A New Kind of War (9 page)

The big car moved forward, as smoothly and effortlessly as a Rolls—or as a well-driven Sherman, thought Fred, with a pang of sadness, remembering Allan Koran’s boast from his last evening swim at Vouliagmeni, three days and most of Europe away from where he was now, in the rain alongside a line of huge American lorries.

The car checked slightly, and the rain blurred the window, and he felt the loss of Allan and his friends, and of the poet’s wine-dark sea and the ineffably blue sky, which was even greater than the mild hunger-and-thirst he had felt for several hours—

(‘Since Scobiemas I have become an effete peacetime soldier
,’ Allan had said, that last time. ‘
Steward! Bring me a beer
—
two beers!’
And then to Fred: ‘
He’ll slop them
…
And there was a time when I could put two beers on my Sherman, and drive it down here without wasting a drop! We’ve all become demoralized by peace, Fred
—
“Peace in Europe
—
and God help those poor devils in the Far East”
—
there’s a toast for you! “God help them
…
but, dear God, don’t ask us to help them!” Steward! Where are those beers
—
?’)

But no beers now. And he mustn’t doze off, either—

‘Sorry I didn’t come for you, major … sir.’ The driver half-twisted towards him. ‘But … the American gentleman said not to. ’E said I was to stay where I was, an‘ ’e’d bring you, ‘e said, ’e did.‘

Fred perked up. If the little man was talkative, then he might let slip their present destination; and then, when they had gone far enough, he could be browbeaten elsewhere. ‘He did?’

‘Ah—’ They passed the last of the trucks, and then swerved too late to avoid a crudely-filled crater across half the road ‘—but I wouldn’t ’ave gorn, even if ‘e’d arsked me … not with all these Yanks around, see?’

All Fred saw was that most of the American drivers were negroes. ‘Yes?’

‘They’d ’ave ‘ad the car, one of ’em would—sure as God made little apples.‘ The little man spoke without rancour.

‘Of course.’ It had been foolish of him to forget for a second that anything left unguarded for more than five seconds was at risk. Soldiers or civilians, it was all the same, they were all thieves; and what they couldn’t steal they stripped—like that Bailey Bridge transporter in Italy, which had been found the day after minus every removable part, engine, wheels, nuts and bolts, and Bailey Bridge. And there was no reason why Germany should be different. But he wanted the little man to go on talking. ‘They’ll steal anything, will they?’

‘Lord no, sir!’ The little man chuckled throatily. ‘The Yanks is choosey now. The Jerries, you’ve got to watch … speshly the little kids—they’re not scared, see. An’ the DPs is worst—they’ll ‘ave the shirt orf yer back if they takes a fancy to it … But the Yanks—’ He tapped the steering wheel. ‘—this is a good vee-hicle, this is. Wot they call a “collector’s piece”, this is.’

Fred lifted himself slightly, the better to see ahead through the two arcs cleared by the windscreen wipers. The road was empty, and flanked by seemingly endless ruins on both sides. But that was more or less what he had expected: the industrial outskirts of the city, which were also adjacent to what would certainly have been a major Luftwaffe airfield, would have been heavily bombed many times. ‘A collector’s piece?’ Cars didn’t interest him, but as he observed the length of the bonnet and the array of dials on the dashboard, adding them to the luxuriousness of the rear seats and the relatively smooth ride over the much-repaired road surface, he also remembered the Air Force major’s admiration.

‘Ah, that it is.’ The little man massaged the wheel approvingly, even though he drove perilously close to a huge pile of ruins—a pack of slanted concrete floors—which narrowed the road. ‘French, this is … wot was owned by a famous film star before the war—before Jerry pinched it. Built like a tank, it is—weighs nearer three ton than two … more like a tank than your proper Froggie tanks, wot they made out uv cardboard an’ ticky-tack, wot I remember of ‘em—huh!’

‘Yes?’ That the little man could remember French tanks, however libellously, for purposes of comparison, confirmed Fred’s estimation of him. There was nothing unusual about his evident contempt for the French, which was common among all those who knew nothing of the incomparable performance of Juin’s
Corps Expeditionnaire Français
in the Italian mountains, and almost universal among British soldiers, outside the 8th Army. But this wasn’t the moment to put him right. ‘Is that so?’

‘Ah.’ The little man let the big car demonstrate its excellence over a series of former bomb craters, while Fred began to marvel at the extent of the city’s ruins. ‘Only trouble is … it’s got a terrible lot of electrics—gearbox an’ all. So it needs a proper REME mechanic to keep it on the road.‘ Another throaty chuckle. ’But Major M’Crocodile’s got hisself a proper REME mechanic, to look after it, see—Corporal Briggs, that is—this is the major’s speshul car, this is—Corporal Briggs!‘ The repeated chuckle was like a death-rattle in the little man’s throat.

‘Corporal Briggs—?’ Obviously there was a story to Corporal Briggs which the little man was bursting to tell. And the more talkative he became, the better.

‘Got ’im out of a court-martial, to get ‘im for the major, the Colonel did—got ’im
orf
an‘ then got ’im posted to us, see?‘ The little man turned towards him, ignoring the endless rain-blurred vista of bombed-out ruins through which they were driving. ’Proper artful, ‘e is—’

‘Watch the road, man!’ Fred commanded quickly as a pile of rubble came dangerously close. But then, as the driver snapped back to his duty, he moved quickly to rebuild the bridge between them. ‘Corporal Briggs is artful—?’

‘Naow, sir, major—not ’
im
—
‘ The little man sounded the car’s mellifluous two-tone horn as they came to an intersection, and then accelerated across it ’—though ‘e is a good mechanic, I’ll say that for ’im … an‘ ’e was court-martialled for doin‘ up Jerry cars an’ then floggin‘ ’em back to the Jerries, see … But
naow
—
it’s Colonel Colbourne wot’s artful … But, then, o‘ course he was a lawyer before the war, gettin’ murderers orf from bein‘ ’anged, wot was guilty, an‘ all that—see?’

‘
Colonel
—’ Fred steadied his voice ‘—Colbourne?’ Relief blotted out surprise. ‘How far is it to Kaiserburg … and TRR-2, driver?’

‘The Kaiser’s Burg?’ The little man confirmed the name in correcting it to his own liking. ‘Not far. If it wasn’t pissin’ down we could maybe see it from ‘ere, almost.’ He pointed into the murk ahead. ‘Right up on top of the Town-us, it is—’igh up, in the woods.‘

Taunus
, Fred remembered, from the only map he had been able to find in Athens. But there had been no
Kaiserburg
on the map. ‘Yes?’
But at least they were agreed that that was where they were going
! he thought. ‘I couldn’t find it on the map.’

‘No … well, you wouldn’t now, would you?’ The little man agreed readily. “Cause it ain’t anywhere—is it? The bleedin‘ Kaiser’s Burg!’

Fred saw an opening. ‘It’s a bad billet, is it?’

The rain slashed across the windscreen, and the car bucked in well-bred protest over another crater—
down
…
bump-bump-bump
…
up
—
and then ran smoothly again, still flanked by ruins.

‘I’ve known worse.’ Uncharacteristically, the little man looked on the bright side, in the midst of unseasonable summer weather likely to render even adequate billets depressing.

A hideous thought offered itself to Fred. ‘We’re not under canvas?’ He had taken it for granted that the occupying forces would have looked after themselves properly in this desolation. But they were well to the south of the zone earmarked for British military occupation, and the teeming Americans had had plenty of time to move into the best of what had been left standing.

‘Under—?’ They had reached another crossroads in the ruins, but this time the little man had his nose against the windscreen as he peered up at a signpost festooned with information, most of it in Military American, but some pathetically civilian, indicating streets which existed only in memory. ‘What was that, sir—?’

Fred felt his depression returning, even though ruins were the same the world over, and he knew that he’d seen enough of them to take these for granted (these just here were fire-bombed empty shells, still substantial, but floor-less from the top to their ground-level pile of blackened rubbish within): he had seen Plymouth burn, and taken his men into Bristol the day after its heaviest raid, to aid the civil power; and his brief bomb-disposal service, before Italy, was best-forgotten … although, when he thought about it, Italy—and Greece too—had on occasion been even worse, when he’d come upon some out-of-the-way village, as inaccessible as it was inoffensive, yet which had been nonetheless comprehensively flattened, sometimes by design, sometimes quite unnecessarily, by accident. But even though this was Germany, which had started it all … the truth was, he was sick of ruins.

The little man came to a decision (which was of necessity all his own, since the rain-swept wilderness appeared to be uninhabited), and they were moving again. ‘What was that, sir—?’

For a moment, Fred didn’t reply. And then the moment lengthened, as they continued to drive through the ruins. And there seemed no end to them, and he realized that he was passing through not ‘ruins’, but the ruin of a once-great city, which might never rise again—or not in his lifetime, anyway.

‘Under canvas?’ His unnaturally prolonged silence animated the little man’s memory. ‘
Naow
, major, sir—we’re snug enough—for the time bein’, like—eh?‘

Fred closed his eyes and sat back in comfort, trying to blot out the dead city. Or … alive or dead …
it was finished, here
—
that was what he must think! Or … he was tired and hungry … and the terrible inadequacy of memory was that, while he could recall the exact picture of a leg of roast pork, with golden crackling on it, he could not recall the smell and the taste—
the taste of crackling
—

There was a bump, and he opened his eyes again as the big car surged forward. And suddenly, they were in open country—country soaked and dripping, but mercifully untouched by war, after all they had been through. And that was like a blessing, after the anathema of the city: all the worst that the war could do had its limits, leaving the rest quite untouched, outside Plymouth, and Bristol, and Cassino—leaving places which hadn’t had their names on the bombs untouched, as though there had never been a war. ‘Where are we?’

‘Wot?’ Now that he was free of the responsibility of threading his way through the ruins of the city, and had his right passenger in the back of the car, the little man was free of all responsibility. So it didn’t matter what the original question had been, never mind his answer to it.

‘Where are we going?’ All the more important questions which he wanted to ask — ‘
Who the hell is Colonel Colbourne
?’ and ‘
What the hell is “TRR-2 Kaiserburg”
?’ in the unembattled British Army order-of-battle in Occupied Germany—were out of order,
first
because they were too humiliating to be asked … and
second
because the little man probably couldn’t answer them usefully anyway.

‘Wot?’ After that stretch of peaceful, umbombed Germany they were passing through a peaceful, utterly unbombed little village—or, not quite peaceful … because there was a group of American army vehicles in the centre of it now—a big white-starred staff car, and a jeep with its rain-hood up, and a 15-cwt … and a large American NCO, with chevrons half the way down his arm, chewing his cigar regardless of the rain.

The sight of the American cautioned Fred to acclimatize himself to Occupied Germany, in the American zone: no British NCO, required to wait in the rain for his officer, would have dared to smoke a cigarette so openly, let alone a cigar. But the Americans, for all their readiness to accept appalling combat casualties, were civilians at heart even more steadfastly than the rank and file of British. And now that the war in Europe was well and truly over he must expect an even more pronounced decline in military discipline than he had observed among his own countrymen, with which Colonel Michaelides so often taxed him.

‘Not far now.’ The little man humoured him, like a father with a tired child in the back.

‘To Kaiserburg?’ Fred felt the big car stretch itself uphill, under the dripping forested slopes of the Taunus Hills.

The Kaiser’s Burg—yus.‘ Sniff. ’An‘ a nasty, dirty night it’s goin’ to be—like it always is when we’ve got a job on.‘ Another sniff. ’Bloody rain!‘ He twisted towards Fred. ’Not like where you’ve been, eh.‘

‘No!’ He answered automatically, as the memory of the crystal clarity of the evening light and the inviting waters of the bay of Marathon tugged him momentarily away from
when we’ve got a job on
—
! ‘What job?’

‘The Kaiser’s Burg—huh!’ The little man appeared not to have heard him. ‘It’s only temp’ry billet, mind you … ’Cause … we’ve bin movin‘ around down ’ere, amongst the Yanks, like … An‘ the Colonel—it suits ’im, bein‘ wot it is … an’ ‘im bein’ wot ‘e is—suits ’im down to the bleedin‘ ground!’ Bigger sniff. ‘No bleedin’ electrics … an‘ we only got water because it’s bin pissin’ down, so the cisterns is all full.‘ He twisted towards Fred again. ’We were in shirt-sleeves up North, in May—would you believe it? An‘ in June, it was a treat … On’y good thing, bein’ ‘ere
now
, maybe we won’t ’ave to come back again … ‘Cause it’ll be perishin’ up here, come winter, wot with the wind and the snow … Mr David sez it’ll be comin‘ all the way from Russia, ’cause there’s nothin‘ in the way to stop it.’ The head shook reassuringly suddenly. ‘But we’ll be all right, come winter, if only we’re still up in the Swartzenburg—with them thick walls, an’ all the trees roundabout, to keep the ‘ome fires burnin’ … We’ll be snug as a bug while the Jerries is freezin‘—serve ’em right!‘