The Tunnel by Eric Williams Page A

adopted the tone of an unintelligent mother humouring a wayward child.
    Peter did not reply.
    ‘Listen,’ the corporal said. ‘We have to travel all day together. Why cannot we be friendly and talk to one another? I would like to practise my English.’
    ‘In case we win the war?’
    ‘Ach, you will not win the war. The Führer cannot afford to lose the war.’
    ‘It isn’t entirely up to the Führer,’ Peter said.
    ‘You should not have fought against us in the first place,’ the corporal told him. ‘The Führer has said many times that we had no quarrel with England.’
    Peter did not reply.
    ‘We are only doing now what England has done in the past.’
    ‘It’s no use talking about it,’ Peter said. He remembered Pop Dawson and his security lectures. They will try to get you into conversation, he had said. The only way to avoid giving information is to refuse to talk. The corporal seemed a bit phoney, anyway, his English was too good.
    The other soldier came in with three cups of soup. He was rather like the old policeman in that he seemed too tired for this war; too tired and not caring enough what it was all about. He put the soup on the table, smiled nervously, and relapsed into a sort of coma.
    The corporal took three slices of black bread from his briefcase and gave one to Peter. ‘You have not much bread in England,’ he said.
    ‘We have plenty of bread,’ Peter told him.
    ‘Ach, for the rich.’
    ‘For everyone.’
    ‘Ach, that is what you say.’ He smiled his disbelief, and bit hungrily at the bread.
    When the train steamed in the corporal turned all the passengers out of the nearest compartment and shut the door leading on to the corridor. He made the other soldier sit next to the window while he sat in the corner next to the corridor. Peter sat between them. The corporal unbuttoned the flap of his holster and loosened the automatic pistol. ‘If you attempt to escape I shall shoot,’ he said.
    It took them all day to get to Cologne; a day in which the wooden seats became harder, and the air in the compartment more foul. At one stage Peter made signs for the older man to open the window and let in some fresh air but the corporal, obviously fearing an escape attempt, forbade him to do so. On most stations there was a Red Cross buffet dispensing free soup, and while the older soldier went foraging the corporal growing more and more short-tempered, guarded the prisoner and prevented other passengers from entering the compartment. There was no heating in the carriage, and Peter sat and brooded over the loss of his flying jacket.
    He had got the jacket without having it marked on his clothing card, and had he survived the war it would have been his own. It was on a hot summer night, he remembered, and they had been bombing Duisburg. They had been hit over the target, and on coming in to land the flaps had stuck and they had overshot and crashed into the hedge at the far end of the runway. The aircraft had gone up in a sheet of flame, but all the crew had been saved; and next morning they had indented for new flying jackets, saying that theirs had been burned in the aircraft. The wing commander had had them in the office, all seven of them, the pile of forms in front of him on the desk.
    ‘You each lost an Irvin jacket last night?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Are you sure of this?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘I was flying last night.’
    ‘Yes, sir?’
    ‘In my shirtsleeves.’
    There had been a short silence, then Mac, the rear-gunner: ‘We took them in case it turned cold, sir. They were all piled up at the back of the aircraft.’
    Then the wing commander: ‘Well, I don’t believe you.’ But he had signed the forms and they had each drawn another flying jacket. Now the ones they had left behind would be returned to the stores, while those they had been wearing would go to the Russian front.
    At midday the soldiers opened their briefcases, and took out bread and sausage which they shared equally