absolutely sure they know you're Americans. You don't want to get shot by your own men. Who wants to go first?'
Nobody moved.
'My advice,' said Lieutenant Green, 'is to leave through the kitchen door. There's a shed back there that'll give you some cover and the hedge isn't more than thirty yards away. Understand, I am not giving any orders any more. It's entirely up to you. Somebody had better go now…'
Nobody moved. Intolerable, thought Noah, sitting on the floor, intolerable. He stood up. 'All right,' he said, because somebody had to say it. 'Me.' He sneezed.
Burnecker stood up. 'I'm going,' he said.
Riker stood up. 'What the hell,' he said.
Cowley and Demuth got up. Their shoes made a sliding sound on the stone floor. 'Where's the goddamn kitchen?' Cowley said.
Riker, Cowley, Demuth, Noah thought. There was something about those names. Oh, he thought, we can fight all over again now.
'Enough,' Green said. 'Enough for the first batch.'
The five men went into the kitchen. None of the other men looked up at them and nobody spoke. The trap- door to the cellar was open in the kitchen floor. The light of the candle came up dimly through the dusty air, and the bubbling, groaning sound of Fein dying. Noah did not look down into the cellar. Lieutenant Green opened the kitchen door very carefully. It made a harsh, grating sound. The men held still for a moment. From above there came the sound of the BAR. Rickett, Noah thought, fighting the war on his own hook.
The night air smelled damp and farm-like, with the sweet heavy smell of cows coming through the crack of the open door. Noah muffled a sneeze in his hand. He looked around apologetically.
'Good luck,' Lieutenant Green said. 'Who's going?'
The men, bunched in the kitchen among the copper pans and the big milk containers, looked at the slight pale edge of night that showed between the door and the frame. Intolerable, Noah thought again, intolerable, we can't stand here like this. He pushed his way past Riker to the door.
He took a deep breath, thinking, I must not sneeze, I must not sneeze. Then he bent over and slid through the opening.
His shoes made a sucking sound in the barnyard earth and he could feel his helmet straps slapping against his cheeks. The sound was flat and seemed very loud so close to his ears. When he got to the shadow of the shed in the deeper shadow of the night, he leaned against the cow-smelling wood and hooked the catch under his chin. One by one the thick shadows moved across the yard from the kitchen door. The breathing of the men all around him seemed immensely loud and laboured. From inside the house, from the cellar, there was a long, high scream. Noah tensed against the shed wall as the scream echoed through the windless evening air, but nothing else happened.
Then he got down on his belly and started to crawl towards the hedge, which was outlined faintly against the sky. In the distance, far behind it, there was the small flicker of artillery.
There was a ditch alongside the hedge and Noah slid down into it and waited, trying to breathe lightly and regularly. The noise of the men coming after him seemed dangerously loud, but there was no way of signalling them to keep more quiet. One by one they slid in beside him. Grouped together like this, in the wet grass of the ditch, their combined breathing seemed to make a whistling announcement of their presence there. They didn't move. They lay in the ditch, piled against one another. Noah realized that each one was waiting for someone else to lead them on.
They want me to do it, Noah thought, resenting them. Why should it have to be me?
But he roused himself and peered through the hedge towards the artillery flashes. There was an open field on the other side. Dimly, in the darkness, Noah could see shapes moving around, but he couldn't tell whether they were cattle or men. Anyway, it was impossible to get through the hedge here without making a racket. Noah touched the leg of the man nearest him, to indicate that he was moving, and wriggled down the ditch, alongside the hedge, away from the farmhouse. One by one, the men crawled after him.
Maybe, Noah was thinking as he crawled, smelling the loamy, decayed odour from the wet ditch, maybe we're going to make it.
Then he put his hand out and touched something hard. He remained rigid, motionless, except for his right hand, with which he made a slow, exploratory movement. It's round, he thought, it's made out of metal, it's… Then his hand felt something wet and sticky and Noah realized that it was a dead man in the ditch in front of him, and he had been feeling the man's helmet, then his face, and that the man had been hit in the face. He backed a little and turned his head.
'Burnecker,' he whispered.
'What?' Burnecker's voice seemed to come from far away, and from a throat near strangling.
'In front of me,' Noah whispered. 'A stiff.'
'What? I can't hear you.'
'A stiff. A dead man,' whispered Noah.
'Who is he?'
'Goddammit,' Noah whispered, furious with Burnecker for being so dull. 'How the hell do I know?' Then he nearly laughed at the idiocy of the conversation carried on this way.
'Pass the word back,' Noah whispered.
'What?'
Noah hated Burnecker deeply, bitterly. 'Pass the word back,' Noah said more loudly. 'So they won't do anything foolish.'
'OK,' said Burnecker, 'OK'
Noah could hear the dry rattle of the whispers going back and forth behind him.
'All right,' Burnecker said finally. 'They all got it.'
He came to the end of the field. The ditch and the hedge made a right-angle and ran along the edge of the field. Cautiously Noah pushed his hand out ahead of him. There was a small break in the hedge, and a narrow road on the other side of it. They would have to cross the road eventually; they might as well do it now.
Noah turned back to Burnecker. 'Listen,' he whispered, 'I'm going through the hedge here.'
'OK,' Burnecker whispered.
'There's a road on the other side.'
'OK.'
Then there was the sound of men walking softly on the road, and the metallic jangling of equipment. Noah put his hand across Burnecker's mouth. They listened. It sounded like three or four men on the road and they were talking to one another as they walked slowly past. They were talking German. Noah listened, cocking his head tensely, as though, despite the fact that he could not understand a word of German, anything he could overhear would be of great value to him.
The Germans went past in a steady, easy pace, like sentries who would come back again very shortly. Their voices faded in the rustling night, but Noah could hear the sound of their boots for a long time.
Riker, Demuth and Cowley crawled up to where Noah was leaning against the side of the ditch.
'Let's get across the road,' Noah whispered.
'The hell with it.' Noah recognized Demuth's voice, hoarse now and trembling. 'You want to go, go ahead. I'm staying here. Right in this here ditch.'
'They'll pick you up in the morning. As soon as it gets light…' Noah said urgently, feeling illogically responsible for getting Demuth and the others across the road, because he had been leading them so far. 'You can't stay here.'
'No?' said Demuth. 'Watch me. Anybody wants to get his arse shot off out there, go do it. Without me.'
Then Noah understood that when Demuth had heard the German voices, confident and open, on the other side of the hedge, he had given up. Demuth was out of the war. The despair or courage that had carried him the two hundred yards from the farmhouse had given out. Perhaps he's right, Noah thought, perhaps it is the sensible thing to do…
'Noah…' It was Burnecker's voice, controlled, anxious.
'What're you going to do?'
