A New Kind of War

‘Of course! Yes, indeed!’ Kyriakos echoed the youth’s enthusiasm, serious and straight-faced. ‘And there is the Frankish cathedral in Athens – that is most interesting.’

‘Is it?’ Audley frowned. “I haven’t seen that. Where is it?‘

‘Oh ... it is much damaged by artillery fire.’ The Greek’s face was suddenly expressionless.

‘Not our guns, I hope?’ The thought of British 25-pounders hammering Frankish thirteenth-century work scandalized Audley.

‘I know that Ibrahim Pasha knocked a hugh breach in the castle at Chlemoutsi in 1825 – damn the Turks!’

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‘You are an historian?’ Kyriakos gave the youth his widest grin.

‘That is obvious, of course.’

‘Well . . . not yet, actually.’ The youth squirmed. ‘But I’ve got a place at Cambridge . . . That is, if God and the army don’t mess things up between them, don’t you know?’ He returned the grin.

‘Your English is jolly good, I must say, Captain – Kyriakos, I mean.’ Then he blinked. ‘I mean . . . “an” historian – ’ Then suddenly he seemed to remember where he was, flashing a quick bright glance at Fred. ‘How did you two come to meet each other, exactly?’

‘Ah! That would be telling!’ Kyriakos rolled a warning eye at Fred before he came back to Audley. ‘But you were just about to tell us how you knew about the secret path – the back door to Osios Konstandinos – eh?’

‘Oh – yes! It’s all in Pemberton, you see.’ Audley was quite disarmed now. ‘The Turks razed the village in the Greek War of Independence – 1824, that was . . . Reshid Pasha had got wind that Markos Botsaris was there, apparently.’ The youth’s grin twisted.

‘It’s like history repeating itself, you might say – ’ He caught his tongue, and the grin became a grimace as he realized what he had said. ‘But with us as the Turks, you see.’

‘Ah – Reshid Pasha!’ Kyriakos glossed over Audley’s indiscretion quickly. ‘He was moving against Missolonghi hereabouts in 1824, wasn’t he? And against your Lord Byron – he was there at the time, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ Audley seized Lord Byron eagerly. ‘It was Byron and Markos Botsaris who were g-g-galvanizing the Missolonghi dummy4

defenders in ’24. And Reshid aimed to trap Botsaris in Osios Konstandinos, by coming in from the sea – ‘ He swung round in his seat, as Osios Konstandinos surrounded them.

It was just another Greek village, which looked as though it had been sacked and rebuilt at regular intervals, all the way from the Peleponnesian War through a hundred other wars, including Audley’s Franks and Turks, and Kyriakos’s Turks and Germans, so that it was now a jumble of infinitely re-used stone, half a dusty ruin and half a triumph of man over man’s inhumanity.

‘Here at last, by God!’ Audley pointed ahead for the benefit of his driver, of whom he had not taken the slightest notice since commanding him to get going, five uncomfortable miles back. ‘Go on past the square, as far as you can, there’s a good fellow.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The driver sounded weary enough to have served in all those ancient wars. ‘I know where to go, sir.’

‘You were saying – ?’ Kyriakos encouraged the youth. ‘Botsaris

– ?’

‘Yes.’ He gave Kyriakos a quick frown, as though he had at last realized that he’d been manoeuvred into answering most of the questions, instead of asking them. ‘But you know the story. So why am I telling it?’

‘Captain Fattorini doesn’t know it though.’ The Greek was ready for him.

‘Well, you tell him, then.’ The youth’s suspicions were clearly roused at last. ‘After you’ve answered my last question, that is.’

‘Your last question?’ Kyriakos echoed the words innocently.

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‘What was it?’

The squalid houses on each side of them all seemed to be empty, staring at them with blank eyes. But, of course, they weren’t empty. And they reminded Fred depressingly of Italy. And yet, Italy, at least, was where the real war was: in Italy, at least, a man knew which side he was on.

‘You wanted to know how we had met.’ He felt his patience snap.

‘I don’t see what the devil that has to do with you, though.’

As Audley started to stutter a reply they came out of the narrow street into what must be the village square. One half of it had been comprehensively demolished, and the other half was full of British military vehicles. A line of sullen-looking prisoners, some in the ragged remains of British battle-dress, was backed up against the wall of another of those tiny Byzantine-Greek churches, which looked as though it had been built for a race of midgets. At each end of the line a bored British soldier covered the prisoners with his Sten.

‘Go on – go on!’ Audley pointed ahead, towards the only unblocked exit, the sudden harshness of his voice hinting that he found this tableau of Liberated Greece no less depressing.

The jeep accelerated, jerking them all this way and that as it bumped over the ruined road-surface. Fred caught a glimpse of a group of soldiers between two of the lorries, one in the act of trying to light a dog-end without burning his nose, another urinating on the rear wheel of his lorry. The urinator had full corporal’s stripes on his arm.

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Discipline was going to hell! thought Fred: those, for a guess, were Royal Mendips of 12 Brigade, who had been notably reliable in Italy. But now they looked sullen and mutinous.

He turned on Audley savagely. ‘I’ve told you why we were up there, on that bloody path of yours – but what the devil is happening here?’