Here Be Monsters

the best troops could have got up there - and then caused all the trouble they did. I was attached to that American division, and we were expecting a strong counter-attack that first evening - or the next morning. The Germans had a good division in that sector - better than the one our chaps had to deal with on the British beaches, actually. Though of course their tanks were closer to us. If there'd been armour close to Omaha on D-Day as well, God only knows what would have happened… Anyway, we'd been arguing about the position of that good division before D- Day, but we didn't get confirmation until far too late. And there were several battalions in reserve - so, with the dummy2

way things were on the beaches, we were expecting to get hit any moment. But there weren't any tanks. And the Americans had made a pretty amazing recovery, actually.'

The Major started to cough politely, but inadvertently took in too much of his own bonfire, and choked frighteningly for the best part of a minute, to everyone's embarrassment.

'Sorry about that, Liza.' He wiped his face with what appeared to be a square of torn sheet.

'But do you understand a word of all that?' He cocked a huge eyebrow at her. 'Divisions and battalions - all that stuff?'

'Yes, Major.' For one fraction of a second Elizabeth began to hit back, irritated alike by his pipe and his assumptions, and sickened by the torn sheeting; but then she remembered that she actually loved the Major, who had always treated her with courtesy and who had now unearthed Colonel Sharpe for her, when everyone else had failed her. 'Yes, I think I do, that is.' She smiled at him, then at the Colonel, as though she was stretching her knowledge to its limits. 'So what did these Rangers do on the Pointe du Hoc - or whatever it's called?'

'Hah! I rather suspect they did what they were originally recruited and formed to do, Miss Loftus. Which happened far too rarely with the American Rangers - and with other elite formations I could mention.'

Elizabeth waited. When a man wanted to give distilled wisdom to the world, it was better to let him have his way without side-tracking him with too many intelligent unwomanly questions.

'Half the time they were squandered on conventional warfare. They threw away a whole Ranger battalion after the Anzio landing.' The Colonel drew a reminiscent breath, and gave the Major a nod. In another moment he'd be fairly launched.

'Huh!' This could have been the right moment for the Major to cough usefully. But instead he nodded back wisely. 'Half the time they should never have been formed in the first place.' He blinked at Elizabeth, as though surprised that he had formulated a complete sentence. 'Stripped the rest of the army of good men - ours as well as the Yanks. Never enough good line NCOs - off swanning around on hair-brained schemes in private armies.

Could tell you a tale or two about that!'

'Yes.' The Major's threat concentrated the Colonel's mind wonderfully, so that he refocused on Elizabeth. 'Pointe du Hoc - as I was saying… When they'd finished their business there, there weren't many of them left. But then, being Rangers, I rather suspect they got up to all sorts of mischief, which probably pulled the Germans away from the right flank of Omaha.

God knows what they did - we certainly didn't know exactly, in the Command Post, even dummy2

though they sent a staff officer off, to try and find out. But I never saw him again - they probably shot him, because the Rangers hated staff officers.' He smiled at Elizabeth. 'But then I had to go back to report to Monty -I was his spy, you see.'

The Deputy-Director sat up, one podgy hand still fumbling in the wreckage of his chocolate box. 'How's that again, Miss Loftus - Elizabeth?'

'How's… what?' He waved the hand vaguely - insultingly - as though he hadn't really been listening, but then she had said something of unexpected interest, against the odds. 'This fellow you talked to - ?'

She had to reel back. What she had just said had come just before Colonel Sharpe had discoursed at length on Field Marshal Montgomery, and then on the use (and misuse) of elite soldiers, which had ranged all the way from the Rangers on the Pointe du Hoc, forward to the Green Berets in Vietnam (and the Paras in the Falklands), and back to the Spartans at Thermopylae, almost two-and-a-half thousand years earlier.

'Well… I think he was attached to the Americans so that he could report back to the British

- '

'Who?' He was concentrating on her.

'Colonel Sharpe. The man I told you about - who told me about the Pointe du Hoc.'

'Yes, yes - ' He waved away the obvious fact that he hadn't been listening, quite unembarrassed ' - but how was it that you got on to him - tell me again - ?'

Cool it, Elizabeth! 'You told me not to consult the records, or anyone in the department.'

Paul would have given her all this in ten seconds flat, even though he was a 1914 -18 man.

'Or the Americans.' The nice young CIA man at Grosvenor Square, who was ex-US Navy and knew all about Father's war record, would have done the same, only better, over an agreeable lunch. 'So… there's this friend of my father's, who had this friend who was on the planning staff before D-Day, and was seconded to the American army as an observer.

But he wasn't really an observer. Or… I mean, he was… but his real job - '

'What's his name?' snapped Latimer. ' Name, Elizabeth - name - ?'

'Sharpe.' Elizabeth floundered. 'Colonel Sharpe - with an 'e'. I don't know his Christian name. But his family had an electrical firm in Hampshire, near Portsmouth. And they went into electronics - computers, I think.'

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Latimer punched the keys of his machine, while Elizabeth tried to conscript any other morsel Major Birkenshawe had let slip. 'I think they had a new factory just near Havant.'