Barbed wire eight feet thick stretched to each side as far as the eye could see; not that there was any time for the eye to wander with machine-gun bullets flipping through the air three feet above your head, tracer every tenth round, for which Thank God, since it placed the trajectory of the other nine killer rounds.
The barbed wire was six feet high, a rolled concertina mass as dense as tangled hair. The sergeant major said, ‘I want you so low on the ground you’ll need to look up at the worms!’ For a thousand years a herd of cattle had munched this field contentedly, every one a Carnation Milk factory. Each in her turn had been eaten, and the signs of their passage long ago were caked deceptively, crusted firm as stone mushrooms. Until you slid over one. ‘The things I do for England, home and beauty.’ He reached the front of the wire and cautiously extended his hand to lift the strand of the first coil. The wire was cold and damp and though it had started to rust it sprang back when he released it. Damn! Slowly he dragged his body forward through the cowpat to the wire, then, working with his hands close to the ground, he sprang the wire and cut it strand by strand using the short-handled cutters from his belt. Alf worked methodically beside him, matching him snip for snip. Slowly they advanced, cutting the wire and pulling it back, trying to make certain it wouldn’t spring back onto their bodies.
Roger’s hands were lacerated and bleeding; so numb he hardly felt the slash of the baleful spikes. As Alf worked he muttered. Both were nervous; but only Alf showed it. The machine-gun fire increased in intensity through the wire.
There was a ‘whang’ as bullets screamed in new directions, ricocheting off the steel knots of the barbs. Suddenly Roger felt the sting on his neck and when he pulled his fingers away, they were sticky with blood. Alf heard Roger exclaim as the ricochet hit him. He put his finger to the wound, about an inch and a half long, the thickness of a pencil. A neat sliver of flesh had been gouged from Roger’s neck an inch below and behind his ear. He felt the bone behind Roger’s ear. No sign of injury.
‘You all right?’ he whispered. This was no time for first aid.
‘Yes. They ought to pack that up; it could be dangerous!’
Roger worked his head from side to side, risked lifting it three inches off the ground. Remember when Nobby got one in the buttocks and jumped up cursing? That finished him. They all missed Nobby, the section joker. Seventeen when they started; how many left now? Five, including Alf. Alf’s all right, he’ll make it. It took ten minutes to cut six feet of wire; and then they were enclosed by it.
‘There’s a mine under that cowpat,’ Alf said.
Suddenly you didn’t hear the machine guns, the whang and whistle of bullets above you. Suddenly you didn’t hear a bloody thing! There was a mine in front of you, under a cowpat.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Wherever did you see a cowpat that wasn’t stuck to the ground?’
‘Hey-ho,’ Roger said, ‘off we go again. Shall we lift it, or cut round it?’
Alf had had enough of cutting wire. ‘Lift the bloody thing,’ he said.
‘Whose turn?’
‘I’ll take it if you like?’
‘They’ve run out of medals!’
‘I’ll buy one in the Naafi!’
The mine had been buried in the top soil and the crust of a cowpat placed over it. You wouldn’t know it was there, except the cowpat was not sitting squarely on the ground and that’s against the laws of nature, isn’t it? Alf snipped the barbed wire on the other side of the mine, taking care the wire didn’t spring back and clout the top of the cowpat. Gently, he lifted the hardened ring of crust. It was about ten inches circular, the size of a dinner plate; not that they’d eaten off a plate for a long time. He laid the cowpat on the ground as if it were Crown Derby. There it was, a dirty khaki paint-on-brass plunger, like a big nipple. Alf dug with his fingers around the sides of the mine, in the earth. ‘Watch out for wires,’ Roger whispered. Sometimes they wire them up in series, so that anybody setting one off will fire a couple more for good measure. No wires. Wiring takes time, and this bugger’s been put there in a hurry, hence the cowpat. Alf eased the soil from around the mine with his finger. The mine itself was about six inches long, and four inches wide. An old friend, Mark Two. Written on the top of the mine, incongruously, was the word Achtung. ‘We are achtunging, you silly sod!’ Roger muttered. The spigot sat proud of the centre of the mine, in a loose collar. It didn’t matter which way you moved that spigot, it would still get you. Alf took a grip on the collar with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Let it be easy,’ he begged out loud. He turned the collar and a watchful God for once said okay. The collar unfastened easily. He unscrewed it carefully, the thumb and forefinger of his left hand on the spigot itself, to prevent bending its knuckle joint. Slowly he pulled upwards with his left hand as he unscrewed the collar with his right. After five complete revolutions of the collar the spigot moved off its seat. It wasn’t until that moment that Roger felt the sweat pouring off his forehead. He pushed his head down onto the ground to wipe his forehead on the wet grass.
‘I’m doing the work and you’re sweating.’ Alf smiled at him.
Roger’s face was not fifteen inches from the mine. ‘If that bugger goes off,’ he said, ‘it won’t matter which of us is doing the work.’
Alf looked down at the mine. The collar had turned five turns, the spigot was loose on its seating. In theory, the collar and the spigot should now come out together. He looked at Roger, who nodded. ‘Lift the bloody thing,’ he said, ‘and let’s get it over with.’
Alf lifted the collar and the spigot together. Both came free. He pulled them upwards and there was the quite audible sound of a click.
‘It’s booby-trapped,’ Roger yelled.
From the bottom of the spigot two wires trailed inside the mine to the booby trap fuse that lay below.
Both tried to stand but couldn’t for the wire. Alf threw the mine but it hit the tangled wire and bounced back.
‘Three-second fuse,’ Alf shouted, his face twisted with terror.
Roger scrabbled in the ground to press himself backwards, but the barbs of the wire snatched his clothing and his pack. Alf thrashed about trying to clear the wire from his back, but became more and more entangled. In the last second, both realised they could not get away and turned their backs to the mine awaiting the blast. Is it true all your life flashes past your mind’s eye at such a moment?
The mine exploded.
‘Dammit,’ said Company Sergeant Major Ben Bolding, thirty yards behind them. ‘That’s two more we’ve lost. The major will be livid.’
The major was livid. ‘Damn it all, Ben, they’ve been taught booby traps over and over again.’
‘They get nervous, Major.’
‘I can’t take nervous men on this trip.’
The CSM hesitated.
‘I was wondering, Major, if you’d care to speak to them before they leave. Give them a bit of a pat on the back, if you see what I mean. One of ’em got a nasty wound on his neck.’
‘He should have kept his head down.’
‘He did, Major. A ricochet off the barbed wire got him.’
‘Ah, well, that could happen to anybody. Where are they?’
‘I imagine they’re scrubbing off!’ The CSM chuckled. A low-level charge planted in the casing of practice mines that exploded with the force of only a Guy Fawkes night penny banger, but was surrounded with liquid methylene blue dye impossible to wash off. Sometimes it seemed the men were more scared of the dye than of live explosive.
Smithells and Burdon had stripped when I went into their barrack hut, and standing on a towel each by the stove were scrubbing themselves with soap and Vim. Smithell’s wound had been dressed, but his neck had started to stiffen.
They both tried to stand to attention when they saw me.
‘I’m surprised at you, Smithells,’ I said, ‘I never thought you’d let yourself be caught by a booby trap.’ He looked shamefaced. ‘We forgot, Major, in the excitement.’
The whole of one side of Burdon’s face was tinted blue. I had to restrain an impulse to laugh. ‘And you, Burdon, the best man we’ve had so far with explosives, what about you?’
‘He’s right sir, you do forget. You’re so bound up in what you’re doing, you forget the details.’
I felt sorry for them. It was the end of the road so far as they were concerned. There was a strict rule in camp – one failure and you were RTU – returned to unit. But, dammit, these men were volunteers for the Commandos, they’d suffered a basic training that crippled a merely average man and yet had re-volunteered for Special Group 404. Not one of them had any idea of what 404 meant to do, but still they volunteered.
‘You’ll be returned to your units,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t help that, but we shall see you get leave before you go back. You are both first-class men, and I’m sorry you’re not staying with us; but when we get into Europe a simple thing such as forgetting a booby trap would wipe out not only the men who forget, but probably the rest of Special Group 404. That’s something I will not risk.’
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ Smithells said. ‘We knew what we were letting ourselves in for the first day. We’re sorry we didn’t make it.’
I turned to go. At the doorway I stopped and looked back. How vulnerable they seemed, the white flesh of their naked bodies contrasting with the wind-tanned hue of their limbs, the blue stain on their faces. ‘This is something I tell only to the good ones,’ I said, trying to smile. ‘Get yourself a bleached blonde, and use her bottle of peroxide to wash yourselves. Both will do you some good, the bottle and the blonde.’
They both grinned. I turned to go. I had no grin in me. Everyone so far who had failed had qualified for the bottle and blonde tip. They had all been good men.
‘I think that bugger’s almost human,’ one of them said, unaware I could hear him. Yes, I was almost human, and that was something to watch. Humanity and weakness go hand in hand; many men have been ‘understood’ and killed. Only by holding to inhuman standards could I protect the safety of all these men entrusted to me. I had to be a bastard to cut out human weakness.
It was not a pleasing prospect. This would be my fifteenth job. I’d had enough.