3
The waiting to land, like all the interminable waiting, felt like it would never end and then suddenly did. Ray found himself on deck loaded with his equipment waiting to climb down into a landing craft. In a grid all around him in the darkness the others were waiting to do the same. So many of them, Ray felt for the first time the pent-up strength of the force. They couldn’t lose. Men went over the side and everyone stepped forward. Then Ray went over the side, clambering down from square to warping square of netting. Beside him, a soldier Ray didn’t know mistimed the jump and fell between the troopship and the landing craft. His helmet struck the hull with a ringing sound and before he had time to cry out he was gone, disappeared into the black water, and didn’t resurface. A quiet, rapid, weird death — the first Ray witnessed — that no one had time to remark on. It made Ray pant with terror for a minute. This was it. This was battle. This was where men died.
Ray dropped into the craft as it was rising on a wave so that it caught the bottom of his feet and almost threw him. He stepped forward, gripped the handle where he stood. Beside him, Floyd whispered, ‘Let’s hope the Frenchies are sleeping.’
‘They’ll wake up.’
‘Look up at those.’
‘What?’ Ray glanced up: the huge side of the ship, the night sky. ‘What?’
‘Those stars. If I knew astrology then what could I know about what’s coming.’
‘We are.’
‘Maybe it’s all up there already.’
‘Shut the fuck up, you two.’ Another voice, tight with fear.
‘I agree with that guy,’ Ray said.
‘Okay, men.’ That was Sergeant Carlson, standing right behind Ray. ‘Settle down. God bless us and our victory.’
The craft surged forward. For the long ride of five miles to the port that was their target, Ray stood and thought and tried not to think. He noticed how strange it was that this was the same world, the same wind blowing against them, the same sea they were moving over, but now everything was different. All the rules were different. And that falling man — had that happened? Maybe he dreamed it. No dreaming. Look. Think forwards. Think weapons. This was a night-time attack, an attack on sleep. Only the sentries would be standing upright with their eyes open. Enemies. He had a picture in his head suddenly of his older brother with his friends from the corner, different when he was with his friends, hostile. At night Ray and Tony’s breath mingled in the small bed. During the day they separated. The look in his eye, hard and distant, when his kid brother walked by. That was the space you had to shoot across, corner to corner. Ray’s mind was too busy. He had his rifle in his hands. He gripped it, feeling the solidity, wood and metal, remembering the parts, the action. That was all he needed to know. Until they reached the target he should be empty like a movie camera pushing forwards into the world, seeing things. I’m in a war! he thought to himself. I’m in a movie!
Now out. Okay. Just the tiniest moment between knowing he had to get out and his muscles responding, a refusal he overcame. Ray was in the cold sea, taking long slow strides to get out of it, holding his rifle over his head. Then he was on the beach, lying down on the smooth sand. The fort was where it should be, up on the right, smaller than he had pictured it. The sentries weren’t firing. Ray wasn’t firing. Other soldiers started firing and the sentries responded, a put-put-put sound that didn’t seem to be hurting anyone. Soldiers were running up the steps, waving others after them. One of the sentries fell. Then the other stopped firing. Ray was running up the stone steps with the others into the fort where people were already corralled outside with their hands up. Flashlights showed their faces soft with sleep. Hearing American voices ahead, one soldier arrived up the steps shouting ‘Geronimo!’ There was laughter. Cigarettes were lit. Everyone was panting, airy with relief. Randall punched Ray on the arm.
‘I think I shot one of those guys.’
‘Well, it wasn’t me. How do you know, though? Lots of shots, Randall.’
‘Yeah, but the timing. When he fell. Think I got him right in the heart.’
‘I’m shaking. Are you shaking?’
‘Why the fuck would I be shaking?’
‘It’s the sea.’ George appeared. ‘We’re not on a boat any more. Feel how solid the ground is. It’s weird.’
‘That’s it,’ Ray said. ‘That must be why. I feel like I’m on waves.’
Sergeant Carlson collected his men together. His squad was one of three ordered to patrol the town and respond to any signs of resistance. A French soldier was issued to him to translate if necessary, a man now already civilian in his indifferent slouch and muttered opinions. Carlson, a head taller with white-gold hair that sparkled in the darkness, patted him on the shoulder with heavy, meaningful friendliness.
‘Tell him, if he tries anything …’ Floyd said.
‘He knows,’ Carlson said. ‘And don’t be talking about anything.’
They walked through old stone streets, alert for some danger from doorways or alleys but none came. Ray looked up at the ancient buildings of pitted stone. They walked across a deserted square, the sound of their boots echoing back from store fronts, the high façade of a great basilica.
Ray wanted to see it all but by the time the sun was up and the town was alive — Ray imagined shy, fascinated children, dark women — he and the others were in pup tents on the outskirts of the town waiting for tanks and vehicles to be landed before the army headed east. Ray stared across low, faded, biblical-looking hills and turned slowly round to the north, watching the town come into view and rocks, sea, sky. He wasn’t the first to hear the planes but as soon as someone did the reaction was general, people either staring or running. Up in the heights Ray saw glinting fuselages. A formation of small planes around a couple of bombers. As they approached, the Stukas — that was what they were — went into their dive like something sliding off a table, falling then powering down towards the town. They roared overhead. Their bay doors opened and elegant, pointed bombs dropped silently out, turning end over end. Ray fell onto his face in time to feel the first explosion buck through the ground. Then again and again, a fit, an attack. Any one of them could be the end of him, any second. He listened to the detonations and in the gaps between them felt a strange swimming uplift, himself exposed, expanding, until the next one fell. The earth beneath him was blackness, oblivion. He lay on the thin, bouncing surface waiting to die. A frantic, dry popping sound was small arms fire discharged at the sky. He should be doing that, he should be up on his feet. He pushed himself up onto his knees and went to the tent for his rifle, keeping low, running round-shouldered, shrinking from the sky. There was smoke rising from the town as German aircraft made snarling, curving runs and flew away. He wrestled his gun up to his shoulder, chose one plane and shot pointlessly at it. An artillery weapon, possibly in the fort, was being fired with effect: a fighter plane cartwheeled chaotically into the sea. A bomb landed close, less than a hundred yards away, a dark speeding freefalling object that vanished inside a blast that Ray felt against his face and hands. The power was tremendous. It could kill him so easily. Bullying, shaking, the biggest thing he’d ever felt and it was personal, it meant him, it wanted to kill him.