I saw a stubby forefinger, black-rimed under the broad nail, resting on a certain point. And then he reeled off the names of the men he would want.
Thirty altogether, I thought. I looked down at the scrawls on the grey surface of the big slate and did some calculations. The enemy would number not far short of two hundred, maybe more.
But Keig’s oak-tree frame was bent squarely over the map again and I was content simply to put my trust in him. Only when, an hour later, I settled on to my pile of straw with my one blanket over me did I ask: But what if he’s a better leader than he is a general?
Leader or general, Keig was up very early next morning and busying himself over an unexpected activity. He set all the men he could find to gathering up old bottles about the farm and even sent five miles to a neighbouring farm to collect yet more. Then he bought from the well-disposed farmer all the lamp paraffin he could spare and half a drum of the motor-oil he had for his tractor. Finally he set young Alan to filling each bottle with three Parts of paraffin and one of oil and stuffing the top with a rag.
At last I asked outright what it was all about. I think the almost light-headed keyed-upness at the prospect of the coming action, which had affected all those named for it, had even stirred Keig’s uniformly phlegmatic nature and that he had been enjoying mystifying us. Because he replied in just two words.
‘Molotov cocktails.’
I suppose I ought to have realized what the devices were from the start, but though I had often enough heard of the wartime home-made bombs I had no idea how they were put together. I wondered how Keig had come across the formula, and asked him.
‘In a book,’ he said. ‘I made sure you’d have read it.’
I sent off to scrape round for more bottles, marvelling once more at the dedication the man had put into his self-imposed task over the years.
And, damn it, I thought, I bet he’s never so much as seen an ordinary cocktail.
This episode confirmed me, in fact, in an opinion I had begun to form recently about Keig. I suspected that somewhere inside him he had made an advance, or had become confident of an advance made earlier. He was, I thought, happy now as a leader. He still gave little away behind that impassive broad dark-complexioned face, but a smile did more often show there briefly and he ventured too on a little rough humour more often than before. It was hardly light-hearted, but I thought it must mean that he felt it now was less of a strain to dominate the odd assortment of men it had fallen to his lot to lead, some of them by no means tractable characters. He even used our names in conversation, our surnames invariably, with a certain amount of ease now, whereas at the start every time he had addressed any of us it had sounded like a barked command, and a command it would be difficult not to obey.
So I dared to hope that if he had succeeded in making himself a confident leader he would also succeed in adding generalship to his unburied talents, enough generalship just now to overcome the seven-to-one superiority of the column we were going to attack in less than six hours time.
We were standing in an informal spread-out way waiting for the order to go. But first Keig made a man-to-man inspection of the whole blackened-faced group of us, brusquely asking to see each man’s gun, swinging it up to peer along the barrels as the last of the light lingered in the sky. Then quite briefly he told us what had been seen by the man he had sent to look out the lie of the land, and what exactly we had to do.
‘Fayrhare,’ he concluded, looking across at Donald who was in charge of one of the two Parties into which we had been split, ‘I want you to get your batch as close up to the camp as you can on your side. But see everybody keeps dead quiet. Now, what’s your watch say?’
Donald glanced at his wrist and stated the time in a flat voice, with no indulgence in his favourite little foible of talking about so many bells in such-and-such a watch.
‘Agreed,’ Keig said, looking at that decidedly expensive watch of his with which he had equipped himself in Dublin.
He turned to the rest of us.
‘Now, two last things. First, none of you’s to shoot more than they need when we start firing. A shot’s meant to kill. Leave making nice bangs to the Keepers. They’ve got enough ammunition for Hallowe’en fireworks: we haven’t. And second, I don’t want anybody on our side hurt if we can help it. There shouldn’t be any need. If the Keepers wake up enough to make it hot for us, we’ll get away quick. Understood?’
There was a murmur of assent. Keig looked round at us, and his eye fell as it often did on young Alan, whom he had included in his own party as a runner, to my private dismay.
‘You, Alan,’ he said, ‘you shouldn’t have to shoot, but d’you understand that?’
‘Yes, Mr Keig.’
‘And Fayrhare, you’ll see your lot remember?’
‘Yes, Mr Keig.’
I had long ceased to wonder at the ex-lieutenant commander giving unquestioned obedience to the obscure smallholder, but the comparison of the two answers following on each other now struck me Particularly. Farmer’s boy and naval officer they both recognized the same authority.
‘Then we’ll go,’ Keig said without further ado.
And off we went, marching, or rather walking—that’s what it was—in a long straggly line with a couple of yards or so between each of us, loping along, guns carelessly held, though with muzzles invariably pointing to the ground. Off to battle.
At the steady ground-covering pace at which we had learned to travel we went through the dark of the countryside, keeping for the most part off the roads, slipping from thicket to thicket, clinging like shadows to one drystone wall and then another. We saw no one. Country folk in the island seldom go about much after dark, and they went about even less at that time when there were likely to be Keepers abroad ready to waylay any solitary passer-by and subject them to a meaningless interrogation in which fists or boots eventually came to figure more often than not.
We Parted from Donald and his group at an easily located rendezvous point, a place where the road we had been using as a rough guide crossed over a stream at a wide culvert. Then the nineteen of us with Keig began quietly walking on again through the open countryside following the course of the stream which, unles our woeful map let us down, we expected to bring us close to the place where the column of Keepers was in camp.
The warm July night was full of the sweet scents of the countryside, patches of the overwhelming tingly medicinal smell of hazel trees, areas dominated by the odour of the straggly elder bushes in full white flower, or like a low under-burden the scent of the rich grass of the meadows. Ahead of me I could see the dumpy cheerful form of Fred Quiddie, a little farther on I could make out at times the lean shape of Jack Ascough, about to experience ‘the real thing’ as he never had in all his years in the Irish Army. Further on still, I knew, Keig himself marched at the head of our line. I imagined those deep eyes darkly afire with concentration as he breasted the cloud-wrapped night.
Then I saw Fred pause a moment and slip quietly downwards. We were entering the stream. The camp must be near. As I came to the place where Fred had disappeared from my view, I in my turn slid quietly down into the tepid gently flowing water. I noticed with pleasure that the bank of the stream itself and the tall grasses above it now gave us almost perfect cover if we simply crouched down a little. The approach could hardly be better. I waded forward after Fred’s retreating outline.
For a quarter of an hour, I suppose, we swished our way along the stream. A fine rain began to drift down and it was wonderfully peaceful. Concentrating on avoiding floundering over with a noisy splash, I had no time to consider what it was we were intending to do when the time came to abandon the warmish comforting water. I simply plunged onward, step by step, with a little two-inch wave curling past each thigh as I advanced.
Then I spotted Fred stationary ahead of me. I stopped, but he beckoned me on till I was within arm’s reach. With the tips of his fingers on my shoulder, he gestured to me with the other arm th
at we were to leave the stream and move on our stomachs across the lush grass of the meadow to our right. I nodded to show I had understood and in turn beckoned forward the man behind me.
Two minutes later we began our final approach. Spread out at a distance of four or five yards between each of us we snaked our way across the thickly damp meadow—one knee up almost to armpit level, a shove forward, next knee up, another shove forward. Zig-zaggedly we progressed over the soft ground, wrenching past the tall wiry-stemmed buttercups, leaving behind us twenty broad swathes of flattened grass.
It seemed that there was no one to look down on us from any near-by height. No shattering challenge came. The night remained thick and still. From somewhere ahead an occasional bird chirped sleepily. It was the only sound.
At last we came to a straggling hedge at the top of the meadow. Cautiously raising my head, I saw that at intervals all along the hedge there were the massive flat stumps of recently felled trees, the cut wood gleaming white in the darkness. I made for the nearest of them and found, as I had expected, that it was the base of a huge oak. I knelt up behind its wonderfully substantial cover.
I almost gasped aloud at the sight that confronted me.
Beginning a mere twenty yards away were neat rows of large white tents, standing out clear as ships’ sails even in the dark of the cloudy night. They stretched away, each big square tent about five yards from the next, over almost the whole of the large field in front of us. Behind them and to our right, silhouetted against a low skyline, there were parked rows of armoured cars and lorries. The gentle night breeze drifted towards us on the soft rain the smell of horses accompanied by an occasional stamped hoof or clink of tethering chain. The other sides of the big field appeared to be surrounded by a drystone wall, broken only for a gate into the near-by road. Here by the light of a small lantern perched on one of the gate-posts it was easy to make out two sentries armed with rifles. They seemed to be the sole guard put on the whole establishment.
I felt a tap on my arm. Fred Quiddie was creeping along the line of us indicating with gestures—the one he made to me was extremely vulgar—that we should get our Molotov cocktails ready for action. I peered at the luminous face of my watch. As far as I could make out we had ten minutes to go before, from the distant blacker mass on the opposite horizon that was the wooded spur which Donald and his party were approaching by, the other prong of our double attack was due to be launched. I untied the first of the oil-filled bottles from round my belt and sniffed at the soaked rag in its mouth to make sure it had not suffered in getting here.
I had barely finished checking the last of my bottles and had got back into position staring over the flat surface of the big oak-bole in front of me, with my shotgun comfortably propped in place, when from the far side of the big field there came a sudden, and very startling, roar of sound. For a moment I did not even know what it was. Then I realized: a concerted volley. The battle had begun.
I aimed my gun at the tent nearest me. It seemed almost silly to be shooting at such an enormous target. I fired. The yellow-red spurt of flame so close to my eyes temporarily blinded me, but on either side of me I heard the heavy bangs of other shots. When I was able to see again the white square of the tent in front was disfigured with huge black rips. One corner abruptly sagged.
‘Aim low. Don’t waste a shot.’
It was Keig’s voice trumpeting out from a little further along the line. I felt a momentary sense of outrage that anyone should shout like that after our hours of keeping silence, till it came to me that far from needing to conceal ourselves we now had to make our presence felt as noisily as possible.
‘Quiddie and Ascough,’ Keig called. ‘Follow me with five cocktails each. Keep your fire to the left, the rest of you. We’re going for the cars.’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the lean figure of Jack Ascough stoop behind me to gather up the Molotov cocktails I had stood there side by side. A minute later the three raiders got over the wall at the corner of the field, quick as rats, and vanished into the darkness, now all the more intense for the bright spurts of flame from our guns. Hastily I reloaded both my barrels, shifted my stance till I was aiming well to the left, picked on a new tent as target and fired twice in quick succession.
By now the Keepers had been stirred into action. There were yells, often as much of fury as of pain as far as I could judge, and dark shapes began blundering out of the tents, one of which had caught alight and begun to illuminate the whole scene with high-flickering tongues of flame.
Then someone among the panicking shapes of the enemy succeeded at last in doing something to retaliate. I saw a sharp hard flash of fire and almost at the same instant there was a heavy thud on the oak-bole in front of me. But it did not really register with me that I had been shot at, that someone there in the confusion in front had taken a rifle and had attempted to kill me.
I slipped behind the wide tree-stump, extracted another couple of cartridges from the improvised bandolier over my shoulder and slid them into the double breech of my gun. When I bobbed up again the scene before me was more confused than ever. The burning tent was now almost a total mass of flames and lit up quite a considerable area of the surrounding camp. I could make out men running from point to point, ducking and stooping as they went. I noted with pleasure that some were running one way while others ran in precisely the opposite direction. There was a great deal of shouting, a little of which only was in the form of barked orders, easily distinguishable amid all the noise of other yells, the unceasing banging of guns by my side, the roar of flames and from time to time the distinctive sound of rifle fire.
Bullets now began to come whining and ricocheting around us. But to my mild surprise I felt only a sense of exhilaration. I was under fire. It was the classic phrase I had so often read. But all I could really think about was that I was not being hit. I took this as a matter of personal pride and stayed up above the oak-bole, loosing off and reloading as quickly as I could and trying to remember each time I fired to pick on a target and shoot at it, in obedience to Keig’s dictum. Yet, even though I was aiming at the figures of men I could not feel I was wounding, perhaps killing, anybody. The whole episode seemed floatingly unreal, and so it remained. I have since discussed, with some curiosity, with other people their battle experiences and I gather this odd state is not as unusual as I then felt it to be.
Now, however, a new note was added to the chaos in front of me: there came a sudden enormously bright flare, followed almost at once by a heavy crump.
The armoured cars, I thought. Keig’s got among them with his famous cocktails.
Three more bright flashes with only two succeeding crumps followed. One dud, I registered. And then there was an outburst of very rapid rifle fire from the direction of the vehicle park and a lot more shouting.
I went back to the business of banging away with my shotgun at any shape I could decently see in the wild scene in front of me.
A few minutes later I spotted two dark figures mounting the wall at the corner of the field. For a second I took no account of them. Then as they one after another dropped to the ground and were lost in the darkness I was flooded by a sudden fear that this was the enemy. The next instant another shape appeared momentarily on the wall, outlined by the flames from the distant vehicle park. It took me no more than that moment to recognize a familiar oak-broad form. Keig.
I experienced a great surge of warmth.
Apparently the three of them were being pursued, or had been seen by some of the Keepers recrossing the wall, because just then a savage outburst of firing came from that direction and I saw Keig and the others, whom I had just begun to make out again as they came towards me, stop, turn and raise their pistols to return the fire. I swivelled round myself, reloaded once more—the bandolier over my shoulder must surely be nearly empty, I thought—and peered into the confusion looking for a target.
In doing so, I failed entirely to notice that farther along in the other directio
n a group of Keepers had got together and rushed a gap in the straggly hedge we were lining. The first I knew of them was suddenly feeling what seemed like a knock from a heavy fist on my left hand. My gun went spinning from my grasp.
‘What the—’ I exclaimed, wheeling round.
And then I realized what had happened to me. Not fifteen yards away a small knot of Keepers was kneeling with rifles up to their shoulders. And one of their shots had hit me. Wounded me.
I leapt up like a chamois and bounded away into the darkness of the meadow behind me.
By the time I had gone ten or twenty yards, charging through the wet knee-high grass, I realized that I was out of the shooting Keepers’ view. I stopped and turned round.
The Keepers—there were only three of them—were still kneeling there, plain to see against the wild background of flames in the camp beyond. They looked like an illustration from some history of the Boer War in precise black-and-white. Each of them was kneeling on one knee, holding himself very upright, the outline of his Norfolk jacket quite clear and that of the absurd peaked hat with its bunch of pheasant feathers in the side. Each had his rifle properly tucked into his shoulder and was firing at regular intervals.
But by now there was no one left to fire at. The others of our party, mindful of Keig’s instructions not to get involved in a pitched battle when they could avoid it, had simply vanished into the dark meadow as I had done, though with more purposefulness.
And now, close to me, I distinguished the broad-shouldered form of Keig.
‘Hello there,’ I said quietly. ‘I’ve been hit.’
Until that moment I had, in fact, scarcely taken account of my wound. But knowing Keig was safe now brought it back to me and I held up my hand, which was throbbing a little but hardly at all painfully, in front of my face. To my intense surprise I saw that the top section of the ring finger was dangling from a thin strip of flesh.
I felt a surge of fury. How dare they. I looked round for my gun, incoherent thoughts tumbling through my head of blazing back at them for what they had done to me.
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