A New Kind of War

The depression hardened him. ‘So what is our deception then – our real deception? Just picking up “Keys”, instead of Krausnick?’

Audley said nothing for a moment. ‘Wait and see. We ought to be moving now – ’

‘No.’ Apart from the hardening, there was the prospect of blundering about in the sodden darkness of the forest. ‘If I’m going to carry this bloody bag . . . then, apart from what the adjutant said

– what he told you to do, David ... I want to know what’s happening, damn it!’

dummy4

Again, Audley said nothing for a moment. ‘Oh . . . very well, then!’

Fred waited for another moment. ‘Yes?’ He lowered the umbrella, and found that Audley was substantially right about the weather: apart from the spattering drips from the thick foliage above, the rain had almost ceased. ‘And you can have your brolly back now, David.’

‘I don’t need it – you can have it, Fred.’

The very last thing Fred wanted to be seen carrying, either by his commanding officer, or by the Americans, was an umbrella. ‘I don’t want it, David – thank you.’

‘Oh . . . have it your own way!’ The umbrella was seized from him with an accuracy which suggested that Audley’s night-vision wasn’t really so bad. ‘Here – you take this, then.’

It was ... a stick? A walking stick? ‘Thank you.’ That wasn’t so bad, anyway. ‘All I want is an answer to my question, David.’ He felt himself almost pull rank – over-inflated majority over over-promoted captaincy – and weakened slightly. ‘I’ve had a long day, you know.’

‘Sure – of course!’ Audley accepted the olive-branch. ‘Okay. So ...

we go into this damn place like a dose of salts . . . It’s a house, with some out-buildings. Like stables – or kennels, I don’t know ... I think it was an old hunting lodge of some sort, in the Kaiser’s days.

When he hunted Otto’s boars hereabouts, and suchlike –I don’t know . . . But it’s been empty for years, anyway. Because it’s in the middle of nowhere, Amos says. Right?’

He had heard briefings like this, from other over-promoted infantry dummy4

subalterns of tender years, full of the same careless confidence. But now wasn’t the time to remember them. ‘So?’

‘So you follow me. With the bag.’ Audley drew a deep breath, and an overloaded branch above suddenly deluged Fred. ‘And we’ll have Devenish with us by then –he’ll be waiting for us at A2.’

Fred’s morale lifted slightly, at the thought of Devenish. ‘And then?’

‘Then we wait patiently for H-Hour. And when that comes, all the pretty searchlights go on, and loud and frightening military noises are made for a moment or two. And then Colonel Augustus addresses his cowering victims – that is, assorted Germans-on-the-run, and hard-case DPs who don’t want to go home, and the odd American deserter no doubt. . .he – our Glorious Leader –

addresses all of them in his execrable German. Which will only serve to confuse them, undoubtedly. But over the loudspeakers he will address them nevertheless, because he fancies his German . . .

Although I’ve heard him address one unfortunate group of Teutons for all of quarter of an hour, and none of ’em understood a word he said . . . But maybe then Amos or the Crocodile will take over – or even the Alligator. And it’ll be okay, then, because they each spraken quite reasonable Deutsch.‘

Audley’s own German accent was on a par with his commanding officer’s. ‘But you don’t speak it?’

‘No. How did you guess?’ Audley seemed amused. ‘Just a few necessary phrases, that’s all. I’m supposed to be the unit’s French-speaker – all the rest have more German then me, even Driver Hewitt, I suspect. But then I’m an exception to the TRR-2 rule in dummy4

more ways than one . . . Shall we go, then?’

Fred stood his ground obstinately. ‘What happens then.’

‘We go in – like I said.’ Audley was trying to be languid, in the style of his admired Major de Souza. But he couldn’t conceal an undercurrent of juvenile excitement which Fred recognized. It was something he could still remember from his own youth: the foolish optimism of young subalterns who knew no better, without which wars would be impossible. But he had lost all that in Italy.

‘Like a dose of salts?’ Once it was lost, it never came back.

‘We go in behind Major de Souza and his warrant officer.’ Audley caught the mocking edge in the question, and his voice stiffened.

‘We always operate in pairs, Major Fattorini. I shall be with Jacko Devenish – ’

That made five, not two. ‘The four of you – plus me?’

‘You are a supernumerary, Major Fattorini. Shall we go?’

‘But I’m carrying the bag, Captain Audley.’ Fred played his ace.

‘I’ll go when you explain that. Not before.’

‘Oh . . . okay, Fred – damn it!’ Mercifully, the young man realized when he was being ridiculous. ‘Amos fingers Number 21 – “Keys”

– for us. And then he and his man cover us while we dress him up as a British soldier. Savvy?’

Fred savvied instantly, suddenly aware that he had been halfway there already, with his bag and David’s deception of their allies.