The Young Lions

CHAPTER FOUR

CHRISTIAN felt like an impostor, sitting in the little open scout car, with his helmet on his head. He held his light automatic machine-pistol loosely over his knees as they sped cheerfully along the tree-bordered French road. He was eating cherries they had picked from an orchard back near Meaux. Paris lay just ahead over the ripples of frail, green hills. To the French, who must be peering at him from behind the shutters of their stone houses along the road, he looked, he knew, like a conqueror and stern soldier and destroyer. He hadn't heard a shot fired yet, and here the war was already over.

He turned to talk to Brandt, sitting in the back seat. Brandt was a photographer in one of the propaganda companies and he had hitched on to Christian's reco

"What're you laughing about, Sergeant?" Brandt asked.

"The colour of your nose," Christian said.

Brandt touched the burned, flaked skin gingerly. "Down to the seventh layer," he said. "It is an indoor-model nose. Come on, Sergeant, hurry up and take me to Paris. I need a drink."

"Patience," Christian said. "Just a little patience. Don't you know there's a war on?"

The Silesian corporal laughed uproariously. He was a high-spirited young man, simple and stupid, and apart from being anxious to please his superiors, he was having a wonderful time on his journey across France. The night before, very solemnly, he had told Christian, as they lay side by side on their blankets along the road, that he hoped the war didn't end too soon. He wanted to kill at least one Frenchman. His father had lost a leg at Verdun in 1916, and the corporal, whose name was Kraus, remembered saying, at the age of seven, standing rigidly in front of his one-legged father after church on Christmas Eve, "I will die happy after I have killed a Frenchman." That had been fifteen years ago. But he still peered hopefully at each new town for signs of Frenchmen who might oblige him. He had been thoroughly disgusted back at Chanly, when a French lieutenant had appeared in front of a cafe, carrying a white flag, and had surrendered sixteen likely candidates to them without firing a shot.

Christian glanced back, past Brandt's comic, burning face, at the other two cars speeding smoothly along on the even, straight road at intervals of seventy-five metres behind them. Christian's Lieutenant had gone down another parallel road with the rest of the section, leaving these three cars under Christian's command. They were to keep moving towards Paris, which they had been assured would not be defended. Christian gri

He turned in his seat and watched the road ahead of him. What a pretty country, he thought. How industriously it has been cared for, the neat fields bordered by poplars, the regular lines of the ploughing now showing the budding green of June.

How surprising and perfect it all had been, he thought drowsily. After the long winter of waiting, the sudden superb bursting out across Europe, the marvellous, irresistible tide of energy, organized and detailed down to the last salt tablet and tube of Salvarsan (each man had had three issued with his emergency field rations in Aachen, before they started out, and Christian had gri

Really, Christian thought playfully, at a time like this I should be humming Wagner. It is probably a kind of treachery to the Greater Third Reich not to be singing Siegfried today. He didn't like Wagner very much, but he promised himself he would think of some Wagner after he got through with the clarinet quintet. Anyway, it would help keep him awake. His head fell on to his chest and he slept, breathing softly and smiling a little. The driver looked over at him, and gri

The three cars sped along the road through the calm, shining countryside, deserted, except for occasional cattle and chickens and ducks, as though all the inhabitants had taken a holiday and gone to a fair in the next town.

The first shot seemed to be part of the music.

The next five shots wakened him, though, and the sound of the brakes, and the tumbling sensation of the car skidding sideways to a halt in the ditch next to the road. Still almost asleep, Christian jumped out and lay behind the car. The others lay panting in the dust beside him, He waited for something to happen, somebody to tell him what to do. Then he realized that the others were looking anxiously at him. In command, he thought, the non-commissioned officer will take immediate stock of the situation and make his dispositions with simple, clear orders. He will betray no uncertainty and will at all times behave with confidence and aggressiveness.

"Anybody hurt?" he whispered.

"No," said Kraus. He had his finger on the trigger of his rifle and was peering excitedly around the front tyre of the car.

"Christ," Brandt was saying nervously. "Jesus Christ." He was fumbling erratically with the safety-catch on his pistol, as though he had never handled the weapon before.

"Leave it alone," Christian said sharply, "leave the safety-catch on. You'll kill somebody this way."

"Let's get out of here," Brandt said. His helmet had tumbled off and his hair was dusty. "We'll all get killed."

"Shut up," Christian said.

There was a rattle of shots. Slugs tore through the scout car and a tyre exploded.

"Christ," Brandt mumbled. "Christ."

Christian edged towards the rear of the car, climbing over the driver as he did so. This driver, Christian thought automatically, as he rolled over him, hasn't bathed since the invasion of Poland.

"For God's sake," he said irritably, "why don't you take a bath?"

"Excuse me, Sergeant," the driver said humbly.

Protected by the rear wheel of the car, Christian raised his head. A little clump of daisies waved gently in front of him, magnified to a forest of prehistoric growths by their closeness. The road, shimmering a little in the heat, stretched away in front of him.

Twenty feet away a small bird landed and strutted, busy with its affairs, rustling its feathers, calling unmusically from time to time, like an impatient customer in a deserted shop. A hundred yards away was the road-block.

Christian examined it carefully. It was squarely across the road in a place where the land on both sides rose quite steeply, and it was placed like a dam in a brook. There were no signs of life from behind it. It was in deep shadow, shaded by the rustling trees that grew on both sides of the road and made an arch over the barricade. Christian looked behind him. There was a bend in the road there, and the other two cars were nowhere to be seen. Christian was sure they had stopped when they heard the shots. He wondered what they were doing now and cursed himself for having fallen asleep and letting himself get into something like this.