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By Root 1069 0

days; the war was in its third year, every week more and more soldiers were being shipped abroad, and each week they seemed younger, less experienced. Hodges was a corporal in the cookhouse and was content to idle away the war as such. He knew of Captain Summers, had heard the rumours about him, sniggered with his cronies each time they saw the thin, waspish figure march by, saluting but wriggling their little fingers at him when he had passed. But Summers hadn’t been the only one; in a camp that size and with so many raw young men, homosexuality was not too unusual. It was sneered at, true, despised by most, but many had secretly indulged in its illicit pleasure. Hodges had even tried it himself once, but found it painful and ‘too much like bloody hard work!’ for his liking. The rumoured ‘bromide in the tea’ didn’t seem to do much good. He used to chuckle to himself when on night duty at the thought of all those pricks raised secretly towards the stars, pumped by thousands of hands all over the camp.

But Summers had propositioned the wrong new recruit one day. He had looked fresh-faced and girlish enough, but, too late, the Captain discovered he had been conscripted with a bunch of his mates from North London. The boy had told him what he could go and do with himself and then applied some threatening blackmail to gain himself and his friends special privileges as well as the odd quid or two.

After only a few months, when the boy learnt he was going to be shipped abroad and suspecting that Summers had something to do with the arrangement, he and three of his bunch had waited one night on a quiet stretch of road leading to the camp, knowing that Summers would be returning alone on his bike. He often had assignations with young men from the town or arranged to meet a soldier there, always returning alone, always using the second-hand bike he had bought himself rather than taking the bus or begging a lift from one of his motor-possessing fellow officers. The group waited patiently, drinking beer and giggling as they described what they would do to the Captain when they got hold of him.

And then, after an hour’s wait, they caught sight of him coming towards them along the dark road. They waited for him to draw level and then pounced, restraining their shouts of glee and anger for fear of being heard by anyone else who might be coming along in the distance. They began to beat him viciously, giving him no chance to recognize any one of them. His cries of fright and pain were cut off by a vicious kick to the throat. He drew his legs up and covered his head with his arms to protect himself, but the constant kicks and punches forced him to try to crawl away. Suddenly, over the screams of the terrified man they heard the roar of an approaching lorry and saw the sidelights in the not-too-far distance.

Taking advantage of the sudden break in their assault, Summers scrambled to his feet and staggered across the road, falling rather than jumping over a fence before they realized what had happened. With a shout, two of them chased after him, the other two deeming it wiser to take the opposite direction and hide in the bushes until the lorry had passed. The aggrieved boy was one of the pursuers and he had no intention of allowing the officer to escape so lightly.

Summers stumbled across the open field, panic lending him speed, the dull thud of boots on grass behind him giving him strength. Without seeing where he was going, or caring, he ran headlong into a barbed-wire fence. He did not see the warning signs spaced at regular intervals along the cruel wire fence, nor would he have understood them if he had – his terror was greater than his rationality. His cry of pain as a barb gashed his cheek brought renewed shouting and cursing from behind. He climbed through the fence, ripping his uniform, wickedly tearing his flesh, and ran headlong into the minefield.

The boy behind, ignoring the warnings in his rage, followed him through, pulling a knife from his trouser pocket, knowing he would soon catch up with his quarry. His companion