Last Man to Die (8 page)

‘Sergeant Cheval, Fourth Royal Quebec,’ he snapped. God, could they really take his accent for a French Canadian? But don’t wait and see – grab the initiative! ‘Who’s in charge?’

The rifles were still pointing at him, but some were beginning to waver in uncertainty. He began to study the men behind the muzzles; only two were in uniform, the rest were in an assortment of crumpled civilian clothing with nothing more than armbands for identification. Behind them, strewn amongst the hedgerows, lay several pedal cycles
which apart from the battered tractor were their only apparent means of transportation. What luck! He had run into Dad’s Army dragged out of their beds. Perhaps there was a chance, after all …

From behind the line of rifles stepped a man in his sixties armed with a Webley pistol, a fierce look in his eye and a carefully trimmed white moustache. He was the only one wearing a military cap. His uniform was smartly pressed and his boots were immaculate. A veteran, and a man who wore his lieutenant’s shoulder pips with pride, Hencke decided. Still astride the motorcycle, he came to a salute.

‘Lieutenant, I am Sergeant Cheval of the Fourth Quebec,’ he repeated the introduction. ‘My regiment is guarding the camp.’

The Webley was still pointing straight at him and there was a bead of nervous perspiration across the bridge of the lieutenant’s nose, but to the officer’s rear Hencke could see the barrels of several rifles beginning to droop towards the ground.

‘Less than two miles down the road there are thirty escaped Germans,’ Hencke continued, waving behind him in the general direction of the north of England. The look of ferocity in the officer’s eye had changed to one of suspicion and he was about to aim a flood of questions which Hencke knew he had no chance of withstanding. ‘Many of them are armed. They’ve already killed several of my company!’

At this point the rifle barrels were raised once more in anxiety; this time they were pointing not at Hencke but back down the road. The lieutenant’s lips were working away in agitation beneath his moustache. He was being overwhelmed by Hencke’s news and the responsibility which had suddenly
been thrust upon him after so many years of waiting, like the fishes, for an invasion which had never come. He had the rank but he couldn’t match the experience suggested by Hencke’s regular army uniform. He had a thousand questions to ask but could find the words for none of them.

‘Lieutenant, the Germans are headed in this direction, they’re not far behind. You must maintain your position here and be ready while I go and warn headquarters.’ It was all so ludicrously makeshift. He hadn’t the slightest idea where headquarters were located, but he supposed they must lie somewhere to the other side of the road block. That was enough. He began gently to rev the bike engine, testing the officer’s resolve. ‘And remember. They’re dangerous!’

For the first time the lieutenant’s eyes left him and began staring in the direction from which Hencke had appeared. The ferocity had gone; there was only anxiety left, and by the time he had dragged his attention back from the distant woodland the moment for making decisions was past. The Norton was already on the move.

‘Good luck, Lieutenant,’ Hencke shouted above the noise of the engine as he weaved around the tractor and the line of men. Their rifles were at shoulder level once more while their boots scratched nervously away at the pavement, trying to find a solid firing position. When Hencke looked behind him he could see a long row of backs. Only the officer was looking in his direction, the agonies of uncertainty twisting his face. But already it was too late …

Hencke waved and was gone.

The portrait of Louis XIV was nothing more than a cheap reproduction but there was no mistaking the profound look of disdain as it gazed down from the painted wooden walls. Eisenhower’s daily briefing session with his military aides was coming to an end. The noise and bustle caused by the fifty or more advisers clattered around the dining room of the dingy red-brick secondary school in Reims which served as SHAEF’s forward military headquarters.

‘D’you know, Dwight, that old bastard wouldn’t have bothered with all this.’ General Omar Bradley, three-stars and Eisenhower’s right hand, waved at the portrait. ‘None of these briefing meetings, no listening to endless advice, no worries about whether the fuel was in the same place as the fighting. Just an order for the peasant army to pick up their pikes and start walking while he went back to his roast pig and mistress. What a way to fight a war.’

Eisenhower winced. Even with as good a friend as Bradley he wasn’t in the mood to discuss mistresses. ‘You’re not suggesting I dress up in silk tights and a red wig like him?’

‘Well, he ruled for something like seventy-odd years. Not bad for the times when you counted yourself lucky if the pox killed you off before the Black Death. And he was big in arts ‘n’ stuff. They called him the Sun King. After all this is over, Ike, d’you think the sun’s going to shine out from under your periwig?’

Eisenhower laughed. Bradley was always able to make him relax even when the going was particularly tough. As commander of the 12th Army Group which formed the backbone of the European command, Bradley shared the weight. While Eisenhower
ordered and authorized, it was Bradley’s job to implement. They shared both the successes and sacrifices of war, and it had built trust and affection.

‘I wonder how that old bastard would have coped with the British, Brad?’

‘What’s dear old Monty been up to this time? Another press conference to let the world know how you and the Pope have got it all wrong? Or is he complaining again that he hasn’t got a zipper big enough for his flies?’ The disdain for General Bernard Montgomery was evident in both of them. A relationship which had always been difficult with their British colleague had become incandescent in recent months as Montgomery complained, cajoled, and claimed credit for other men’s victories. He was Bradley’s equivalent and Eisenhower’s subordinate, but he rarely acted as such, particularly in the presence of the media when a poised pen or the pop of a flashbulb would send him off into grandiloquent summaries of the European battle scene which would have made even the Sun King feel uncomfortable.

‘No, it’s not Montgomery this time,’ Eisenhower responded, blinking as the blinds were drawn back from the high windows to let in a flood of springtime light. ‘It’s the Old Man. Churchill. Didn’t want to raise it in front of everyone, but I’m having real trouble getting the extra division out of him. Should have arrived days ago, but all I get in its place is flannel and soft soap. First he keeps complaining that the British forces are left sitting idly on their backsides, then he won’t give me the troops to do anything other. What does he expect me to do? Scare the Germans into surrender by dropping my pants?’

‘This isn’t some screwball way of putting pressure on you to let him have Berlin, is it? You know, Berlin or nothing?’

‘Could it really have come to that, Brad? Monty, yes, but surely not the Old Man. Sweet Jesus, I thought we were fighting this war together.’ Eisenhower’s square jaw began to work back and forth in exasperation. The allied command had worked so harmoniously right up until D-Day and the invasion of Europe, but once they had set foot on French soil the co-operation seemed to vanish in a political quagmire as deep and impassable as the trench mud of the First War. He cracked his knuckles as he recounted the times the British had got in the way, been stubbornly slow off the mark or had brazenly attempted to trip him up. Caen. Arnhem. Antwerp. The Ardennes. The Rhine … He had run out of knuckles, and of patience. ‘I’ll not let them make a damned fool of me any longer, Brad. I’ve taken about as much flak as I can stand. Hell, I wouldn’t take this sort of crap even from the French! It’s about time someone made our allies realize just who’s in charge of this shooting match.’

There was an edge to his voice, uncharacteristic in a commander renowned for seeing the other man’s point of view. Bradley said nothing, gratified that at last his superior seemed determined to clamp down on the petulance of their colleagues. And not before time. Eisenhower dug deep into his pocket for the lucky pennies he always carried. ‘Like worry beads,’ he had once explained, ‘except it scares the shit out of the men if the Supreme Commander is seen to worry. So I play with my pennies.’ They were cascading from one hand to the other as he tried to pour away his frustration and waited for an orderly
to bring coffee. The orderly was pouring before Eisenhower returned to the point.

‘It truly galls me to think of thousands of British troops sitting outside Dover doing nothing,’ he muttered distractedly.

‘I’m not sure where the general gets his information, but those troops sure as hell ain’t there,’ the orderly interrupted in a slow Texan drawl. He had been with Eisenhower a long time, not so much because of his valeting skills as his ability to read his master’s moods, and to respond appropriately, usually with a humorous tale or a choice piece of gossip which otherwise would never have reached the Supreme Commander’s ears. And Eisenhower loved a good gossip; it helped remind him there was still a real world out there.

‘What d’you mean, Mickey?’

‘Well, sir, you’ll remember I’ve just been on leave in London?’ he began. One of the perks of working for the boss was an almost limitless ability to contrive seats on transport planes flying away from the battle zone.

‘Sure do,’ Eisenhower responded. ‘Only time for weeks I got a decent cup of coffee.’

‘The general is so kind,’ the orderly continued, completely unabashed. ‘I got talking to some of our British friends. Strange little watering hole called the Ferret and Firkin. I never did figure out what the “firkin” bit was.’

‘This story’d better be good, Mickey, or I’ll have your balls on toast,’ Eisenhower chuckled; the orderly’s calculated impertinence was beginning to work its usual magic.

‘There’s these two Brit quartermasters ferretin’ and firkin’ and feeling pretty relaxed about the
whole thing. Seems they were just about to join the fun here in Europe when most of their unit got orders to ship north, to York-Shire or wherever.’ He managed to make it sound somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle. ‘So this pair were left waging war with a mountain of supplies and equipment while the rest of their buddies were off opening a new battle front.’

‘New front?’ Bradley enquired.

‘Well, General, I’m not supposed to breathe a word. Honest to God, they swore me to secrecy …’ Mickey’s eyes wandered theatrically around the room in search of eavesdroppers. ‘But it seems like there’s been a big break-out, a whole prison camp full of Germans on the loose with half the British army in hot pursuit. Sounded like the biggest roundup east of the Shenandoah, ’cept nobody’s supposed to know a thing about it … Cream, General Bradley?’

But the two generals had lost interest in the coffee. ‘Could it be, Brad? Could it really be so cretinous?’

‘A break-out?’ Bradley sucked thoughtfully at his teeth. ‘What would we do in the same circumstances? I guess we’d want to keep it quiet. Hell, if we’d lost a whole campful of prisoners, Montgomery’d be on every radio broadcast braying like a jackass and offering to help sweep up the mess.’

‘But to hold back an entire division from Europe at a time when Churchill is screaming for more action, just to cover up their own blunder …?’

‘Politics, Dwight. Capital “P”. This whole damn war is growing to be all about politics.’

Eisenhower’s easy mood had vanished, steel re-entered his voice. ‘That’s no excuse for incompetence and duplicity, not when the lives of my men
are at stake. Check this story out for me, Brad, see if it’s true.’

‘And if it is?’

‘Fight fire with fire. Take on the politicians at their own game.’ The lucky pennies jangled into the palm of his hand, where he gripped them tightly in a clenched fist. A tight smile of determination and of decision broke on his face. ‘You know, Brad, maybe Mr Churchill could do with some help rounding up his strays. From some of the drovers in our press corps …’

He hadn’t realized how cold he had become until the petrol ran out. He’d shaken the machine to slop every last drop from the tank into the fuel line and it had given him a few extra miles, but then it had started coughing once more, slowed, and died. It was only then as he had tried to dismount that he discovered his fingers, clamped firm and senseless around the handlebars, wouldn’t move, frozen solid by the hours of forcing his way through the clinging mid-English damp. At first all he could manage was a spastic twitching of a little finger and it took him several agonizing minutes before the rest had followed and he had loosened his grip. Then he discovered he couldn’t stand straight. His clothes were drenched to the skin, his back locked as if he were still thrusting his way forward in the saddle, his eyes scraped raw by the night air. And it got worse.

After he had dumped the bike he knew he would have to quit the roads and try his luck cross country. South. As long as he headed south he was getting nearer his goal. Yet cross country was murder. By day he looked suspicious, an increasingly unkempt vagabond in miltary uniform, so he tried walking at
night but that proved impossible in the perpetually cloud-covered countryside. And he was getting weaker, less able to fend off the biting wind which drove the temperature down and flayed at his resilience. As dawn broke, a week after the escape, he knew it was time for taking risks. The spirit was stubborn but the body was refusing to respond. It needed food, warmth, rest.

This was farming country, mindless miles of hedgerow and ploughed mud across which a few homesteads and primitive cottages lay scattered like grains of discarded wheat. He had passed a small farm about half a mile back; there had been wood smoke curling from the chimney and the low of cattle at milk coming from the shed to the rear. Too much life; he needed something altogether more quiet. Ahead he could see but one house, of pale yellow stone like so many of the rest, nestling beside a meandering lane but set well back up its own track. He could see no sign of activity. It would have to do, but not up the track where he could be clearly seen from both house and lane. It would have to be once more across country, even though that would turn the few hundred yards to the front door into a mile or more, skulking behind hawthorn bushes, hugging the trees, trying not to startle and scatter the sheep. He was shivering, he knew it would hurt.