A Kiss for the Enemy

by David Fraser

  ‘Of course,’ Hilda Marvell’s letter ran, towards its end, ‘the Americans now being in the war does mean one feels a total gulf between us and Marcia. Before, when the USA had diplomatic relations with Germany, one always had the feeling, however far-fetched, that something, somehow, might be done. Now there’s a great, grim wall across the whole world and reaching to the sky. We’re on one side of it, and our darling Marcia is on the other. She must feel like that too. I’m afraid I hope so.’

  Hilda was Anthony’s chief correspondent. His father wrote briefly and prosaically. Other men grunted with pleasure at letters from wives, sweethearts. There were the domesticated types who read silently, thinking of home, firelight, peace. There were the lechers, the boasters, who used letters as evidence of amorous triumphs, to be savoured in recollection, sometimes quoted aloud. There were a few who never received letters at all, for whom the cry ‘Mail’ generally induced a determined concentration on cleaning a rifle, attention to some small personal task, an averting of the eyes, shamed by neglect. ‘And I,’ thought Anthony, ‘I have no lover to write letters to me.’ His lover, too, was on the other side of what Hilda called that great grim wall across the whole world. And could she even think of him now? Was she alive? And where? But although he thought of Anna with a longing entirely undimmed by more than three years apart he thought of her with a certain inner contentment. This woman had loved him, borne his child (if Bob O’Reilly were to be believed – and why not?) and was a woman of such quality as few of his luckier, more satisfied comrades could ever dream of. And he, at least, could dream.

  There was a whistle and a distant crump. Shells falling on C Company away to the north, on their left.

  Letter stuffed into his pack and left at Company Headquarters, Anthony walked across to B Company’s right-hand platoon, putting much effort into demonstrating a nonchalance he seldom felt. Shelling in the Company area, the right-hand forward company of the battalion, had been light since the previous evening.

  The platoon – the right-hand forward platoon of the entire battalion front – was commanded by Sergeant Brinson, a lugubrious, reliable man. The Platoon Commander, Lieutenant Peter Worldham, a cheerful, impertinent, irrepressible youth had been one of B Company’s casualties on the second day. They’d heard nothing about him since. As Sergeant-Major Phillips had briskly organized the stretcher party which took him down the hill Anthony had had a word –

  ‘You’ll be all right, Peter.’

  Worldham had smiled. Anthony saw the pain behind the smile and feared that the shell splinter had found the stomach. Now Sergeant Brinson managed the platoon, in an austere sort of way. ‘Everybody does things in his own fashion,’ thought Anthony, ‘and there’s no doubt Brinson gives them confidence. They feel that even the Germans wouldn’t take liberties with him.’

  Sergeant Brinson, for once, seemed less than alert. He gave no sign of registering Anthony’s arrival. He was leaning against the end face of his slit trench, his head apparently in his right hand, very still. Private Wilcox, who shared the trench with him, grinned at Anthony and saluted. He turned half-apologetically to Sergeant Brinson. It was beginning to rain again.

  ‘Captain Marvell, Sergeant.’

  Brinson did not move.

  ‘Sergeant –’

  ‘Sh – sh – sh!’

  Anthony stood on the edge of the slit trench and looked down into it. If they heard that dreaded, familiar, rushing sound, the fanfare of a German salvo, he would have to join them sharply. Wilcox was large. The trench was not.

  ‘’Morning, Sergeant Brinson.’

  Brinson now turned his head thoughtfully, saluted Anthony with deliberation, turned his head back in the previous direction and said quietly,

  ‘Listen to this, sir!’

  Anthony listened. The wind was not as sharp and cruel as it had been but it produced background noise to all other sound. No guns were speaking. For Tunisia it was a quiet morning.

  ‘What is it, Sergeant Brinson?’

  ‘Listen, sir!’

  Then Anthony heard it.

  The wind dropped for a moment and he heard it. Without question. The sound of engines, rising to a roar, falling to nothing. The intermittent, clattering creak of steel tracks. To the right of Sergeant Brinson’s platoon the ground fell steeply to a valley floor. There had never been anything to stop the Germans, were they so minded, from driving past that right flank, moving along the valley, threatening the right rear of the Battalion.

  There was another lull in the force of the wind. The sound came to them now more strongly and more steadily. Three things were certain. These were tanks. They were German. And they were not very far away.

  Although Anthony did not know it, Richard Wright, his Company Commander, was at that moment making his way back to B Company in an agony of concern. Meanwhile, Anthony was in command. The sound of tanks rose and fell. The slope to the valley was convex. The enemy seemed to be moving around their right, towards the rear company of the Battalion. D Company.

  An artillery observation officer had a trench near the lip of the hill, whence the valley could be observed. Anthony decided to visit him. He was not sure that it was the right moment to pay a call, strictly speaking outside the perimeter of his own company area. On the other hand he could see little. He felt a mighty need to know more of what was happening.

  Anthony reached the artilleryman’s post without incident. The latter, a young man with a high forehead and the manner of a junior and ebullient university don, had already won friends among B Company with his manifest enthusiasm and competence. He now pointed downwards with quiet enjoyment.

  ‘There they are!’

  There were, as far as Anthony could count, fourteen German tanks. They were moving, as he had assumed, toward the right rear of the battalion. The nearest was about a thousand yards away. They looked like beetles.

  ‘They’ve shown no signs of turning this way,’ said the Gunner quietly, ‘and there’s a battery of the regiment’ (‘he means his regiment – twenty-five pounders –’ thought Anthony) ‘in a position down there, when they turn the corner.’ He brought his binoculars up again.

  ‘Look at that!’

  ‘That’ was a body of German infantry, following the tanks. Small parties were moving in a rapid, workmanlike way along the valley floor and traversing the lower slopes of the hill. Their hill! Men were hung with ammunition belts for the light machine guns which many toted. The prominent stick grenades, and their helmets, unique among the combatant armies, gave their silhouettes a sinister fascination. The Gunner officer was talking urgently into the microphone of his radio set. It was a promising target for artillery fire, although the German groups were well dispersed.

  Anthony looked to his left. It was surely unlikely that the enemy would neglect their hill altogether. They would, at least, seek to mask it, to sweep it clean of the British sufficiently to make sure their own advance up the valley was not overlooked by hostile observers. That implied a simultaneous attack any time now. The convex shape of the hill made approaches to it from below difficult to detect. It would also, Anthony reckoned, make the movement of tanks laborious, although not impossible. The lower slopes were not only steep: they were extraordinarily rocky. Any attack would be an infantry attack.

  Anthony’s view from the artillery observation post was a good one. He scanned as much as he could of the ground below Sergeant Brinson’s platoon.

  Then he saw it.

  He held his binoculars firmly, focused on a particular outcrop of rock. One rounded stone on the surface was darker than the rest.

  It shifted.

  It disappeared.

  Anthony swung his binoculars to a point further along the hillside. A thornbush was prominent between two boulders. Beside the thornbush were two dark objects, small, dead branches lying on the ground perhaps.

  One moved sharply, followed by the other.

  Anthony grabbed the Gunner’s arm.

  ‘There are hel
mets and boots coming up this hill. I’m getting back to the Company.’ He pointed.

  ‘Got them!’ said the Gunner softly, his binoculars up. ‘Got them!’ He started talking rapidly into his microphone.

  ‘Good luck!’ said Anthony. His mouth was dry. ‘You may not have much longer here. Some of them are bound to come this way.’

  The other grinned.

  ‘If I have to go back I’ll scramble over to your Company Headquarters. If it’s still there.’ He returned to scrutiny of the valley, binoculars in one hand, microphone in the other. British shells were beginning to explode in the valley.

  Anthony ran back to Sergeant Brinson’s platoon.

  ‘They’re climbing up the hill below you. The Gunners will hit them as hard as they can. I should think they’re about seven hundred yards away.’

  Brinson nodded sternly. His platoon, now at a strength of twenty-eight men, was posted for just this contingency and he implied that the Germans, for once, were behaving properly and obliging by turning up where expected. Brinson’s riflemen and light machine gunners could engage any enemy climbing over the right-hand crest at a range of 150 yards exactly. Brinson liked that. It was close quarter work at which his men’s marksmanship should be deadly. To have moved forward, further over the convex slope in search of a longer field of fire as some inexperienced soldiers might have done, would have been to expose his platoon to German tank and mortar fire at ever longer ranges. Major Wright, his Company Commander, had posted the platoons – skilfully. Brinson had sited every trench, moving round with young Worldham before the little fellow had been hit, getting his eye down to ground level, weighing it up. He had several well concealed observation trenches forward of the crest, manned at night. He had a pair of men as observers there by day. They had a covered route back over the crest and he’d withdraw them in good time. Brinson’s men were in the proper place all right. He said quietly –

  ‘Well, they ought to walk into a Battalion mortar task very nicely, sir.’ For one of the pre-arranged tasks for the Battalion mortars was immediately behind the crest line over which German infantry, vulnerable, laden, would have to scramble to reach Brinson’s platoon.

  ‘Yes, we’ve got Corporal Jacks up here.’ Corporal Jacks was a mortar fire controller.

  ‘Are there a lot of them, sir?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell. They’re moving up pretty slowly, keeping low. We only picked them up by chance. And of course it’s steep going. I expect they’re covered by tanks and mortar observers in the valley or on the far hill. They won’t see you till they top the crest.’

  Brinson’s mouth was set, as ever, in a disapproving line. His eyes were calculating and calm. He fixed them on the near crest line. His men were all in their slit trenches. He had called a few brief commands to them, unhurried, businesslike. He communicated strength and confidence.

  ‘Right, sir,’ Brinson said. ‘And the Gunner OP can see this hill face opposite us can he, sir?’

  ‘He can. But there’ll come a moment when he’ll have to pull out. He’s pretty exposed.’

  ‘I’ve got Corporal Vincent watching from the forward trench. He’ll probably see something soon. They’d hardly put less than a company at us, would they, sir?’ It was an assertion, sensible, unalarmed. A German company probably meant about one hundred men, infiltrating between platoon positions, rushing section trenches amid a flurry of hurled stick grenades and close quarter machine carbine fire, all supported by Spandau light machine gun teams working their way forward from rock to gully, cleft to fold in ground, taking the defenders in flank.

  ‘Hardly less than a Company. You’d better get Corporal Vincent back. Good luck, Sergeant Brinson.’

  Anthony ran off. They both knew that the hill where they stood was very prominent, very commanding: a desirable piece of tactical real estate. Yes, the Germans would hardly launch less than a company at it. They might easily commit a battalion – several companies – at the same time as pushing tanks and infantry up the valley floor. The Germans by now knew perfectly well that their enemies could only get stronger, and that they were running a losing race against time. The troops of General Anderson’s First Army, operating eastward after their landing in November at Algiers, had already been joined by an American and a French Corps. Far away in the Western Desert the British Eighth Army, fresh from their great victory at El Alamein under General Montgomery, was moving towards Tripoli and would certainly advance into Tunisia and join hands with First Army. The Germans must be doomed – in the end. Meanwhile, they were showing every sign of a vigorous, and possibly successful assault on the hill on which Anthony’s men were deployed.

  Anthony reached Company Headquarters. At the same moment, with a whistle and a series of cracks, the first German mortar shells began to hit B Company.

  Chapter 15

  Just after midday the first German attacks struck two of Anthony’s three platoons simultaneously: they coincided, too, with the arrival back of Richard Wright at his Company Headquarters. Thereafter, events were confused for a period which Anthony discovered later to have been only about forty minutes. This was astonishing. It seemed in retrospect as if a whole day had been spent in that opening battle.

  The German infantry worked their way forward by a series of short rushes, interspersed with agile crawling, to two small folds in the ground, one between B Company’s two forward platoons and one outside the left flank of the left-hand platoon – not Brinson’s. The effect was to produce, very suddenly, German machine gun fire that drummed inwards in sharp, staccato bursts at the forward platoons of the Company.

  Immediately thereafter the assault came in over the lip of the hill – more infantrymen, accompanied by much shouting, aiming at Brinson’s platoon and the right-hand trenches of its neighbour. There was a great deal of noise. German mortar shells were falling in clusters among B Company. These always seemed to Anthony to be directed with superhuman accuracy, as if able to search and find individual trenches and men. It was astonishing, after enduring intense mortar fire, to find anybody left alive: but most people usually were. Anthony wondered, without much confidence, whether Allied shell and mortar fire appeared to the enemy comparably lethal. British shells and bombs could now be heard exploding, their dust visible, beyond the crest to the front whence the Germans had come, along the reverse slopes of the ridge.

  The machine gun fire was now deafening. The Spandau bursts sounded like some demonic dentist’s drill. Answering them came the rather slower, friendly sound of the British Bren guns, firing from every section position. And every British rifleman was pumping bullets into whatever he could see of an enemy landser creeping or rushing toward or past him, now crawling among the rocks, now suddenly upright to loose toward a British slit trench a murderous burst of fire from a machine pistol, or arching the body, like a participant in some bizarre athletic event, to hurl a stick grenade. From every quarter of the Company area came the sombre cry ‘stretcher bearers’. Sergeant-Major Phillips, quiet, indefatigable, organized them and a hundred other things. And Anthony, too, found himself doing what seemed a hundred things at once, most of them requiring him to shout at the top of his voice. Now Anthony could see the Company area speckled with grey bodies, bodies that did not move, did not seek to evade the bullets criss-crossing the hillside. There were dead and dying British soldiers in the slit trenches: by now there was no doubt of that. But all could see they had taken their toll. The direct assault from the front seemed to have been discontinued. B Company still held its ground.

  The worst threat appeared to be from a party of Germans who had infiltrated into a hollow between B Company and their neighbours to the left, C Company. This hollow – ground into which neither company could easily see – was marked at the rim by a line of scrub. From that rim – at a distance of about two hundred yards from the left-hand platoon of B Company – what sounded like four German machine guns were firing. A burst followed every movement in B Company area.

  There had been n
o firing for a little time when Wright jumped into the Headquarters trench with Anthony. Several slits had been connected to provide, as it were, a battle station and observation post for Company Headquarters. These were in turn ingeniously linked by a short excavated way down to the rocks, half cave, half dugout, which provided Company Headquarters with some working space. In this latter nest was their radio set, their link to Battalion Headquarters. Anthony had alternated between cave and trench during the flurry and confusion of the German attack. The trench had twelve inches of slimy mud at its base. It was a wretched place but it felt extraordinarily safe compared to the ground above it. Anthony had, for much of the last forty minutes, manned the radio set, kept Battalion Headquarters informed as well as he could, received in turn laconic accounts of what was supposed to be happening in other parts of the Battalion area. Then he had returned to the forward trench whence Wright had been doing his best to stay master of B Company. Now there was something of a lull.

  Wright had been tireless – and fearless. He had encouraged every platoon in turn, exposing his body in what appeared suicidal fashion. He had, the Company would remember afterwards, seemed present everywhere, steadying men, helping them with a laugh or a curse at exactly the moment when doubt or terror was in danger of striking. Anthony knew that no small part of his own fears was that Richard Wright might fall; and Anthony still felt inadequate to taking his place. Yet Wright seemed positively to be courting a German bullet, inviting a fragment from a mortar bomb or a stick grenade.