by Mark Allen

Howard ducked behind a bramble bush. To cover his retreat I opened fire, the bullets from my trusty Sten gun sprayed out across the water seeking the enemy on the opposite bank. They returned fire from behind discarded oil drums, which for some unknown reason had been painted with blue and yellow stripes.

One of the enemy broke cover, sprinted across the flat grassland. I rolled out from behind a stack of lorry tyres, their shelter no longer required. Spread flat against the ground, the dampness from the grass soaking through my jeans, I let the Sten gun spit lead.

Caught in a hail of bullets the fleeing figure should have fallen, yet he kept running.

‘You’re dead,’ I called out.

‘Am not,’ Mick shouted back.

‘Am too,’ I replied.

Standing with a hand on his hip, the gun hanging by his side Mick screwed up his face then relaxed, a sure sign he’d thought of a good lie. ‘You missed,’ he said.

‘How could we miss you fatty?’ Howard emerged from behind the bush pointed his gun and fired. ‘Got you that time.’

‘That’s cheating, and don’t call me fatty, ugly.’

‘CAR!’ Pete yelled and came running toward us.

The expanse of water, which previously could have only been forded with the aid of landing craft, now reached no higher than half way up Pete and Mick’s Wellingtons. Their pounding feet sent fountains cascading into the air.

I ducked back behind the tyres and knelt. Mick rushed over to join me; he tripped over the backs of my legs and fell face first into the sodden ground. I looked at him as he pushed himself upright; his cheeks were red, his face wet, tufts of grass and mud stuck to it. He was going to blub.

I put a finger to my lips and pointed to the road, Mick nodded and drew the back of his hand under his nose sucking air through the nostrils with more sound than was safe, I looked away.

The car, a white and brown Hillman Minx, just like my dad’s but a different colour, drove slowly along the winding single track road. It pulled to a halt at twelve o’clock from our position.

For a few moments it sat motionless on the high banked road, which in turn swept down to a flat grass plain and the stream where we hid; a door opened. A man climbed out of the front passenger side, he gazed in our direction. I looked across to where Pete and Howard, safe from view behind upturned oil drums, waited. Pete signalled for us to keep low.

The driver’s door and one of the rear doors opened, two more men climbed out of the vehicle, one held a white object in his arms, I was too far away to make out what it was. They talked briefly; pointed to the field rising up from the road, then walked toward it climbing over the wooden fence to gain access. The man from the passenger side of the Minx stayed by the car, he lit a cigarette and glanced left, right, at us, then at his friends climbing the hill.

I felt my heart beating in my chest, was it fear or excitement? I didn’t know but it felt good.

The men had stopped walking and one, who had taken a shovel with him, began to dig into the soft clay ground, that’s when the thought hit me. Gunmen, they had to be. Here to hide their weapons. But which side were they on, ours or theirs?

I looked down at my useless Sten as it lay in the grass next to me, it really was no more than a long piece of wood with a shorter piece of wood nailed at a right angle to the first, and of course I had painted it brown. Once it had had a trigger of sorts, but this proved too flimsy for prolonged fire fights.

The man standing by the Minx had his back to us, his attention focused on his friends further up the hill.

I heard Pete call out, and look over to him. He was waving his hand beckoning for us to join him. I grabbed my Sten and shot a look back toward the Minx. The man by the car had decided to join his companions and was trudging up the hill, with lightning speed I broke cover.

Racing across the grass, water spurting out from beneath my Wellingtons as they pounded the wet ground, I ran in a half crouched position keeping as low as I could. Mick pursued me, I heard his heavy breathing then a yelp as his foot found a hollow tripping him up. He landed with a splash.

I jumped over Pete and Howard’s legs, they were both kneeling down, and rolled across the grass to absorb the impact of my fall. I’d seen paratroopers do the same thing in a film. In a flash I brought my Sten to rest on top of one of the barrels. The men were grouped together, staring at the hole they’d dug.

‘Stay down, they’ll see you for sure,’ Pete said, as quietly as he could. Mick looked up his face streaked with mud.

‘It’s cold and wet and my hand’s all muddy, errr it’s cow crap.’ Mick began to push himself upright.

‘Freeze fatty or I’ll blow you away.’ Howard levelled his gun at Mick.

‘I’m not playing any more,’ Mick said, his voice small and quiet and beginning to tremble.