A Good Clean Fight Read Online Free PDF

Harris?”
    â€œOh no, not Corporal Harris. Corporal Harris is bored with excessive violence. What Corporal Harris enjoys is some really ferocious homicidal thuggery.”
    â€œAnd plates of egg and chips.”
    Ten feet above their heads, an empty food tin on a string jerked and rattled against the cliff face. “Aircraft,” Lampard called, “aircraft.” Unhurriedly the men left their jobs and sat in the deep shadow. After a while they heard the thin, lazy buzz of its engine, but the noise came bouncing off the valley walls and only the lookout on top of the cliff knew where the plane was. “Harris has a passion for egg and chips,” Lampard said. “He and Pocock got lost after a raid, decided to walk home, about two hundred miles. Ran out of food, so they found one of those Road Houses you’ve got all along the coastal road. Casa something.”
    â€œCasa Cantieri.”
    â€œIt was nighttime. They tossed in a couple of grenades and killed everyone except the cooks. Pocock wanted to grab some grub and skedaddle, but Harris made the cooks fry him egg and chips. They were all Italians, by the way. The place looked like a slaughterhouse, blood and guts splashed everywhere. Cooks were terrified, and the odd Italian soldier kept arriving. Harris stood by the door with a meat cleaver and chopped them down as they came in.Pocock wasn’t enjoying this very much, but Harris was in his element, in a quiet sort of way. The cooks, of course, couldn’t think straight and they made a nonsense of the egg and chips, so Harris told them to try again. While they were doing that he chopped a couple more late arrivals. Finally the cooks managed to do him his egg and chips the way he liked them. By now Pocock couldn’t eat anything, so Harris ate his share too. Then they left. I don’t think I’ve done full justice to the occasion, but no doubt your imagination can fill in the gaps.”
    â€œI have no imagination,” Schramm said. “It surrendered, in the face of overwhelming reality.”
    The tin above them rattled twice. “All clear,” Lampard said. “Your chaps don’t seem to be making much of an effort to find you, do they?”
    Schramm gave a sad smile. “You know what German soldiers are like,” he said. “Slack, lazy, disorganized and irresponsible. I expect they’re still finishing lunch.”
    *   *   *
    The patrol stood around in a loose circle and ate from their mess tins. It was easier to wave away the flies when you were standing, but the flies never gave up. They too had been waiting all day for this meal. It was rich and rewarding: salmon, ham and tongue, sausages, mixed vegetables, chutney, apricots, cheese. All tinned. The only untinned protein to be eaten was the odd, unwary fly.
    The wireless officer, a young and balding signals lieutenant called Tony Waterman, said: “If it’s not a rude answer, which part of Germany are you from?”
    â€œLeipzig.”
    â€œAh.” Waterman nodded, and kept nodding while he thought about that. He was short and thickset, with a very round face that settled naturally into an expressionof placid goodwill. “I saw a bit of Hamburg and Hanover, but oddly enough I never got to Leipzig.”
    â€œYes, I know.”
    Waterman smiled his gentle agreement with Schramm’s agreement.
    â€œWhat d’you mean, you know?” Gibbon asked. Gibbon was the navigator for the patrol. His beard, under the dust, was as red as oxblood. He squinted suspiciously at Schramm, but then Gibbon squinted at everyone. Too much desert sun.
    â€œMajor Schramm has a file on each of us,” Lampard said. “In fact he has a file on the entire SAS. You haven’t met Captain Gibbon.” He waved his mess tin by way of introduction.
    â€œHow do you do,” Schramm said.
    â€œIntelligence knows nothing,” Gibbon said. “That’s the first rule of