“I was a bomber pilot. I don’t remember ever feeling particularly happy about it.”
“Ah, no-but the air is different from soldiering. You do not see the enemy you kill. A machine war. Impersonal.”
“It was personal enough for me,” George said; but the remark went unheard. There was the light of reminiscence in the Colonel’s eyes.
“You missed much in the air, Mr. Carey,” he said dreamily. “I remember once, for example …”
He was off.
He had taken part, it seemed, in numerous British raids on German garrisons on Greek territory. He went on to describe in great detail what he obviously felt to be some of his more amusing experiences. Judging by the relish with which he recalled them, he had indeed had a happy time.
“… splashed his brains over the wall with a burst from a Bren gun … put my knife low in his belly and ripped it open to the ribs … the grenades killed all of them in the room except one, so I dropped him out of the window … ran away without their trousers, so we could see what to shoot at … tried to come out of the house to surrender, but he was slow on his feet and the phosphorus grenade set him alight like a torch … I let him have a burst from the Schmeisser and nearly cut him in two …”
He spoke rapidly, smiling all the time and gesturing gracefully. Occasionally he broke into French. George made little attempt to follow. It did not matter, for the Colonel’s whole attention now was concentrated on Miss Kolin. She was wearing her faintly patronizing smile, but there was something more in her expression besides-a look of pleasure. If you had been watching the pair of them without knowing what was being said, George thought, you might have supposed that the handsome Colonel was entertaining her with a witty piece of cocktail-party gossip. It was rather disconcerting.
The Lieutenant came back into the room with a tattered folder of papers under his arm. The Colonel stopped instantly and sat up straight in his chair to receive the folder. He looked through it sternly as the Lieutenant made his report. Once he rapped out a question and received an answer which appeared to satisfy him. Finally he nodded and the Lieutenant went out. The Colonel relaxed again and smirked complacently.
“It will take time to check the lists of prisoners,” he said, “but, as I hoped, we have some other information. Whether it will be of help to you or not, I cannot say.” He glanced down at the bundle of torn and greasy papers before him. “This ambush you mention was most likely one of several operations undertaken in that week by an ELAS band based in the hills above Florina. There were thirty-four men, most of them from Florina and the villages about there. The leader was a Communist named Phengaros. He came from Larisa. A German army truck was destroyed in the action. Does that sound like the case you know of?”