‘Like how?’ Play Inkester’s game; if he wants to chat for a while, why not? Maybe Inkester never daydreams.
‘Well, like when we went down the hill to the road after Lieutenant Sidworth bought his; remember, us an’ Sealey. Davis put us in exactly the right place… best protection, good position. It bloody looked dangerous but we were safer there than up on the hill in the open. And later, in fact every time we moved position he was careful, every time bloody careful; not just drive up and think we’d got hull-down, but exact… just right… and good cam… natural cam… cover… everything. I tell you, it wasn’t all luck DeeJay, it was sort of genius. Maybe he’s got an instinct. You know. I’ve read about things like this, tankies who got themselves right through the last big war, and Korea and places, without a bleedin’ scratch… there’s always got to be someone who gets all the way through. Well, this time, it’s going to be us.’
You stupid bastard!’ This time DeeJay was angry. If he could have reached Inkester through the narrow gap between the back of his driving seat and the gun, he would have grabbed him and smashed his stupid face.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Inkester knew the driver’s anger was genuine, and was startled.
‘You’ll fucking jinx it, you daft bugger! I don’t want you, nor any other nig-nog talking about luck, skill or anything to do with why we’re dive and the others aren’t. I don’t give a fart about surviving yesterday, or today… even tomorrow. I’m alive now, and that’s all that matters.’
Spink interrupted in an attempt to distract the two men; there was nowhere to go inside a tank if someone started throwing punches. ‘I think our WO is a bloody lunatic.’
Spink’s remark was a mistake. Inkester grabbed him by the collars of his coveralls and dragged him forward until their faces were only a few inches apart. ‘You think what, Stink?’
‘I don’t mean he’s mad or anything, honest… just I thought that he was going to murder me.’ To his relief Inkester pushed him away.
‘I’d have bloody murdered you, too,’ DeeJay said fiercely.
‘Davis is a fuckin’ good commander, Stink.’ Inkester reached down beside his seat and brought out a bar of chocolate. He broke it into three equal parts and to Spink’s surprise gave a piece to each of them. ‘We’re all mates in this tank, we fight together. But remember, Davis is ace, Stink, genuine essence!’
TWENTY
Another new troop. New men. They weren’t even from his own regiment… unless you counted some of the reserves who had reached the division in the past few hours. Strangers, all of them. Maybe it was better like that. If he thought about them too much Davis knew he would go crazy as they got themselves killed off. They were really only replacement equipment, not men with faces and names; limited-life equipment, lacking durability, intended to be used and discarded. When they had reported to him, he had tried not to look at them too closely. Their names were on his list, but he had not even attempted to remember them.
‘If you ask me what’s going on once more, Inkester, I’ll crown you. You’ve heard the orders, and you’ve got eyes like the rest of us.’ He was getting snappy… testy. No damn wonder. ‘Spink, what are you up to?’
‘Reading, sir.’
Reading. God, twenty-four hours ago the lad was a breathing disaster area, and now he was cool enough to read a book while they waited for an enemy attack. He realized he knew nothing at all about Spink; not even his age… nothing about his background. Did he even have a christian name? Inkester and Hewett, he knew them; everything about them, faults, weaknesses, good points, what made them both tick. But Spink? ‘Spink, how long have you been in the army?’
‘Eight months, sir.’ There was the sound of his book, some paperback, closing.
‘Where are you from?’ A few minutes ago he hadn’t wanted to know the new men, and here he was questioning Spink. It was different though with your own loader, he told himself. If Spink was going to buy it, then the odds were that he would too. And it was necessary to work close to your crew, understand them.
‘Winchester, sir. Hampshire.’
‘I thought that was the home of the Green Jackets. Why didn’t you join them?’
‘Don’t like walking, sir.’ There was a touch of humour in the lad’s voice.
‘What were you doing before you signed on?’
‘Insurance, sir; clerk. It was dead boring.’
Insurance clerk. ‘O-levels, Spink?’ You would need reasonable educational qualifications in an insurance company.
‘Yes, sir, six.’
‘Six O-levels and you want to be a loader.’ Six O-levels were enough for a commission!
‘No, sir. I want to be a troop leader.’
Saucy young bugger. Davis smiled to himself; Spink might do it. Perhaps quicker than he anticipated if the war lasted, and if he stayed alive.
Another dawn; the third of the war. There was the familiar smell of diesel fuel, oil, stale explosives and the crew, inside the Chieftain. They were sited facing south-east, fine rain making it difficult for Davis to see through the episcope as the breeze caught the mist and swirled it against the hull. It was barely wetting the surface of the ground yet; he wanted full torrential rain, the kind of downpour the dark night clouds had promised earlier.
The gusty breeze was moving the brown leaves of a tall beech to the Chieftain’s left, billowing the soggy camouflage netting that broke the outline of the hull. To their rear a thousand meters away was the River Oker, running north-west towards the Hahnen Moor. They were hull-down behind the low railway embankment that led from Braunschweig to a nearby cement works; there would be no more trains for a long while, the track was destroyed in a hundred places, the lines twisted and curled, distorted, the embankment blasted flat. Davis’s visibility was less than two thousand meters,
He had been eavesdropping on the different radio wavelengths, hoping to obtain some reasonable idea of what was happening along the front. Many of the conversations meant nothing, but he could follow the battles taking place somewhere in the mist and low cloud; seven kilometers ahead. The sounds were there when he opened the hatch, the noises of war dampened by the low cloud, but closer, woolly. The rain wouldn’t slow them much… bloody Scotch mist! Still, with luck, it might cut down the air activity.
‘Charlie Bravo Nine this is Zulu, over.’
‘Charlie Bravo Nine, over.’
‘Everything okay?’
‘Yes, sir.’ What was the new captain’s name? DeYong! Probably Dutch; he had an accent that was difficult to identify.
Davis had sited the Chieftain carefully during the night; optimistically hoping for heavy rain. He could remember a time a few years ago on exercise when a troop of the regiment, sent to defend positions near a river, had remained stationary for almost. twenty hours in a downpour. When the time came to move, they couldn’t. Every one had sunk in the soft earth and had to be towed out by recovery vehicles with kinetic ropes. You didn’t make errors like that in this situation; not if you wanted to live.
Was the rain getting heavier? Rain. It would turn the broken ground, churned by the shell and rocket fire ahead of the advancing Russian armour, into a swamp. It would restrict air activity, and enable the NATO reinforcements more time to be brought up to the front. Every road in the abandoned territory which might have been useful to the Russians had been destroyed, but many behind the NATO lines were still in reasonable condition. Rain favoured the defenders.
Visibility? It seemed less. A thin line of poplars he had been able to see clearly only minutes ago, was hidden. Was it increasing mist, or was the drifting smog of the battlefield already closer?