A New Kind of War (19 page)

He had heard briefings like this, from other over-promoted infantry subalterns of tender years, full of the same careless confidence. But now wasn’t the time to remember them. ‘So?’

‘So you follow me. With the bag.’ Audley drew a deep breath, and an overloaded branch above suddenly deluged Fred. ‘And we’ll have Devenish with us by then—he’ll be waiting for us at A2.’

Fred’s morale lifted slightly, at the thought of Devenish. ‘And then?’

‘Then we wait patiently for H-Hour. And when that comes, all the pretty searchlights go on, and loud and frightening military noises are made for a moment or two. And then Colonel Augustus addresses his cowering victims—that is, assorted Germans-on-the-run, and hard-case DPs who don’t want to go home, and the odd American deserter no doubt …
he
—
our Glorious Leader—addresses all of them in his execrable German. Which will only serve to confuse them, undoubtedly. But over the loudspeakers he will address them nevertheless, because he fancies his German … Although I’ve heard him address one unfortunate group of Teutons for all of quarter of an hour, and none of ’em understood a word he said … But maybe then Amos or the Crocodile will take over—or even the Alligator. And it’ll be okay, then, because they each
spraken
quite reasonable
Deutsch
.‘

Audley’s own German accent was on a par with his commanding officer’s. ‘But you don’t speak it?’

‘No. How
did
you guess?’ Audley seemed amused. ‘Just a few necessary phrases, that’s all. I’m supposed to be the unit’s French-speaker—all the rest have more German then me, even Driver Hewitt, I suspect. But then I’m an exception to the TRR-2 rule in more ways than one … Shall we go, then?’

Fred stood his ground obstinately. ‘What happens then.’

‘We go in—like I said.’ Audley was trying to be languid, in the style of his admired Major de Souza. But he couldn’t conceal an undercurrent of juvenile excitement which Fred recognized. It was something he could still remember from his own youth: the foolish optimism of young subalterns who knew no better, without which wars would be impossible. But he had lost all that in Italy.

‘Like a dose of salts?’ Once it was lost, it never came back.

‘We go in behind Major de Souza and his warrant officer.’ Audley caught the mocking edge in the question, and his voice stiffened. ‘We always operate in pairs, Major Fattorini. I shall be with Jacko Devenish—’

That made five, not two. ‘The four of you—plus me?’

‘You are a supernumerary, Major Fattorini. Shall we go?’

‘But I’m carrying the bag, Captain Audley.’ Fred played his ace. ‘I’ll go when you explain that. Not before.’

‘Oh …
okay
, Fred—damn it!’ Mercifully, the young man realized when he was being ridiculous. ‘Amos fingers Number 21—“Keys”—for us. And then he and his man cover us while we dress him up as a British soldier.
Savvy
?’

Fred savvied instantly, suddenly aware that he had been halfway there already, with his bag and David’s deception of their allies. ‘We put “Keys” into this uniform—?’ He sensed Audley staring at him in the dark. ‘As one of ours?’

‘That … that is exactly right.’ For a moment there was silence between them. ‘Full marks—join the club, and all that … Like, “God Bless America”—but “God, don’t let’s trust the Yanks”—
exactly
right, Fred!’

The sudden bitterness in the young man’s voice caught Fred’s interest. ‘You don’t like what you’re doing, David?’

‘Like it? Huh!’ Audley paused. ‘You should hear Sar’ Devenish on that subject!‘

‘He doesn’t like it—?’

‘On the contrary, old boy!
Sergeant
Devenish poached me to rights long ago, when we were in Greece together, when I made the mistake of saying that I didn’t much like killing Greeks, when I’d been hired to kill Germans—huh!’

Even more interest. ‘What did he say?’

‘He said: “Well Mr Audley—” I was a humble lieutenant then … and I can’t do his voice—I’ve got no ear for mimickry … But, anyway, he said: “Well, Mr Audley, I don’t remember being signed up to do anything but obey orders. And I certainly never expected to do what I liked. Because if I could do what I liked, then I’d be doing my job back in England, and I’d be going home to the wife and the kids every evening. And none of this foolishness.”’

God
! A super-saturated branch gave way above them, spattering Fred with German rain.
God
—
this foolishness
!

‘So let’s go then. We can’t afford to waste any more time discussing free will and military n-n-necessity, anyway. So come on, Fred—’

After a time Fred began to realize that he’d been
going
and
coming on
almost automatically, in almost total darkness and more by a mixture of sound and instinct. But then, when he lost the sound of Audley’s footsteps for an instant, his fear came back—

‘David—!’

‘Come on! We’ve got to
move
now! We can’t be late!’

‘David! How d’you know where we’re going?’

‘Don’t worry. Just follow me—’ It was no use worrying—

Well
… at least he could work out the logic of the assault: if there was anyone who could be trusted to do the clever stuff, it would be Amos de Souza—no problem there … And, by the same logic, Audley and Devenish were an ideal snatch-squad: the young dragoon was built like a brick shit-house, and Devenish was a veteran and a hard man, as he himself had reason to remember.

He almost tripped up, on an invisible fallen branch thicker than anything he had encountered before, and saved himself with Audley’s stick; and caught the sound of the boy crashing his way ahead, regardless as a tank, and, in the surrounding silence, almost as noisy—

Then the noise stopped. ‘Are you all right, Fred?’

‘Yes.’ Led by the voice, and with all his senses sharpened by the night, he could just see something darker in the darkness of the forest. Or he might just be imagining that he could? ‘But I can’t really see a damn thing.’

‘I can. So don’t worry—just follow me.’ Audley waited for him to close up again. ‘We’ve got to leg it now, too. Because we can’t be late for the fun—Amos would never forgive me if I missed the party, you know. Right?’

Fred clenched his teeth, trying to forget the aftermath of those other Italian fun-parties when the dawn had revealed the bodies of the fun-party-goers on the river banks, with others bobbing in the shallows among the wrecked pontoons, or caught in the reeds. And the bobbing corpses were usually his men, too, because the heavily-laden infantry sank to the bottom quickly: they were the ones you trod on, who had drowned quietly in three-foot of water, when you went to recover the sodden engineer bundles later on—
damn! Damn! Damn! Damn
! ‘Right, David. But I hope you know what you’re doing—and where you’re going.’

But Audley didn’t go. Instead his torch came on suddenly, blinding him totally.

‘Put that damn thing out!’ The old night-discipline asserted itself.

‘It’s all right.’ Audley soothed him quickly. ‘We’re still half a mile from A2. No one can see us here—and I know exactly where we are, too!
Look
—
’ Instead of going out, the torch-beam swept left, and then right, into the forest ‘—
see
?’

Fred tried to see. ‘We’re in … some sort of ditch—?’ That was all he could see in the pale yellow light as it moved, directing his eye: there were banks either side, humpy and uneven … but banks, nevertheless, with trees on either side, and only the minor debris of fallen branches in the bed of the ditch, ahead of them.

The torch went out. ‘That’s right: we’re in a ditch. And so long as I don’t go up on the bank on either side—which I can feel with my feet … and my umbrella … because you’ve got my ashplant now, damn it!—then we’re on the right track to A2 …
right
?’ The tightness of Audley’s voice marked the end of his patience. ‘So we’re going, Fred—“quam celerrime”, as my old Latin master used to say—or “double-quick”—or “on the double”—?’

They went, then. And they went almost, but not quite, ‘on the double’—the old sergeant-major’s double, hallowed on a thousand parade-grounds and route-marches … but as close to it as the ditch, and the debris in it, and Audley’s longer legs, permitted—

(But
—
dear God Almighty! Damn you, Kyri, for getting me into this mess
—
damn you! And I could be dining with you in Athens, this very night, but for that, Colonel Michaelides, damn you!)

(Phew! The bloody ditch was almost vertical now!)
And—he could feel the sweat running down his chest—And—thank God he was nearly at the top now! He could even see, far off on his right, a few distant lights twinkling of what remained of German civilization.

But—a ditch? Since when did ditches climb up almost vertical hillsides in forests—?

‘David!’ The name came out in a hoarse exhausted wheeze. But then, as he opened his mouth again to repeat it, the sound of an aircraft which had been droning in the back of his consciousness suddenly increased, drowning out his intention and replacing it with the fear that even if he
clicked
now, Audley wouldn’t hear him. So instead he felt around with his stick like a blind man, for the guidelines of the improbable ditch on either side of him.

They were still there—there first on one side, and then on the other, as the continuous drone became a steady drumming, and then graduated to a final ear-splitting roar as the plane swept over them finally, far too low for comfort, above the top of this Taunus hill.

Eventually the sound died away. But then, even as it did so, he heard more droning engines—
Click-click-click-click
, he pressed desperately.

Click-click-click
came back to him, humiliatingly close—but then
click-click
—
two more
clicks
, but further off and almost drowned by the second approaching aircraft.

Christ! Maybe they weren’t so clever at that
! thought Fred, clicking again instinctively.
What if there were a couple of mad low-flying Yanks up there, practising their night-flying
… or
maybe helplessly lost, and circling the airfield on which he’d landed a few hours back
—
?

‘Hullo there—Fred?’ Audley pitched his voice against the crescendo of sound, as the second plane swept overhead. ‘Jolly good!’

‘Is it?’ There would soon come a point when this young man’s version of Amos de Souza’s nonchalance irritated him beyond endurance.

‘You’ve still got the bag, I hope?’ Audley’s cheerful confidence was worse than de Souza’s imitation. That last bit was bloody steep, wasn’t it?‘

Foul words presented themselves. But already the first aircraft was on its second circuit. ‘Yes—’ He had to shout ‘YES!’

‘JOLLY GOOD!’ Audley waited then, until the first plane had passed over them for the second time. ‘We’re almost there—you heard Sar’ Devenish’s signal?‘

‘Yes.’ He couldn’t say that he hadn’t been warned: Audley had warned him that Colonel Colbourne was a lunatic, and Colonel Colbourne had warned him that all his officers were mad. And, long ago, Kyri Michaelides had warned him to steer clear of them all. ‘What sort of ditch is this?’

‘What—?’ As Audley started to speak the drumming of the second aircraft increased. ‘WHAT?’

This time, impossibly, it was worse: in the black starless sky the second plane almost touched the tree-tops just ahead of them, with its red-and-white lights winking to outline it.

‘WHAT … ’ Audley let the sound disperse before he continued ‘ … sort of ditch?’

So he had heard, the first time. ‘Yes.’

‘Yes—of course! It’s—’

Click-click!

‘I didn’t have time to tell you—’
Click-click-click
Audley returned ‘—it’s a
Roman
ditch, Fred. Because we’re spot on the old Roman front line, which curves up round Frankfurt—or “Moguntiacum”, as Caesar Augustus Colbourne is wont to call it—the old Roman
limes
, in Latin: it linked up with their Raetian defences, on the Danube, with the Antoine Line, on the Main … and then north and west through the Upper German lines, to reach the Rhine at “Confluentes”—which is Coblenz to poor ignorant types like you and me, Fred—’ Audley’s voice had been lifting as he continued, becoming a shout again ‘—
FRED
—
’

It was no good replying. With the noise, he could hardly think.

‘The Romans dug a ditch, all the way from the Danube to the Rhine—’ Now as the sound decreased, Audley adjusted to it again ‘—with look-out posts, and forts … sort of, like Hadrian’s Wall, but not so good—sort of customs-and-excise, plus soldiers … Hadrian’s Wall—?’

‘I know what Hadrian’s Wall was. Go on, man.’ The planes were going away at last, it seemed. But he couldn’t be sure. ‘Go on—?’

But Audley appeared to have been struck dumb by the mounting silence.

‘What’s the matter?’ After so much noise after so much silence, Fred cracked first. And he also heard one of the planes coming back again. ‘We’re in the Roman ditch—is that it?’

‘That’s right. Our billet—the fort … is on the same line. Ten or twelve miles away, as the Roman legionary might walk it—eight or nine, as the crow flies. But twice as much, on the road tonight. And now we’ve done about a mile and a half, from A1. Anyway … With another half a mile to do, to the objective. Which is also on the line —’

Click-click
! came out of the darkness ahead of them.

‘—and we should be moving now. Because A2 is damn close to A3, I tell you. And the Yanks’ll be in position now, I’d guess.’

The circling planes were only a drone, but they were still out there, higher up, yet not far away. And suddenly Fred knew why.

Click-click-click
! Audley answered. ‘Right, Fred?’

‘The planes will be coming back as we close in, I take it? To drown our approach-sound?’ Amos de Souza had almost said as much, he remembered now. ‘Spot-on, major! An old trick—’