Resistance by Owen Sheers Page B

about what these men did in the name of fighting for their country. And the other man too, the man who’d visited George after Atkins, the man who’d never told him his name, he’d been at his most articulate when telling George what the occupying soldiers would do to him and his loved ones. Men castrated like male lambs. The young women “spread” among the elite officers. Yes, he hated them. And yet here, in the flesh, these young guards looked so normal, so human. They looked like the young Allied soldiers he’d seen retreating through this same stationjust the week before. Only the colour and cut of their uniforms were different. The dirt, dust, and the shabbiness of the material were all the same. Under those odd mushroom-shaped helmets, George saw how these guards were boys like him. He even noticed two of them share a joke, the language angular on his ear. They’d laughed. And then he’d hated them again. These boys playing at soldiers, laughing outside the station he’d known since he was a child.
    At the head of the queue, a German officer stood beside the freight clerk, observing the showing of papers and the collection of goods. The white silk scarf about his neck was smudged with grime along its creases. When George handed his docket to the clerk, the officer took it and glanced over its details. “Ah, chickens,” he’d said in a delicately accented English as he passed the docket back to the clerk. “My wife keeps chickens.”
    A poster was pasted to the wall beside the desk. As the clerk worked through his files and papers, George read the first few sentences.
Proclamation to the People of Britain
    1. British territory occupied by German troops will be placed under military government.
    2. Military commanders will issue decrees necessary for the protection of the troops and the maintenance of general law and order.
    3. Troops will respect property and persons if the population behaves according to instructions.
    4. British authorities may continue to function if they maintain a correct attitude.
    The clerk was completing his paperwork. George scanned over the next directive, hoping to reach the end of the poster before he had to leave. But then number 6 stopped him in his tracks. He felt the blood drain from his face.
    The officer gave George a curt smile and a short nod, indicating he could leave with his crate of chicks. As he carried the crate away from the station, the two young guards watched him pass. George looked straight ahead, fixing his eyes on the brow of the hill over which he’d walk home. One of them strolled a few paces behind him, then stopped. George heard the metallic snap of his steel-shod boots on the tarmac. When they stopped he thought maybe the soldier was raising his rifle, taking aim at the back of his head. A rush of fear rose through him. He felt vulnerable, exposed, as if an area the exact circumference of a bullet just above his neck had turned to liquid. He kept his eyes on the hill and carried on walking, the chicks bubbling away in the crate he held before him. Nothing happened, but still he didn’t look back until he was out of sight and only then did he put the crate down and rest beside a signpost at the edge of the road, his hands quivering on his thighs. The signpost was new, the soil at its base freshly turned. The Germans had put it there, replacing the one removed by the Home Office five years earlier. The Germans seemed to have thought of everything, even bringing their own signposts. What else had they come prepared for? George thought again of that poster at the station, its sixth directive, so definite, so abrupt in its translation:
    6. All civilians are warned that if they undertake active operations against the German forces, they will be condemned to death inexorably.
    Shrapnel damage to left wheel arch of staff car .
    George checked over the details of his latest observation, then folded it three times into a chunky square of paper. Reaching under