A New Kind of War

‘Yes.’ The eagles were still on patrol, wheeling and dipping and soaring over the highest peak, out of which the ridge itself issued in a great jumble of boulders piled beneath its vertical cliff. ‘So what?’

Kyriakos looked at him at last. ‘This is the path the villagers took when the Turks came. Over this ridge – this path – is the only line of retreat. If our side is too strong . . . we’re rather in the way, old boy.’

The Greek shrugged philosophically, but Fred remembered from Tombe di Pesaro days that the worse things were, the more philosophic Captain Michaelides became. Then hadn’t we better find another spot in which to cower, Kyri?‘ He tried to match the dummy4

casual tone.

‘Yes, I was thinking about that.’ Kyriakos turned his attention to the hillside below them. But it was unhelpfully open all the way down to the track along which they should have driven an hour earlier, happy and unworried – only an hour, or a lifetime thought Fred. And that further reminded him of the Michaelides Philosophy: being in the Wrong Place ... or there at the Wrong Time . . . that was ‘ No fun at all, old boy!’ And now they appeared to have achieved the unfunny double, by Christ! But the unfunniness, and the patient eagles, concentrated his mind. ‘If you did see someone up there, Kyri . . . couldn’t he just possibly be one of yours – ours?’ He threw in his lot finally with the Royal Hellenic Army and the bloodthirsty National Guard.

‘Ye-ess . . .’ Kyriakos shifted to another position behind the outcrop. ‘I was thinking about that, too.’

Fred watched him raise himself – never show yourself in the same place twice, of course; and the poor bastard had had a lot longer in which to learn that simplest of lessons, ever since the Italians had chanced their luck out of Albania, back in the winter of ‘40. But then he remembered his own manners.

‘My turn, Kyri.’ He raised himself – too quickly, too quickly – but too late, now! And he wanted to see the crest of that damned ridge for himself, anyway –

The surface of the rock midway between them burst into fragments in the same instant that the machine-gun rattled down at them, with the bullets ricocheting away into infinity behind them.

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This time the echoes – their own echoes, much louder than those of the fire-fight over the ridge – took longer to lose themselves, as he breathed out his own mixture of terror and relief.

(“Missed again!‘ That was what Sergeant Procter, ever-cheerful, ever-efficient, always said, when he himself had been shaking with fear, back in Italy. ’ If they can’t hit us now, sir, then the buggers don’t deserve to win the war –do they!‘)

‘That was deuced stupid of you, old boy.’ Somewhere along the line of his long multi-national service since Albania in 1940

Kyriakos had picked up deuced, probably from some blue-blooded British unit, which he used like too bloody right, a ripe Australianism, in other ‘No-fun’ situations.

‘I’m sorry.’ The ridge had been thickly forested on the crest, with encircling horns of trees to the left and right; so the machine-gunner’s friends would have no problem flanking this outcrop, thought Fred miserably. And Kyriakos had certainly observed all that already. ‘A moment of weakness, Kyri – I’m sorry.’

‘But not altogether useless.’ With typical good manners Kyriakos hastened to take the sting from his criticism. ‘That was a Browning

– a “B-A-R”, as our American friends would say ... a nice little weapon.’

‘Yes?’ Fred let himself be soothed, knowing that Kyri was using his hobby to soothe him, deliberately. ‘I bow to your experience, Captain Michaelides. But what does that mean?’

‘Not a lot, to be honest. It goes back a long way, does the BAR ...

We had some of them in 1940 – Belgian FN variants . . . But, then dummy4

so did the Poles. And the Germans and the Russians inherited them, as well as ours, of course . . . But, so far as I’m aware, you never used them, old boy.’

Lying back and looking upwards Fred caught sight of one of the eagles making a wider circuit. Or maybe the bloody bird had pinpointed his dinner now. ‘So those aren’t our friends, up there?’

Kyriakos thought for a moment. ‘Ah . . . now, I don’t think we have any friends at the moment, either way.’ Another moment’s thought. ‘Because we’re not part of the action: we’re an inconvenience, you might say.’

The fire-fight continued sporadically over the crest. By now the commanding officers on each side would be estimating casualties and discretion against the remaining hours of daylight and their very difficult objectives. And suddenly an overwhelming bitterness suffused Fred. Because the bloody Germans were one thing, and bad enough. But the bloody Greeks were another – and this really wasn’t the war he had volunteered for. Even, until now, it wasn’t a war which he had been able to take seriously: it was Kyri’s bloody war, not the British army’s bloody war – and especially not his!

All of which made him think of the unthinkable, which nestled in his pocket, where he had put it this morning, freshly laundered.

‘How about surrendering – for the time being?’

‘Yes.’ Kyriakos nodded. ‘I had been thinking about that, also.’

The lightness of the Greek’s voice alerted him. The truce talks ...

we could claim flag of truce – couldn’t we?‘

‘We could.’ The Greek had his own large white handkerchief.

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‘But ... if you don’t mind ... we will claim it my way – ’ He shook the handkerchief out. ‘ – okay?’

Suddenly Fred felt the breath of a colder wind within him than one he had already felt on his cheeks. ‘Kyri – ’

‘No! You are quite right, old boy!’ Kyriakos shook his handkerchief. ‘We wouldn’t get ten yards . . . This way . . .