Other Paths to Glory (32 page)

The sound of another lorry revving up on the edge of the wood broke the silence on the ridge. Butler turned towards it momentarily, then swung back towards Mitchell. He stabbed a finger towards the Prussian Redoubt abruptly.

‘In the meantime, get those old men off this hill and right away from here - double quick.’

Mitchell frowned.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I say. They shouldn’t be here.’

‘Why the hell not? They’ve more right to be here than anyone alive.’

‘Then if they want to stay that way, get them out of here. There’s enough explosive under this ground to blow us all halfway back to England.’

‘Explosive?’

‘Aye.’ Butler regarded him. ‘You didn’t get round to discovering what Ollivier had in store for this afternoon’s meeting, did you? A hundred tons of ammonal - or whatever the Germans used back in 1916. All packed in airtight tins and sandbagged in ready to blow. And the French reckon it would have blown, too, though I’m no expert.’

Ready to blow?

Mitchell stared at the wood, hypnotised by the thought of two hundred thousand pounds of ammonal. A third of that had opened a hole one hundred and fifty yards wide at La Boiselle …

‘Ollivier thought so too, anyway,’ went on Butler. ‘His detonator was set for 6 p.m.’

Bouillet Wood would have disappeared off the map.

And the summit conference.

And Paul Mitchell.

Ready to blow since 1916: So that was why the Germans had held Bully Wood so lightly - and why no counter-attack had been mounted until too late. They’d planned to draw the attack into the wood and then blow it to kingdom come from the safety of some deep dugout in the Prussian Redoubt.

Only Harry Bellamy and his Poachers had spoilt the plan.

‘It would have gone up right enough,’ he said.

‘Indeed? Because your Mills grenade went up?’

‘Not just the grenade, no.’ Mitchell watched the lorry on its way thoughtfully. ‘There were two big mines at Messines in ‘17 which were never exploded, and afterwards they more or less lost track of them - somewhere near Ploegsteert Wood they were.’

‘You mean they’re still down there?’

‘One is. The other blew up of its own accord during an electrical storm … in 1955. Fortunately it was still in open country.’

Come to that he had a little mine of his own now, large enough to make a respectable bang in academic circles: the truth about the battle of Hameau Ridge, no less.

And in popular circles too, suitably edited - just right for the front page of the
Sunday
Times Weekly Review,
say.

The Heroes of Hameau.

In its way that would be a memorial to Harry Bellamy and his Poachers; and it would certainly establish the future author of
The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line
most satisfactorily in the public eye: Paul Mitchell, the rising young military historian.

And after that there would be Charles Emerson’s unpublished masterpiece. For if the manuscript had gone up in flames the ideas were still intact, safely locked up in the rising young historian’s memory.

That future was his for the taking, the survivor’s inheritance.

Except that he had no more use for it than they had for a memorial. Or if they had they could afford to wait for a better man (or at least a worthier scholar) to build it for them. It was all the same to them - last year, next year, sometime, never.

Whereas Paul Mitchell had suddenly acquired a taste for the unconquered present.

He grinned at Butler. If he asked whose summit they’d saved he’d be told that it wasn’t any of his business. Which it wasn’t - so he wouldn’t ask.

Not for the next three days, anyway.

The End