone a handful of dummy4
thistles: they were mostly conscripts, with a leavening of regulars and territorials like himself, but they were also sappers, and proud of it –
Bridges, endless bridges! And the bridge over the Volturno was more than just a bridge: it was the eighth-bloody wonder of the bloody-world! And I saw Leese –
Jolly Polly Leese! – drive on at one end, past irate, gesticulating Military Police, and approach a column of tanks which had lumbered on to the other end – the far distant end –towards him . . . and he was driving himself, too, Jolly Polly! And he’d had to back up all the way, while the MPs were tearing their hair, because the first tank commander wasn’t going to back up for anyone, not even God Almighty himself, let alone the commander of the 8th Army – not for Jolly Polly, not for anyone! But at least he’d still been jolly at the end of it –
Wildschweinrücken! And then a nightmare wild boar’s head poking out of a wall, with its glaring red pig-eyes but its tusks dripping black blood –
Harvesting! How the men had hated stocking! Men who fancied their skills with metal and wood –
anything was grist to a sapper . . . but they couldn’t dummy4
stand up two wheat-sheaves, one against another, in the stubble: while they were turning round to grab another sheaf, the first two had fallen over – to the loud contempt of the farm labourer driving the tractor, and the little gnarled man sitting high up on the binder behind him – ‘ Garn! Can’t yer do it, then? It’s too ’ard for yer, is it? Too much like ‘ard work, like, is it?’