Slowly the men moved towards the rear of the truck, heavily, as though they were walking in thick mud. Two or three of them fell when they jumped down over the tailboard and just lay there uncomplainingly as other men jumped and fell on them. Christian was the last one out of the truck. I am standing, he thought with deliberate triumph. I am standing.
Hardenburg looked at him queerly in the moonlight. Off to both sides there was the flash of guns and there was a general rumble in the air, but the small victory of having landed correctly made everything seem quite normal for the moment.
Christian looked keenly at the men struggling to their feet and standing in sleep-walking poses around him. He recognized very few of them, but perhaps their faces would come back to him in daylight. "Where's the company?" he asked.
"This is the company," Hardenburg said. His voice was unrecognizable. Christian had a sudden suspicion that someone was impersonating the Lieutenant. It looked like Hardenburg, but Christian resolved to go into the matter more deeply when things became more settled.
Hardenburg put out his hand and pushed roughly at Christian's face with the heel of his palm. His hand smelled of grease and gun-oil and the sweat of his cuff. Christian pulled back a little, blinking.
"Are you all right?" Hardenburg said.
"Yes, Sir," he said. "Perfectly, Sir." He would have to think about where the rest of the company was, but that would wait until later, too.
The truck started to slither into movement on the sandy track, and two of the men trotted heavily after it.
"Stand where you are!" Hardenburg said. The men stopped and stood there, staring at the truck, which gathered speed and wound loudly over the shining sand towards the west. They were at the bottom of a small rise. They stood in silence and watched the truck, with a clashing of bearings, past Hardenburg's motor-cycle, climb up the rise. It shone along the top of it for a moment, huge, rolling, home-like, then disappeared on the other side.
"We dig in here," Hardenburg said, with a stiff wave of his hand to the white glitter of the rise. The men stared stupidly at it.
"At once," Hardenburg said. "Diestl," he said, "stay with me.
"Yes, Sir," said Christian, very smart. He went over to Hardenburg, elated with the fact that he could move.
Hardenburg started up the rise with what seemed to Christian superhuman briskness. Amazing, he thought dully, as he followed the Lieutenant, a thin, slight man like that, after the last ten days…
The men followed slowly. With rigid gestures of his arm, Hardenburg indicated to each of them where they should dig in. There were thirty-seven of them and Christian remembered again that he must inquire later what had happened to the rest of the company. Hardenburg stretched them out very thin, in a long, irregular line, one-third of the way up the rise. When he had finished he and Christian turned and looked back at the bent, slow figures digging in. Christian suddenly realized that if they were attacked they would have to stand where they were, because there was no possibility of retreating up the exposed slope from the line where Hardenburg had set them. Then he began to realize what was happening.
"All right, Diestl," Hardenburg said. "You come with me."
Christian followed the Lieutenant back to the track. Without a word, he helped Hardenburg push the motor-cycle up the track to the top of the rise. Occasionally a man would stop digging and turn and peer thoughtfully at the two men working the motor-cycle slowly up to the crest of the slope behind them. Christian was panting heavily when they finally stopped pushing the machine. He turned, with Hardenburg, and looked down at the sliver of a line of toiling men below him. The scene looked peaceful and unreal, with the moon and the empty desert and the doped movements of the shovellers, like a dream out of the Bible.
"They'll never be able to fall back," he said, almost unconsciously, "once they're engaged."
"That's right," Hardenburg said flatly.
"They're going to die there," said Christian.
"That's right," said Hardenburg. Then Christian remembered something Hardenburg had said to him as far back as El Agheila.
"In a bad situation that must be held as long as possible, the intelligent officer will place his men so that they have no possibility of retreat. If they are placed so that they must either fight or die, the officer has done his job."
Tonight Hardenburg had done his job quite well.
"What happened?" Christian asked.
Hardenburg shrugged. "They broke through on both sides of us."
"Where are they now?"
Hardenburg looked wearily at the flash of gunfire to the south and the flicker further off to the north. "You tell me," he said. He bent and peered at the petrol-gauge on the motor-cycle.
"Enough for a hundred kilometres," he said. "Are you well enough to hold on at the back?"
Christian wrinkled his forehead, trying to puzzle this out, then slowly managed to do it. "Yes, Sir," he said. He turned and looked at the stumbling, sinking line of figures down the hill, the men whom he was going to leave to die there. For a moment, he thought of saying to Hardenburg, "No, Sir, I will stay here." But really, nothing would be gained by that.
A war had its own system of balances, and he knew that it was not cowardice on Hardenburg's part, or self-seeking on his own, to pull back and save themselves for another day. These men would fight a small, pitiful action, perhaps delay a British company for an hour or so on the bare slope, and then vanish. If he and Hardenburg stayed, they would not be able, no matter what their efforts, to buy even ten minutes more than that hour. That was how it was. Perhaps the next time it would be himself left on a hill without hope and another on the road back to problematical safety.
"Stay here," Hardenburg said. "Sit down and rest. I'll go and tell them we're going back to find a mortar platoon to support us."
"Yes, Sir," said Christian and sat down suddenly. He watched Hardenburg slide briskly down towards where Himmler was slowly digging. Then he fell sideways and was asleep before his shoulder touched the ground.
Hardenburg was shaking him roughly. He opened his eyes and looked up. He knew that it would be impossible to sit up, then stand up, then take one step after another. He wanted to say, "Please leave me alone," and drop off again to sleep. But Hardenburg grabbed him by his coat, at his neck, and pulled hard. Somehow Christian found himself standing. He walked automatically, his boots making a noise like his mother's iron over stiff and frozen laundry at home, and helped Hardenburg move the motor-cycle. Hardenburg swung his leg over the saddle with great agility and began kicking the starting pedal. The machine sputtered again and again, but it did not start.
Christian watched him working furiously with the machine in the waning moonlight. It wasn't until the figure was close to him that Christian looked up and realized that they were being watched. It was Knuhlen, the man who had been weeping in the truck, who had stopped shovelling and had followed the Lieutenant up the slope. Knuhlen didn't say anything. He just stood there, watching blankly as Hardenburg kicked again and again at the pedal.
Hardenburg saw him. He took a slow, deep breath, swung his leg back and stood next to the machine.
"Knuhlen," he said, "get back to your post."
"Yes, Sir," said Knuhlen, but he didn't move.
Hardenburg walked over to Knuhlen and hit him hard on the nose with the side of his fist. Knuhlen's nose began to bleed. He made a wet, snuffling sound, but he did not move. His hands hung at his sides as though he had no further use for them. He had left his rifle and his entrenching tool at the hole he had been digging down the slope. Hardenburg stepped back and looked curiously and without malice at Knuhlen, as though he represented a small problem in engineering that would have to be solved in due time. Then Hardenburg stepped over to him again and hit him very hard twice. Knuhlen fell slowly to his knees. He kneeled there looking blankly up at Hardenburg.