I looked round, and found three pairs of eyes staring. Klosse was calculating the chances of jumping me and taking my M1 carbine. Strasser’s were wide with pure terror, but I knew that if Klosse moved the SD man would follow him. Walter Brohm was wearing a little half smile that asked me what I was going to do next.
‘Stan!’ I kept my voice low and the Pole looked back from where he had been covering the road. He nodded as I signalled him to move into the forest and towards our ambushers’ flank. He shot a last look at the three prisoners, grinned at me and was gone into the undergrowth.
‘Here.’ I tossed my pistol to Brohm. ‘If they move kill them.’ Then I followed Stan into the wood.
Why did I put my trust in Brohm, who was undoubtedly the least trustworthy of all? Because the one thing I could trust was his instinct for self-preservation. Walter Brohm had a destiny. He was not going to join some ragged band of fanatics whose fate was, at best, to end up in a prison camp, or more probably be hunted down and killed by the Allies. Walter Brohm had placed his faith in America. Now I was placing my faith, and my life, in the hands of Walter Brohm. Stan and I had operated as a team on and off for a year and now we moved sweetly and silently through the trees, taking it in turns to cover each other. We froze as a last burst from the machine gun brought the firing to a halt. I was gambling that the firepower I heard was evidence of their strength. The MG-42 required a crew of two, one to fire and one to load, three more for the small arms and the faust, add two just in case. Say seven. We began moving again and I motioned Stan right, towards the trees edging the road. I heard voices, at first quiet, then high-pitched shouting as they celebrated their victory. In my mind I could see what was happening and what was about to happen and I picked up the pace, taking the chance of being heard and arming a grenade as I moved forward at the crouch. Stan kept pace with me. Thirty yards ahead I could make out movement through the trees and I prayed they were concentrating on their front and not their flank. They would be relaxed now, in that state of post-combat euphoria when a man is at his most vulnerable. They would be hungry and focused on whatever treasures the jeep held. I slowed and dropped to a crawl among the leaf mulch and the dead branches and I sensed Stan mirroring my movements to the right. Then I felt him tense, stop, half-sensed, half-saw the hand signal. Three, no, four, moving into the road to investigate the jeep. Wait. He nodded, his eyes intense, but not frightened. Stan had been fighting Germans since 1939 when the world had been looking the other way as they raped his country. He was better than I was. Wait. Wait. I imagined one of the men at the burning jeep looking at the mangled bodies, kicking them, just to make sure, turning, seeing the second jeep by the ditch a hundred yards away. A shout. Fire! Stan’s controlled bursts raked the road at the same instant I threw my first grenade. The second was in the air as the first exploded and I heard screams as lumps of razor-edged shrapnel scorched the air between the trees, tearing flesh and smashing bone. I ignored the men in the road. They were Stan’s. I ran forward, screaming, though I wasn’t aware of it, and firing short bursts at the two soldiers by the machine gun and the two who had simply been waiting to share the spoils of the attack. Three of them were down, caught in the grenade blasts, but the fourth blazed away and I felt the hot breath of a passing bullet on my cheek and heard the unmistakable shoop . . . shoop . . . shoop of rounds passing over my head. Inexperienced. Firing too high. I took my time, aimed and he was punched back with two bullets in his chest and another in his throat. A second grey-clad figure struggled to his feet at the edge of my vision and I fired as I turned towards him, the burst folding him in half like a puppet with its strings cut. It was finished, but I was still flying, my mind ranging over the scene around me and the carbine kicking as I automatically fired into the prone figures lying by the wrecked machine gun. I’d learned the lesson the hard way a long time ago. A wounded man can kill you, a dead man can’t. As I stood in the disbelieving void of the aftermath, I registered single shots coming from the trees by the road and I willed my protesting body across the pine needles to take up a position a few yards from the Pole.
‘How many?’
‘Just the one, hiding behind the jeep.’
I replaced the half-empty clip in the carbine with a full one and he did the same. No point in prolonging this. It had to be done.
‘Three-second burst then we rush him. I’ll take right. You take left.’ On such arbitrary decisions your life hangs. Stan just nodded.
‘Go!’
I fired towards my side of the overturned jeep, leaping forward as the last bullet left the barrel. When I was halfway across the road I saw a muzzle flash a heartbeat before someone kicked me in the right shoulder and I went down hard on the gravel. I heard Stan continue firing and a high-pitched voice call out ‘Kamerad! Kamerad!’, which is what Gerry says when he wants to give up. But Stan hadn’t heard from his family since the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and he knew what that meant. A single shot was followed by a sharp cry, then there was silence.