Michael Ridpath - Shadows of War

‘Yes, corporal?’

‘Message from Lieutenant Dodds, sir. Three Home Guard have wandered into a minefield. They need sappers to get them out.’

Conrad swore under his breath.

The minefield was only ten minutes from the school on a stretch of boggy pasture half a mile in from the sea. The minefield was clearly marked, although in the dark it was impossible to make out the writing on the wooden signs. Dodds was there with the Home Guard platoon commander and he had alerted the engineers who were on their way. Even in the gloom, Conrad could see three figures in the field about a hundred yards away waving towards them. One of them was shouting for help. He sounded more like a child than a man.

‘How did they get in there?’ said Conrad to the Home Guard officer, who was a middle-aged man with the rank of captain. ‘I thought you people were supposed to know the local terrain. That was the whole point.’

‘They come from a village ten miles away,’ said the captain meekly. ‘They have never patrolled here before.’

‘Well, can’t they just keep still and wait?’ Conrad said. ‘The sappers will be here in twenty minutes.’

‘That’s Cobbold shouting,’ said the Home Guard officer. ‘He’s only seventeen. He’s just joined up.’

Conrad stood up and roared. ‘Private Cobbold! Stay calm and wait for the sappers! They won’t be long.’

Private Cobbold shut up.

‘I could go through the minefield and lead them out, sir,’ said Dodds. ‘It’s quite muddy. You can see their footprints in the field. If I tread in them exactly, I shouldn’t blow up a mine.’

‘Don’t be silly, Dodds. Just wait for the sappers.’

‘He was shouting about running for it earlier,’ said Dodds.

‘Why would he do that?’ said Conrad. ‘If he’s that scared he will just stay put.’

‘Message from the sappers, sir.’ It was Lance Corporal Fowler. ‘Their vehicle has broken down.’

‘They are engineers, aren’t they?’ said Conrad impatiently. ‘Can’t they fix it?’

‘Fan belt has snapped.’

‘All right, you men out there!’ Conrad shouted. ‘There’s been a delay with the sappers. Hold tight, we’ll sort it out!’

He turned to send his own vehicle to head back to pick up the sappers. Just then there was a cry from the field. Conrad turned to see a figure sprinting towards them. ‘What the hell?’ said Conrad. ‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘Private Cobbold, I said—’

There was a loud explosion and Private Cobbold was sent flying into the air, landing hard on his shoulder.

Then there was silence. The watching soldiers held their breath, straining to hear sounds of life. Then it came, a long low moan.

‘Are you all right, Cobbold?’ the Home Guard officer shouted.

His request was met by another moan.

‘I’m going to get him,’ said Dodds.

‘Wait for the sappers. It’s his own bloody fault he’s in there. There is no reason he should get you killed too.’

The moan rose to a scream. And then another.

Conrad turned to Corporal Fowler to give him orders to drive off and pick up the sappers.

When he turned back, Dodds was in the minefield. He had a torch and he was sweeping the ground in front of him, stepping gingerly from footprint to footprint.

‘Mr Dodds! Come back here at once!’ Conrad shouted, but Dodds ignored him.

The screams continued.

Conrad held his breath as he watched Dodds pick his way through the field. At any moment he expected to hear another explosion and to see Dodds turned into a rag doll flying through the air. But perhaps Dodds’s theory would hold true. Perhaps by sticking to the footprints he would dodge any mines.

Conrad liked Dodds, and he was turning into a very good officer. This would be a very stupid way to lose him.

He reached the point at which the Home Guards’ path into the minefield was closest to Cobbold’s moaning body. But there was still ten yards distance between the two men, ten yards of virgin minefield. Dodds hesitated. For a moment Conrad thought he would chance his luck by stepping on to untrodden grass, but then he eased himself on to the ground, and began to crawl. It was hard to see in the dark, but standard operating procedure when forced to traverse a minefield was to crawl on your stomach, using a bayonet to probe ahead for mines, and that was what Conrad assumed Dodds was doing.

It was still dangerous, though, and Private Cobbold was still yelling.

Those last ten yards seemed to take an age. Then the moon appeared from behind the clouds, and a few seconds later Dodds’s tall frame was silhouetted against the grey horizon above the sea in the distance. Conrad could hear the officer talking soothingly to the fallen man, whose screams decreased to whimpers. A barn owl shrieked.

Dodds bent down, slung Private Cobbold over his shoulders and stepped back the way he had come. The screams intensified: Dodds had given no consideration to Cobbold’s wounds — he couldn’t afford to.

Carefully, slowly, Dodds picked his way to the edge of the minefield where four men and a stretcher were waiting for him.

He ambled over to Conrad and stood to attention. He was breathing heavily and his tunic was covered with blood.

Conrad felt the fury explode within him. ‘Mr Dodds! I gave you a clear order not to go in there! Are you trying to get yourself killed?’

‘Yes, sir! I thought we had discussed this before, sir!’

‘You’re an idiot, Mr Dodds.’

‘Yes, sir! No doubt at all about that, sir!’

Conrad stared at the tall, blood-spattered, nineteen-year-old officer with the rosy cheeks, standing to attention in front of him. A wave of relief rushed through him, extinguishing the anger and replacing it with a sort of giddy euphoria. He felt his lips twitch into a grin. Dodds smiled too. Very soon they were both bent over laughing, as the Home Guard captain looked on bemused.

It was a long night. The sappers eventually arrived and cleared a path to the two men still stuck in the field. The boy survived, but only just. He had lost a lot of blood and the surgeon said he would lose his leg below the knee.

When Conrad and Dodds eventually arrived back at the prep school for breakfast, there was an envelope waiting for Conrad, addressed in his father’s writing.

Conrad tore it open. It contained an unopened telegram with a covering note from his father saying it had arrived at Kensington Square and he had forwarded it immediately.

Good for him, thought Conrad.

The cable was from a Hubert Berger of a bank in Liechtenstein. MEET ME IN HOLLAND 11 MAY AT 6 PM MADVIG’. Given the invasion of Denmark in April, Copenhagen was no longer operational as a letterbox, and so Theo had used a neutral Liechtensteiner to pass on his message. According to the code they were using, 11 May at 6 p.m. actually meant 8 May at 3 p.m., which was the following day.

It must be urgent. Probably something about an imminent invasion of Holland and Belgium, Conrad guessed. But how the hell could he get there in a day?

He could try to persuade Colonel Rydal to give him leave, but since he had only been back at the battalion for less than forty-eight hours, that was a long shot. If the colonel did agree, then Conrad might be able to book a seat on an aeroplane to Holland: it would be tight but it was possible he could get to the airport in time. But would they stop him getting on the aeroplane at passport control?

Probably. Given how Major McCaigue had somehow known about his trip to London the previous weekend, it seemed quite likely that someone would stop him.

He could try to get authorization from McCaigue or from Van. But that would take hours, or even a day. And even then the chances were he wouldn’t get it.