The soldiers approached the tank and at a word from an officer made temporary camp. They sat, feet in the ditch, and broke out water bottles, while a billycan was set up on a portable gas ring. Little winding chimneys of white smoke rose from cigarettes in the still, hot air. Dryden felt their collective antagonism to the presence of the press, and watched, oddly fascinated, as one dismantled and oiled an automatic rifle. Another stood, walked a few yards downwind and urinated into a ditch.
Sensing the calculated insult Dryden looked away and heard laughter at his back, then footsteps approaching, so he turned to face a heavy man with three pips on his flak jacket. As the officer made his way through the gorse he picked up his legs and arms as he walked, a self-conscious compensation perhaps for the onset of middle age. Dryden guessed he was in his early forties, but recognized a military uniform had never made anyone look any younger. The major’s hair was boot-polish black and shone unnaturally, but his complexion was poor, blotched as if his face had been scrubbed with a nailbrush. Cross-checking his position on a hand-held GPS with a map in a plastic see-through wallet he looked up at Dryden, unable to hide a frisson of annoyance at the sight of the reporter.
‘Dryden?’ he asked. ‘Philip Dryden – from
Dryden nodded. At the gate he’d been presented with the official form for signature which effectively removed his right to claim insurance if some idiot with a long-range peashooter turned him into a human jigsaw.
The major smiled, taking five years off his age: ‘Just routine. Only with live firing we insist. Regulations. You lot in the press would be the first to get on our case if we broke the rules.’
Laughter rolled along the line of men by the ditch, and Dryden wondered what was funny. Excluded, he looked towards the north where the guns must be, hidden beyond the horizon.
‘So they’ll fire over our heads right?’ he asked realizing immediately that there was little alternative. ‘Sorry. Stupid question.’
The major nodded.
‘When does the shelling start?’ Dryden asked.
‘Maroon – that’s the signal flare – goes up 10.50am. They’ll hit it on the pip. Ten minutes later they open fire with an eight-minute bombardment, then we go in to the first line of attack and stop. Then 11.20 another maroon, followed by a further five-minute bombardment at 11.30. Then we move forward to the targets.’ Broderick rubbed his hands together. ‘Pictures?’
Dryden swung round a digital camera. ‘I’m a one-man band.’
‘Great.’ The major smiled. That was all the military was ever interested in thought Dryden – pictures to send home, pictures for the scrapbook, pictures for the mess wall, pictures in the local paper, pictures for the MoD. Sod the words.
Broderick looked up at the sky: ‘St Swithun’s Day,’ he said: ‘Looks like we could have a good month.’ The single cloud was a distant smudge to the east, and the noon sun was already compressing their shadows around their boots.
Dryden slapped a mosquito against the back of his hand. ‘You Territorial Army too?’ he asked, keen to talk about something other than the weather.
‘Sure, sure. These are my men,’ he said, managing not to make it sound proprietorial.
‘So what do you do in Civvy Street?’
The major looked him in the face. ‘Business,’ he said, ducking the question.
A maroon thudded from the direction of the checkpoint, the signal that they had ten minutes before the bombardment began. The dull percussion in the sky was marked by a purple blotch and matched by a solid jolt through the earth.
The men stood and gathered round, following Broderick up on to the top of the old tank. The billycan was passed around, the tea inside reeked of tannin, had been sweetened with carnation milk, and was the colour of liquid cattle manure. Dryden took a gulp, casually, knowing he was being watched.
Broderick sat on the turret, spreading out a map for the men. ‘Right. Listen up. Today’s exercise is live firing. This range was requisitioned in 1907. That’s a century. So far the number of soldiers who have left Whittlesea Mere in a body bag is four. There is absolutely no law of nature which says one of you can’t make it five, so listen.’
Dryden imagined the crumpled body bag, his own hand peeping from the folds of black plastic, blood under the fingernails. ‘War games,’ he thought, realizing what an obscene juxtaposition of words it was.
The major’s briefing was brutally short. The Royal Artillery would bomb the two targets – twice – then the company would move in, conduct house-to-house searches, flush out insurgents, secure the target, and replace the red target flags with blue. All shells would be live, all personal ammunition blank. Blue tin hats denoted Blue Force – those attacking. Red Force, the enemy, was in position. Its soldiers, wooden cut-out targets with concentric rings running out from the heart, wore red hats; a helpful designation Dryden could not help feeling undermined the integrity of the exercise. His own yellow armband proclaimed him a non-combatant.
‘And this is our target,’ said Broderick, stabbing a finger at the heart of the wasteland of fen shown on the map. ‘The lost village of Jude’s Ferry.’
