David Dean - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

Normally our relationship was such that I was the leader and spokesman if one was necessary, so I was surprised at him asserting himself, but I let him lead us through the trees on a parallel course with the crowd on the road. Half an hour later we watched from a distance as a staff car appeared on the road, driven by a major. The truck stopped and the major jumped down to stand in the road. He had red hair and one of those little bristly moustaches. “We’re making a stand here,” he shouted. “We’ve got to create a diversion to give the regiment a chance to regroup. N.C.O.’s to the front.” It was an order.

We were N.C.O.’s. We’d got our lance-corporal’s stripes by surviving Le Havre.

A sergeant stepped forward. “Sir,” he said. “This mob couldn’t make a stand against a boy-scout troop and you are a bleeding lunatic who wants to die. I don’t.”

The major looked around for someone to arrest the sergeant, but just then three Stukas came out of the sky and raked the crowd with machine-gun fire; back and forth they went as we watched from the trees. The planes stayed in the sky, hovering like carrion birds, using anything that moved for target practice. We found an orchard to wait in until dark, when we could move unseen. That first day we ate the biscuit and drank some of the water.

That night we walked forward, avoiding the groups of stragglers who had started to reappear. We had nothing to eat the second day, and on the third day we tore out the linings of our pockets to suck out the biscuit crumbs. In the early hours we ran out of water and stopped to fill up the canteen at a well, but the water was putrid. At that point I didn’t want to go on. I’ve had varicose veins all my life and my legs wouldn’t stop hurting, and now my foot was paining me, too, and we had to have water soon. We sat down by the well, and Billy told me to stay there while he went for water. I never saw him again, until now.

While I waited for him to come back, I took off my boot, slid it off, rather, because it was full of blood. I dried it up as best I could with a field dressing. Once I’d got it tidied up, it wasn’t as bad as it looked, but a stone had got wedged under the ankle bone and cut a little hole where the blood was draining out. At the same time, an insect the size of a cockroach had got into my boot below the laces, and, as I surmised, tried to bite its way out. There were five or six marks where it had stung or bitten me, now all swollen up. I don’t know what kind of insect it was — a Greek insect — but I decided it wasn’t a scorpion or anything like that or I would be dead. Then, as I was dabbing at the bites, I must have pulled off a scab because a thin jet of blood shot out, strong enough to travel a yard before it hit the ground. I got frightened because I thought I’d opened an artery. I’ve found out since that with an artery you get a pumping action, but all I could think of was how to make a tourniquet. While I was panicking it stopped just with the pressure of my thumb and I found I could keep it stopped with a field dressing.

The next bit is hazy. I must have passed out or just fallen asleep and when I came round Billy had evidently been and gone. There was a small sheet of Greek newspaper beside me with a piece of grey bread and a lump of cheese, that soft white stuff. I ate a couple of mouthfuls, and then I passed out again. When I came round the second time, it had been more than an hour since Billy first went off and I tried to think what that meant. There wasn’t much I could do but wait. I knew the beach wasn’t far away, but I couldn’t get my boot back on, my foot had swollen up so. I sat there, not knowing what to prepare myself for, and along came a German motorcycle and sidecar. I stood up and put my hands on my head to show I was unarmed, but as they got close, even by moonlight I could see that the helmets weren’t German; in fact, these blokes were bareheaded.

“This the road to Sphakia?” the bloke in the sidecar shouted, in an accent that I knew but couldn’t place. One of ours, anyway.

“It is,” I said. “Want me to show you? I know the road well. I’m a transport driver. Been over it a dozen times.”

They looked at each other. “What happened to you?”

I identified the accent now. Australians, or New Zealanders. “Caught one in the foot,” I said. “Stuka. Shot up my engine. The rest of our patrol bought it. I was lucky.”

The driver twisted the grip, revving the engine. “We’ve lost our unit,” he said. “Seen any New Zealanders come by?”

“No,” I said. “But I’ll help you look.”

“You on your own?”

“I had a mate,” I said. “He went off to find some water, a couple of hours ago. He must have come back and gone off again. He left me this bread and cheese.”

“Which way did he go?”

I pointed.

“There be dragons,” he said. “You won’t see him again. The bastards are ahead of us and on both sides. This is the last road out.”

The man in the sidecar said, “Get in behind me. We’ll drop you off with the first ambulance we pass.”

I didn’t know much after that. They gave me some water, which I drank too quickly and brought up. Then I passed out. I remember lying on a stretcher; there was a rowboat, then a ship, then I woke up in a camp in the desert, where I spent the next two months getting fit again.

Now, drinking tea between races in Sandown Park (Last Call came seventh out of eight), listening to my story, Billy said, “Did you look for me in the camp?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “I was afraid I would find you alive and in one piece.”

“You thought I’d left you there and gone ahead on my own?”

“I didn’t know, did I?”

He said, “Let me get a bet on this last race. Then let’s have a pint at the bar.”

I said, “The bar closes right after the race.”

“Then we can go over to the bleeding pub by the station, can’t we?”

I could see what he wanted, a chance to think, mostly. I thought I would give him fifteen minutes, enough time to collect his winnings and come and find me. He was back five minutes after the race. “No luck?” I asked.

He held up some notes. “Ten quid,” he said. “Paid for my afternoon.”

We turned and walked across the course towards the railway station. “We can do this another time,” I said.

“Unless you’re in a hurry, I’d like you to hear my story, too,” he said. “Been twenty-two years.”

The pub was nearly empty. We settled down in a corner with a couple of light ales, and he started in right away.

“About a quarter of a mile away from us there was what looked like an empty farmhouse, but I’d seen a shadow cross the yard. There was no one about when I reached the farmhouse. I turned the kitchen upside down looking for something to bring you back but all I could find was a crock of olives. I walked through every room and didn’t find anybody home, but I was sure I’d seen that shadow so I did the old trick of slamming a door, then sat down to wait. Soon the trapdoor I hadn’t noticed lifted itself from the kitchen floor and a head poked out, an old woman. I got my foot under the trapdoor and kicked it open, and the old woman started screaming, then blubbing, and there were a couple of kids down there, as well as the goats by the smell of it, and they all got into it. I made shushing noises and when she quietened down I pointed to my mouth and she passed up the bread and cheese I left you and a bottle of wine. Wine would have been a mistake in our condition, of course, but I couldn’t make her understand I wanted water, so I left with the bread and cheese, which I brought back to you, and I took off again with the canteen to find some water. Halfway back, I heard a commotion coming from the farmhouse and I went close enough to see a party of Jerries pushing the old woman and the kids into the yard. Then they set fire to the house. It was so bright I was afraid I would be seen, so I waited until the soldiers had gone, leaving the family to watch their home burn. I suppose, when it was cool enough, they could still go down to the cellar. I don’t know.