“Of course, I don’t know what this dialectical-materialism stuff means, but then I could never understand what the Bible was all about either. At school we had to say bits of the Bible. I always used to get top marks for Scripture. Here I’m politically reliable.”
“You do not believe in the cause for which we fight?”
“No more than you do, Sergeant. I leave that to the amateurs. Soldiering’s my job. What do I want with causes?”
The Sergeant had nodded thoughtfully and glanced at the medal ribbons on Arthur’s shirt. “Do you think, Corporal, that there is any possibility of our General’s plans succeeding?” he had asked. Although they both held commissions in the Markos forces, they had chosen to ignore the fact in private. They had been N.C.O.’s in proper armies.
“Could be,” Arthur said. “Depends on how many mistakes the other lot make, same as always. Why? What are you thinking about, Sarge? Promotion?”
The Sergeant had nodded. “Yes, promotion. If this revolution were to succeed, there might be big opportunities for men able to take them. I think that I, too, must take steps to become politically reliable.”
The steps he had taken had proved effective, and his qualities as a natural leader had soon been recognized. By 1947 he was commanding a brigade, with Arthur as his second-in-command. When, in 1949, the Markos forces began to disintegrate, their brigade was one of the last to hold out in the Grammos area.
But they knew by then that the rebellion was over, and they were bitter. Neither of them had ever believed in the cause for which they had fought so long and hard and skillfully; but its betrayal by Tito and the Moscow Politburo had seemed an infamous thing.
“ ‘Put not your trust in princes,’ ” Arthur had quoted gloomily.
“Who said this?” the Sergeant had asked.