The Young Lions

They had to rest. They hadn't slept for two days and they had had nothing to eat since the day before, and the barn and the house looked promising.

"Take off your helmets and leave them here," Noah said.

"Stand up straight. And walk slowly."

There was about fifty yards of open field to cross to the barn. If anyone happened to see them, they might be taken for Germans if they walked naturally. By now Noah was automatically making the decisions and giving the orders. The others obeyed without question.

They all stood up, and carrying their rifles slung over their shoulders, they walked as normally as possible towards the barn. The air of stillness and emptiness around the buildings was intensified by the sound of firing in the distance. The barn door was open, and they passed the odour of the dead cows and went in. Noah looked around. There was a ladder climbing through the dusty gloom to a hay loft above.

"Go on up," said Noah.

Cowley went first, taking a long time. Then Burnecker silently went after Cowley. Noah grabbed the rungs of the ladder and took a deep breath. He looked up. There were twelve rungs. He shook his head. The twelve rungs looked impossible. He started up, resting on each rung. The wood was splintery and old and the barn smell got heavier and dustier as he neared the top. He sneezed and nearly fell off. At the top he waited a long time, gathering strength to throw himself on to the floor of the loft. Burnecker knelt beside him and put his hands under Noah's armpits. He pulled hard, and Noah threw himself upwards and on to the hay-loft floor, surprised and grateful for Burnecker's strength. He sat up and crawled over to the small window at the end of the loft. He looked out. ›From the height he could see some activity, trucks and small, quickly moving figures about five hundred yards away, but it all looked remote and undangerous. There was a fire burning about half a mile off, too, a farmhouse slowly smouldering, but that, too, seemed normal and of no consequence. He turned away from the window, blinking his eyes. Burnecker and Cowley faced him inquisitively.

"We've found a home in the Army," Noah said. He gri

It was nearly dark when he woke up. A strange heavy clatter was filling the barn, shaking the timbers and rattling the floors. For a long while Noah did not move. It was luxurious and sweet to lie on the wispy straw, smelling the dry fragrance of old harvests and departed farm animals, and not move, not think, not wonder what the noise was, not worry about being hungry or thirsty or far from home. He turned his head. Burnecker and Cowley were still sleeping. Cowley was snoring, but Burnecker slept quietly. His face, in the dimness of the twilit loft, was childish and relaxed. Noah could feel himself smiling tenderly at Burnecker's calm, trusting sleep. Then Noah remembered where he was and the noises outside began to make sense to him. There were heavy trucks going past and creaking wagons pulled by many horses.

Noah sat up slowly. He crawled over to the window and looked out. German trucks were going past, with men sitting silently on top of them, through a gap in the hedge of the next field. There, other trucks and wagons were being loaded with ammunition, and Noah realized that what he was looking at was a large ammunition dump, and that now, in the growing darkness, when they were safe from the Air Force, German artillery outfits were drawing their ammunition for the next day. He watched, squinting to pierce the haze and the darkness, while men hurriedly and silently swung the long, picnic-like baskets containing the 88-millimetre shells into the trucks and wagons. It was strange to see so many horses, like visitors from older wars. It seemed old-fashioned and undangerous, all the big, heavy, patient animals, with men standing holding the reins at their heads.

My, he thought automatically, they would like to know about this dump back at Divisional Artillery. He searched through his pockets and found the stub of a pencil. He had used it on the landing craft – how many days ago was it? – writing a letter to Hope. It had seemed then like a good way of forgetting where he was, forgetting the shells searching across the water for him, but he had not got far with the letter. Dearest, I think of you all the time (routine, flat, you'd think that at a moment like that you would write something more profound, come forth with some deep-hidden secret that never before had been expressed). We are going into action very soon, or maybe you could say that we were in action now, except that ifs hard to believe you could be sitting writing a letter to your wife in the middle of a battle… Then he hadn't been able to write any more, because his hand began to jump, and he had put the letter and the pencil away. He looked through his pockets for the letter now, but he couldn't find it. He got out his wallet and took out a picture of Hope and the baby. He turned it over. On the back, in Hope's handwriting: "Picture of worried mother and unworried child."

Noah stared out of the window. On a direct line with the dump, perhaps half a mile away, there was a church steeple. Carefully he drew a tiny map, putting in the steeple and marking the distance. Five hundred yards to the west there was a cluster of four houses and he put that in. He looked at his map critically. It would do. If he ever got back to their own lines it would do. He watched the men methodically loading the straw baskets under the protecting trees, eight hundred yards from the church, five hundred yards from the four houses. There was an asphalt road on the other side of the field in which the dump was situated, and he put that in, being careful about the way the road curved. He slipped the picture into his wallet. With fresh interest, he peered out across the countryside. Some of the wagons and trucks were turning into a side road that crossed the asphalt road six hundred yards away. Noah lost sight of them behind a clump of trees, and they did not reappear on the other side of the trees. There must be a battery in there, he thought. Later on, he could go down and see for himself. That would make interesting news for Division, too.

They were on the edge of a canal. It was not very wide, but there was no telling how deep it was, and the oily surface gleamed dangerously in the moonlight. They lay about ten yards back from the bank, behind some bushes, looking out doubtfully across the rippling water. It was low tide and the bank on the other side showed dark and muddy above the water. As nearly as they could tell, the night had nearly worn away and dawn would break very shortly.

Cowley had complained when Noah had led them close to the concealed battery, but he had stuck with them. "Goddammit," he had whispered bitterly, "this is a hell of a time to go chasing medals." But Burnecker had backed Noah, and Cowley had stuck.

But now, lying in the wet grass, looking across the silent band of water, Cowley said suddenly, "Not for me. I can't swim."

"I can't swim, either," said Burnecker.

A machine-gun opened up from somewhere across the canal, and some tracers looped over their heads.

Noah sighed and closed his eyes. It was one of their own guns across the canal, because it was firing towards them, and it was so close, twenty yards of water, no more, and they couldn't swim… He could almost feel the photograph in his wallet, with the map on the back of it, with the position of the dump, the battery, a small reserve tank park they had passed, all marked accurately on the back of the photograph, over Hope's handwriting. Twenty yards of water. It had been so long, it had taken so much out of him, if he didn't cross now he would never make it, he might as well tear up the photograph and give himself up.