have, to keep the monastery gates shut or they would swamp us."
"You all keep warm in there?" I asked. "Not very warm. And we would not .have room for a length of them." He went on, "I know what you are thinking. it is essential for some of us to keep well. We have
the only hospital in Phat Diem, and our only nurses are these nuns." "And your surgeon?"
"I do what I can." I saw then that his soutane was speckled with blood. He said, "Did you come up here to find me?" "No. I wanted to get my bearings."* "I asked you because I had a man up here last night. He wanted to go to confession. He had got a little frightened, you see, with what he had seen along the canal. One couldn't blame him." "It's bad along there?"
"The parachutists caught them in a cross-fire. Poor souls. I thought perhaps you were feeling the same."
"I'm not a Roman Catholic. I don't think you could even call me a Christian." "It's strange what fear does to a man." "It would never do that to me. If I believed in any God atall, I should still hate the idea of confession. Kneeling in one of your boxes. Exposing myself to another man. You must excuse me. Father, but to me it seems morbid-unmanly even."
"Oh," he said lightly, "I expect you are a good man. I don't suppose you've ever had much
'to regret."
I looked along the churches, where they ran down evenly spaced between the canals, towards the sea. A light flashed from the second tower. I said, "You haven't kept all your churches neutral."
"It isn't possible," he said. "The French have agreed to leave the Cathedral precincts alone. We can't expect more. That's a Foreign Legion post you are looking at." "I'll be going ^long. Goodbye, Father." "Goodbye and good luck. Be careful of snipers." I had to push my way through the crowd to get out,
past the lake and the white statue with its sugary out-spread arms, into the long street. I could see for nearly three quarters of a mile each way, and there were only two living beings in all that length besides myself-two soldiers with camouflaged helmets going slowly away up the edge of fhe street, their sten guns* at the ready. I say the living because one body lay in a doorway with its head in the road. The buzz of flies collecting there and the squelch of the soldiers' boots growing fainter and fainter were the only sounds. I walked quickly past the body, turning my head the other way. A few minutes later when I looked back I was quite alone with my shadow and there were no sounds except the sounds I made. I felt as though I were a mark on a firing range.* It occurred to me that if something happened to me in this street it might be many hours before I was picked up: time for the flies to collect. When I had crossed two canals, I took a turning that led to a church. A dozen men sat on the ground in the camouflage of parachutists, while two officers examined a man. Nobody paid me any attention when I joined them. One man, who wore the long antennae of a walkie-talkie,* said, "We can move now," and everybody stood up.
I asked them in my bad French whether I could ac-e.ompany them. An advantage of this war was that a European face proved in itself a passport on the field: a European could not be suspected of being an enemy agent. "Who are you?" the lieutenant asked. "I am writing about the war," I said. "American?" . ."No, English."
... "He said, "It is a very small affair, but if you wish to come with us..." He began to take off his steel helc"et, "No, no," I said, "that is for combatants." "As you wish." We went out behind the church in single file, the lieutenant leading, and halted for a moment on a canal-bank for the soldier with the walkie-talkie to get contact with the patrols on either flank. The mortar shells tore over us and burst out of sight. We had picked up more men behind the church and were now about thirty strong. The lieutenant explained to me in a low voice, stabbing a finger at his map, "Three hundred have been reported in this village here. Perhaps massing for tonight. We don't know. No one has found them yet." "How far?" "Three hundred yards." Words came over the wireless and we went on in silence, to the right the straight canal, to the left low scrub and fields and scrub again. "All clear," the lieutenant whispered with a reassuring wave as we started. Forty yards on, another canal, with what was left of a bridge, a single plank without rails, ran across our front. The lieutenant motioned to us to deploy and we squatted down facing the unknown territory ahead, thirty feet off, across the plank. The men looked at the water and then, as though by aword of command, all together, they looked away. For a moment I didn't see what they had seen, but when I saw, my mind went back, I don't know why, to the Chalet and the female impersonators and the young soldiers whistling and Pyle saying, "This isn't a bit suitable." The canal was full of bodies: I am reminded now of an Irish stew containing too much meat. The bodies overlapped: one head, seal-grey, and anonymous as a convict with a shaven scalp, stuck up out of the water like a buoy. There was no blood: I suppose it had flowed away a long time ago. I have no idea how many there were: they must have been caught in a cross-fire, trying to get back, and I suppose every man of us along the bank was thinking,
'Two can play at that game.'* I too took my eyes away; we didn't want to be reminded of how little we counted, how quickly, simply and anonymously death came. Even though my reason wanted the state of death, I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself. For what? I didn't know, nor how, except' by taking a look around at the little I would be leaving.
The lieutenant sat beside the man with the walkie-talkie and stared at the ground between his feet. The instrument began to crackle instructions and with a sigh as though he had been roused from sleep he got up. There was an odd comradeliness about all their movements, as though they were equals engaged op a task they had performed together times out of mind. Nobody waited to be told what to do. Two men made for the plank and tried to cross it, but they were unbalanced by the weight of their arms and had to sit astride and work their way across a few inches at a time. Another man had found a punt*
hidden in some bushes down the canal and he worked it to where the lieutenant stood. Six of us got in and he began to pole it towards the other bank, but we ran on a shoal of bodies and stuck. He pushed away with his pole, sinking it into this human clay, and one body was released and floated up all its length beside the boat like abather lying in the sun. Then we were free again, and once on the other side we scrambled out, with no backward look. No shots had been fired: we were alive: death had withdrawn perhaps as far as the next canal. I heard somebody just behind me say with great seriousness, "Gott sei dank."* Except for the lieutenant they were most of them Germans. Beyond was a group of farm-buildings: the lieutenant went in first, bugging the wall, and we followed at six-foot intervals in single file. Then the men, again without an order, scattered through the farm. Life had deserted it -not so much as a hen had been left behind, though hanging on the walls of what had been the living-room were two hideous oleographs of the Sacred Heart and the Mother and Child which gave the whole ramshackle group of buildings a European air. One knew what 'these people believed even if one didn't share their belief: they were human beings, not just grey drained cadavers.*