A Kiss for the Enemy (18 page)

Next, Anthony heard a hissing screech followed almost
immediately by a distant and sharp crack from a gun. Automatically and belatedly he dropped. About fifty yards away a small cloud of earth rose, fell and settled. There was a strong smell of explosive. The next shell and the next fell beyond. In each case the sound of the gun firing followed the scream of the shell. These are travelling fast!' Anthony reckoned. The firing appeared to be directed at the lane down which he was moving! He got up and marched on, somewhat more slowly. Then he heard, this time unmistakeably, a familiar roar and a frightful, deafening, screaming sound. Into the ditch again. Two German aircraft flew down the line of the lane. He saw the dust spurting from their machine gun bullets – or so he supposed. Or were they using bombs and was the dust being raised by the movement of the aircraft, so low had they dived? As if to answer him two shattering roars came from a point further down the lane. The aircraft tore westward. Immediately ahead Anthony heard shouting.

‘Hang on here, Sergeant Ridgeway,' he heard a voice yell. He was approaching a blind corner. There was a clump of trees and the lane curved. Anthony moved on quickly and unsteadily. British soldiers! Laden, dust-covered, sweat-streaked British soldiers, lying against the hedges beside the lane. Presumably the Corporal's bloody infantry who'd been marching for three hours and were bloody knackered.

‘Hang on, Sergeant Ridgeway! We're half a mile ahead of B Company.'

‘Right, sir! As long as those Stukas don't come round again!' Sergeant Ridgeway yelled back. Anthony felt comforted. For the past three minutes the lane had seemed appallingly lonely. He found what appeared to be the Company Commander standing in mid-road, a lieutenant, who looked younger than Anthony and also looked hot and totally exhausted. He peered at Anthony.

‘Where are you from?'

‘Brigade Headquarters. I've got to do instant interrogation of some prisoners who are meant to be somewhere down here. Get the stuff out of them while they're still warm. Quicker to send me down here than march them all up and back. Or so somebody thought.'

The other laughed. ‘You'll have to hurry. Not many still warm, I fancy.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘I mean there are a good many corpses in grey lying in the first farmyard you come to. There looked to be a few live ones too. With a Redcap standing over them. About two hundred yards, you're nearly there.'

Anthony looked at the other, who shrugged his shoulders.

‘I expect somebody found it impossible to cart them back and thought it best to see they couldn't fight another day. Nothing to do with us. Anyway, they're SS – I saw the badge. The SS don't take prisoners, as I expect you know.'

‘No, I didn't know,' said Anthony.

‘You haven't passed some British tanks, have you? I know it sounds an absurd question.'

Anthony described their whereabouts. ‘They were starting up.'

‘We're doing an attack with them. We've been marching for three hours to get to the meeting place. I believe they've done one attack already.'

‘Well, good luck,' said Anthony, ‘I'd better get on. Good luck in your co-operation with the tanks.'

‘I don't really think I've ever seen a tank before.'

There was a low humming sound in the sky, whose pitch suddenly expanded and sharpened.

‘Stukas!' yelled Sergeant Ridgeway. They all three reached the same point in the ditch simultaneously. It seemed extraordinarily small.

‘How long have you been in charge of these prisoners, Corporal?'

‘About an hour, sir.'

‘How did those ones – die?'

‘Can't say, sir. Our Section Sergeant told me to get up here on my bike and relieve some infantry chaps who were guarding them. So I did. Then they sent up Corporal Evans and Corporal Hickens here.'

About twenty figures in field grey were sitting on the ground by a brick barn. The Military Police Corporal's rifle
periodically pointed in their direction. Two other Redcaps covered the group. The squatting prisoners appeared extremely frightened. Along the fence which separated the farmyard from a field of standing corn were lying a number of bodies. They looked undramatic, untidy little heaps of jumble. Anthony did not count them.

‘I want a few minutes with them, Corporal. Then they must be escorted back to Brigade Headquarters.'

So long had Anthony's march taken, so long was the way back, so imminent appeared the attack that he could not believe any information would be of the slightest value to Brigade Headquarters if deferred. He decided to see what he could discover in a very few minutes. He was, he thought, probably wrong to hurry it but it seemed best, and what seemed best was all he could do. He identified a
Feldwebel.

‘Bring him over.'

The Corporal shouted and pointed his rifle.

The German got to his feet and marched up to Anthony. Unlike the others he seemed uncowed. He stood to attention and looked levelly at Anthony. Obeying some instinct, Anthony said – ‘In what part of the Reich is your home?' He felt absurd. Interrogation must be an expert's business.

The man looked at him, a flicker of surprise at the fluent German crossing his face. He shrugged his shoulders and gave his name and rank. SS rank.

‘I asked you from which part of Germany you come. I imagine you're in the
Totenkopf
Division.' For in his short sojourn at Brigade Headquarters Anthony had absorbed as much as he could of the sketchy information about the enemy there was available. Division SS
Totenkopf
– ‘Death's Head' – was certainly in the area of Arras.

The German eyed him boldly.

‘
Herr Leutnant
, I wish to complain.'

‘I'm not here to listen to your complaints. You can make them later. Where was your company moving to when you were captured?' Anthony spread his map before the man's eyes. Involuntarily the German looked at it.

‘If I can engage his professional interest,' thought Anthony, ‘I might – just – get somewhere.'

‘We know you were retreating southward,' he continued to
the
Feldwebel
, ‘towards –' he indicated the road to Bapaume. ‘Isn't that so?'

It worked. ‘No!' said the other. His soldierly dislike of inaccuracy overtook his discretion. ‘No! We were driving westward. We were on the way to here and here –' he pointed on the map – ‘We stopped only because of the enemy attack from the north.' He became aware of Anthony once again. ‘My complaint,
Herr Leutnantl
Some of my comrades have been shot while prisoners.'

‘If you have complaints, make them later,' said Anthony. ‘Now is it true that the Division's leading Regiment has reached –'

It went on some time, longer than the few minutes Anthony had reckoned sensible if information was to be timely. Interrogation was punctuated by two other visits from the Luftwaffe. It yielded little, thought Anthony, but that little might conceivably be of use if he could get it back. Then another Military Policeman arrived on another motorcycle. More shouting.

‘They've got to be got back, sir. Message from Division. As fast as possible.'

‘I'm not surprised. Give me a lift back to Brigade, can you?'

‘Hop on, sir.'

The infantry were now clear of the lane. They had been trudging past during Anthony's interrogation of the
Feldwebel
and two other junior NCOs. From the south came sounds of continuous machine gun fire and a number of particularly ear-splitting cracks from what could only be German guns. Anthony clung to the Military Policeman's waist and bumped along on the pillion. Shells were falling two hundred yards to their right. More sharp cracks.

‘Those may be our tank guns in action.' Anthony did not believe it but liked saying it.

‘Not them, sir,' shouted the Redcap over his shoulder. ‘Ours are smaller guns than those. Those are Jerries.' Next moment Anthony found himself lying in the lane as the Corporal leapt from his motorcycle and reached the ditch. The same familiar, mind-shattering roar and screech. Two divebombers, followed by two more, came in low, firing over the fields to Anthony's
right. ‘That must be where our tanks and infantry are advancing,' thought Anthony, picking himself up. He felt superior to the Police Corporal.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘they're well wide of us. We must get on, Corporal.' The roll of firing to the south was continuous now.

‘I didn't get much out of them, sir. Death's Head Division.' Anthony conveyed his information rapidly. It related to a situation before the Germans had been taken prisoner. It was, he felt, hopelessly stale. But he had at least tried.

‘You've taken long enough to get that little, God knows.'

‘I'm sorry, sir. I took some time to reach them.'

‘Well, it was just a long shot you might pick up something which could help this attack in its later stages. You haven't. And it's not having any later stages. We're calling it off. Now get back to your battalion, somehow.'

‘Sir, I should report to you that a German
Feldwebel
I interrogated told me that some of the prisoners had been shot. By us.'

‘Christ, we're in the middle of a bloody battle, we're up against a gang of murderers called the SS, and you come bleating to me about some Hun NCO's allegations. Go away!'

Robert Anderson blessedly retrieved him.

‘Believe it or not there's a truck going your way in an hour. A taxi ride all the way! And unless there's a disaster I've booked your seat.
And
here's a cup of tea!'

‘Robert, we've been attacking, is that right?'

‘That's it. But the Germans lined up lots of guns, including a thing with the biggest barrel anyone's ever seen, meant for shooting at aircraft thousands of feet up, and now taking on our dear little tanks! Lined up that and other things. And that's the end of that. Meanwhile, these bloody Stukas have been over without stopping.'

‘What happens now?'

‘We're off.'

Anthony sipped his tea. Scalding hot, nothing had ever tasted better.

‘Robert, I talked to one of the infantry chaps who was moving up to co-operate with the tanks. They'd never done it before. Hadn't the faintest idea what to do.'

‘Well, who has? Not the sort of thing we've gone in for, is it? Christ, here they come again.' They both dropped as the familiar screech and roar burst upon them. The barn filled with dust. Anthony heard a man screaming beyond the open barn door.

‘They've got the radio vehicle,' he heard a voice shout. ‘Get over here quick some of you and give a hand with Sergeant Bragg.' To his absurdly self-satisfied relief Anthony found that he had lowered himself to the ground so circumspectly that he had avoided spilling his mug of tea. ‘I'm getting rather good at being bombed,' he thought.

‘Get anything useful from the interrogation, Anton?'

‘Not much. Anyway, there was no way I could have told anybody quickly if I had. The prisoners were over a mile away. It was an idiotic idea to send me. I needed a bike or a radio or something –'

‘We don't seem to go in for radios much.'

‘Well, I was perfectly useless. And, Robert –'

‘Yes?'

‘Quite a lot had been shot. Of the prisoners, I mean.'

Robert frowned his familiar frown. ‘Yes, it's being said that some of our chaps are pretty fed up, particularly with this SS lot, and aren't taking many prisoners. There's a story going round that the SS lined up some of our people and shot them. And of course our people feel they've got a lot of scores to wipe out. Not much fun being pushed back and bombed like hell and not given any chance to hit back.'

‘Do you suppose it's true – about what the SS did to our people?'

‘No idea.'

‘Well, I've no idea, either,' said Anthony. ‘But I rather think it's best – if one can – to be slow to believe atrocity stories about the other side in war. Not easy. But best.'

‘Here's Vencourt, sir.'

Anthony had been asleep.

‘God, I'm sorry, I've been no use to you. I dropped off.'

‘That's all right, sir.'

Anthony climbed down into the darkness of a village street. He was in luck. Not only his own battalion but his very own company were in the quarter of the little town where he alighted. The truck drove off and Anthony found his way to Company Headquarters.

‘Welcome back! The battalion's in reserve. We're moving off in three hours to take up a new position –' the map was spread on a kitchen table. They've had some food here, and about four hours' sleep. Not bad. Your platoon's in a warehouse a hundred yards down the road. Unfortunately the Jerry artillery's been rather active. They put down a lot of stuff an hour ago and actually hit battalion headquarters. Not badly, and everybody's been laughing. The Sergeant Major got a shell splinter in the arse.'

‘Really?'

‘No, not really I don't suppose, but the chaps have to tell each other things to keep their spirits up. Now get along, you'll get two hours with your head down, with luck.'

Anthony found the sentry outside the platoon billet.

‘Is Sergeant Chester here?'

‘In that corner, sir. Sergeant Chester?'

‘No, don't wake him up.'

But Sergeant Chester was awake and present. They were in what appeared to be some sort of store room – large, dry, cavernous. One or two hurricane lamps cast shadows.

‘Electricity's not working, sir,' said Sergeant Chester. There was a distant grumble of artillery fire. Anthony felt an extraordinary sense of comfort and homecoming.

‘Have you had anything to eat, sir? There's plenty here. Plenty of local provisions so to speak.'

‘Wonderful, Sergeant Chester!'

‘Not bad, sir. They've eaten well, believe me. Lot of living off the land going on. Some of them's doing better than they've ever done. Needs a bit of controlling.'