Small Wars Read Online Free Page B

foothills, and the fields beneath them were stepped to make them workable. Hal could see the three-tonner ahead full sideways now, because the road had taken a sharp bend to get around an outcrop before disappearing into trees. The trucks ground and toiled up the steep incline and around the long corner.
    This was how many of Hal’s days were spent, patrolling the villages, conducting searches. At least there was more to do than in Germany where he had been in his office most of the time, signing papers concerning the minutiae of the movement of supplies, or overseeing exercises and patrols that were almost uniformly without incident. The glory of the regiment had been demonstrated mainly in the boxing ring, and the silver cups that were awarded decorated the officers’ mess wherever they were sent. He had envied James, whose first posting had been to Eritrea, and whose letters, almost gritty with desert sand, were full of action.
    Hal’s father had gone into the Great War a lieutenant and come out of it a major. His uncles – those who survived – had had their promotions the same way, in the big conflicts of big battles. His grandfather had fought in both Boer wars, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Treherne – Hal had kept his medals in his room when he was a little boy. In Germany, Hal’s regiment had spent a year living in a palace formerly occupied by Nazi generals. There had been a gold banqueting hall. His first office was a music room and his desk Louis Quinze. It wasn’t Ypres. Now, in Cyprus, England was fighting to hold her territory, and Hal could serve her in some small measure.
    As the last of the convoy made the turn, the road forked, with one narrower part going into the trees and the other climbing up to the left.
    The sky was white, the tops of the mountains were hidden. If they went higher they’d be in mist. They took the wider, left-hand turn and the first village they came to was compact, with a café in its centre.
    The men in the café all stood up and watched as two trucks stopped and the others and the Land Rover drove on through, nearly touching the houses on each side, the soldiers holding their Sten guns and staring back at the old men.

    The second village was more spread out along the road with no clear centre to it. The two three-tonners pulled over and Kirby stopped the Land Rover close behind them. Hal got out and met Lieutenant Grieves, who had climbed out of the truck in front of him.
    ‘Mandri, sir.’
    ‘I’ll try and find the chief. You can get going when I come back.’
    Hal took Kirby and went to look for the village headman.
    He found a bar that was set back from the road with a ragged tree in front of it and metal chairs stacked against the outside wall. Kirby pushed open the door for him, and Hal stepped inside, taking off his cap and looking around. There was a good smell of Greek coffee. At a table in a corner, five men stopped playing dominoes to look at him.
    ‘Good morning,’ Hal said in Greek, and the old men nodded and said good morning back.
    Hal asked for the mukhtar and was told he lived next to the church. He thanked the men and left. As he walked back past the trucks he was aware of Grieves watching him and scowling; he was impatient and bored with waiting and the men were bored too. Well, they could wait some more: relations with the Greeks must be respected.
    There was nobody on the street and just a girl staring from the darkness of her house as he and Kirby walked to the church. In the crooked square, a small boy stood by the corner with muddy feet and Hal felt the presence of the people inside the houses without seeing them.
    He chose the larger of the houses next to the church – although it was still a pretty rough-looking dwelling – and knocked. The door opened, and a woman in a black dress, holding a broom, greeted him. Hal asked for the mukhtar and was shown into a parlour to wait.
    The walls were plastered but the floor was stone and there was a damp