Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

Barnes laughed silently, weakly, the spasm shaking his aching body. Of course! He’d got the system wrong! He must need a refresher course. The real sentry would have kept a close eye on the progress of the column and then waved down one of the last trucks to pick him up: motor-cycles had no wireless communication, no way of being told that there was a sentry ahead to be collected, and that last patrol which had gone over the bridge already carried a soldier in the side-car. All that tension, all that nerve-racking anxiety – all for nothing. He went across the road and told Penn.

‘Jolly good,’ was all Penn could find to say. ‘Anyway, now we can relax,’ he added.

‘I’m afraid not – there’s one fatal question we need the answer to before morning.’

It was half an hour before dawn and beneath the bridge the world was pitch black. Barnes switched on his torch and shook Pierre awake. The lad stirred, blinked in the glow of the beam, sat up, and ran his hands through his hair.

‘More trouble, Sergeant?’

‘No, but you seem anxious to do your bit. We are all just about exhausted and I’d like you to relieve Reynolds from guard duty if you would. It means three hours on the bridge because we won’t be moving off before seven.’

‘Certainly!’ Pierre began to lace up his shoes. ‘I am most willing to take my turn with all guard duties. I said so.’

‘We’ll see how you make out. All you have to do is to stand on the bridge and listen. Don’t assume that if a vehicle is coming it will have its lights on – and remember, it may not be coming from the south like the others. In fact, I’m more worried about them sending someone back from the north if they find out they’re one sentry missing.’

‘I will watch very carefully.’

‘At the first sight or sound of anything coming you run down here and wake me – is that clear?’

‘Perfectly.’ He reached out for the machine-pistol, but Barnes’ hand closed over the weapon. ‘I’ll need something, won’t I?’ Pierre protested.

‘Yes – your eyes and your ears. I’m not risking you letting loose at something in the dark which turns out to be a shrub instead of a crouching man. Up you go.’

Barnes waited until Pierre was climbing up to the bridge and then he ran back under the archway, crossed the river without making a sound, clambered up the opposite bank, and settled himself behind the shrub which had concealed him when he had watched the progress of the Panzer column. He was now hidden on all sides because the lower part of his body was submerged under a clump of brambles. From where he lay he could hear Pierre and Reynolds talking on the bridge, followed by, the sound of the driver slithering down the bank as he returned to the archway. After that the only noise came from the bridge itself where Pierre had begun to patrol backwards and forwards, his footfalls a soft tread in the night. Gradually, Barnes found that he was able to see the patrolling figure as a vague silhouette beyond the parapet, a silhouette completely unaware that he was being checked. By the time the false dawn began to glow in the east Barnes had come to the conclusion that Pierre would make an excellent sentry: at frequent intervals the lad paused at either end of the bridge to listen for a whole minute before he resumed his march back and forth, and once or twice he glanced over the parapet wall and looked along the river as though he feared they might be subjected to a surprise attack either upstream or downstream. Dammit, thought Barnes, he might have been trained for the job.

The real dawn was beginning to show, pale shafts of cold light low down on the horizon, when Barnes found himself in difficulties. He had lain quite still ever since he had taken up his position, putting up with an ache in his right leg which steadily grew worse, when suddenly he was subjected to an attack of cramp. Forcing himself not to move, he felt the cramp take hold, compressing and kneading the leg muscles of his calf mercilessly, to such a fierce degree that he had to dig his fingers into the ground to bear it. He was determined not to move since Pierre had now stopped at his end of the bridge, his face turned towards where Barnes lay as he watched the dawn grow stronger, and any sound would alert Pierre and warn him that he was under observation. Sweat began to trickle over Barnes’ face as he struggled with all his will-power to keep the leg flat until the pain receded, which gradually it did, and when the cramp had gone Pierre resumed his patrol, almost as though he had waited so as to cause Barnes the maximum agony.

Through the shrub Barnes could now see the field beyond which rose gently to a ridge. From his personal reconnaissance of the area shortly after they had first arrived he knew that beyond the ridge the ground fell away sharply to a lower level. It was, in fact, the one blind approach spot in the vicinity of the bridge, the one place where an enemy patrol could come close to the bridge without being observed at a distance. It was also the spot to which his eyes were now glued, and as he watched the line of the ridge grew clearer until it was sharply outlined against the dawn sky which was streaked with splashes of grey and gold, the genesis of another glorious day. Pierre had stopped again, this time on the far side of the bridge, and the absolute silence of early morning seemed uncanny, unreal, a silence that Barnes imagined he could almost hear. It was also chilly and several times he shivered as the cold penetrated his battledress and began to freeze his body, the low temperature accentuated by the presence of early morning dew which had settled on his uniform and coated his hands with a film of moisture. Beyond the ridge a spiral of white mist was rising from the ground, the curtain of vapour blurring the dawn light so that he could almost convince himself that there was movement behind the mist. A few minutes later he detected human movement beyond the ridge.

Gradually, the vague figure moved higher up the ridge and then stood stock still. Barnes tensed, fingers closing over the revolver in his right hand, bis eyes staring at the silent figure half hidden in the mist so that it was impossible to identify the clothes it wore. The figure was two-dimensional, without depth, faintly outlined against the light behind it until the mist swirled away and he saw that it was the upper half of a soldier wearing a greatcoat and a pudding-shaped helmet. He could hear Pierre crossing the bridge again and then the footfalls ceased abruptly; when he glanced sideways Pierre had disappeared, crouched down behind the parapet wall. This will test his reflexes, Barnes told himself grimly.

The helmeted soldier remained motionless, staring in the general direction of the bridge as though he sensed danger. Now the silence was heavy and ominous, like the moment before the storm breaks. Barnes waited. Pierre waited. The German soldier waited. The soldier stood so still that he might have been a statue, and now Barnes’ attention was concentrated on two points’ – the ridge in front of him and the parapet wall to his side. Then without warning the soldier marched up to the crest of the ridge and came down the other side, a slow deliberate approach as though he had not seen anything yet but he still didn’t like the look of the bridge. He could easily be the advance guard of a patrol sent out to find out what had happened to the sentry, a patrol which had been clever enough to cross the river higher up so that they could approach the area unexpectedly from the south side in the hope of taking the enemy by surprise.

He came forward holding a machine-pistol across his body, a body which stooped forward, the face blurred by remnants of dissolving mist. Barnes heard a rustle from behind the parapet where Pierre crouched, and when the rustle stopped the only sound in the heavy stillness was the faint tread of the oncoming soldier’s boots, a tread so light that Barnes knew he was trying to walk cat-footed as he crept forward. Halfway between the ridge and the bridge he stopped, head to one side, listening. Then he began to advance again and Barnes raised himself slightly. This was it. Any second now. He heard a scrabbling sound from the bridge and Pierre stood up, his hands in the air. He was calling out as he walked forward into the open, walking more rapidly when the soldier didn’t open fire, calling out urgently. Barnes stood up, his battledress rumpled, hands by his sides, and also emerged into the open as Pierre reached a point midway between the bridge and the soldier who now swivelled his machine-pistol to train it on Barnes. Turning, Pierre saw Barnes and called out again, one hand pointing, jabbing in Barnes’ direction. He began to run towards the soldier, shouting at the top of his voice, insistently, continuously. A short distance from the helmeted figure he stopped abruptly, his voice dying away as Barnes walked briskly across the field towards the two men. Pierre had been shouting non-stop in German until he saw the face under the helmet, the face of Penn wearing the German sentry’s greatcoat and helmet.