The Young Lions

Then he got down on his belly and started to crawl towards the hedge, which was outlined faintly against the sky. In the distance, far behind it, there was the small flicker of artillery.

There was a ditch alongside the hedge and Noah slid down into it and waited, trying to breathe lightly and regularly. The noise of the men coming after him seemed dangerously loud, but there was no way of signalling them to keep more quiet. One by one they slid in beside him. Grouped together like this, in the wet grass of the ditch, their combined breathing seemed to make a whistling a

They want me to do it, Noah thought, resenting them. Why should it have to be me?

But he roused himself and peered through the hedge towards the artillery flashes. There was an open field on the other side. Dimly, in the darkness, Noah could see shapes moving around, but he couldn't tell whether they were cattle or men. Anyway, it was impossible to get through the hedge here without making a racket. Noah touched the leg of the man nearest him, to indicate that he was moving, and wriggled down the ditch, alongside the hedge, away from the farmhouse. One by one, the men crawled after him.

Maybe, Noah was thinking as he crawled, smelling the loamy, decayed odour from the wet ditch, maybe we're going to make it.

Then he put his hand out and touched something hard. He remained rigid, motionless, except for his right hand, with which he made a slow, exploratory movement. It's round, he thought, it's made out of metal, it's… Then his hand felt something wet and sticky and Noah realized that it was a dead man in the ditch in front of him, and he had been feeling the man's helmet, then his face, and that the man had been hit in the face. He backed a little and turned his head.

"Burnecker," he whispered.

"What?" Burnecker's voice seemed to come from far away, and from a throat near strangling.

"In front of me," Noah whispered. "A stiff."

"What? I can't hear you."

"A stiff. A dead man," whispered Noah.

"Who is he?"

"Goddammit," Noah whispered, furious with Burnecker for being so dull. "How the hell do I know?" Then he nearly laughed at the idiocy of the conversation carried on this way.

"Pass the word back," Noah whispered.

"What?"

Noah hated Burnecker deeply, bitterly. "Pass the word back," Noah said more loudly. "So they won't do anything foolish."

"OK," said Burnecker, "OK"

Noah could hear the dry rattle of the whispers going back and forth behind him.

"All right," Burnecker said finally. "They all got it."

He came to the end of the field. The ditch and the hedge made a right-angle and ran along the edge of the field. Cautiously Noah pushed his hand out ahead of him. There was a small break in the hedge, and a narrow road on the other side of it. They would have to cross the road eventually; they might as well do it now.

Noah turned back to Burnecker. "Listen," he whispered, "I'm going through the hedge here."

"OK," Burnecker whispered.

"There's a road on the other side."

"OK."

Then there was the sound of men walking softly on the road, and the metallic jangling of equipment. Noah put his hand across Burnecker's mouth. They listened. It sounded like three or four men on the road and they were talking to one another as they walked slowly past. They were talking German. Noah listened, cocking his head tensely, as though, despite the fact that he could not understand a word of German, anything he could overhear would be of great value to him.

The Germans went past in a steady, easy pace, like sentries who would come back again very shortly. Their voices faded in the rustling night, but Noah could hear the sound of their boots for a long time.

Riker, Demuth and Cowley crawled up to where Noah was leaning against the side of the ditch.

"Let's get across the road," Noah whispered.

"The hell with it." Noah recognized Demuth's voice, hoarse now and trembling. "You want to go, go ahead. I'm staying here. Right in this here ditch."

"They'll pick you up in the morning. As soon as it gets light…" Noah said urgently, feeling illogically responsible for getting Demuth and the others across the road, because he had been leading them so far. "You can't stay here."

"No?" said Demuth. "Watch me. Anybody wants to get his arse shot off out there, go do it. Without me."

Then Noah understood that when Demuth had heard the German voices, confident and open, on the other side of the hedge, he had given up. Demuth was out of the war. The despair or courage that had carried him the two hundred yards from the farmhouse had given out. Perhaps he's right, Noah thought, perhaps it is the sensible thing to do…

"Noah…" It was Burnecker's voice, controlled, anxious.

"What're you going to do?"

"Me?" said Noah. Then, because he knew Burnecker was depending upon him, "I'm going through the hedge," he whispered. "I don't think Demuth ought to stay here." He waited for one of the other men to whisper something to Demuth. Nobody whispered anything.

"OK," Noah said. He started through the hedge. He got through it quietly, with the wet branches flicking drops of water on his face. The road suddenly seemed very wide. It was badly rutted, too, and the rubber soles of his shoes slipped in the middle and he nearly fell. There was a soft jangle of metal as he lurched to right himself, but there was nothing else to do but go forward. He could see a break in the hedge where a tank had gone through and broken down the wiry boughs. The break was fifteen yards or so down the road, and he walked crouched over, near the edge of the road, feeling naked and exposed. He could hear the other men crunching behind him. He thought of Demuth, lying alone on the other side of the road, and he wondered how Demuth was feeling at that moment, solitary and full of surrender, waiting for the first light of dawn and the first German who looked as though he had heard of the Geneva Convention.

Far behind him he heard the clatter of the BAR. Rickett, who never surrendered anything, cursing and firing from the upstairs bedroom window.

Then a tommy-gun opened up. It sounded as though it was no more than twenty yards away, and the flashes in front of them were plain and savage. There were shouts in German, and other guns opened fire. Noah could hear the nervous whining of the bullets around his head as he ran, noisily and swiftly, to the opening in the hedge and hurled himself through it. He could hear the other men ru

He was out in a field now. He ran straight across the field, with the others after him. Tracers were criss-crossing in front of him aimlessly, and there were loud surprised shouts in German off to the left, but there didn't seem to be any really aimed fire anywhere near them. Noah could feel his breath soggy and burning in his lungs, and he seemed to be ru