The Young Lions

Christian shook his head. Ridiculous, he thought, the five minutes had existed, had passed; the careless, meaningless accidents had happened; the bright-eyed boy, going out in the evening to his pint of beer in a Devon pub after an afternoon of cruising over France, had spotted the two tiny figures on the sand; the sun-wrinkled farmer had irrevocably used the knife; the future of Germany would be decided with no further comment by Anton Behr, widower, late of Germany, late of Rostov, late coast-walker and philosopher.

Christian bent down. Slowly, panting heavily, he pulled first one boot then another from the feet of his friend. The curs, he thought as he worked, at least they're not going to get these boots.

Then, carrying the boots, he scuffed heavily through the sand towards the road. He picked up his own boots, which the Frenchman had dropped. Then, carrying all four boots against his chest in the crook of his wounded arm, he plodded, barefoot, the road feeling smooth and cool under his soles, towards Battalion Headquarters five kilometres away.

With his arm in a sling, not hurting too much, Christian watched them bury Behr the next day. The whole Company was on parade, very solemn, with their boots polished and their rifles oiled. The Captain took the occasion to make a speech.

"I promise you men," the Captain said, standing erect, holding his belly in, ignoring the thick north-coast rain that was falling around him, "that this soldier will be avenged." The Captain had a high, scratchy voice, and spent most of his time in the farmhouse where he was billeted with a thick-legged Frenchwoman whom he had brought to Normandy with him from Dijon, where he had been stationed before. The Frenchwoman was pregnant now and made that an excuse to eat enormously five times a day.

"Avenged," the Captain repeated. "Avenged." The rain dripped down his visor and on to his nose. "The people of this area will learn that we are strong friends and terrible enemies, that the lives of you men are precious to me and to our Fuehrer. We are at this moment at the point of apprehending the murderer…"

Christian thought dully of the English pilot, probably sitting this moment, because it was a wet day, unapprehended, in a snug corner of a tavern, with a girl, warming his beer between his hands, laughing in that infuriating, superior English way, as he described the crafty, profitable slide down the Norman sky the day before, to catch two barefooted Huns, out for their constitutional at sunset.

"We shall teach these people," the Captain thundered, "that these wanton acts of barbarism do not pay. We have extended the hand of friendship, and if in return we are faced with the assassin's knife, we shall know how to repay it. These acts of treachery and violence do not exist in themselves. The men who perform them are spurred on by their masters across the Cha

Christian looked around him. The other men were standing sadly in the rain, their faces not resolute, not furious, mild, subtly frightened, a little bored. The Battalion was a makeshift one, with many men who had been wounded on other fronts, and the latest culling of slightly older and slightly disabled civilians and a heavy sprinkling of eighteen-year-olds. Suddenly, Christian sympathized with the Captain. He was addressing an army that did not exist, that had been wiped out in a hundred battles. He was addressing the phantoms that these men should have been, the million men capable of fury who now lay quietly in their graves in Africa and Russia.

"But finally," the Captain was shouting, "they will have to come out of their holes. They will have to crawl out of their soft beds in England, they will have to stop depending upon their hired assassins, and they will have to come to meet us on the battlefield here like soldiers. I glory in that thought, I live for that day, I shout to them, 'Come, see what it is to fight the German like a soldier!' I face that day," the Captain said solemnly, "with iron confidence. I face it with love and devotion. And I know that each one of you feels the same identical fire."

Christian looked once more at the ranks of soldiers. They stood drearily, the rain soaking through their synthetic rubber capes, their boots sinking slowly into the French mud.

"This Sergeant," the Captain gestured dramatically to the open grave, "will not be with us in the flesh on the great day, but his spirit will be with us, buoying us up, crying to us to stand firm when we begin to falter."

The Captain wiped his face and then made place for the Chaplain, who rattled through the prayer. The Chaplain had a bad cold and wanted, before it turned into pneumonia, to get in from the rain.

The two men with spades came up and started shovelling in the dripping fresh mud piled to one side.

The Captain shouted an order, and marching erect, trying to keep his behind from waggling too much under his coat, he led his Company out of the small cemetery, which had only eight other graves in it, through the stone-flagged main street of the village. There were no civilians in the street, and the shutters of all the houses were closed against the rain, the Germans and the war.

The SS Lieutenant was very hearty. He had come over from Headquarters in a big staff car. He smoked little Cuban cigars one after another and had a bright, mechanical smile, like a beer salesman entering a rathskeller. There was also a smell of brandy about him. He sat back in the comfortable rear compartment of the car, with Christian beside him, as they sped along the beach road to the next little village, where a suspect was being detained for Christian to identify.

"You got a good look at the two men, Sergeant?" the SS Lieutenant said, nibbling at his cigar, smiling mechanically as he peered at Christian. "You could identify them easily?"

"Yes, Sir," said Christian.

"Good." The Lieutenant beamed at Christian. "This will be very simple. I like a simple case. Some of the others, the other investigators, grow melancholy when they are in an open-and-shut case. They like to pretend they are great detectives. They like to have everything complicated, obscure, so that they can show how brilliant they are. Not me. Oh, no, not me." He beamed warmly at Christian. "Yes or no, this is me man, this is not the man, that is the way I like it. Leave the rest of it to the intellectuals. I was a machine operator in a leather-goods factory in Regensburg before the war, I do not pretend to be profound. I have a simple philosophy for dealing with the French. I am direct with them, and I expect them to be direct with me." He looked at his watch. "It is now three-thirty pm. You will be back at your Company by five o'clock. I promise you. I make it fast. Yes or no. One way or another. Goodbye. Would you like a cigar?"

"No, Sir," said Christian.

"Other officers," said the Lieutenant, "would not sit in the back like this with a Sergeant, offering him cigars. Not me. I never forget that I worked in a leather-goods factory. That is one of the faults of the German Army. They all forget they ever were civilians or ever will be civilians again. They are all Caesars and Bismarcks. Not me. Plain, open and shut, you do business with me and I'll do business with you."