England strolled over to join us: he seemed to have recovered his composure. Cummings’s driver doubled over to us and saluted. He’d been sent to look at what was left of Brond. He was out of breath, but reported, ‘The town square has disappeared, sir. Just a bleeding great hole. There aren’t many undamaged houses left. If the squadron had been driving through . . . well, they would have got most of us, sir.’
Charteris said, ‘Thank you, Trooper. Get yourself a cuppa, and try to ignore the screams.’
James asked me, ‘You were there. How much explosive would it have taken to do that much damage?’
‘We used four-thousand-pound blast bombs called cookies in the RAF. One of them couldn’t have managed anything that big.’
Charteris looked quizzically at me. James asked him, ‘Didn’t you know the bold Padre was in the RAF before he saw the light?’
‘Wireless Op,’ I said ‘. . . but now I’ve found Jesus.’
‘Good job someone has.’ That was Charteris again. ‘Fuck knows where he’s been for the last few years!’
Lammers had guts. He didn’t shout until the tracks touched him. Then he babbled fast and loud. Charteris waved a stop, and James told us, ‘My side of the business, I think.’ He took his time about strolling over. He returned about fifteen minutes later. Doug had come back, with char and a wad for Charteris and me. James had filled half a dozen pages of his small notebook with that fine script of his.
He told Charteris, ‘Three thousand kilos of high explosive under a fountain in the main square apparently – what’s that in pounds? They emptied the village in the path of our advance: deliberately stripped it bare, and didn’t booby-trap it with anti-personnel mines. Best result for Jerry was that we moved a field HQ in there. Next best was that we just advanced a column up the main street because the street was clear. Either way we would have been blown to bits. Our friend on the grass out there would have set it off from the church steeple.’
‘Who is he, sir?’
‘A Lithuanian SS man. Unpronounceable bloody name. Very well drilled in the Geneva Convention: expects you to treat him with respect and humanity. He was a merchant sailor before the war, sailing for a shipping line out of Middles-brough.’
‘Anything else, sir?’
‘They’ve prepared three more villages like this. He gave me the names. Do you want to radio them forward?’
‘Thank you, Major. What did happen to the people who lived here?’
‘He genuinely doesn’t know. They were gone before he arrived. He said that they were relocated by a Sonderkommando.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked him.
‘What we’d call pioneers, but they’re really clean-up groups. What they’re good at is disposing of lots of bodies.’
The tank had backed off Lammers for twelve feet or so. Even from where I stood I could see the relief on his face. He smiled, even as Rachel’s Dream suddenly lurched over him. It was over in seconds. Cummings was back with us.
‘Driver’s foot will have slipped, sir,’ he told me. ‘Do you want to say some words?’
‘No. I told you. That bastard can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.’
Cummings grunted. It may have been a little laugh.
‘Why don’t you stick around, sir? You’re our sort of Padre. The lads could get used to you.’
I wanted to be sick.
Les slept through the lot. Even the explosion. As we packed Kate for a getaway I told him, ‘I spoke to a Jerry today. I picked up a telephone in that village and was answered by a switchboard operator in Bremen.’
‘Does the Major know that yet?’
‘No; I haven’t had time to tell him.’
‘Do. It’ll make him laugh.’
He didn’t laugh. He wrote it down in his little notebook while we bounced down little Belgian country lanes. Les can’t have been happy with the roads we were using, because his hands on Kate’s wheel had white knuckles. James said, ‘Thanks very much, Charlie . . . only next time tell me sooner, savvy? These little things can be important.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I told him. Situation normal.
PART FOUR
Holland: April 1945
Twelve
Close to nightfall the Major asked Les, ‘Where’s our crossing point into Holland?’
‘Between Arendonk and Reusel, I thought, Major. I’m pulling us back into the canals. There’ll be units backed up everywhere and a lot of confusion. With a little bit of luck the border’ll be so congested we can slip through like last time. OK?’
‘OK, Private. You’re the boss.’
From a Major, that. Les filtered into a column of big army trucks. James explained to me, ‘The problem is that we’ve been moving north across the fronts of two Allied armies: both moving due west. We’re not going with the flow. But at pinch points like this we can make it work to our advantage: we can slip in with a bigger mob.’
They made me swap over with James. I curled into the back seat-well and pulled James’s camouflage cape over me. Les slotted into a convoy and we lurched along with it for hours. I woke with cramp in my right leg that made me want to scream. I managed to clamp my mouth shut.
James said, ‘OK, Charlie. You can come out now.’
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
‘Holland,’ Les sniffed. ‘Land of the Cloggies. Where the Cloggies live in the boggies. Why don’t you two see if you can grab some kip: like last night?’
Looking back, it was Les who taught me to sleep in cars and moving vehicles. I’ve done it ever since; sometimes when I’m driving. The Major pulled rank and made me swap to the front again.
I don’t know what time it was when I woke up. It was dark, and over in the east there was that glow on the cloud base. The flashes in it, like lightning, must have been gunfire. Les grinned to show he knew I was there, but didn’t say anything. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, and was as dark as a Greek bandit.
