World in Flames

“What?” said Lewis, alarmed, turning back from watching the coffee, face tight with hunger and fatigue.

“No lolly for you, old chap!” He meant no candy — no prize.

“What you bloody mean?”

“Look!”

Lewis did look, at the map, now unfolded and spread out on the table. Suddenly he remembered the warning about not marking it up with starting coordinates, et cetera, lest the enemy, as Cheek-Dawson had cautioned, could backtrack on it. He peered closely at the map. “Hang on. Here — let me have a gander.” With this, Lewis bend down, looking closer at the map. At that moment another man, one of the missing, collapsed in the doorway. Two men lumbered to their feet, went over, and dragged him in.

Lewis was still staring at the map. “There’s no bloody writing on it. Look, not even a pencil impression.” He held the map up like holding a sheet to dry. “ ‘Ave a look.”

Cheek-Dawson turned him about to face the class, prostrate before him. “Anyone see it?”

Everybody gazed up at the map, some of them looking like stunned cows, still not recovered. There was no writing on it, just as Lewis had said.

David Brentwood reluctantly put up his hand. Poor old Lewis looked as if he’d collapse if they didn’t give him something to eat soon. “Folds,” said David. “You can see the square where the map’s been folded and pressed down.”

“Top of the class, Brentwood. Folded square!” said Cheek-Dawson, taking the map from an incredulous Lewis. “Enemy interrogator sees that he’d know precisely the grid you started from. Reduce his search pattern by a factor of ten at least. And you and your group would’ve had it.”

Brentwood pulled out his map. “I did the same thing,” he said, looking up at Cheek-Dawson.

The officer smiled. “So did I — first time out. Don’t do it again. Keep folding it different ways — confuses the dickens out of them—if you’re caught!”

“Can we eat now?” said Lewis unrepentantly.

“Of course,” said Cheek-Dawson. “Then after lunch you lot take a stroll down to Avergavenny. We’ll pick you up there with the lorries and take you back to Senny Bridge. Everyone clear on that?”

“Why can’t we go back now?” asked a Coldstream Guard.

“Yeah,” added Lewis.

“Lorries are tied up, I’m afraid,” answered Cheek-Dawson. Besides, a stroll after lunch’ll do you good. Otherwise you’ll get sleepy.”

“Where is this Aber—”

“Avergavenny,” said Cheek-Dawson, noting the Coldstream Guard’s name. Anyone who couldn’t get a verbal instruction right the first time could put a troop, or an entire SAS squadron of seventy-two men, at risk. Foreign-sounding names were no excuse. Scotland and Wales were full of them.

“It’s just east of us,” continued Cheek-Dawson. “Follow the road. It’s clearly marked.”

“How far, sir?”

“Oh, what is it, Sar’Major — twenty-three, twenty-five miles?”

“ ‘Round that, sir.”

There was a surly silence in the cold chapel.

“Right you are,” said Cheek-Dawson. “I’ll not hold you up any longer. You can have lunch. Pipes are frozen — no joy with the taps, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to do the best you can on that score.” He handed the map back amicably to Lewis and headed for the door with the RSM toward their Land Rover outside.

“Where’s bloody lunch?” asked Lewis, joined by a discordant chorus.

“In the bag,” said the RSM, pointing to a kit on the only table in the hall. “Where’d you think?” With that, he and Cheek-Dawson left.

Lewis opened the kit bag and staggered back. It had been tied tightly so that only now could they smell it. It was full of dead rats — and a note: “You must learn to live off the land, but we’ll give you a head start this time. From now on you’ll have to fend for yourself.”

One man began throwing up. Thelman said he felt sick. So did David. One of the Brits, a sapper, rose and kicked the table leg. “Fuck this for a lark! I quit!”

David rose slowly from the floor, every muscle and tendon in his body throbbing with pain, made worse now because of the cold, the temperature in the disused chapel only a degree or so above the minus five centigrade outside. He was looking back at the last man who had come in — someone said the man was so cold he was turning blue — and all David could see was the blinding snow of Stadthagen, the dogs chasing him, the guards screaming, and the cold, so cold it was unimaginable. “All right,” he called out to several of the troopers at the back of the chapel. “Take turns cuddling up to him. Thaw him out or we’ll lose him.”

“That Cheek-Dawson,” said Lewis. “He’s a fucking sadist.” David knew it was just as tough in the U.S. Special Forces — no doubt to separate the men from the boys when everyone was exhausted, cold, morale at rock bottom. Yet for David, this was worse than anything he’d seen in Special Forces. Intellectually he understood, but emotionally he was furious. But “fury just fucks your mind,” a black instructor had wisely told him at Camp Lejeune. “Fury gets you nowhere, man, clouds your judgment,” when judgment was already clouded because of the cold, hunger, and resentment. David walked over to the table and called out, “Anyone got a knife?”

Several hands went up.

“Lighter — matches?” he asked next.

“Yeah. I got one.”

“All right. Let’s get the fire going.”

“Where? There’s no grate, no stove.”

“Tear apart the altar rails,” David said, pointing to the front of the chapel. Stick by stick.”

“Christ, there’ll be trouble for that,” said someone.

“You want your meat raw?” David asked. There was a loud crack — a plank coming away.

“All right,” said David, turning to the two men with the knives. “Start skinning.” One man came forward, the other not moving, shaking his head, his mouth twisted in a mask of repulsion. “I–I can’t.”

Brentwood walked over to him. “Listen, chief — you want to eat or not?”

The man shook his head.

“Then you’ll starve. Give me the knife.” He turned to Lewis. “Aussie, take this guy and a few others outside, tear off the guttering. Water’ll be frozen in that. We can melt it over the fire.”

“Okay, Davey boy,” said Lewis. You’re the boss. Come on, fellas — get the lead out.”

* * *

“Who’s that?” asked Cheek-Dawson, now sitting in the Land Rover parked a quarter mile down the road out of sight, listening to the parabolic mike feed on the Land Rover’s radio. “That the American chap — Brentwood?”

“Yes, sir. Didn’t say much before. You think he’s a goer?”

“The point is, Sar’Major, can he hack phases two to six? This is kindergarten.”

“True enough, sir.”

“Well then — shall we join them?”

“Very good, sir.”

* * *

When Cheek-Dawson reappeared with the RSM, everybody stopped what he was doing.

“Enough for two more?” asked Cheek-Dawson.

“No problem,” said Lewis. “You can start if you like, Captain.”

Cheek-Dawson didn’t hesitate. Pulling his SAS dagger from its scabbard, he pulled the rat from its spit, sliced a piece off, and, using the dagger as a fork, raised it to his mouth, blew on it to cool it, then began to eat.

“True what they say. Captain?” said Lewis with relish. “Taste like chicken?”

“Taste like rat, Aussie,” said Cheek-Dawson. He turned to Brentwood. “Course, you made a bad mistake with the fire, old boy.”

“Oh?” retorted Brentwood. “You couldn’t see it, could you? We jerry-rigged a canopy, blackened out the windows. You couldn’t have seen it. Besides, it’s snowing. So what’s the beef?”

“The rat’s the beef,” said someone. Brentwood ignored it, waiting for Cheek-Dawson’s response. He had him cold. Didn’t he?