‘OK, it’s about time. Let’s go,’ Dawson muttered and stood up. He slung the Mauser over his shoulder and checked his Schmeisser – if they met anyone, it would probably be at very close range, and the machine-pistol would be a more useful weapon than the rifle in that circumstance.
‘Ready,’ Watson acknowledged, and stood ready to follow Dawson along the meandering path that led down the gentle slope from the hill to the level farmland below.
They’d watched the activity on the plain diminish steadily as dusk fell and the darkness approached. There had been progressively less movement of troops and supplies as the shadows lengthened, and by early evening most of the German soldiers had assembled in makeshift camps consisting of groups of tents, sentries posted on the outskirts of each encampment.
That was what Dawson had been hoping would happen. The wood they’d taken shelter in was to the south of an unmade road the Germans had been using to transport men and materiel. It would have been very difficult to cross it unseen if the movements had continued through the night, and they had to cross it to make any progress towards the north-west and the border with Luxembourg.
In silence, the two sappers walked down the track that snaked through the trees. At the very bottom of the hill there was a small clearing. Just before they entered it, Dawson held up his hand, and both men stood in watchful silence, carefully checking the land ahead of them, in case the Germans had positioned sentries there. But the clearing appeared completely empty in the moonlight, the only illumination.
Dawson stepped forward, Watson a few steps behind him.
‘The road’s about a hundred yards over there,’ Dawson whispered, pointing to the north. ‘I know it all seems quiet at the moment, but I still think we ought to head east for a while.’
The two men walked around the edge of the clearing, and emerged through the trees on the far side. Beyond the wood and the hill, the land was more or less flat, a network of cultivated fields with lanes and tracks snaking around them.
‘This way,’ Dawson muttered, and began walking slowly down a narrow track that turned into a field through an open gate. They stepped through the gateway and carried on walking down the side of the field in the same direction, Dawson holding the compass in his left hand and checking it periodically.
After about half a mile, he stopped. In front of them just outside the field was another lane or track, unmade and continuing to the east.
‘I think this is about far enough, Dave,’ he muttered. ‘We don’t want to go very far this way or we’re going to get too close to that town over there – Pachten, I think it’s called. It’s time we tried to cross that road.’
Dawson led the way out of the field, across the unmade track and into the next field. The whole time both men scanned in all directions for any sign of trouble. The field was perhaps 400 yards wide, and they kept close to one end of it, where the fence and hedge offered some cover. At the far side they stopped and looked over the fence into the adjoining meadow.
‘Empty,’ Dawson muttered, ‘but we must be getting close to the road now. Keep your eyes open.’
‘I’m like a tree-full of owls, mate.’
The two men followed the same routine, crossing the field at one end, walking about twenty feet apart.
At the opposite side they stopped and again checked over the hedge. But this time, they could actually see the track the Germans had been using, because beyond this hedge was an area of unfenced waste ground, and the rutted and unmade road was clearly visible on the far side of it.
Also visible were two intermittent faint red glows that periodically brightened and then faded, but always stayed just visible.
‘Bugger,’ Dawson muttered. ‘Two sentries, both smoking cigarettes. And there might be more of them – non-smokers, maybe – that we can’t see, posted at intervals along the road.’
‘Do you want to try to take them out? Rush them and then run for it?’
‘No. Far too risky. I’d rather try and slip across the road without being spotted. If we use the pistol or the Schmeissers, we’ll wake up the entire camp back there and we’ll end up running with a couple of hundred fucking Jerry soldiers hot on our trail. A really bad idea. If we do have to make a kill, we’ll have to use the bayonets, but I really don’t want to do that. We’ve no idea when these sentries are going to be relieved, and if we did kill one, his body might be found within minutes.’
‘So we need to sneak across that road, somehow and somewhere?’
Dawson nodded. ‘Definitely, even if we have to go another mile east.’
Watson took a final look over the hedge at the silent sentries. ‘Then we’d best get moving,’ he whispered.
An hour later, that’s where they were – about a mile further east – having back-tracked some distance away from the unmade road before they again started heading in the general direction of Pachten.
‘Right,’ Dawson said, ‘let’s try again.’
As before, the two men moved slowly and as quietly as they could in a northerly direction, creeping across the deserted fields towards the road they needed to cross. The geography was much the same – fields separated by hedgerows and tracks used for farm machinery – but this time they had to cross three meadows before they reached a point where they could see the unmade road.
‘What do you reckon?’ Watson whispered, peering through a gap in the hedge.
‘I don’t see any sentries,’ Dawson replied quietly, studying the land beyond the hedge just as carefully as his companion, ‘but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any out there. Let’s give it another few minutes, just in case.’
They waited in silence for perhaps another five minutes, but saw nothing to suggest that the Germans had posted any sentries along that stretch of the road.
‘Right,’ Dawson decided. ‘Time’s passing, and we’ve got a long way to go. Let’s do it.’
They stood up cautiously, backed away from the hedge and checked their weapons. They each had their Mauser rifles slung diagonally across their shoulders and the straps of the Schmeissers around their necks, allowing the machine-pistols to hang directly in front of their chests, within easy reach.
Dawson reached down to his belt and drew out the Mauser bayonet, and motioned Watson to do the same.
‘Just in case,’ Dawson said. ‘No noise.’
He led the way to a break in the hedge perhaps twenty yards away, then paused and for a few seconds just stared towards the road, alert to any sight or sound. He still neither saw nor heard anything, so he stepped cautiously through and took a dozen silent steps that brought him to the edge of the unmade track.
He glanced behind him, checking that Watson was ready to follow him, then looked both ways again and stepped out. He was barely half-way across when he heard a guttural shout from his left. He stopped immediately and half turned towards the sound.
Clearly visible in the pale moonlight was a German soldier, striding down the track, his Schmeisser pointed straight at him.