A New Kind of War

sky.

One last try, perhaps –

‘What’s Major Kenworthy got in the Hippo then, d’you dummy4

think?’ He tried to sound sleepy and not-very-interested.

Once again, no instant reply. ‘I’m sure I can’t say, sir.’

Pause. ‘Major Kenworthy . . .’e likes gadgets, an‘ bits-an’-bobs of machinery – ‘eavy stuff.’

Heavy stuff –

People were light stuff: you didn’t need a Hippo to carry off people.

Although . . . that poor devil, last night, when he was dead . . . he’s seemed heavy, even though there was nothing to him really: but then the dead were always heavy – heavy and awkward, as though they objected to going, and were set on causing as much trouble as they could to the living, if it was the last thing they did . . . Which of course it was –

Kenworthy: that was his ten-tonner – his Leyland Hippo Mark 2A, making heavy weather of every dip and undulation, with the weight of its contents . . .

Kenworthy, Liddell, Ingrams, Carver-Hart, Simpson –

Simpkins? – Simpkins . . . M’Crocodile –

McCorquodale, damn it! And Then Macallister – not Macalligator: mustn’t say that! – and then Colbourne, de Souza and Audley (that was easy, like learning the dummy4

dates of the Kings and Queens of England, which mathematicians always had trouble with, by some perverse illogic: 1066-1087 –1087-1100 – 1100-1135 ... the Normans were easy, and the Stuarts and Hanoverians too, later . . . 1714-1727 –1727-1760 –

“George the Third remarked with a smile/ There are seventeen-sixty yards in a mile” – but the Plantagenets and the Wars-of-the-Roses lot were confusing . . . not like Colbourne, de Souza and Audley!) Mustn’t dream again: must just go out like a light and sleep, with no silly nightmares: must remember that the war’s almost over – almost over – almost over-and-over-and-over – over-here, if not out-there . . . and I’m over-here, and not out-there – ignoble thought!

Ignoble-sensible thought – sensible-ignoble thought –

sensible-sensible thought –

Huge, amorphous nightmare: yawning great lorry, heavy-loaded with inadequately-secured Bailey bridge components, bouncing up-and-down and shifting, because the silly-bloody driver was exceeding the speed restriction –must slow down, get off the road –

get off the road – !

Fred shook himself awake, with his mouth full of foul, dummy4

leathery tongue and empty-stomach taste, quite absurdly sorry for himself, and yet also ashamed of his over- imagined horrors. Because this wasn’t Italy, the home of all Bailey bridges . . . this was Germany, of course!

And it was doubly Germany, because there were trees everywhere – tall, trees, rising up on every side – and ahead, as they swung round a hairpin corner, with the engine whirring at his back –

And no bloody-great lorry, either: as they whirred round the bend he saw the open road ahead, rising steeply – just a foul dream –

What–?

He sat bolt upright, and hit his head on the roof of the car–ouch!

‘How long have I been asleep – ?’ He addressed the driver thickly, only realizing gratefully in the next second it was still Driver Hewitt in broad daylight, and not some grinning stranger whom he’d never met and couldn’t remember.

‘You’ve ’ad a right good sleep – quiet as a baby.‘

Hewitt grinned at him encouragingly. ’Your ‘ead did knock against the side a bit ... but it didn’t seem to worry you none – ’ They came to the end of the straight stretch and Hewitt spun the wheel again, twisting the little car round another hairpin ‘ – so I dummy4

didn’t think to wake you.’

Fred squinted ahead, at another stretch of trees heavy with summer, and an open road still climbing ahead.

And then turned quickly to peer out of the divided rear-window behind them.

They drew away from the corner, and the road behind was as empty as the road in front. ‘Where’s the convoy?’ His voice was still thick with sleep: he could hear it outside himself, beyond the eternal whirring of the engine, but without any other sound.

‘Oh, we lost that – about ten miles back, before Detmold,’ replied Hewitt cheerfully. ‘I laid back for a bit, round Paderborn – the proper road’s no good there jus’ now ... I think they’re repairin’ a bridge what’s fallen down . . . An‘ then I went like the clappers, an’ I took the wrong turnin‘ . . . But you don’t need to worry none.’

‘I – what – ?’ Words failed him.

‘They knows the way.’ Hewitt agreed with himself.

‘They drove it enough times, so they oughta know it.

An’ we–we’re spot on, like.‘