‘The Italians may go on with the fight. Or they may give it up, in a straightforward and orderly way, doing the best they can by their present allies: in which case one of the things they will be sure to do is to hand us over intact to the Germans. Or they may chuck in the sponge at a moment’s notice, without consulting the Germans at all, in which case a pretty fair period of chaos is liable to ensue. I imagine a lot will depend on Mussolini. I understand, from guarded references which our “I” people in camp here have deciphered from the daily press, that the two ends of the axis may not be revolving at quite the same speed just now.
‘However, please let no one deceive himself. Whichever of those three things happen, our course is not going to be easy or straightforward.
‘If there is chaos, then we will take what advantage of it we can. If, on the other hand, it seems that we are going to be moved further north, under Italian control, or handed over lock, stock and barrel to the Germans, then a very awkward decision may face us. I don’t want to make too much of it, because it may never happen. But in such circumstances, we might have to face the fact that it would be our duty to rush these walls regardless of cost.’
Colonel Lavery paused for a moment and looked round at his audience, which had fallen strangely silent. He himself was thinking of Benucci’s words to him a week before – on the night, in fact, that Coutoules had disappeared.
He repeated, ‘Regardless of cost. If the British Army was in Italy and advancing towards us fast, through a friendly or at any rate a neutral countryside, then it might be our plain duty to go over those walls on the calculation that if sixty or seventy per cent of us got clear we should have taken a justifiable chance. As I said before, I am not stressing this, because we are working now on certain alternative methods which may be available when they are required.
‘Meanwhile, I intend that the whole camp – I include the orderlies – they are not here at the moment but they will be told later – the whole camp will be organised on an infantry basis into companies and platoons, so that a proper chain of command will exist, and anything which has to be done can be done promptly and efficiently. Details will be given out later, by Hut Commanders. Two or three other things. I have noticed that army boots, of which a fair number have been issued lately, are being cut down and made into walking shoes. This will cease. All boots will be carefully preserved, also all Army clothing, particularly overcoats, raincoats and mackintoshes. Everyone should see that he is equipped to the best of his ability for a long, hard, cross-country march. Secondly, the issue of additional Red Cross food parcels, which has been possible lately from our accumulated stocks, will stop. Lastly, since it is particularly his province, I have asked Colonel Baird to have a word with you about security.’
Colonel Baird was a less practised speaker than Colonel Lavery, but he made up in directness what he lacked in flourish. He said, ‘Things have been happening in this camp in the last few days that we don’t like, and that we can’t explain. Most of you know, and if you don’t it’s time you did, that the body of Leiutenant Coutoules was found about ten days ago in very suspicious circumstances. Captain Byfold has been arrested by the Italians on suspicion of having had a hand in his death. We happen to know that this is nonsense. A lot of people thought Coutoules was an informer – I mean, that he told the Italians about escape plans and so on. I don’t suppose we shall ever know the truth of that now. But something else more unpleasant has grown out of it.’
Colonel Baird paused here, not for oratorical effect, but simply because he wanted to be very careful about what he said next. The silence in the hut was painful.
‘Certain facts have led us to believe that there may still be an informer among us. I can’t say any more at the moment. I asked that the orderlies should not be here today. I don’t want this information passed to them.’
Colonel Baird paused again, almost as if he had finished. Then it seemed to occur to him that some explanation of his closing remarks might be required.
‘I don’t want you to think,’ he said, ‘that we suspect any particular orderly. We don’t. It’s just that their backgrounds are more difficult to check than yours are. Most of you chaps come from a very small number of regiments and schools, and businesses and families. We’ve done a certain amount of work on you already. I hope you won’t take it the wrong way, but we’re going through the whole business again to see if we haven’t missed someone. It may mean asking you a lot of silly questions, but it can’t be avoided.’
He turned to Colonel Lavery to indicate that he had finished.
‘Very well,’ said Colonel Lavery. “That’s all.’
‘Just picture me,’ said Rupert Rolf-Callender, ‘trudging through the Italian countryside, dressed in some or all of these clothes.’ He had laid his spare wardrobe out on his bed. It consisted of two very thin Italian cotton shirts, a pair of bathing trunks, three pairs of sunglasses and a pair of leather sandals.
‘You shouldn’t have flogged all your issue stuff for cigarettes,’ said the Honourable Peter Perse. ‘Now you’ll have to get it back again. It’s going to be a buyers’ market, too.’
‘It just shows you,’ said Tag Burchnall virtuously to his friends. ‘What did I say all along? Don’t worry about footling escape schemes. Just keep absolutely fit and let the Army think for you. Can anybody lend me some dubbin?’
Overstrand said to his friends in Room 10, ‘My God, that shook them. Were you looking at their faces when the S.B.O. talked about storming the walls?’
‘They didn’t look too happy,’ admitted Tony Long. `I’m not sure that I exactly welcome the prospect myself, not in broad daylight. It would be an awfully long way up that wall with a couple of machine guns firing at you.’
‘It was the first time that half of them have faced up to the fact that the war isn’t finished,’ said Overstrand. His voice sounded bitter. ‘They’ve spent a year, lying in their beds in winter and on them in summer, and physically and morally they’re as hard as a school of baby jellyfish.’
‘I didn’t quite get what Baird meant about security,’ said Baierlein. ‘What’s the connection between security and Coutoules?’
This question was obviously aimed principally at Goyles who weighed for a moment the claims of professional integrity against friendship and decided that a limited amount of indiscretion could do no harm.
“They think,’ he said, ‘that the Italians knew that Coutoules was going to be killed and dumped in a tunnel.’
‘In our tunnel?’
‘No. In some tunnel; when we produced him in the Hut A tunnel they naturally assumed that that was where the interment had taken place.’
‘So they knew all along that it was a fake,’ said Baierlein. ‘I thought they got on to poor old Roger rather smartly.’
‘Yes, but look here,’ said Overstrand, his face getting red, as it usually did when he was excited, ‘that means there’s another informer in the camp.’
‘That’s Baird’s idea,’ said Goyles patiently.
‘But was it this other informer and his pals who killed Coutoules?’
‘Not necessarily. They just told the Italians it was going to happen.’
‘Then who did kill him?’
‘That’s the thing we’ve got to find out. There are really two enquiries going on, you see. One’s a sort of security check to spot the informer. The other’s a criminal investigation – who was doing what, where and with whom the evening of July 1st – that sort of thing.’
‘Well, Tony and you and I were all right,’ said Grimsdale a little tactlessly. ‘We were all in jug. What about you three?’
‘It can’t be Goyles,’ said Baierlein, ‘he’s the detective in the story. And Byfold has been arrested for the crime by the Italians, so by all the canons of detective fiction he can’t be guilty. It must have been Overstrand—’
‘Plenty of motive,’ said Grimsdale, ‘we all know he hated Coutoules.’
‘I don’t see,’ said Overstrand angrily. ‘Why has it necessarily got to be one of us six?’
‘Don’t be a goat,’ said Baierlein. ‘Grim was only pulling your leg.’
‘One good thing,’ said Goyles, adroitly changing the subject. ‘We’ve got the word to push on with the tunnel double shifts. They want us to have it ready by the end of this month.’
‘All very well to talk about pushing on,’ said Baierlein. ‘It’s true that we’ve cleared the fall, but we can’t go ahead without putting a proper roof across that cavity. It’s a bloody big hole. You can’t do it with fiddling little pieces of bed board. I was down there yesterday to measure it. If you stay the four corners as close as possible to the fall, you’re still going to need a huge sheet of plywood, or something of the sort.’
‘I doubt if there’s such a thing in the camp,’ said Goyles.
‘My God, but there is,’ said Overstrand. ‘And you shall have it.’
‘Good morning, Tenente Mordaci,’ said Tony Long affably, as he leant from his window.
‘Good morning,’ said Mordaci. He hitched his cloak over his shoulders and creased his face into an amiable smile. He was not averse to paternal conversations with blond young English lieutenants. Nevertheless, he was never quite certain that Tenente Long was really as respectful or as ingenuous as he liked to appear. Indeed, the respect of the prisoners for their jailers seemed to be getting distressingly smaller every day. There was an undercurrent of feeling. Even Mordaci, who was not the most sensitive of men, had noticed it.
‘And how are
i nostri?’
‘Our gallant troops are everywhere in good heart.’
‘As at El Alamein?’
‘At El Alamein we were grossly betrayed and deserted.’
‘And at Tripoli?’
‘The greater part of our troops were safely evacuated from Tripoli.’
‘And at Pantellaria?’
‘An unimportant outpost.’
‘And now in Sicilia?’
‘In Sicilia great victories are daily being gained.’
‘And soon in Italia?’
‘Italia – never.’ Mordaci waggled a fat forefinger reprovingly at his young interrogator. ‘Never shall foreigner defile the sacred soil of Italy.’
He hitched his cloak once more round his massive shoulders and rolled off across the compound with the satisfied smile of one who has dealt firmly with a tiresome interrogator. It may be that had he known that Tony had spoken to him simply because it was part of his duty to detain him for as long as he could – or had he even guessed that, somewhere beneath his feet as he stood talking, the sacred soil of Italy was being excavated at the rate of more than a square yard a day – it is possible that had he known all this his smile might have been less complacent.
That afternoon the new prisoners were allowed to join the rest. Since the news of the invasion of Sicily was by now general, and had in fact appeared, suitably garbled, in such Italian newspapers as were allowed into the camp, there seemed no point in keeping them in the already overcrowded Italian Staff Quarters.
Normally, new prisoners were welcomed immediately into the living huts, where they found themselves the centre of a gratifying amount of attention. They personified the outside world. They
were
the latest news. On this occasion, however, Colonel Baird’s hand was over them from the moment they entered the camp, and they were taken immediately to the Senior Officers’ Quarters, where they were brought, one at a time, before the Escape Committee, in session in Colonel Baird’s room. The interrogation was friendly, but thorough.
The first of them happened to be the little dark subaltern who had semaphored the news of the fall of Sicily. His name turned out to be Potter.
‘Now, Potter, perhaps you could give us a few details, Regiment and Division and so on. I see you were in the Signals.’
‘Yes, sir. I was signals officer in the 15th R.H.A.’
‘What Division was that?’
‘Eighth Armoured – that’s their Divisional Flash I’m wearing.’
‘So it is, I hadn’t spotted that. Who commands them now?’
‘Colonel Williams.’
‘Is that Chubby Williams?’
‘No, sir. It’s his brother. Chubby commands the Ninth.’
‘Of course. By the way, where did you say you were at school?’
‘Shelton.’
‘Oh, yes. Which house?’
‘School house.’
‘Let me see. You’re just twenty-two. I suppose you would have left there in ’39.’
‘’38 actually, sir. I left early to start my articles.’
And so on.
At the end of about fifteen minutes the officer concerned, feeling that he had been very carefully and skilfully taken to pieces and put together again, was allowed to join his hut where, of course, the questions started all over again.
‘You were in the 15th were you? Oh, Tag – here’s a chap who was with the 15th in Sicily. He says Mike has got a Battery.’
‘If Mike’s got a Battery,’ said Burchnall, ‘all I can say is, it’s a damn shame I was ever captured. I should have been a Brigadier by now.’
Next day Goyles’ plans suffered a setback. He heard about it after breakfast from Long.
‘I say,’ said Long, ‘have you heard the latest?’
‘Nobody ever says that, in that particular tone of voice,’ said Goyles, ‘unless it’s bad news, so out with it.’
‘I’m not sure whether it’s bad news or not,’ said Long. ‘Rather a sign of the times, really. Benucci has stopped all walks.’
‘Curse,’ said Goyles.
‘If you ask me, it’s not because he’s worried about people escaping. It’s simply because he’s afraid that the populace will begin to show too much sympathy with us. They haven’t been exactly hostile as it is. With the Eighth Army in Sicily they’ll begin to pelt us with flowers.’
‘It isn’t that,’ said Goyles. ‘I’m not all that keen on walks. It’s just that – look here, you’ll have to keep your mouth shut about this.’
‘This detection business is ruining your faith in human nature,’ said Tony coldly. ‘Of course I’ll keep my mouth shut. What is it?’
Goyles explained about the arrangement he had made with Biancelli.