Jan remembers sitting out on the veranda of the mess hut with Mechelen the evening before he accompanied the unit on his first action. He was feeling nervous, wondering how he would react, and how he would conduct himself in front of the rest of the men. Earlier, inside, he’d noticed that the men hadn’t had their customary boisterous good humour. He didn’t want to ask for confirmation, but he assumed that this was attributable to their pensiveness and sombre reflection about tomorrow’s task. He’d been relieved when Mechelen had suggested that they go and sit outside, as he found the men’s morose silence oppressive and embarrassing.
The sun was down already, and it was pretty chilly to be sitting outside, but he preferred the perpetual chill across his back and shoulders to the atmosphere inside the hut.
“They’ll be fine tomorrow,” said Mechelen in the darkness. “They’re just a little nervous tonight. It’s always like this.”
“It is?”
“Oh yes. People – well, most people – never shake off that sense of anxiety about the unknown. That worry that something might go wrong, and that they might not do their job properly.”
“Even after so many actions?”
“Mm. It’s something to do with the type of men who get to be in these units, I think: you have to care about what you do, and you have to want to do it to a certain standard of perfection every time. And because there are so many variables in each action’s equation, and so many things that can go wrong, people worry about those things – especially the things that they might fuck up.”
Mechelen pauses and lights a cigar.
“Want one?”
“No. Thank you.”
“And the thing is, these boys are good - bloody good. The best, I think. I could you tell you some stories about other units I’ve accompanied, and reports I’ve heard…but maybe another time. The thing is, this lot are excellent, and they do their work in an extremely professional and efficient manner. Excellent. They won’t let anybody down.”
Jan takes a sip of his wine, feels the chill ripple from the back of his throat and up his neck, across the shoulders, and tingle down his arms. Out in the woods, a bird cries a creaking, plaintive cry. The night feels very still and cold after the cry fades.
“That’s the thing that irritates me,” says Mechelen. “These boys could do this job with one hand tied behind their backs now. And the High Command practically do tie our hands behind our backs sometimes, with all their pointless regulations and logistical stupidities. And the unrealistic expectations they have, and the unrealistic workloads they set. They’ve got no idea back at the High Command, no fucking idea: they’re so far away now that they don’t have a real feel for what it’s like out here, no sense of what it feels like to be here, doing the job, on the ground, day after day. How could they have? I’ve seen what it’s like back there – no-one tells the truth when they report back there: no, they just tell them what they want to hear – they don’t lie, exactly…they just don’t tell the whole truth about everything…especially about the quality of the troops, about the militias, about logistics and resources – you’ve seen it yourself – and about morale – about the real stuff that really makes a difference on the ground, in the everyday. And they rely, ultimately, on the abilities of these men her to make everything work properly. And I know it’s not exactly the kind of work that’s going to raise the roof in the movie theatres back home, and these aren’t pictures aren’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it would be nice if the High Command would at least show a little appreciation for the difficulties and sacrifices these men are making.”
Mechelen tips the last of the wine down his throat. Jan hears the alcohol chuckle down his gullet, and imagines Mechelen’s upturned chin, and the stretched throat and Adam’s apple.
“Let me give you an example,” says Mechelen. “They give us some order about assisting with a ‘resettlement’ – like the ghetto clearance in [Riga] last month, before you arrived. That had to be accomplished to make way for the arrival of the expelled [X]s from the West. The original [X]s from the locale had all been assembled in the ghetto over a period of months, and they’ve developed a whole culture and society there, and yet the local forces are expected to jump to attention and organise a fundamental clearance within a couple of days of the order being issued – as if there’d be no friction or drag or difficulties on the ground. As if the simple fact of the order made the accomplishment easy. And I know that’s how the armed forces work, fundamentally, but I sometimes think that the desk-wallahs – no offence – might make more allowance for what happens at the sharp end, in territories where we’ve not had time to establish our infrastructure and standard practices. But anyway. You get on with it, because that’s your duty, and what you’re trained to do. So you do it. They leave it to us to get on with it – without proper resources, no detail, nothing. Hopeless. So we improvise, do our best, make it up as we go along, and we clear the ghetto and assemble all the evictees further east at the destination we’ve been given, a ‘transit location’ out to the East, in a place none of us have even heard of, let alone visited for reconnaissance or preparation. And when you get there there’s a railway station, and a local commander who’s not expecting you, and five thousand people in rail cars with just the food that they’ve been told they can carry on their resettlement. And between you, with the local commander going apeshit in your faces, as angry and confused as you all are, you have to come up with a plan and make it all work, at three o’clock in the morning, in the rain, when all the High Command are asleep, or drunk, and none the wiser about what their simple orders mean. Not a clue.”