out, and your clothes rotted with it, and became stiff on your back, and you had a steady rash of prickly heat that itched and burned, but your nose suffered worst of all. The human race was only bearable when the obscene juices of living were being constantly washed away. You became dulled to your own smell, of course, otherwise you would kill yourself, but when you joined any group, the smell hit you, in a solid, jolting attack.
So the night was solace. There had been little enough solace since he had arrived in Africa. They had been winning, it was true, and he had marched from Bardia to this spot, some seventy miles from Alexandria. But somehow, while agreeable, victory did not have a personal quality to a soldier in the line. No doubt victory meant a great deal to the well-uniformed officers at the various headquarters and they probably celebrated over large dinners with wines and beer when towns were taken, but victories for you still meant that there was a good chance that you would die in the morning, and that you would still live in a shallow, gritty hole.
The only good time had been the two weeks in Cyrene, when he had been sent back with malaria. It had been cooler there, and green, and there was swimming in the Mediterranean.
When Himmler had reported that he had heard the expert on the radio announce that the plan of the German General Staff was to go through Alexandria and Cairo to join up in India with the Japanese, Knuhlen, who had come out with a recent draft of replacements, and who had taken over some of Himmler's old position of comedian to the company, had said, 'Anybody who wants can go and join up with the Japs. Myself, if nobody minds, I'll stop in Alexandria.'
Christian grinned in the darkness as he remembered Knuhlen's rough witticism. There are probably few jokes, he thought, being told tonight on the other side of the minefield.
Then there was the flash for a hundred miles, and a second later, the sound. He fell to the sand, just as the shells exploded all around him.
He opened his eyes. It was dark, but he knew he was moving and he knew that he was not alone, because there was the smell. The smell was like clotted wounds and the winter clothes of the children of the poor. He remembered the sound of the shells over his head, and he closed his eyes again.
It was a truck. There was no doubt about that. And somewhere the war was still on, because there was the sound of artillery, going and coming, not very far off. And something bad had happened, because a voice in the darkness near him was weeping and saying between sobs, 'My name is Richard Knuhlen, my name is Richard Knuhlen,' over and over again, as though the man were trying to prove to himself that he was a normal fellow who knew exactly who he was and what he was doing.
Christian stared up in the opaque darkness at the heavy-smelling canvas that swayed and jolted above him. The bones of his arms and legs felt as though they had been broken. His ears felt smashed against his head, and for a while he lay on the board floor in the complete blackness contemplating the fact that he was going to die.
'My name is Richard Knuhlen,' the voice said, 'and I live at Number Three, Carl Ludwigstrasse. My name is Richard Knuhlen and I live at…'
'Shut up,' Christian said, and immediately felt much better. He even tried to sit up, but that was too ambitious, and he lay back again, to watch the sky-rocketing waves of colour under his eyelids.
The barrage had been bad the first night, but everyone was fairly well dug in, and only Meyer and Heiss had been hit. There had been flares and searchlights and the light of a tank burning behind them, and small petrol fires before them where the Tommies were trying to mark a path through the minefield for the tanks and infantry behind the barrage, small dark figures appearing in sudden flashes, busily jumping around so far away. Their own guns had started in behind them. Only one tank had got close. Every gun within a thousand metres of them had opened up on it. When the hatch was opened a minute later they saw with surprise that the man who tried to climb out was burning brightly.
The whole attack on their sector, after the barrage died down, had only lasted two hours, three waves with nothing more to show for it than seven immobile tanks, charred, with broken treads, at aggressive angles in the sand, and many bodies strewn peacefully around them. Everybody had been pleased. They had only lost five men in the company, and Hardenburg had grinned widely when he went back to battalion to report in the quiet of the morning.
But at noon the guns had started on them again, and what looked like a whole company of tanks had appeared in the minefield, jiggling uncertainly in the swirling dust and sand. This, time the line had been overrun, but the British infantry had been stopped before it reached them, and what was left of the tanks had pulled back, turning maliciously from time to time to rake them before rumbling out of range. But before they could take a deep breath, the British artillery had opened up again. It had caught the medical parties out in the open, tending the wounded. They were all screaming and dying and no one could leave his hole to help them. That was probably when Knuhlen had begun to cry and Christian remembered thinking dazedly and somehow surprised: They are very serious about this.
Then he had begun to shake. He had braced himself crazily with his hands rigid against the sides of the hole he was in. When he looked over the rim of the hole there seemed to be thousands of Tommies running at him and blowing up on mines, and those little bug-like gun carriers scurrying around them in eccentric lines, their machine-guns going, and he had felt like standing up and saying, 'You are making a serious mistake. I am suffering from malaria and I am sure you would not like to be guilty of killing an invalid.'
It went on for many days and nights, with the fever coming and going, and the chills in the middle of the desert noon, and from time to time you thought with dull hostility: They never told you it could last so long and they never told you you would have malaria while it was happening.
Then, somehow, everything died down, and he thought: We are still here. Weren't they foolish to try it? He fell asleep, kneeling in the hole. One second later Hardenburg was shaking him and peering down into his face, saying, 'Damn you, are you still alive?' He tried to answer, but his teeth were shaking crazily in his jaws and his eyes wouldn't really open. So he smiled tenderly at Hardenburg, who grabbed him by the collar and dragged him like a sack of potatoes along the ground as he nodded gravely at the bodies lying on both sides. He was surprised to see that it was quite dark and a truck was standing there, with its motor going, and he said, quite loudly, 'Keep it quiet there.' The man beside him was sobbing and saying, 'My name is Richard Knuhlen,' and much later, on the dark board floor under the smelly canvas, in all the heavy, bone-shaking jolting, he was still crying and still saying it over and over again, 'My name is Richard Knuhlen and I live at Number Three, Carl Ludwigstrasse.' When finally he really woke up and saw that perhaps he was not going to die at that moment and realized that he was in full retreat and still had malaria, he thought, abstractedly: I would like to see the General now. I wonder if he is still confident.
Then the truck stopped and Hardenburg appeared at the back and said, 'Everybody out. Everybody!'
Slowly the men moved towards the rear of the truck, heavily, as though they were walking in thick mud. Two or three of them fell when they jumped down over the tailboard and just lay there uncomplainingly as other men jumped and fell on them. Christian was the last one out of the truck. I am standing, he thought with deliberate triumph. I am standing.
Hardenburg looked at him queerly in the moonlight. Off to both sides there was the flash of guns and there was a general rumble in the air, but the small victory of having landed correctly made everything seem quite normal for the moment.
Christian looked keenly at the men struggling to their feet and standing in sleep-walking poses around him. He recognized very few of them, but perhaps their faces would come back to him in daylight. 'Where's the company?' he asked.
'This is the company,' Hardenburg said. His voice was unrecognizable. Christian had a sudden suspicion that someone was impersonating the Lieutenant. It looked like Hardenburg, but Christian resolved to go into the matter more deeply when things became more settled.
Hardenburg put out his hand and pushed roughly at Christian's face with the heel of his palm. His hand smelled of grease and gun-oil and the sweat of his cuff. Christian pulled back a little, blinking.
'Are you all right?' Hardenburg said.
'Yes, Sir,' he said. 'Perfectly, Sir.' He would have to think about where the rest of the company was, but that would wait until later, too.
The truck started to slither into movement on the sandy track, and two of the men trotted heavily after it.
'Stand where you are!' Hardenburg said. The men stopped and stood there, staring at the truck, which
