Ian Slater - Rage of Battle

“You daft?” asked Waite. “You’ve got no chance. Besides, why bust your gut, mate? You’ve done your bit.”

No I haven’t, thought Brentwood. If he’d done his bit, he wouldn’t have lain petrified most of the night; he would have moved down the lines, risking the deadly, albeit friendly fire, trying to get through to the pocket. Or had it been just common sense to stay put till the shelling was over? After all, no one would blame him for what he’d done. No one, that is, except himself — the man who’d won the Silver Star for bravery at Pyongyang. His father certainly wouldn’t forgive him.

Something had happened since Pyongyang. Strange, he’d always thought you could divide people into the brave and the not so brave, but an awful possibility began gnawing away at him — that it might just be how you felt on any given day. But there was another reason, beyond honor, beyond regaining his sense of self-esteem, that impelled him to think of escape. “We’ve all seen it,” he told Waite.

“He’s right,” said the man behind them, who, having lain down, was now propping himself up, trying to keep the head bandage on, grimacing in pain as the effects of the last morphine jab wore off. “Now we know what they’re up to, they’re not going to let us—” He didn’t have to finish it.

“Christ!” said someone else. Brentwood looked behind him. It was a British lance corporal, terrified. “Hey, wait a minute — I mean, they could have done us already. Right?”

David shook his head. “Not before they got our uniforms. Waite’s right. That would have got our uniforms all messy.”

“Aw, bullshit,” said another cockney. “They aren’t going to shoot us.”

“Why?” asked Waite.

“Well — too — too fucking close to the front, mate. Might draw a chopper strike.”

The young German guard and the other guards began to “Raus!” them — getting everyone ready to move out.

“Where are we going?” demanded a British officer from a group on the other side of the clearing.

“Charing Cross!” came a Scottish voice.

One of the Stasi guards, an older man, waved them to their feet with his hand. The German had a weary look about him that worried David more than it might have comforted him. It was the look of a man who’d seen it all before, a man for whom nothing would be a surprise. A man who would follow orders to the letter, not because he hated Americans or British but because it was the easiest thing to do. “You will be taken back,” the German said in passable English, “for the interrogation.”

“See?” whispered a cockney triumphantly. “We’re going to be interrogated — that’s all.”

“Oh, lovely,” responded Waite. “That’s just ducky, that is. I love being interrogated. My favorite fucking pastime, that is. Eh, Brentwood?”

“I can think of better things to do,” answered David.

“So can I,” said the soldier with the bloodied eye, his voice tremulous with fear. “Jesus, I can’t see where the hell I’m— “

“Here,” said David, getting up. “Hold on to my arm.”

As the bedraggled column of poncho-clad prisoners started off through the gloomy wood, the wounded cockney asked his American friend what he thought their chances were.

“Watch it,” said David, steering him around a jagged stump that was almost invisible in the mist-shrouded pines.

“What do you think, Waitey?” the man asked.

“Waitey—?” pressed the soldier, David steering him about a long, ghostlike branch that, stripped of its bark, had served as a toilet seat for the cesspool trench.

“I think,” said Waite, “we’re in for the high jump.”

“What the hell’s that mean?” asked one of the Americans.

“It means,” said a Scottish voice, “he thinks they’re going to hang us, laddie. Or shoot us.”

“Jesus! Jesus — that’s against the—”

“Geneva Convention,” the Scot finished for him. “Aye.”

“Anybody got a Mars bar?” asked an English sapper who’d been captured two nights earlier by a Stasi patrol sweeping the pocket’s perimeter.

“Och,” said the Scot. “Rot your teeth, laddie, and tha’s a fact.”

“You’re mad,” said the American. “You’re all goddam mad.”

“It helps,” answered Waite wryly, adding, “Be careful now.” He nodded toward the young guard they’d dubbed “Asshole.” But for now the guard wasn’t saying anything, looking as miserable as the prisoners. Even so, David was surprised they had let the prisoners talk at all — not when they were all supposed to be going to be interrogated. He remembered his DI at Parris Island screaming at them, “Never fucking let your prisoners talk. Why, marine? Because the fuckers’ll make up the same fucking story. Are you listening, Brenda Brentwood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You listening, Thelma?”

David smiled at the memory of the DI yelling at him and Thelman — something David had once thought it would be impossible to smile about. Besides, he told himself, the Russians had probably already collected fairly reliable intelligence about the American, British, and German armies bottled up in the pocket. Hell, they were right there to pick up the airborne, or had they just been in the area anyway?

Try as he might, however, David could not help thinking of one of the great secrets of World War II: the massacre of thousands of Polish prisoners of war. Slaughtered by the Russians, deep in Katyn Forest.

“Leave it on,” the corporal told Malle. She reclipped her brassiere. The way he’d said it only added to her sense of shame, as if she’d been caught wanting to exhibit herself and he doing her a favor — a small mercy — telling her to cover herself up. But now she guessed his real reason was the thick, raised scar of the mastectomy where they had taken off her left breast. At once she feared for Edouard, hoping, in spite of the revulsion she felt for the Russian, that the scar hadn’t turned him off.

Tossing his cap onto the bedside table, obscuring the photo of Malle and her late husband, and pulling off his shining black boots, dropping them with a thud, motioning for her to come closer and smiling as one would coax a shy, frightened puppy, he patted the bed, dragging the two pillows down so they lay flat on the multicolored quilt.

“Come on, Malle. ‘You’ve done this before, eh?”

She was shocked at his use of her first name and for a moment stood holding her black slip protectively in front of her, suddenly frozen as she smelled the strong odor of camphor. No, she decided, of course he wouldn’t wonder about the new quilt — lots of people used camphor to protect their clothing.

“You should call me Mitya,” he told her, reaching out, hooking the slip’s spaghetti shoulder straps, taking it away from her. “It’s short for Dimitri.”

She forced a smile, walking haltingly toward him, her left hand in his. It was sweaty and warm — cloying — her other hand fidgeting at her throat. His grip became stronger as he pulled her closer. She fixed her eyes on the crazy pattern of the quilt, vibrant reds flowing into deep blues, men orange and speckled brown swirls that made no sense and which, normally pleasing to the eye, now panicked her — everything swirling out of control. She braced herself. He became suddenly angry, releasing her. “What’s the matter with you? You want me to pick up the boy? I can, you know. All I have to—”

“No, no,” she said, “no — I’m — I’m sorry.”

“You forgot something,” he said, his tone surly.

“I—” she began, hands on her forehead, her head shaking, trying to think of what it was. “I’m sorry, I—”