Vengeance 10

‘There,’ he muttered, not moving his lips. ‘Third-storey window, on the right, grey-brick building, two ahead.’ The familiar excitement began to build, and he found himself smiling.

‘Right, sir.’ The sergeant shifted his stance. Memling knew they would wait until the jeep was directly beneath, then lob grenades, supplemented by MG fire from one of the other buildings. It was a classic street ambush and a difficult one to survive. The hard choice was which to hit first — providing you spotted them: the bomb throwers or the machine-gunner?

Memling eased the clutch out until the jeep bucked and threatened to stall. He bent forward as if adjusting the throttle and made a quick survey of the buildings on the left. Just along the road and two opposite he had caught a glimpse of movement in an upper-storey window. He described it to the sergeant and pushed the clutch in.

‘Hang on tight. I’ll dash for the left side of the street. Put a burst through that window. I’ll take the bombers. When I shout, you duck. Understood?’

‘Right you are, sir.’ The sergeant was a combat veteran with two years in the desert, and he did not like street fighting one bit. He wanted to be able to see his enemy, and Memling was well aware of the man’s shortcomings in that regard.

‘Just do as I tell you sergeant and you’ll be all right.’ Memling dared not risk a glance behind. ‘Get ready. On three. One… two… three!’

He yanked the wheel hard left, jammed the accelerator down, and the jeep stalled. The MG exploded into action and Memling was out in an instant, crouching beside the jeep, Sten gun poking over the bonnet; but a figure was already in the window, and the stick grenade flew at them before he could open fire.

‘Duck!’ The sergeant landed on the cobbles beside him as the grenade hit the gun mount and bounced to the road. It rolled under the jeep and went off in a plume of choking red smoke.

A whistle blew, and Memling got up, swearing, as the referee strolled from the doorway behind. ‘Afraid you chaps have bought it. Grenade exploded right under your petrol tank.’ He waved his stick at the window where a grinning commando was leaning out. ‘Good pitch, lad. Good pitch.’

‘South Maling will be wanting him after the war.’ The instructor, a reed-thin colonel with an artificial leg, offered Memling and the sergeant a cigarette. ‘American, ‘I’m afraid. All I could get at the NAAFI.’ The sergeant accepted the light, then saluted and went off” to return the jeep. Memling and the colonel walked along the street which was now full of enlisted men in fatigues setting up for the next practice.

‘Weren’t quite quick enough, were you? Next time, Jerry will be using live bombs,’ the colonel observed. ‘Not like you to mess up that way.’

Memling gave him a quirky smile and thought about the jeep’s stalling. Excuses were never acceptable. He should have foreseen that possibility. ‘If we were perfect every time, there wouldn’t be any sense to having a war. No one would get killed. Then where would we be?’

‘Sounds a bit Bolshie to me,’ the colonel chuckled. ‘I understand you go off on leave today.’

Memling nodded. ‘That probably accounts for my lack of quickness back there. Hard to keep your mind on playing soldier when that nonsense is coming up afterwards.’

The colonel lurched to a stop, then with a mutter lifted his left leg and shook the knee joint back into position. ‘Yes, there is that. Still I suppose it can’t be avoided.’

Memling gave him an anxious glance. ‘What do you think, sir? Have we much of a chance?’

The colonel flicked his cigarette away. ‘Why do you ask me questions like that? You know how I must answer.’

Memling shook his head. ‘Not with me, sir.’

The wind off the loch caught at his thick, fair hair, and whipped it about his head as he sighed. ‘You stand damned little chance, Memling. Damned little. Your Canadians are keen enough and, I don’t doubt, will give a good account of themselves. But they haven’t got the training, and we haven’t the equipment to support them properly. I dare say the objective is important; but in all fairness, you should remember that the real objective is a practice for the big one. London is expecting mistakes, quite a few in fact.’ The older man tapped his cane against his tin leg and studied the surrounding hills, it’s going to be hard, boy. Damned hard. In spite of our precautions, Jerry will be waiting, and that’s only one aspect. The other is lack of training. London thinks that troops can be trained in less than a month for this sort of invasion. Well they’re wrong, but they won’t believe it until they have their faces rubbed in the casualty lists. The problem is training a vast number of men, possibly upwards of a million or more, to invade a continent that has had four years to prepare. This dress rehearsal is designed to find out. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

Memling nodded. ‘I could be shot for hiding in a hole, sir.’