Free The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies Page B

blinked and squinted until he could make out half a dozen men, rifles trained on him, and at their centre a burly fellow in motorcyclist's goggles with a tank on his back, and before him the blunt black muzzle of the flamethrower, the delicate blue bud of the ignition flame at its tip.
    There was a long moment of silence. Karsten must have imagined it, but he could have sworn it was possible to make out the hiss of gas, the ticking of the fuel cylinders. Standing,
    swaying slightly in the scarred portal, it seemed as if something more were required of him, something more formal. But under the scrutiny of the several pairs of eyes trained on him, he found himself tongue-tied, like those times in front of class when he'd forgotten the lesson he was supposed to have by heart. He felt himself grow hot, and he realised that beneath the sweat and grime he was blushing. And then it came to him, the correct phrase, rising out of memory.
    "How do you do?" he asked, and the rifle barrels trained on him began to bob and weave, and he saw the men were laughing, shaking with it.
    "Oh, that's a good one, Jerry! That's priceless, that is. How do you fucking do yourself?"
    He had to lean back into the entry, clinging to the scorched camouflage netting, to call the others out. Schiller fairly ran to him, but Karsten had to order Heino out when he hung back-- ashamed of having shat himself, Karsten thought. The boy appeared at last with his hands up, his right raw and bleeding. He'd tried to beat out the flames on Willi's head.

    It's lightening faintly on the beach, the posts of the stockade becoming visible against the sky, and Karsten thinks it must be dawn. Nearby, he hears the rasp of a match and a guard's face flares in the gloom, then vanishes as if blown out, the light shrinking to the smouldering tip of the cigarette. Enough to draw a bead on in the darkness, though, and Karsten finds himself holding his breath, waiting for a shot. But there's nothing. When he looks back at the sky, he realises the red glow to the east is fire.
    In the immediate aftermath of their capture, after they'd seen to Heine's hand, one of the Tommies had offered a cigarette, holding it under Schiller's nose, and when Schiller reached for it, closing his fist and yanking it away.
    "What's he want?" Schiller muttered out of the side of his mouth.
    They were squatting, fingers laced behind their heads.
    The Tommy proffered his hand again, whispered something then, pointed at Schiller.
    "What's he saying?" Schiller hissed, almost losing his balance, "What the fuck's he saying?"
    "Trade," Karsten told him dully. "He wants to trade you for the cigarette."
    "Trade what?" "Your cap." "My cap?"
    "He wants it for a souvenir," Karsten said, looking at his feet. "To remember this by." You're going to get a medal , he wanted to shout in the Tommy's face, stabbed with sudden envy.
    Schiller was already pulling out the cap folded under his epaulette and handing it over.
    He offered to share the cigarette. "Go on. That was a good deal. A souvenir! Who'd want to remember this shambles?"
    The victors , Karsten thought, but after a second he took the
    cigarette and then held it out to Heino. "Take it," he barked when the other hesitated. "You don't know when you'll see another." And the boy had reached out his good hand.
    Throughout the night, they're visited by more souvenir hunters. Heino gives up his prized pack of dirty playing cards for a couple of squares of chocolate, which he gobbles down at once. Karsten trades his lighter for a cigarette and then waits stonily for the Tommy to light it through the fence for him. Karsten assumes they'll run out of things to offer before long. But he's wrong. The Tommies want everything and anything-- epaulettes, belts, even buttons--and when the prisoners shake their heads, the Tommies stop asking, stop bartering, start demanding at gunpoint.
    Faced with the muzzle of a gun, Schiller gives up his watch, dangling by its strap like a fish