A New Kind of War

And . . . what the hell was Audley complaining about?

He’d survived the war, when a million – or ten million

–better men hadn’t! Christ – what more did he want!

He could see the Dakota’s lights now, dead ahead through a gap in the trees, and almost level with him –

God Almighty! – almost below him as it roared up from the plain below the hills, so that he felt himself willing the pilot to pull the stick: Pull the stick, man!

Get the nose up – up, for Christ’s sake!

With an ear-splitting crash of sound, which made him duck instinctively, the Dakota was on them – and over them, and gone, sucking its noise after it.

‘God Almighty!’ he murmured – or not murmured, he realized, but shouted.

‘No. Not God Almighty, Fred – ’ Audley shouted back at him ‘ – that’ll be Our Jake – Jake Austin ... He likes low-flying, does Our Jake!’

‘ Ready, David?’ De Souza was almost shouting too, now: the sound of the second Dakota was increasing in dummy4

its turn. “Let’s go, then!‘

Suddenly everyone was moving, and it was all familiar: the shadow-shapes, and the nearer-sounds of heavy footfalls and the chink-chink of equipment –

sounds which he couldn’t really hear, except in his memory – all brought back the recent past, and he felt his blood pump as he became part of the movement forward and thought the old familiar prayer – sweet Jesus Christ! let it not be me tonight!

Then his heart lifted, and it was like – it was exactly like – waking from that old black examination nightmare, in which the terrible fear of total lack of knowledge and inevitable failing always enveloped him – waking to the sweet realization that it was all long in the past, and over-and-done-with: that he’d taken the exam long ago, and passed it ... and now this wasn’t Italy, but Germany with the war over-and-done-with-and-finished-forever, with no mines and booby-traps on the river bank, and no machine-guns and shells waiting to seek him out in the darkness ahead!

He giggled to himself with pure joy at the thought. He had been tired, and that was why his memory had played cruel tricks on him – tiredness notoriously distorted rational thought. But now he wasn’t tired at all. Which was funny – although not half as funny as the thought of Audley going into action umbrella-in-hand, just like his dragoon ancestor – that was funny –

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Thump!

He half-checked. But then knew he couldn’t stop –

Thump –

But then he identified the mortar-sound instinctively out of all the other sounds, and automatically threw himself full-length on the ground, and Sergeant Devenish tripped over him –

For a confused moment they were a tangle of arms and legs and equipment and breathless grunting. Then they pushed clear of each other, scrabbling for recovery just as the first parachut-flare burst into unearthly brightness far above them.

‘F-----’ Devenish started to swear, but then stopped.

‘Sir?’

Fred found himself staring up at the unearthly, flickering light as it descended beneath its trail of smoke: it was odd how quickly one’s own side’s flares seemed to come down, compared with the agonizing slowness of the enemy’s, which always took forever, as though they were suspended on invisible wires –

‘Are you all right, sir?’ inquired Devenish doubtfully.

The second flare ignited high above simultaneously with another thump-pause- thump of two more going up from somewhere on their left.

‘Yes.’ Fred remembered, from his long distant subaltern-past, a grizzled major of engineers dummy4

admonishing him: ‘ You are a perfect idiot Mr Fattorini

– in-so-far as perfection is attainable!’ ‘Thank you, Sergeant Devenish.’ Well . . . now he was a major, too!

So even closer to perfection, by God! ‘I tripped over a tree-root – ’

‘Yes, sir – so you did!’ Devenish was on his feet, and already moving – ‘Don’t forget the bag, sir – ’

The bloody bag! ‘Go on, sergeant – go on! I’m coming.’

With no dignity left to salvage, Fred hated himself and Devenish equally as he grabbed the bag and launched himself in the sergeant’s wake, desperate not to be left behind.

Another engine-sound, very different from that of the departing planes, startled him from somewhere away in the forest on his left. Almost simultaneously, even as the light from the second flare faded and another ignited, much brighter light burst alive ahead, silhouetting moving figures sharply in the final fringe of trees – trees which themselves seemed to move against a background of fiercely-illuminated buildings in the clearing beyond them.

The most distant figure stopped suddenly, raised its arm, and dropped to one knee. Almost magically, the other figures followed suit, moving left and right behind convenient tree-trunks and sinking out of sight.

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‘Come on, come on, come on!’ Audley stage-whispered irritably. ‘What’s the old bugger waiting for? Let’s get