Clear of the square I passed an Army car with its engine running. There was no-one in it. I realised suddenly that we should need something to tow the bomb away. I left Langdon’s bike and commandeered the car.
It took me but a moment to get back to the gun site in it, bumping over the grass of the flying field because the roadway was too full of craters. Langdon grabbed the rope as soon as I pulled up. He did not hesitate, but ran straight to the bomb, paying the rope out as he ran. We watched, half expecting the thing to go off as he tied the end of the rope round the fins. He did it quickly, but he showed no trace of nerves. It was not the sort of thing you want to think about beforehand. Yet Langdon had known that he, as detachment commander, was going to do it, all the time I had been away getting the rope.
As he ran back I tied the other end of the rope to the rear bumpers of the car. The rope.was about fifty yards long, but even so I did not feel very happy about it as I climbed back into the driving seat. I took the strain slowly in bottom. And as I moved forward with the full weight, I could feel the bump and slither of the bomb at the end of the rope as it followed me like some terrible hobgoblin.
But it was soon over. I left the thing well out on the flying field and, untying the rope, drove back to the site.
‘That’s marvellous of you, Barry,’ Langdon said as I got out of the car.
I felt myself blushing. Blushing had been an awful bugbear to me in my youth, but I thought I had grown out of it. ‘It’s nothing to what you did,’ I said to hide my embarrassment.
‘You’d better return the car now. And at the same time you can take Strang to the first-aid post. His hand is giving him a good deal of pain.’
Strang protested. But he was as white as a sheet and, in spite of a rough-and-ready bandage, blood was dripping quite freely from his hand. They got him into the seat beside me and I drove the big car back along the edge of the field.
As I came into the square the one undamaged Tannoy that I had heard before announced: ‘Preliminary air-raid warning. All personnel not engaged in urgent work take cover. Preliminary air-raid warning.’
The crowd in the square seemed to thin out like magic and vanish. I drove through the scatter to the nearest ambulance. I attracted the attention of a nurse who was trying to stop the blood of a poor fellow whose leg had been shattered. She seemed incredibly cool and impersonal. She glanced at Strang’s hand whilst continuing to work on the man’s leg, ‘You’ll be all right for the moment,’ she told Strang. ‘Just stay around till we’ve patched up some of the worst cases. We’ll soon fix that for you.’ She belonged to a Canadian ambulance unit.
I wanted Strang to get immediate attention. But a glance round told me that the staff of every ambulance in sight was equally busy. There was nothing for it but to let him stay and take his turn. An alarm was on and I had to get back to my site. With Thorby in its present disorganised state anything might happen. The great thing was that the guns should be fully manned.
I sat him down on the grass. They’ll fix you up in no time,’ I said. He did not answer. He was dazed with pain and loss of blood. I went back to the car.
I was just on the point of climbing into the driving seat when I noticed a civilian lying on the grass near by. Something about the white leathery skin of his face made me pause. Streaks of blood from a cut on his forehead showed scarlet on the white sweat of his face. His pale-blue eyes were wide and staring and his lips moved as he muttered to himself. His left shoulder and arm appeared to have been badly crushed. His clothes had been cut away from the shoulder and his hurt roughly dressed. It was his boots that brought recognition to my mind. They were clumsy hob-nailed boots — a workman’s boots.
I went over to where he lay, groaning and muttering to himself. And as I stared down at him, I knew I was right. He was the workman who must have planted that incriminating diagram in my pay-book. ‘Well, serve him right,’ I thought. And I was just turning away when I heard his lips mumble; ‘It won’t hurt you if you splash water over it.’
Some childhood memory of playing boats. But because it was spoken in German and not with the slight Scottish accent I had last heard him using, it drew my interest. And I bent down to listen, remembering how Elaine’s sleep babbling could have told me something. But it was partly gibberish, partly childhood memories that he mumbled. It was all in German and occasionally he got a word wrong or mispronounced it. If he were a German, and that seemed probable as he would surely babble his own language in his delirium, it seemed reasonable to suppose that it was a long time since he had been in Germany.
I bent closer. ‘I’m sorry you won’t be with us for the day.’ I spoke in German. It seemed funny to be speaking of der Tag in another way. He showed no sign of having heard. I shook him and repeated my statement.
His eyes remained wide, unseeing and expressionless. But apparently my voice made contact with his subconscious, for he murmured: I’m all right. I shall be there. I’m to drive one of the lorries.’ He tried to raise himself, his eyes sightless. ‘It’ll be all right, won’t it? Say it will be all right.’
‘But you won’t remember what day it is,’ I suggested, still speaking in German.
‘Yes, I will.’ He mumbled so that I could scarcely hear him.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘You don’t remember the day now.’
‘Yes, I do. Yes, I do. It’s — it’s — ” He struggled desperately with his memory. ‘It’s — I pick the stuff up at Cold Harbour on-“
His moment of lucidity seemed suddenly to vanish. The sweat poured down his ashen face with the effort he had made. He relapsed into the uncouth babblings of his delirium. But I scarcely noticed it. My mind had grasped avidly at the vital point. Cold Harbour! Elaine had talked of a Cold Harbour Farm in her sleep. Cold Harbour was not a very common name.
I was excited. I began trying to draw him again. And when that failed I tried direct questions. But I could get no sense out of him though I shook the poor devil till the sweat turned the blood to water on his face with the pain of it.
In the end I had to give it up. I got back into the car and drove it across to where I had first found it. Langdon’s bike was still there, I was just mounting it when a lance-corporal dashed up and caught me by the arm. ‘What the devil were you doing with that car?’
I had just started to explain when a brass hat with red tabs all over him came panting up. I saluted. ‘What’s all this?’ he demanded. ‘My car. You took my car. Why?’
I told him,
‘That’s no excuse. Monstrous behaviour! Name and unit? Make a note of it, Corporal.’ And with a snort he disappeared inside the car. He was in a hurry to get off.
I rode back to the site. They were all in the pit. Nobody spoke. They were all watching the sky. They looked strained, terribly strained. I realised that my shirt was sticking to me. The air throbbed with the heat. I took my helmet off to wipe the sweat from inside it with my handkerchief. ‘Where’s Micky?’ I asked. Kan was at the firing position.
‘He’s not feeling very bright,’ Langdon said charitably. ‘He’s gone to the shelter at the dispersal point over there.’
‘Not very bright!’ said Bombardier Hood. ‘He’s scared out of his wits. Can’t take it.’
‘Well, we’re none of us feeling very brave,’ said Langdon.
Mason suddenly arrived on a bike. He was the only link with Gun Ops., the telephone having been hit. But I didn’t hear the plot he gave Langdon. I was staring at my steel helmet. There was a scarred dent on the back of it. On the back of it! And I was remembering just where I had been standing and which way I had been facing when that bullet had ricocheted off my helmet. And a cold shiver tingled up my spine as I remembered that I had been facing the field and all the planes had passed in front of me or over the pit. None had passed behind me. Yet the dent was on the back of my tin hat. I hadn’t taken it off until this moment, so that I knew I had not had it on back to front. Besides, I remembered how my head had been jerked forward.