James Rouch - Overkill

Without pausing to survey the jam of canteen furniture, Dooley swung his pick-handle and brought it down on a green-flecked white table top. Shards of laminate struck the walls of the stairway and at that single pounding blow the table folded almost in half. A dozen more attacks of similar ferocity and whole chairs and broken pieces of enamelled steel tubing were clattering back down on the others.

He didn’t stop until he had smashed a track through the debris to the next flight of stairs, then, using the pick-handle like a stick, leant on it while he regained his breath. ‘What you waiting for?’

They had reached the fourth floor without further problem when they encountered the first resistance. A bottle fell from above and, missing them, went on to shatter on a lower flight. Fluid that burst and splattered from it gave off clouds of fumes as it ate into the concrete.

‘Here we go again, playing by the bloody rules while Commie-loving shit breaks them and then screams brutality at us.’ Burke was beginning to lose his temper. It was bad enough to make it to Hamburg and not get a word of thanks, but this was adding bloody insult to injury.

‘You fancy doing something about it?’ Hyde was taking his gas mask out.

‘Too fucking true. I had enough of fucking acid bombs in the Bogside without being able to do a ruddy thing about it. I’m not bloody standing for it here.’

‘Just two of us can clear the stairs, Major, so long as we can count on back-up the second we hit the roof or wherever the buggers are going to make their last stand.’

‘You’ve got it.’ Revell had too much respect for the British sergeant’s ability to even consider rejecting his plan. The NCO had been chomping at the bit for some time now. This slice of independent action might settle him for a while.

‘We’ll come when you call.’

‘Right, stay a flight behind us.’

It felt good to be running his own show again, even if it was only for a few minutes and against nothing more than a bunch of ignorant, arrogant students. Hyde pulled on his mask and fastened the straps tightly. He nudged Burke.

‘Gloves.’ His voice was muffled and came back at him inside the rubberised micro-particle-proof respirator. Again he nudged the driver, and this time just jerked his hefty club upwards.

Side by side they started up, and immediately came under a deluge of missiles and devices. With his hand Burke warded off another of the acid containers to send it tumbling all the way to the ground floor.

Chairs, table legs, drawers from filing cabinets crashed about them and still they kept going. A plastic bag filled with a white powder burst and smothered them with its contents. They didn’t even break step as they wiped the quicklime from their eyepieces. A whole desk landed immediately in front of them showering pencils and pens and paper as its locks burst. Short ramming blows from the clubs and it was left behind them, a splintered wreck hung half over the railings.

A crowd of youths blocked the top of the last flight, all competing with each other to hurl the biggest item with most force. Hyde edged ahead and as he did a wild kick was aimed at his face. It was the chance he’d been hoping for.

With all the strength he could muster he thrust the blunt end of the club forward as far as he could, and rammed it into the student’s crotch. The others had to grab hold of the victim as he collapsed clutching himself, and the disruption of the defence line gave the sergeant his opportunity.

Two sweeping blows he delivered swept the legs from a pair of defenders trying to push a complete filing cabinet over the top, and they went down with it on top of them.

Burke used his pick-handle like a quarterstaff and propelled another against the wall, bringing his knee up into the pinned student’s groin.

Surviving members of the group had Hyde surrounded in a corner and were cautiously closing in, avoiding the savage jabs he made at them with the razor sharp end of a metal chair back. The circle of figures could only be seen in outline in the darkness, and grew larger and more menacing as they drew nearer. Something hit him a sharp blow on the shoulder, and then his attackers were gone, borne down and buried under a furious attack from behind as the rest of the squad arrived. It was over in seconds.

‘This what you wanted?’ Revell handed the roll of red cloth to the German colonel.

‘Ja, danke schon.’

He unfolded it and examined the crudely stencilled hammer and sickle in one corner.

‘Have we passed the test? That was a test, wasn’t it?’ Keeping the irritation from his voice demanded a considerable effort from Revell. ‘It had to be, why else give a combat group a task that could have been handled by the civilian police.’

‘You are mistaken, Major. It was not a test, not in the sense you mean. Around you are my men, look at diem.’ The colonel indicated the thirty or forty variously armed soldiers and civilians sleeping or resting in the alleyway. ‘We formed this unit at Christmas. If all the men who had joined it had survived then I would have a battalion by now. Instead I have one depleted platoon. Tomorrow it may not even be that. Together we have been through hell many times. It was they who needed to see your men in action. Now they are satisfied, and will be happy to eat and fight with you.’

‘I was hoping someone was going to say something about eating. Lead me to it.’ Appreciative lip-smacking noises came from Dooley.

Among the weapon-and ammunition-draped recumbent forms someone laughed. Revell couldn’t see who, but he recognised it as a woman’s laugh, though it was brief and held more of sarcasm than humour.

Herding the students before them they crossed a wide street that had once been lined with trees: now only stumps or shrapnel-slashed branchless trunks remained. Here and there showed the burned-out skeletal frame of a truck or tram and walking was made difficult by chunks of brick and pieces of bomb casing that turned under their feet.

Ahead of them loomed a forest of apartment blocks, and they climbed a ramp-like pile of rubble to enter one by a second-floor window. As the last of them did so, a desultory artillery fire began to register on the area.

A long time ago Clarence had turned off his mind from the physical discomforts and privations of the war, and now he drank the thin greasy soup without noticing its taste and ate the stale bread without noticing that it had none, save for a markedly bitter flavour to its thin crust. He ignored what went on around him. Having found a comparatively quiet corner he’d settled down with his meal and now warded off any attempted conversation with a scowl.

‘Here, Clarence.’ Dooley noticed the sniper eating alone. ‘You afraid somebody is going to nick your chow? Forget it. The way this stuff tastes nobody in his right mind would want it.’

‘You’re wrong there, mate.’ With his spoon Burke indicated the students, who having been bound hand and foot had been dumped close to the trestle from which the meagre rations were being doled out. ‘I been told those blokes didn’t have any ration cards on them. In dodging the draft they also missed out on the nosh. Look at ‘em.’

The youths were watching every ladleful of soup, every morsel of bread as it was dispensed. Some of them were drooling, and a pair of them bumped and wriggled against each other, even tried to use their teeth as weapons in a fight to reach a fragment of crust that fell to the floor.

It was stiflingly hot, with the steam from the cooking adding to the humidity of the night. As the last dregs were licked from bowls the members of the unit drifted from the apartment to find cooler, less crowded places to sleep. Most of them still nibbled at the small hunks of coarse bread, making it last.