The Young Lions

CHAPTER TEN

IT might have been bearable without the wind. Christian moved heavily under his blanket, tasting the sand on his cracked lips. The wind picked the sand off the flinty, rolling ridges and hurled it in malicious bursts at you, into your eyes, your throat, your lungs.

Christian sat up slowly, keeping his blanket around him. It was just getting light and the pitiless cold of night still gripped the desert. His jaws were quivering with the cold and he moved about, stiffly, still sitting, to get warm.

Some of the men were actually sleeping. Christian stared at them with wonder and loathing. Hardenburg and five of the men were lying just under the ridge. Hardenburg was peering over the ridge at the convoy through his glasses, only the very top of his head above the jagged rocky line. Every line of Hardenburg's body, even through the swathing of the big, thick overcoat, was alert, resilient. God, Christian thought, doesn't he ever have to sleep? What a wonderful thing it would be if Hardenburg got killed in the next ten minutes. Christian played deliciously with the idea for a moment, then sighed. Not a chance. All the rest of them might get killed that morning, but not Hardenburg. You could take one look at Hardenburg and know that he was going to be alive when the war ended.

Himmler crawled cautiously down from his position under the ridge next to Hardenburg, careful not to raise any dust. He shook the sleeping men to awaken them and whispered to them. Slowly they began to move around, with elaborate measured motions, as though they were in a dark room crowded with many delicate glass ornaments.

Himmler reached Christian on his hands and knees. He moved his knees round in front of him and sat down next to Christian very deliberately.

"He wants you," Himmler whispered, although the British were three hundred metres away.

"All right," Christian said, without moving.

"He's going to get us all killed," Himmler said. He had lost a great deal of weight and his face was raw under the stubble of his beard and his eyes seemed caged and desperate. He hadn't made a joke or clowned for the officers since the first shell was fired over their heads outside Bardia three months before. It was as though another man, a thinner, despairing cousin, had taken possession of Sergeant Himmler's body upon his arrival in Africa, leaving the rotund, jovial ghost of the old Himmler comfortably moored in some shadowy haven back in Europe, waiting to claim possession of the Sergeant's body if and when he ever returned. "He just lies up there," Himmler whispered, "watching the Tommies, singing to himself."

"Singing?" Christian shook his head to clear it.

"Humming. Smiling. He hasn't closed his eyes all night. Ever since that convoy stopped out there last night, he's just lain there and kept his glasses on them, smiling." Himmler looked bleakly over at the Lieutenant. "Wouldn't go for them last night. Oh, no. Too easy. Afraid we might miss one of them. Has to lay up here for ten hours, to wait till it gets light, so we can get every one of them. It'll look better in the report." Himmler spat unhappily into the restlessly swirling sand. "He'll get us all killed, you wait and see."

"How many Tommies are there?" Christian asked. He finally dropped his blanket and shivered as he picked up his carefully wrapped machine pistol.

"Eighty," Himmler whispered. He looked around him bitterly.

"And thirteen of us. Thirteen. Only that son of a bitch would take thirteen men out on a patrol. Not twelve, not fourteen, not…"

"Are they up yet?" Christian broke in.

"They're up," Himmler said. "Sentries all over the place. It's just a miracle they haven't spotted us so far."

"What is he waiting for?" Christian looked at the Lieutenant, lying tensely, like a crouching animal, just under the ridge.

"You ask him," Himmler said. "Maybe for Rommel to come down and watch this personally and give him a medal after breakfast."

The Lieutenant slid down from the top of the ridge and waved impatiently for Christian. Christian crept slowly up towards him, with Himmler following.

"Had to set the mortar himself," Himmler grumbled.

"Couldn't trust me. I'm not scientific enough for him. He's been crawling over and playing with the elevation all night. I swear to God, if they examined him for lunacy, they'd have him in a strait-jacket in two minutes."

"Come on, come on," Hardenburg whispered harshly. As Christian came up to him, he could see that Hardenburg's eyes were glowing with what could only be happiness. He needed a shave and his cap was sandy, but he looked as though he had slept at least ten refreshing hours.

"I want everyone in position," Hardenburg said, "in one minute. No one will make a move until I tell them. The first shots will be from the mortar and I will give a hand signal from up here."

Christian, on his hands and knees, nodded.

"On the signal, the two machine-guns will be raised to the top of the ridge and will begin firing, and continuous fire will be kept up by the riflemen until I give the command to stop. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Sir," Christian whispered.

"When I want corrections on the mortar I will call them myself. The crew will keep their eyes open and watch me at all times. Understand?"

"Yes, Sir," said Christian. "When will we go into action, Sir?"

"When I am good and ready," Hardenburg said. "Make your rounds, see that everything is in order and come back to me."

"Yes, Sir." Christian and Himmler turned and crawled over to where the mortar was set up, with the shells piled behind it and the men crouched beside it.

"If only," Himmler whispered, "that bastard gets a slug up his arse I will die happy today."

"Keep quiet," Christian said. Himmler's nervousness was unsettling. "You do your job, and let the Lieutenant take care of himself."

"Nobody has to worry about me," Himmler said. "Nobody can say I don't do my job."

"Nobody said it."

"You were about to say it," Himmler said pugnaciously, glad to have this intimate enemy to argue with for the moment – to take his mind off the eighty Englishmen three hundred metres away.

"Keep your mouth shut," Christian said. He looked at the mortar crew. They were cold and shivering. The new one, Schoener, kept opening and closing his mouth in an ugly, trembling yawn, but they seemed ready. Christian repeated the Lieutenant's instructions and crawled on. Making certain to raise no dust, he approached the machine-gun crew of three on the right end of the ridge.

The men were ready. The waiting, through the night, with the eighty Englishmen just over the scanty ridge, had told on everyone. The vehicles, the two scout cars and the tracked carrier, were barely hidden by the small rise. If an RAF plane on an early patrol appeared in the sky and came down to investigate, they would all be lost. The men kept peering nervously, as they had done all the previous day, too, into the clear, limitless sky, lit now by the growing light of dawn. Luckily, the sun was behind them, low and blinding. For another hour the British on the ground would have a difficult time locating them against its glare.

This was the third patrol through the British lines that Hardenburg had taken them on in five weeks, and Christian was sure that the Lieutenant was volunteering again and again at Battalion Headquarters for the job. The line here, far over on the right of the shifting front, among the waterless, roadless sand and scrub, was lightly manned. It was a succession of small posts and wandering, mingled patrols, more than anything else, not like the densely packed ground near the coast, with its precious road and water-points, where there were full-dress artillery and aerial sweeps all day and night.

Here there was a sensation of uneasy stillness, a premonition of disaster hanging over the landscape.

In a way, Christian thought, it was better in the last war. The slaughter was horrible in the trenches, but everything was organized. You got your food regularly, you had a feeling that matters were arranged in some comprehensible order, the dangers came through regular and recognizable channels. In a trench, Christian thought, as he slowly approached Hardenburg, lying once more just under the crest of the ridge, peering over it through his glasses, you were not so much at the mercy of a wild glory-seeker like this one. Finally, Christian thought, in 1960 this maniac will be in command of the German General Staff. God help the German soldier then.

Christian dropped carefully to the sand beside the Lieutenant, keeping his head down under the sky-line. There was a slight, sour smell from the leaves of the desiccated brush that clung to the sharp soil of the ridge.

"Everything is ready, Lieutenant," Christian said.

"Good," said Hardenburg, without moving.

Christian took off his cap., Slowly, very slowly, he raised his head until his eyes were over the line of the ridge.

The British were brewing tea. They had a dozen fires going in small tins that had been half-filled with sand, and then soaked with petrol. The fires flared palely. The men were grouped around them and waited with their enamel cups. The white of the enamel picked up little glitters of sunshine and gave a curious impression of restless movement to the groups. They looked very small, three hundred metres away. Their trucks and cars in their desert paint looked like battered toys.

There was a man on duty at the machine-gun mounted on a circular bar above the cab of each truck. But apart from that, the entire scene had a kind of picnic quality, city people who had left their women at home on a Sunday to rough it for a morning. The blankets on which the men had slept still lay about the vehicles and here and there Christian could see men shaving out of cups of water. They must have a lot of water, Christian thought automatically, to waste it like that.

There were six trucks, five open and laden with boxes of rations, and one covered. Ammunition in that one, probably. The sentries had drifted in towards the fires, still holding their rifles. How safe they must feel, Christian thought, thirty miles behind their own lines, on a routine run to the posts to the south. They had dug no holes for themselves and there was no cover anywhere, except behind the trucks. It was incredible that eighty men could move about so long and so unconcernedly under the guns of an enemy who was only waiting the move of a hand to kill them. And it was grotesque that they were shaving and making tea. Well, if it was going to be done, now was the time to do it.

Christian looked at the Lieutenant. There was a slight, fixed smile on his face, and he was humming, as Himmler had said. The smile was almost a fond one, like the smile of a grown-up watching the touching, clumsy movements of an infant in a play-pen. But Hardenburg made no sign. Christian settled himself in the sand, squinting to keep the men below in focus, and waited.

The water boiled below and little gusts of steam spurted up into the wind. Christian saw the Tommies domestically measuring out the tea into the water, and sugar from sacks, and tinned milk. They would make a richer tea, he thought, if they knew they wouldn't need the rest for lunch, or dinner.

He saw a man from each of the groups around the fires carry back the cans and sacks and carefully stow them away in the trucks. One by one, the Tommies dipped into the steaming brew and came up with their cups full. Occasionally, a twist of the wind would bring the faint sounds of talk or laughter, as the men sat on the ground taking their breakfast. Christian ran his tongue over his lips, watching them, envying them. He hadn't had anything to eat for twelve hours and he hadn't had a hot drink since he left their own command post. He could almost smell the rich, heavy savour of the steam, almost taste the thick, cloudy drink.

Hardenburg didn't stir. Still the smile, still the tuneless humming. What in the name of God was he waiting for? To be discovered? To have to fight, instead of merely killing at leisure? To be caught by a plane? Christian looked around him. The other men were crouched in stiff, unnatural positions, staring with worried eyes at the Lieutenant. The man on Christian's right swallowed dryly. The sound was foolishly loud and metallic.

He's enjoying it, Christian thought, looking back once more to Hardenburg. The Army has no right to put a man like that in command of its soldiers. It's bad enough without that.

Here and there among the British around the trucks men began to fill pipes and light cigarettes. It gave an added air of contentment and security to the small tableau, and at the same time made Christian's palate ache for a cigarette. Of course, it was difficult at this distance to observe the men very closely, but they seemed like the ordinary, run-of-the-mill type of English soldier, rather scrawny and small in their overcoats, moving about in their phlegmatic, deliberate way.

Some of them finished their breakfasts and industriously scrubbed their kits with sand before moving over to the trucks and starting to roll their blankets. The men at the machineguns on the trucks swung down to get their breakfast. There were two or three minutes when the guns on all the vehicles were left unattended. Now, Christian thought, this is what he was waiting for. Quickly he glanced around to see that everything was in readiness. The men had not moved. They were still crouched painfully in the same positions they had taken before.

Christian looked at Hardenburg. If he had noticed that the British guns were not manned he did nothing to show it. Still the same small smile, still the humming.

His teeth, Christian noted, are the ugliest thing about him. Big, wide, crooked, with spaces between them, you could be sure that when he drank anything he made a lot of noise about it. And he was so pleased with himself. It stuck out all over him, as he lay there smiling behind the binoculars, knowing that every man's eyes were straining on him, waiting for the signal that would release them from the torture of delay, knowing they hated him, were afraid of him, could not understand him.

Christian blinked and looked once more, hazily now, at the British, trying to erase the image of Hardenburg's thin, ironic face from his eyes. By now new sentries had slowly swung up to their positions behind the guns. One of them was bareheaded. He had blond hair and he was smoking a cigarette. He had opened his collar, warming himself in the heightening sun. He looked very comfortable, lounging with the small of his back against the iron bar, his cigarette dangling from his lips, his hands lightly resting on the gun, which was pointing directly towards Christian.

Well, now, Christian thought heavily, he's missed that chance. Now what is he waiting for? I should have inquired about him, Christian thought, when I had the chance. From Gretchen. What's driving him? What is he after? What turned him so sour? What is the best way to deal with him? Come on, come on, Christian pleaded within him, as two British soldiers, both of them officers, started out from the convoy with shovels and toilet-paper in their hand. Come on, give the signal… But Hardenburg didn't move.

Christian felt himself swallowing dryly. He was cold, colder than when he had awakened, and he felt his shoulders shaking in little spasms and there was nothing to do about it. His tongue filled his mouth in a puffy lump, and he could taste the sand inside his lip. He looked down at his hand, lying on the breech of his machine-pistol, and he tried to move his fingers. They moved slowly and weirdly, as though they were under someone else's control. I won't be able to do it, he thought crazily. He'll give the signal and I'll try to lift the gun and I won't be able to. His eyes burned and he blinked again and again until tears came, and the eighty men below, and the trucks and the fires, all blurred into a wavering mass.

He heard a curious, lilting sound next to him. He turned slowly. It was Hardenburg chuckling.

Christian turned back, but he closed his eyes. It has to end, he thought, it has to end. The chuckling had to end, the British at their morning labours had to end, Lieutenant Hardenburg had to end, Africa, the sun, the wind, the war…

Then there was the noise behind him. He opened his eyes and a moment later he saw the explosion of the mortar shell. He knew that Hardenburg had given the signal. The shell hit right on the blond boy who had been smoking, and he disappeared.

The truck started to burn. Shell after shell exploded among the other trucks. The machine-guns were pushed over the ridge and opened up, raking the convoy. The little figures seemed to stagger stupidly in all directions. The men who had been squatting at their toilets were pulling at their trousers and running clumsily, tripping and falling. One man ran straight at the ridge, as though he didn't know where the firing was coming from. Suddenly he saw the machine-guns, when he was no more than a hundred metres away. After a moment of complete, stunned immobility, he turned, holding his trousers up with one hand, and tried to get away. Someone casually, as a kind of afterthought, shot him down.

Hardenburg chuckled again and again, between calling out corrections for the mortar. Two shells hit the ammunition truck and it blew up in a wide ball of smoke. Pieces of steel whistled over their heads for a whole minute. Men were lying strewn all over the ground in front of the trucks. A sergeant seemed to have got about a dozen men together and they started to lumber through the sand towards the ridge, firing wildly from the hip. Someone shot the sergeant. He fell down and kept shooting from a sitting position until someone else shot him again. He rolled over, his head in the sand.

The squad the sergeant had led broke and started to run back, but they were all cut down before they got anywhere near the trucks. Two minutes later there was not a single shot coming from the Tommies. The smoke from the burning trucks poured back, away from the ridge, in the stiff wind. Here and there a man moved brokenly, like a squashed bug.

Hardenburg stood up and held up his hand. The firing stopped. "Diestl," he ordered, staring out at the burning trucks and the dead Englishmen, "the machine-guns will continue firing."

Christian stood beside him. "What was that, Sir?" he asked dully.

"The machine-guns will continue firing."

Christian looked down at the wrecked convoy. By now, except for flames coming from the trucks, there was no movement visible. "Yes, Sir," Christian said.

"Rake the entire area," Hardenburg said. "We're going down there in two minutes. I don't want anything left alive there. Understood?"

"Yes, Sir," Christian said. He went over first to the machinegun on the right, and then to the other one and said, "Keep firing, until you are ordered to stop."

The men at the guns gave him a strange, sidelong glance and went to work. In the silence, with not a word being spoken and no shouts or other gunfire to blend with it, the noise of the guns, nervous and irritable, seemed disturbing and out of place. One by one the men who were not handling the guns stood up on the crest of the ridge, watching the bullets skip along the ground, tear at the already dead and the wounded near the trucks, making them jump with eccentric spasms on the windswept sand.

A British soldier lying near one of the breakfast fires was hit. He sat up and threw his head back and screamed. The sound floated up to the ridge, surprising and personal in the methodical rhythm of the guns. The men at the guns stopped firing as the Tommy screamed, his head back, his hands waving blindly in front of him.

"Continue firing!" Hardenburg said sharply.

The guns took up again and the Tommy was hit by both of them. He fell back, his last scream sliced in half by a spurt of bullets.

The men watched silently, the same look of fascination and horror on all the faces.

Only Hardenburg didn't look like that. His lips were curled, his teeth showing, his breath came in rather hurried, uneven gasps, his eyes were half-closed. Christian tried to remember where he had seen that look before… abandoned, lost in pleasure. Then he remembered. Gretchen. When he had made love to her… They must be cousins, Christian thought, they really look tremendously alike…

The guns went on and on, the even, chattering noise by now almost like the everyday sound of a factory in the next block. Two of the men on the ridge took out cigarettes and lit them, very matter-of-factly, already a little bored with the monotony of the scene.

Hardenburg waved his hand. "Cease firing," he said. The guns stopped. The gunner nearest Christian was sweating. He sighed loudly and wiped his face and leaned wearily on the barrel in the quiet.

"Diestl," said Hardenburg.

"Yes, Sir."

"I want five men. And you." Hardenburg started down, sliding a little in the heavy sand, towards the still field below.

Christian motioned to the five men nearest him and they followed the Lieutenant.

Hardenburg walked deliberately, as though he were going to address a parade, towards the trucks. His pistol was in its holster and his hands swung in stiff little arcs at his side. Christian and the others followed just behind him. They came to the Englishman who had foolishly run towards them, holding on to his belt. The Englishman had been hit several times in the chest. His ribs were shattered and sticking in white and red splinters among the blood-soaked rags of his jacket, but he was still alive. He looked up quietly from the sand. Hardenburg took out his pistol, pulled the bolt to load it, and casually shot twice, without taking careful aim, at the Englishman's head. The Englishman's face disappeared. He grunted once. Hardenburg put the pistol back in his holster and strolled on.

Next there was a group of six men. They all seemed to be dead, but Hardenburg said, "Make sure," and Christian fired some shots into them mechanically. He felt nothing.

They reached the line of breakfast fires. Christian observed the careful way in which the tins had been punched with holes to get the best possible results out of the makeshift stoves. God knows how many gallons of tea had been brewed there. There was a heavy smell of tea, and the smell of burned wool and burning rubber, and the smell of roasted flesh from the trucks, where several men had been caught in the fire. One man had jumped out of a truck, all ablaze. He was lying on one elbow, with his blackened and burnt head up in an alert searching pose. The mortars had hit around here, too, and there was a pair of naked legs torn off at the hips.

Here and there an arm moved, or a groan could be heard. The detail spread out, and the shots came from all over the area. Hardenburg went to the leading car, which had obviously been used by the officer in command of the convoy, and rummaged around inside for papers. He took some maps and some typewritten orders and a photograph of a blonde woman with two children that was tucked in the map-case. Then he set fire to the car.

He and Christian stood watching the car burn.

"We were lucky," Hardenburg said. "They stopped in just the right place." He grinned. Christian grinned too. This wasn't like the half-farcical approach to Paris. This wasn't the black-marketing and police-work of Rennes. This was what they were here for, this was what the war was like, these dead around him were measurable, substantial, valuable.