A Good Clean Fight Read Online Free PDF Page A

glut of heat on the Western Desert. The sun had beaten everyone, beaten them to the ground, left them for dead. The sun was, yet again, undisputed champion of the solar system. And then, thank Christ, it relaxed. The heat eased. Men breathed again.
    Schramm had slept, on and off, for most of the day. Now he came out and sat in the shade and watched the patrol get on with the chores of desert life: cooking food and cleaning weapons, refueling the trucks, checking the tires, double-checking the radiators, and a dozen other details. Schramm noticed that the camouflage nets were still in place. And there was a lookout on top of the cliffs.
    Lampard sat beside him and began cleaning his tommy-gun. “I’m awfully sorry we can’t offer you shaving water,” he said.
    â€œMy dear Lampard.” Schramm half-raised a hand to dispel any anxiety.
    â€œSatisfy my curiosity.” Lampard squinted down the barrel. “Does everyone in Abteilung 5 speak such good English?”
    â€œI think so.” Schramm rubbed his chin. He quite enjoyed not having to shave. “Each one of us specializes, of course.”
    â€œReally? What is your specialty?”
    â€œCentral London. The Knightsbridge area. But only as far as Harrods.”
    Lampard cleaned a spring. “Bloody sand . . . You do talk a lot of balls.”
    Schramm took off his right sock. Already there were holes in the heel and toe. He stuffed it in a pocket. “You grew up in Norfolk. Am I right?”
    Lampard stared. “You can tell all that from my voice?”
    â€œOh no. Everything is on your file. What more can I remember? Your middle name is . . . wait a moment . . .”He frowned at his bare foot and clenched his toes. “Roger?”
    â€œRichard.”
    â€œRichard
, yes. And two years ago there was an officer you had a fight with. Hooper. Captain Hooper.”
    â€œGood God. Any more?”
    â€œUm . . . Captain Hooper lost.”
    Lampard got on with cleaning his gun. “Where
did
you learn your English?” he asked.
    â€œOh well,” Schramm said. “It is not a military secret. In 1917 your Royal Flying Corps shot me down. I was for a long time a prisoner of war, very boring, the camp had no books in German so I read books in English, hundreds of them. Dickens, all of Dickens, all Thackeray, Trollope, Kipling, Hardy, Stevenson. And some Americans: Mark Twain, O. Henry, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Others, I forget the names. The Tarzan stories I enjoyed the most. No doubt they symbolized escape, and freedom, and so on. Do you like books?”
    Lampard aimed at the sky and tested the trigger action. “I don’t really like anything except fighting . . . After the war?”
    â€œHere and there. This and that. A little teaching. Tour guide for Americans. Some journalism in London. Reuters man in Berlin.” He watched Lampard empty a magazine and clean the bullets. “I find this strange,” he said. “Why do you use a clumsy gangsters’ weapon when you could use the Sten gun, which is half the size?”
    â€œIt makes me feel like James Cagney. What were you doing in that car?”
    â€œListening to Rome radio, on . . .” He tapped his ears.
    â€œHeadphones.”
    â€œYes, headphones. When I saw you I removed them. But you could see nothing, could you? I think you made a great gamble.”
    â€œSo did you, old chum. One hiccup out of you and mychaps would have put half-a-dozen grenades into that Alfa.”
    â€œThus killing you too.”
    Lampard slotted the magazine onto the gun and put the gun inside a dust-proof bag. He did not close the bag. “You don’t think that would stop them, do you?”
    Schramm tried to grip a pebble with his toes, but it was too big. “It seems an excessively violent way to fight a war, that’s all.”
    â€œExcessive violence is what they enjoy.”
    â€œEspecially Corporal