After a while he began to feel restless under her unwavering stare. He was prepared to dispense pilchards but two tins of beans, he told himself, would not go very far among this rabble, and he would be wise to conserve his stock against an uncertain future.
The woman’s eyes, however, continued to battle with his caution, and at length he groped under the leaves and handed her the half-full tin.
She fell upon it with the same ravening hunger as she had shown earlier in the day, and when the beans were gone she thrust her tongue into the tin and licked it as clean as a cat’s plate. When it was empty she sighed and made a series of signs that he could not understand. She was still trying to explain something when the Belgian came into the hut and proposed that he should guard the pilchards, whilst Boxer took two or three of the younger women out on a foraging and reconnaissance expedition.
For some reason that he could not explain Boxer trusted the woman more than he trusted the Belgian. He was getting very good at sign-language by this time and soon made her understand that she was to stay with the crate while he and the old man were away from the clearing.
The Belgian began to argue but Boxer cut him short. “You bloody well do as I say and don’t chew the cud, gran’pa!” he said, so firmly that the old man followed him over the bank and through the bushes to the track.
They spent the afternoon skirting along the edge of the woods in search of turnips. Several aircraft passed over but they were too high to be identified.
Once, in the far distance, they saw a German motorised column pass along the skyline, and towards evening they paused to listen to a steady boom of artillery that seemed to come from the east and not the west as he would have expected.
They explored an abandoned farmhouse but found nothing worth carrying away and dusk was falling when they returned to the bivouac, to find the Russian girl sitting cross-legged on the pile of leaves, a heavy cudgel on her lap.
She said something to the old Belgian who merely grunted. When Boxer asked what she had said he hunched his shoulders and pointed at the cudgel.
“They came but she struck them,” he said, laconically.
“Good for you, Olga!” said Boxer and patted her shoulder.
Without quite knowing how it came about Boxer now assumed full leadership of the group. The old man hung about uncertainly and the woman looked at Boxer interrogatively, as though awaiting orders. Outside, between the hut and a smokeless fire, the other women and children were gathered expectantly and Boxer, having glanced at the group, and then at the woman with the cudgel, understood that some decision was expected of him.
“Are they waiting about for their rations?” he asked the old man.
The Belgian’s eyes narrowed and he glanced contemptuously at the woman on the couch.
“Send her away,” he said, “it is time that we made a plan!”
Boxer signalled to the woman to leave them and she rose very reluctantly, moving just outside the entrance and facing inwards, her back to the crowd.
The old man began to grope for words, but there was no mistaking the urgency of the message he wished to convey.
“It is best you and I leave here,” he said, “there is not enough to feed these women!”
Boxer was outraged. “Well, you mean old bastard!” he exclaimed. “Leave these kids to starve and go off with the lot? Not bloody likely, Grandpa! If anyone goes short it’s going to be you, chum!”
He did not understand why he should take this attitude. After all, the old chap was talking good sense, and pilchards that would keep two for a fortnight would only last a couple of days shared among the twenty-four starvelings in the clearing.
He certainly had not intended to get himself mixed up with these people, for it was surely neither the time nor the place to add to one’s responsibilities, but now that they were looking to him for leadership he found it impossible to abandon them.
“If you think you’d get along better on your own take four tins and clear off now,” he told the Belgian. “Me? I’m going to get some organisation into this outfit!”
He walked out of the hut and addressed the girl, whom he now thought of as ‘Olga’. Olga was the only Russian name he knew, apart from ‘Ivan’.
“Get ’em lined up, Olga,” he said and supplemented his order by signs.
The girl understood at once and began to marshal the refugees into a queue. He went back to the hut, where the Belgian was already helping himself from the crate.
“I said four, Grandpa, not forty-four!”
He slapped the old man’s hand and counted out four tins.
“Now scram, Grandpa!” He pointed to the door and repeated: “Scram! Vamoose! Allez-allez, you thieving old basket!”
The man shrugged and left the hut. Boxer did not reflect much upon the problem of communicating with these people without an interpreter, even such an inadequate interpreter as the Belgian. He told himself that he would manage somehow, and he and Olga dragged the crate into the open where he began issuing tins. This done he returned, opened his last tin of beans and shared it with the girl.
It was dark now and he wondered about the fires but decided that they would have to risk advertising their presence. The huts were little more than shelters and it was cold.
He sat down on the leaves and tried to think. What the hell could you do for these people? To judge by the constant rumble of guns, and the almost continuous drone of aircraft overhead, fighting was now going on all around them. This little glade was as safe as anywhere, he supposed, and certainly safer than trekking east or west along roads or forest tracks. Tanks and motorised infantry would use the tracks, particularly with so many hostile aircraft overhead, and some of the Yanks were not over particular in their choice of targets—his own column had been strafed four times in its movements from camp to camp.
If they remained here, however, they would have to be fed and the pilchards would not last much longer. His frown of concentration turned on the girl, who was cleaning the communal mess-tin and spoon with handfuls of leaves.
Watching her Boxer relaxed, thinking her action typical of her entire sex. Louise, his sister, would have done just that, even under these conditions. Here was artillery grumbling all round them, the sky vibrating with bombers, and twenty-two women and children trying to sleep in home-made huts on a supper of tinned pilchards, yet Olga still practised the trade of housewife! He wondered how old she was and how she came to be here. He yearned to confide in her and ask her advice, but knowing no single word of Russian, he realised that this was not possible. The fire outside had burned up and its glow lit up the hut as she laid down the burnished mess-tin and picked up her cudgel, seating herself on the crate, folding her arms, and leaning her body on the flimsy wall. She was evidently taking her responsibilities as sentry very seriously.
“You can’t sit like that all night, Olga,” he said. “They won’t try anything, so long as I’m here!”
She smiled and threw back her mop of hair. He got up and spread his blanket on the leaves, pointing first to her and then to himself. She understood this readily enough but indicated by signs that he should lie down first and when he did so she lay down beside him and threw the edge of the blanket over his shoulders, jerking it towards her so that they were pressed together in its fold.
He was surprised by her warmth and by the softness of the thick couch of leaves. Nestling there, with her arm across his shoulder in order to hold the blanket in place, he reflected that it had been quite a day. It promised to be quite another, tomorrow, but he would not think about that now. Something would turn up, just as it always did.
It was years since Boxer had held a woman in his arms but he experienced no desire for this one and this fact also surprised him. Was it the cold, the years of celibacy behind wire, or the strange, overriding conviction that this girl, now seeking to comfort him, was not a woman at all in that sense but a kind of mother, doing duty for all mothers, everywhere.
He considered t
his fancy for a moment and then, the moment before sleep overtook him, the humor of the situation struck him and with it the need to make a mental note of it in order to recount the story to Bernard. He had so many stories to tell Berni, but this, surely, was the richest of them! A woman and a bed in exchange for a crate of tinned pilchards!
Even as he fell asleep his face split in his habitual grin.
Boxer remained in the clearing for fourteen days and the period proved to be the final stage in the true discovery of himself as an individual.
Ever since that August day almost three years ago, when he had been faced with the terrible necessity of making a whole series of decisions regarding the disposal of Bernard, Boxer had been moving steadily towards the achievement of independence.
His experiences in the prison camps had given him plenty of opportunity to exercise ingenuity, but inside there had always been expert advice available and, in addition, a certain pattern to which even inveterate practical jokers like Boxer were obliged to conform. Here, in the clearing, there was no single person with whom he could confer, and the only pattern that emerged was that of staying out of sight and staying fed until either the Americans or the Russians showed up, and he could hand over his charges to someone better equipped to look after them.
His luck, however, did not desert him, for on the second day, while on a reconnaissance along the edge of the forest, he found a hamlet from which the inhabitants appeared to have evacuated themselves in haste.
He made a thorough search of two small farms and located two sacks of oatmeal in an abandoned perambulator. He wheeled them home in triumph and there was joy and thanksgiving in the bivouac that night, for every person in camp had two helpings of porridge, as well as their usual ration of pilchards.
On the fourth day the population of the clearing was augmented by a party of German civilians from a town on the other side of the river that they could see from the fringe of the woods.
The party consisted of three elderly men, five middle-aged women, and seven assorted children. One of the women, a school-teacher, could speak both English and Polish, and was able to understand sufficient of Boxer’s orders to transmit them to the Russians.
The two groups displayed no animosity towards one another and neither questioned his authority. Outside on the plain there was war and here, deep in the woods, was a limited measure of security, hot food, and partial shelter from rain and cold. This, for the terrified refugees, was all that mattered for the moment, and as the thunder of guns increased from the west more and more fugitives began to trickle into the clearing, some of them bringing stocks of food that went into a communal larder.
More huts were built, a regular system of reconnaissance was organised, and a permanent patrol set to watch the junction of the forest path and the road where Boxer had first encountered the Russians. Rumours circulated in the camp with the persistence of the aircraft patrols overhead, and Boxer issued orders for the huts to be moved and rebuilt under the trees, leaving the open section of the clearing free in case the settlement should be mistaken for a troop concentration and bombed.
Once or twice, German motorised columns rumbled along the road within half a mile of the camp, but no units penetrated the belt of undergrowth that screened the clearing from the track. Such fires as they used were built under the close-set trees and a watch was maintained on each in order to keep it as smokeless as possible.
Even so, on the fifth day, a grizzled forester wearing a uniform that reminded Boxer of the Sherwood Forest outlaws featured in the two-penny magazines of his youth, came into the camp and handed Boxer his shotgun.
In a conversation conducted through the school-teacher the forester assured Boxer that he was not, and had never been, a member of the Nazi party, but had been enrolled in a specially-formed unit for the defence of the district against anticipated paratroop attacks, in February. There were many such as he in the district, he said, and they would be happy to surrender to units of the British, or the Americans. Meantime, pending arrival of the main forces of the Allies, he would be glad to act as forest guide to the refugees. He made no secret of the fact that he wished to shed his quasi-military status as rapidly as possible.
Boxer did not know what to make of all this and was by no means sure of the attitude he thought to maintain towards Germans carrying arms. After some thought he decided to abandon his role of P.O.W. and take an altogether more active part in the war. Convinced of the sincerity of the forester he accepted his shotgun and ammunition, and sent him to watch the cross-roads. This was certainly a risk now that the man had found the clearing, but it was one that Boxer was obliged to take, for there were no facilities for holding the man prisoner in the clearing.
Two days later there were even more startling developments. The forester reported to the school-teacher that he had made contact with a group of armed civilians, whom he had persuaded to surrender. He assured Boxer that there would be no trouble with these people, some of whom he knew, and all of whom were men over forty, hastily enlisted for home defence during the last two months.
They marched into the clearing the following morning and stacked their arms outside Boxer’s hut. There were twenty-nine of them in all and the leader behaved towards Boxer as though he had been a conquering general.
By this time Boxer was getting used to authority and was even attired for it. The had brought him a British officer’s pack, found abandoned along the route of one of the P.O.W.’s forced marches, and he had decked himself out in an infantry captain’s cap and battledress, so that he was ready for the second mass surrender, this time of a party of regular troops, located by the patrols of the first party and conducted to the clearing by night.
This latest batch consisted of forty-three men under the command of a bewildered junior officer. The officer, Boxer noted, was at the end of his tether, and had been hoping to surrender for days. He spoke English and told Boxer that he and his half-company had not slept for four nights and had marched over two hundred miles since the unit was despatched to the Wanfred sector, a fortnight ago.
The men were too exhausted to eat and lay about round the fires, the subject of sour complaints on the part of women trying to prepare meals with improvised utensils.
There was no serious food problem now, however, for the obliging forester had shown them where they could find meal, root crops, and maize in abundance. More and more huts and a few tents sprang up, and when Boxer conducted a census he found that there were over two hundred prisoners and refugees in the clearing and more coming in each day.
He formed a kind of staff from the Russian girl, Olga, the German school-teacher and the forester, and they discussed their various problems round his fire. It was here that the forester told him that he could, if he wished, make contact with American tank units, who were about to cross the river and by-pass the forest to the south. Boxer decided to take his advice, for it seemed to him that if he continued to rule the clearing the entire population of Germany might sooner or later find its way there and deposit its manifold problems in his lap.
He set Olga and the Russian women to guard the rifles and followed the forester along a series of tracks that led south through a part of the woods that he had not yet explored.
On the way they heard small-arms’ fire, coming from the direction of the river and later a dull, heavy explosion. When they emerged from the woods on to the river road they saw the tail-end of a German column, disappearing at speed into the east. Across the river were puffs of smoke that indicated the presence of American artillery.
They settled themselves on a wooded ridge overlooking the stream and within hailing distance of the damaged bridge. The bridge had evidently been blown up that morning and its demolition must have been the explosion they had heard. Boxer decided that the charges must have been faulty, for only one arch had been severed and even this was still practicable to pedestrian traffic.
About noon the first American infantry began to cross, led by small group
s of heavily-laden men, who picked their way carefully across the twisted girders and ultimately formed up on the bank. The nearest of them were about a hundred yards away when Boxer stood up and shouted. The immediate response was a smart volley, that whipped through the branches of the trees under which they were standing. Boxer was indignant.
“Well, stone the bloody crows!” he exclaimed, subsiding quickly.
When he cautiously raised his head again a patrol of four men were fanning out in the undergrowth immediately below them. They moved with elaborate caution and Boxer, watching them closely, could not restrain a chuckle.
“So help me, if I had a Tommy I could pick all four off in one burst!” he told the stolid forester.
He saw what he must do. He was accustomed now to making swift decisions and remembered that his long woollen socks were white, or had once been white. He kicked off his boot, peeled off a sock, and raised it on a length of twig that the forester passed to him.
A moment later a voice below called sharply:
“Stand up, don’t stir, and keep your hands above your head, Kraut!”
Boxer stood up, grinning, and saw that the foremost man of the patrol, a broad-faced corporal, was already within thirty yards of the ridge.
“I’m no bloody Kraut, Yank!” said Boxer, genially. “I’m a P.O.W. on the run, and I’ve got a whole army of Krauts falling over ’emselves to surrender!”
They took both him and the forester before the officer, a major, who was polite and incredulous, but not inclined to be helpful.
“You say you’re a P.O.W. and you’ve got two hundred Krauts rounded up in the woods, Captain?”
The Avenue Goes to War Page 64