LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Will it make us late?’

      ‘You won’t miss your appointment with the Tommis.’

      ‘How late?’

      ‘Sixty kilometres to Deelen, Deelen to your radar site can’t be more than one hundred and fifty kilometres, even after dropping me off in The Hague.’

      ‘How long at Deelen?’

      ‘Stop being so nervous, August. We’ll have no local traffic in the border zone, a few convoys between Utrecht and The Hague and then nothing at all in the prohibited coastal zone. When we get to Deelen you’ll be fascinated. I’ll have to drag you away, you’ll see.’

      The first traffic holdup was on the far side of Geldern. Teenage officer cadets, stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat, were working like a chain-gang to replace a damaged bridge section in record time.

      They were only a couple of kilometres past that when an oncoming convoy halted them again. August watched the twelve-ton half-tracks, and the 8.8 cm flak guns they trailed, creep past. It was a large battery complete with fire-control equipment and personnel in full battle order. Three of the guns were crewed by Flakhelfer. These Hitler Jugend, some only fifteen years old, were dwarfed by the seats of the giant tractor. Their steel helmets came low over their unsmiling faces. They wore brightly coloured badges and shoulder-patches and red and white swastika armbands. At their waists each one had a dagger.

      ‘Hitler Jugend volunteers,’ said Max.

      ‘Conscripts,’ said August.

      ‘Kids?’

      ‘That’s it.’ How soon would Hansl be accoutred thus and fed into the endless war? Max counted the guns as they rolled past. ‘Twenty-eight guns,’ exclaimed Max. ‘Fantastic.’

      ‘Grossbatterie; under centralized fire control. At first it was two or three sites combining, now they have up to forty guns under one control.’

      ‘Is that good?’

      ‘At least the flak keeps the RAF up high. Without flak the Tommis would come down on the deck and put their bombs into our factory chimneys.’

      ‘You know, August, my friend, there are quite a few homeless civilians living in the Ruhr who would prefer that.’ He laughed.

      A flak officer noticed the dark-blue Citroen with its Luftwaffe number plates and came across to apologize for the delay. He was a stern-faced young man, steel helmet, fair moustache and a non-regulation pair of soft kid gloves that came into view as he saluted.

      ‘There are road repairs in Geldern,’ said Max Sepp. ‘You won’t get these contraptions through the town.’

      ‘I know, sir,’ said the officer, ‘but we turn off to Wesel before the roadworks.’

      ‘The road into the Ruhr from Wesel is even worse,’ said Max. ‘I know this district well.’

      ‘Our destination is Ahaus,’ said the flak officer.

      ‘Why Ahaus?’ said Max. ‘If it was left to me I’d pull all the flak back into the Ruhr. There you can be sure of a crack at the terror flyers. You’ll be lucky to see any Tommis at Ahaus.’

      ‘The policy is still an air defence corridor along the Netherlands border,’ said August.

      ‘My lads are keen,’ said the officer. ‘They’ll be disappointed unless they see action soon.’

      August replied, ‘“No great dependence is to be placed in the eagerness of young soldiers for action. For fighting has something agreeable in the idea to those who are strangers to it.”’

      The flak officer was puzzled. He pulled at the fastening of his glove.

      ‘Vegetius,’ supplied August.

      ‘A Roman military writer of the fourth century,’ explained Max Sepp.

      ‘As the Herr Oberst wishes,’ said the officer respectfully. Three huge searchlights trundled past them. He saluted again and swung aboard one of the slow-moving tractors to join his young enthusiasts. The Citroen moved forward.

      ‘You shocked the fellow,’ said Max.

      ‘I didn’t mean to,’ said August.

      ‘Why worry?’ said Max. ‘With that medal at your throat you can afford to be blasé about heroism. But in case you should think me an untutored serf, Vegetius was also the man who said, “Let him who desires peace prepare for war!”’

      ‘We all say something we don’t mean once in a while,’ said August.

      Max laughed, and August wondered if he had not been too quick to judge his old friend.

      There was another quarter of a mile of the traffic jam before the cause of it was revealed. There a Bedford Army lorry and an Opel car were locked in embrace. A young NSKK man was directing the traffic on to the grassy verge around the debris while three other NSKK men were extricating the unconscious driver from under the lorry’s bent steering column. The rear part of the Bedford had broken through a hedge and from it boxes of fruit had fallen and split open. Pigs from the orchard were making the most of their good luck.

      ‘Those bloody British lorries,’ said Max. ‘They shouldn’t allow them on the road.’

      ‘But after Dunkirk there were so many.’

      ‘With right-hand steering. Half of these lorry drivers are Motor Corps kids. They are taught to drive in three weeks and then they come on the road and kill anyone who gets in their way.’

      The NSKK boy waved them forward and they bumped on to the grass. It was well ploughed up now and the Citroen’s wheels were spinning for a moment before getting a grip. Max leaned out of the car as they passed the traffic man. ‘Those right-hand drives are death traps,’ he said.

      ‘I don’t speak German,’ said the traffic man. ‘I am French.’ He had the same green-and-black uniform that the Germans had but he wore a tricolour badge on his sleeve and now he tapped it. Max was furious. ‘What bloody use are they?’ he shouted loud enough for the boy to hear.

      August said, ‘We’re short of manpower, Max. Russia is drinking our population as fast as we can get them there.’

      ‘A Frenchman,’ said Max angrily.

      ‘They are a logical race. They should make good traffic police.’

      ‘Huh,’ said Max. ‘Logical. They put a knife between your ribs and spend an hour explaining the rational necessity for doing it.’

      ‘That sounds like a lot of Germans I know.’

      ‘No, a German puts a knife into your rib and weeps a sea of regretful tears.’

      August smiled. ‘And after the Englishman has wielded the knife?’

      ‘He says, “Knife, what knife?”’

      August laughed.

      From there on, apart from a traffic jam in Kleve and a long line of traffic crawling through a military police check at the Waal bridge, they moved fast. August dozed off until Max nudged him.

      ‘We’ll be at Deelen in five minutes or so,’ said Max.

      ‘Deelen air base or the Divisional Operations Room?’

      ‘Number One Fighter Division. They control the whole damned air battle there: the whole of the Netherlands, Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, and even parts of Hesse and Belgium. Been there before?’

      ‘Last year.’

      ‘Ah yes, the old sanatorium buildings. Wait till you see the new bunker. When I first saw it, August, I realized for the first time that, no matter what the Amis and Tommis do, they can never win against organization like ours. On the control map there is every night fighter, bomber, flak unit, civil-defence

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