A New Kind of War

‘Make way there!’ Audley’s voice was loud and offensively British. ‘Out of the way, soldier!’

Corporal Keys bridled just ahead of Fred, as though unwilling to take part in the charade at this last and most important moment, so Fred gave him a brutal shove to get him moving again, conscious at last that he was a full and paid-up member of the TRR-2.

‘Get on, you bugger!’ Devenish, ahead of Corporal Keys, admonished their newer prisoner angrily – that poor confused devil had also baulked momentarily, like dummy4

Corporal Keys, at the prospect of finally exchanging his smelly freedom for the bright uncertainty of captivity beyond the doorway.

The American soldier stood aside, blank faced and holding his carbine close to his chest, and Fred caught an incongruous whiff of eau-de-cologne as he pushed by the man, as distinctive against all the doss-house smells as the perfume of roses in a midden. And then they were outside, in the open chiaroscuro of night-and- searchlights.

For a moment the bushes on each side of the doorway protected Fred’s eyes from the harshness of the searchlights, but after two or three strides the delicate tracery of leaves was gone, and he was suddenly blind in the full glare, transfixed by it as though it was focused on him only –

This way!‘ shouted Audley. ’Follow – ‘ The ear-splitting explosion overwhelmed the rest of the shout, seeming to come from all around them in the millisecond of its concussion, but then galvanizing Fred to grab instinctively at Corporal Keys, to pull him down on to the wet ground.

The next elongated fraction of time was filled with the aftermath of the explosion, beyond rational thought.

Then in the midst of its confusing echoes, as he began to think and hear again, Fred knew that the explosion hadn’t harmed them, and that they must get moving dummy4

again.

But now there was another sound: where there had been a continuing babel of noise behind him, coming out of the passage from the entrance hall, now there was a terrible mixture of shrieks – which together became a thin wailing – God! He had heard that wail before, in Italy: it was the appalling distillation of maimed surviving flesh-and-blood on the edge of a bomb’s impact in a cellar crowded with human beings!

He raised himself slightly, above the body of Corporal Keys, which he had pulled down with him. First, the pitiless continuing glare of the searchlight blinded him; then Audley was on his knees ahead of him, cutting off the beam.

‘Get up – for Christ’s sake, get up!’ Audley was up now, and gesturing at him. ‘Get him up, Fred!’

Fred felt the wet earth under his hand, and the cold damp through his trousers at his knees as he levered himself up.

‘Jacko! Help him!’ shouted Audley.

Fred was suddenly aware of Corporal Keys beside him, and that only Corporal Keys mattered. But when he grasped the German’s arm, it was a dead weight, tensed against him: the man was hugging the ground almost literally, for the illusion of protection it gave him when everything else around him had gone mad.

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Sergeant Devenish appeared out of nowhere, on the other side of the German.

‘Come on now, sir – let’s do like the officer says then, shall we?’ The sergeant addressed the German in a voice quite different from any he had ever used before in Fred’s hearing: unhurried, gentle, almost as though wheedling a frightened child. But without the slightest effect, nevertheless.

‘Right, then – ’ Devenish spoke the two words to himself, and then his chest expanded ‘ – take my weapon, if you’d be so good, sir – ’ he thrust his gun into Fred’s hands a second time across the inert body ‘

– LET’S BE HAVING YOU THEN, YOU BUGGER!’

Whether it was the effect of the sudden transition from gentleness to roaring anger, or the grasping hand-on- the-collar with every ounce of the sergeant’s muscle-power in the lift, or both, Fred never knew. But in the next second Corporal Keys was on his knees, and in the second after that he was moving, even before his legs were fully straightened, with one of Devenish’s hands still grasping the collar, and the other pulling his battle-dress blouse.

‘Fred!’ Audley gesticulated as he came alongside Devenish. ‘The other one – bring him!’

Fred followed the direction of the boy’s hand. Major de Souza’s prisoner, who had been lately Sergeant Devenish’s, was now all alone in the open and in the dummy4

glare of the searchlights, hunched under his blanket and imprisoned by the same fear which had rooted Corporal Keys to the ground.

‘Right!’ He heard his forced acknowledgement of the boy’s order, and felt angry with himself for the inadequacy of his performance so far, for which the excuse of six peaceful months in Greece was no bloody excuse at all – damn, damn and damn!

The prisoner was no more than half-a-dozen yards away — the prisoner who, for a guess, didn’t matter a damn, compared with Corporal Keys – damn, damn and damn! But at least he’d get this right, damn it!

‘Come on!’ The wretched fellow had rolled sideways, into a twitching blanket-covered ball, even as he covered the distance between them. But Audley’s much-admired Sergeant Devenish was his model now, even though he couldn’t match either of the sergeant’s voices. ‘Get up!’

A bare foot, emaciated and filthy-white in the unnatural light, kicked out from under the blanket.

‘Damn you – GET UP!’ Fred seized an edge of the blanket and ripped it aside. ‘ DAMN – ’ But then the Devenish-words died on his lips as he saw the blood, black as ink, bubbling out of the man’s mouth and streaming to join the great spreading wound on his chest – God!

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