The '44 Vintage

the raw cracks between the toes on the other foot had so far obstinately refused to heal; though to be fair to the Sister he lacked the permanganate of soda and the chlorinated soda and boric acid which she prescribed; and even if he had possessed them he would never have been able to find a way of soaking his feet in her weak solution of those chemicals. He just had his handy bottle of gentian violet.

He reached over to his left-hand ammunition pouch and carefully extracted the precious bottle from its nest of cotton waste between the Sten magazines. The luxury of privacy was another thing to be thankful for. This time at least he would be free from the humiliation of painting his feet while others were watching.

He set the bottle on the ledge beside the boot, noting as he did so that it was still nearly half full. With a little luck it could still outlast the fungus if used sparingly, with no need to report sick . . .

He stared down with concentrated hatred at his left foot through the distorting glass of the cool water, wishing irrationally that it was acid which might burn and cauterize both the infection and the treacherous toes. The colour was a filthy, degrading colour, and the toes were his enemies—he, who had always been the smartest and the cleanest man in the platoon. And they, the toes—his own flesh, they were the source of his waking and sleeping nightmare of being unfit for duty when at last there was real duty to be done.

He could hear his father's voice in his inner ear:

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Look after your feet and they'll look after you.

And—

Trench feet? The bad battalions had it, but not the good ones.

He didn't even know what trench feet were. But they had to be something like this.

Something had moved in the corner of his eye. Or maybe it was a slight sound, or a shadow, or the warning of a fifth sense that told him he was no longer alone.

He reached for the bottle of gentian violet, to hide it away in his ammunition pouch.

'Hande hoch, Tommy!'

Butler froze, unable to believe his ears, his hand halfway towards the little bottle.

'Hande hoch.'

The impossible words came from behind him, quite close. But where they had been almost conversational the first time, more a suggestion than an order, now they were a harsh command which made his back a yard wide.

Butler raised his hands.

'Gut. Steh jetzt auf.'

The words banged against each other in his brain like goods wagons in a shunting yard, their meaning clanging out loudly.

He stood up in the stream, feeling the water crawl up his legs to soak his trousers below the knee.

The meaning expanded. First, it wasn't possible: this was ten miles, more than ten miles, behind the front line of a retreating enemy.

And then, because it was happening, it was no longer impossible, only cruelly unfair.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

It must be an escaped prisoner ... or maybe a bailed-out Luftwaffe pilot?

No, hardly an airman. Because he hadn't even heard a German plane, never mind seen one, in the last twenty- four hours. But if an escaped soldier . . . that was a frightening thought, because the shambling prisoners he had seen had seemed relieved to be out of their defeat alive. Anyone determined to fight on would have to be a hard man, most likely a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi from the SS units.

' Dreh dich um . . . langsam.'

Langsam? Butler scrabbled desperately in his German vocabulary, fear sharpening his memory to a razor-edge.

Slowly.

He turned round slowly.

To his surprise there was no one to be seen. The strip of rough pasture between the stream and the hedgerow was empty, and the open gateway to the road through which he had entered the field over the tank-crushed remains of the gate was empty too.

'Gut. . . zuwelchem Truppenteil gehorst du, Tommy?'

The voice seemed to come out of the thin air of the gateway, for choice from the left of it where the vegetation was thickest.

Butler licked his lips nervously, sorting out the words for their meaning and trying at the same time to divine the intention behind that meaning. The German obviously wanted to know his prisoner's unit as a prelude to asking if he was alone. But why should an ex-prisoner want a prisoner of his own when he ought to be avoiding all contact with his enemies?

The answer came back frighteningly quickly: the uniform he was wearing was what the German wanted.

A nice clean British uniform, without holes or bloodstains—which was why he was using words and not bullets.

' Zuwelchem—Truppenteil—gehorst—du . . . ?' The German spaced the words patiently, as though he had all the time in the world.

Butler was suddenly and shamefully aware that he was sweating profusely. Fear wasn't cold, like the books said, but hot—and he was bathed in sweaty fear. It was running off him and down him like water.