By that time I’d moved in close myself, and could hear what was going on. I counted the Krauts out onto the causeway. I’ll swear none of them was over nineteen years old. Spotty teenagers mostly, hungry and tired in Para smocks too big for them. Their mixture of weapons looked as if they’d come from a museum. Including the middle-aged Hauptmann sixteen of them surrendered. George had got the number right, but the wrong way round – there were only sixteen of them left.
The ADC shook hands with the Captain again, and said something that sounded diabolically like, ‘Sprachenzee Anglische? Do you speak English?’
The Hauptmann looked pained; as if he’d failed an exam. He smiled apologetically and said, ‘A little. Only a little.’
‘You have many wounded?’ That was Harry again.
The small German looked mystified,
‘Nein: no, only these.’ He indicated his rag, tag and bobtail street gang, who were carefully laying their weapons on the causeway. They had an inordinate number of potato masher grenades for so small an army; I remember that. The mortar that had caused the casualties I had seen the day before looked like a home-made job: it had started life as a drainpipe. Harry tried again.
‘You have many dead, then? Many kaput?’
The Captain looked even more mystified, if that was possible: I didn’t know if it was the question, or the hotchpotch of lingo it was posed in. He shook his head.
‘No. Only these.’
I don’t know when it began to dawn on us that the little Kraut was walking out with precisely the number of men he went in with. One of the Press Corps guys scrambled up onto the causeway. He gave the Kraut officer a cigarette, and asked him, ‘You are Paras? Fallschirmjägers?’
‘Nein. Volkssturm.’
‘Never heard of it, matey.’
‘People’s Army. You call it the Land Defence Volunteers in your country, I think.’
‘Fucking hell.’ That was Les. He’d crept up on us. ‘It’s the Home Guard.’
That was what we struggled to come to terms with as we moved away from the embarrassment as quickly as we could. This motley crew of a man, and a few boys in pieces of uniform too big for them, had held up the Allied advance for almost two weeks, and killed dozens doing it. And we’d had to throw a dozen Spitfires and three Lancs at them before they gave up.
‘It’s just occurred to me . . .’ I said to Les.
‘. . . Yes, I think I know what you’re going to say, sir. It’s not going to be as easy to get to Berlin as Winston thinks, is it? Don’t you think that someone should tell him?’
‘Tell the Major,’ I said. ‘He can do it. Perhaps, for once, they won’t shoot the messenger. Anyway, he’s had it far too easy for the last week or two.’
‘Don’t be too hard on him. He never asked to go soldiering . . .’
‘. . . and this isn’t soldiering, Les, and what’s more, you bloody know it.’
‘It’s not my fault, either, sir.’
‘I didn’t say it was.’
We climbed the rest of the way to the Quonset bar in a sort of baffled, humpy silence. The Colonel was standing at the bar with a couple of senior medical types. I tried to ignore him, but he spotted me, and turned to say, ‘All fixed up, Padre. You’ll get a Croix for this lot.’
‘Hardly worth it, sir, for smoking out one man and Jerry’s Home Guard.’
‘It’s definitely medal material, Padre. Sixteen Jerry Paras walked out alive after a gallant defence. There must be hundreds dead over there. I’ll get you to pray over the rubble before you move on.’
‘There aren’t any bodies, sir. There’s no one there.’
‘Atomized, dear boy, by pin-prick . . . sorry, I meant pinpoint . . . bombing. Your old squadron, I understand.’
He’d obviously been talking to someone, and had then had a few.
I said, ‘Sir, it is my opinion that sixteen men went into that castle, and sixteen marched out. I can’t in all conscience accept a medal for bombing the shit out of a Home Guard patrol, and missing them.’
‘That’s where my military experience comes in, old boy, so listen carefully. I’m the Colonel . . . and you’re apparently a Padre, savvy?’
‘Sir.’
‘I agree it appears as if a patrol of Jerry’s Home Guard has stood us off for a fortnight, and killed a good many good men. But that, the military mind tells me, is plainly impossible. So far?’
‘So far, sir.’
‘So there must have been another hundred or so Paras in there as well.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘Everyone knows that Paras fight to the death: so that is what this lot did, almost to the man. So far?’
‘So far, sir.’
‘. . . and if there ain’t any bodies and body parts, it must be because they were blown to smithereens by our RAF friends. Atomized by devastating bombing. A great success for the RAF. I’m sure that you understand.’
‘I do, sir.’
‘. . . and that if you accept the Frenchy’s little
