Free Artillery of Lies by Derek Robinson Page B

Take Poland.”
    â€œWe already did,” Christian said.
    â€œNot all. We gave half to the Russians, remember? But England and France
started
this war because of Poland. Now they’re fighting alongside Russia and where’s bloody old Poland? Lost in the shuffle.”
    â€œGreat wars are bound to be complex affairs,” Christian said. He was beginning to feel stiff and cold.
    â€œI bet you General Francisco Franco doesn’t find it complex. Francisco Franco looks around and says to himself: Does poor, battered, shattered Spain really want to fight the British Empire, the United States and the USSR all at once?”
    Christian drank some beer but it was flat so he threw the rest away. “You don’t paint a very optimistic picture, sir,” he said.
    â€œDepends what you mean by optimism,” Oster said briskly. “Come with me, Christian, and I’ll show you what this war is really all about.”
    Oster’s car took them across Berlin. A faint sunshine had broken through the steel-gray overcast and there was just enough breeze to move the huge swastika flags and pennants that hung from every large building. The display gave Christian a great sense of patriotic unity: of a calm and quiet determination; very sturdy, very
German.
He was about to comment on this and he glanced at Oster; but Oster’s head was half-hidden behind the raised collar of his greatcoat and his eyes were almost closed. Christian saved the thought for later.
    The car stopped at the Brandenburg Gate and the driver hurried to let them out. Oster waved his gloves at the massive pillars of the monument, topped by a giant Goddess of War with a chariot drawn by four horses as tall as elephants. “Ever been up there?” he asked. “I thought not. Stunning view. Come on.”
    They entered by a low steel door tucked away in a corner of the monument. It was a long, dark climb up a tightly spiraling staircase but Oster was right: the view was worth it. Christian found himself looking out at an apparently endless boulevard, straight and broad, cutting clean across the heart of Berlin. Of course he had seen it before—but always at ground level. Now he saw it as its designer must have imagined: emerging from infinity, testing the imagination. This was much more than a road. This was a
statement.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “Memorable is hardly the word.”
    â€œOh, it’s just the beginning,” Oster said. “This runs east-west. Picture an even greater street crossing it, north-south. You’ve seen the Champs-Elysées?”
    â€œOnce or twice.”
    â€œThree hundred and thirty feet wide, so I’m told. Feeble, isn’t it? A miserable alley. Our north-south avenue is four hundred feet wide! And five miles long! The widest, longest avenue in the world. How big d’you think the Arc de Triomphe is?”
    â€œI’m afraid I’ve no idea, sir.”
    â€œOh, it’s stunted, believe me. Tiny. No more than a hundred and sixty feet high. Makes you wonder what all the fuss is about, doesn’t it? Now,
our
Triumphal Arch is more than twice as high! Three hundred and eighty-six feet! You can fit their piddling little hoop in the opening of our Arch and still leave room for a squadron of Heinkels to fly through! See?” Oster pointed at an empty bit of landscape.
    â€œUm … no, sir,” Christian said.
    â€œWell, we haven’t built it yet. Have patience, Christian, have patience. Anyway, the piddling little French hoop, or ‘oop as they would say, has no place under our Triumphal Arch—which, incidentally, will bear the names of our glorious dead in the last war, all one million eight hundred thousand of them, carved in granite, which you must agree will make the glorious dead feel much better … Where was I?”
    â€œUnder the ‘oop,” Christian said.
    â€œAh yes. Now, on a clear day when you look