The small Italian sentry was lounging placidly in the plum coloured shade of the prison camp wall, his toylike carbine propped near his leg, when the new prisoner was brought in. The sentry had seen many American and British officers enter Campo Concentramento Prigionieri di Guerra 202 and had long since lost interest in them. He never noticed faces any more, only boots. The new one was Americano, the sentry noted through half-closed eyes. Americane boots, the kind the Americani called GI. He would gladly have given a month's wine and tobacco ration for such a pair.

Then a scalding voice pinned him against the wall. The sentry shrank back, his elbows and shoulder blades grinding into the warm dun brick, his little carbine clattering to the baked earth. He did not understand the words but their tone was unmistakable.

'Don't you salute officers in your army, soldier?' the newcomer demanded in a hard voice. 'And pick up that popgun before you trip over it.'

The sentry gaped at the American officer, his eyes abulge and furtive.

'Jump to it, soldier!' the American snapped.

'Colonnello,' stammered the boyish Italian second lieutenant escorting him, 'he is not understand.'

'Then explain it to him,' the American ordered.

The lieutenant shouted at the sentry, taking refuge in anger from the insecurity instilled by the American colonel. The sentry fumbled for his carbine, came rigidly to attention and, shaking, presented arms.

The American responded with a crisp salute, then studied the dusty weapon.

'Disgraceful,' he said.

He turned to the lieutenant.

'Have him clean that piece.'

The lieutenant stared with brown fawn's eyes, a look of anxious concentration on his smooth face.

'Have him clean that carbine,' the American said. 'Not that Fm trying to help you run your war but I wouldn't want anybody shot by a filthy carbine.'

'Si, colonnello,' the lieutenant said hastily, wondering why he was taking orders when he should be giving them but unable to withstand the prisoner's cold assurance. 'Domani. Tomorrow.'

'Domani,' the American said. 'God knows how many times I've heard that word in the last six hours.'

He returned to his scrutiny of the squirming sentry.

'Ask him when he shaved last,' he demanded, without taking his eyes from the man.

The lieutenant asked. The man answered sullenly and hung his head. The lieutenant snapped at him. The sentry snapped back. They argued with increasing heat.

'As you were!' the American ordered.

They stopped immediately and looked at him as if awaiting instructions.

'Lieutenant,' the American said with patient irony, 'no wonder you people are losing a war. An officer does not argue with an enlisted man. He tells him.'

'I know colonnello,' the lieutenant said apologetically. 'But these imbecilli ... Those who guard the prigionieri are, how you say, the dregess.'

'Dregs,' the American corrected. 'You're assigned to this prison camp, aren't you, lieutenant?' The lieutenant looked betrayed. He was perhaps twenty-two, with a sensitive, handsome face. His hair was dark and curly, his jaw firm, his lips full.

'While I'm on the subject,' said the American, 'when was the last time you had a shave, lieutenant?'

'Only this morning,' the lieutenant said eagerly, thrusting his face forward for closer inspection.

The American drew back distastefully.

'What do you use for after-shave lotion?' he demanded. 'Chanel Number Five?'

Without another glance at the lieutenant or the sentry, he turned and strode toward the barricade of timbers and barbed wire separating the forecourt from the prison compound, where a jostling throng of prisoners waited. The lieutenant hurried after him.

The colonel was tall and conspicuously erect. His dark blond hair was short and bristling, with a scatter of grey at the temples. His face was deeply tanned except for two ovals around the unblinking grey eyes where the skin had been shielded by sunglasses. His eyes were finely wrinkled at the corners and squinted a little from looking into the sun for enemy fighters. His was a tough face, grim almost, with no vestige of softness of any kind. It was, from a distance, a young face, but viewed closely was older than its thirty-six years.

There was a soiled lump of bloodstained bandage on the side of his head, held their by dirty adhesive tape which came down over one ear and within an inch of a heavy dark eyebrow. His flying suit was oilstained and rusty with dried blood. On his shoulders, stamped on squares of brown leather, perched the silver eagles of a colonel. On his left breast the wreathed wings of a command pilot glinted in the beetling sun.

When the colonel had first come through the prison camp gate a prisoner who had been amusing himself making faces at the indolent sentry had shouted, 'Fresh meat!'

It had quickly brought to the wire a crowd of fellow prisoners who had been taking the sun or were otherwise engaged in meaningless outdoor preoccupations. They were joined in turn by a horde of prisoners who came tumbling out of every barracks exit, thick as ants around a stickthrust.

The man who had cried out was sun-blackened and ribby. He was barefoot and one-eyed. His only garment, a pair of dirty desert shorts, hung low on his bony hips revealing a black glass eye staring fixedly from his enormous navel. Except for the eye in his belly, he was not particularly conspicuous among his fellows. Though not so thin or deeply tanned, they were similarly dressed. Their hair was long and unkempt and many of them had inventive beards and moustaches. Some wore eyeshades made of cardboard and twine and a man in the forefront had a tin plate on his head, held there with a black shoelace tied beneath his chin.

The prisoners jeered and applauded, a holiday crowd at a ragpickers' carnival, while the colonel toyed with the sentry. When the colonel approached them, they pressed closer, forcing the men in front against the barbed wire and filling the air with greetings and cries of pain.

'Hey, colonnello, welcome to P.G. Doochentydooey.'

'We got Messina yet?'

'Have we landed up north?'

'Where'd they get you?'

'You ain't gonna like it here, colonel.'

The newcomer did not answer or smile. He surveyed the mob with a look of distaste on his hard brown face, his eyes frosty in their pale ovals of untanned skin. The prisoners, unabashed, continued their clamour. The sentry at the barricade, having witnessed the scene at the camp entrance, threw open his gate and came to attention. The colonel returned his salute and stepped through, followed by the lieutenant.

'I bring you a new companion,' said the lieutenant, smiling.

'You're a good kid, Bobby,' a prisoner called out.

'Thank you,' the lieutenant replied.

'We'll leave your name off our white list when our chaps get here,' cried a British voice.

'Thank you,' the lieutenant said again, 'but it is not necessary.'

'That's what you think.'

A sturdy man in a broad-brimmed Australian hat came shoving through the press towards the newcomer.

'Stand aside, you buggers,' he said in a deep, good-natured voice.

He had a black moustache like the horns of a Cape Buffalo, immensely thick in the middle and curving out and up in a noble sweep of luxuriant jet. His eyes were blue, his chin and jaw heavy. His skin was more pink than tanned. He wore greasy British battle-dress trousers hacked off at the knee, and broken desert boots. His big toe protruded through a gap in the left one.

'Who's the senior officer here?' the colonel demanded.

The sturdy man shoved aside the prisoners nearest the colonel and stepped forward holding out a broad hand.

'Fincham, here,' he said. 'Eric Fincham, leftenant-colonel, British Army. Welcome to P.G. Two-oh-bloody-Two, colonel.' The colonel seemed not to see the proffered hand, his eyes fastening instead on the Britisher's arching moustache. Fincham's face went a shade pinker.

'A light colonel,' said the American. 'I'm a bird colonel.'

He shook the Englishman's hand at last, then turned to face the centre of the noisy throng.

'I am Colonel Joseph Ryan,' he announced. 'Your new senior officer.'

'Iron-ass Ryan,' exclaimed a burly man with a big peeling nose who had just rushed from the barracks to join the mob at the gate. 'I had him at advanced. Only he was a captain then.'

If Ryan heard him he gave no indication of it.

'I'll want a talk with you after a while, colonel,' Ryan said to Fincham.

The Italian lieutenant cleared his throat and said apologetically, 'I must report now to the settore office. With the colonnello's permission ...'

'Carry on, lieutenant,' said Ryan.

'Good afternoon, gentlemen,' said the lieutenant.

'So long, Bobby,' the prisoners chorused.

Ryan turned to the prisoners.

'Break up this high school pep rally and go back to your quarters until further orders,' he said.

He did not speak in a particularly loud voice but his words carried to the rearmost ranks. The prisoners stared at him in uncomprehending silence.

'I gave an order!' Ryan snapped. 'Move.'

He looked at the skinny man with the glass eye in his navel.

'Except you,' he said. 'You stand by.'

Muttering, the prisoners began moving slowly toward the surrounding barracks.

'A pretty raunchy bunch, colonel,' Ryan said, turning to Fincham.

Fincham's pink deepened again and his lips parted as if in retort, but instead of answering he pressed them together so firmly the tips of his moustache vibrated.

Ryan's eyes dropped to the skinny man's belly.

'You're staring,' he said.

'Sir?' the man blurted. 'No, sir!'

'Put that eye where it belongs.'

'Yes, sir!'

He plucked the glass eye from his navel, popped it into his mouth to moisten it and inserted it in his empty socket. His good eye, lighter in colour than the artificial one, roved nervously.

'That's better,' said Ryan. 'But not much. Hitch up those shorts.'

The man raised his shorts above his hips but they slipped back down immediately.

'Get yourself a belt,' Ryan ordered. 'What's your name?'

'Frankie ... I mean, Orde, sir. Orde, Franklin. Second lieutenant.'

'Colonel,' Ryan said to Fincham, 'why hasn't this man been repatriated?'

'I suggest you take that up with Colonel Battaglia,' Fincham replied angrily.

'I will,' said Ryan. 'Lieutenant, carry on.'

'Sir?'

'Taxi after the others.'

'Yes, sir.'

Orde left at a trot, his thin arms pumping, his calloused feet slapping on the hardpacked earth of the courtyard.

'Now,' said Ryan. 'Where can we talk?'

'My quarters ... sir,' Fincham said with savage courtesy.

'Lead on.'

Fincham led him across the courtyard and up ironbound cement steps to the top floor of the two-storey U-shaped barracks. Socks and less identifiable articles of clothing hung on the iron guardrails like the banners of some ragged but dauntless army. When they reached the second floor, Fincham thrust his hands into the frayed pockets of his shorts and sauntered along the porch. The porch was a six-foot strip of dirt-scabbed cement cluttered with pots and boxes of reddish earth from which protruded random spears of onion and straggly garlands of radish.

'This supposed to be a garden?' Ryan asked.

'Tunnel dirt,' said Fincham. 'Must get rid of it somehow.'

'How far along are you?'

'New one's just begun. The one before was almost to the wall before the Ites found it.'

The prisoners were noisy in their quarters. When Ryan and Fincham passed the doorless entrance to a living bay the occupants fell silent, stared at Ryan and resumed their yammer when he passed. Midway along the porch they reached a small, shallow room.

Fincham paused, bowed mockingly and, with a flourish of his hand, said, 'My humble quarters are at your disposal, sir.'

'Thank you,' said Ryan ignoring the irony.

The room was dim and cool after the penetrating glare of the untempered sun. The floor and walls were dark brown tile, the ceiling light plaster. The room was six feet wide, eight deep and eight high. It gave an impression both of bareness and clutter. The only furniture was a heavy four-sided stool of solid unpainted wood and a rickety two-deck bunk, also unpainted wood. On the top bunk was a thin palliasse and a flat pillow. The frame of the bottom bunk formed a little pen containing a pair of British boots and two cardboard boxes full of tin cans. A pair of woollen socks, some underdrawers and a small soiled towel hung on a string stretched between the bunkposts.

Fincham placed his palms flat on the top bunk, sprang into the air, twisted lithely and landed in a sitting position as the bunk shuddered in imminent collapse. He sat grinning down at Ryan, his teeth white in the gloom.

'This is one of our posh suites, sir,' he said. 'Guinea a night, bed and breakfast. We have less dear accommodations for subalterns. But I expect the colonel will be wanting our very best. Flying pay and all that.'

Ryan ran a finger along an inchwide wall projection and looked casually at the grime he collected.

'I used to do this wearing white gloves,' he said. 'And gigged a man when I found a speck on 'em. When was the last time this room was policed?'

'Policed? Oh. What month is this, August? Yes, so it is, August. July, I believe it was. Or was it June? You know how time flies when you're on holiday. Sit down, sit down, sir. Try the easy chair there.'

Ryan remained standing. He rubbed a hand across his chin.

'I need a shave,' he said. 'Is there some tackle I can borrow until I get my issue?'

Fincham's grin broadened.

'Your issue, did you say? I expect that might be a bit late, colonel. Unless you've arranged to have it parachuted in.'

'I see.'

Fincham dropped to the floor and rummaged through the litter in the lower bunk. He straightened holding a small tin of soap, a moulting brush and a battered safety razor.

'I'll sharpen the blade,' he said.

'That won't be necessary.'

'Bold words, colonel. But reckless.'

Fincham took out the blade and rubbed it rapidly around the inside of an earthenware mug.

'There,' he said. 'That should do it.'

The brush fell to the floor as he was handing it to Ryan and both men stooped to retrieve it. Ryan's legs buckled. Fincham grabbed him before he hit the floor.

'Are you all right?' he asked.

'Damn,' Ryan said angrily. 'I must have lost more blood than I ... I'm all right, colonel. Let go of me. You've got an arm like an anaconda.'

Fincham released him and went to the door.

'Bonzer!' he shouted. 'Quick time!'

Heads popped out of every door in the two-storey warren, looked toward Fincham's room, then popped back inside again.

'What're you up to?' Ryan demanded.

'My runner. Want to lie down?'

'I told you I'm fine. I don't guess there's any hot water for shaving?'

'Not unless you brought it with you.'

Hobnailed boots pounded along the porch and a squat man knocked, burst into the room and flung out a massive arm in an exaggerated British salute. His only garment was a kilt made of coarse grey blanket. He had a short stubble of red hair and a thick red moustache running across his ruddy cheeks and turning into sideburns.

'Sir!' he bellowed, standing at straining attention, his deep voice reverberating in the tiled room.

'Fetch Captain Stein,' said Fincham.

'Sir!' Bonzer shouted again, saluting, whirling and racing off with a clatter of hobnails.

'Who's Captain Stein?' Ryan asked.

'One of yours. Still keen on shaving?'

'I said I was all right. Got a mirror?'

Fincham dived into his cache again and emerged with a jagged triangle of glass.

'The mirror's sharper than the razor, I expect,' he said.

He poured water into a tin can from a wine bottle hanging by a string from the bunkpost.

'You'll have to go outside to shave,' he said, nodding toward the small dusty bulb screwed into the ceiling. 'No lights until dark and then bloody little.'

Out on the porch, Ryan made a thin lather and spread it on his face. He showed no further sign of weakness. He had finished shaving one cheek, the cold, dull blade dragging at his whiskers when Bonzer returned with Captain Stein.

Stein was a spare man of medium height with a shock of wiry brown hair, alert brown eyes and a brown moustache which looked as if it had just been clipped and combed. He wore a neat khaki uniform with the shirtsleeves buttoned at the wrists. His GI shoes were glossy. Ryan looked at him approvingly.

'That's more like it,' he said. 'What can I do for you, captain?'

'It's what I can do for you, sir,' Stein replied.

'What did you have in mind?' Ryan demanded.

'I'd like a look at that scalp of yours.'

'Why?'

'I'm a doctor.'

'A doctor? What's a doctor doing in a prisoner of war compound?'

'Colonel, sir, you have no idea how many hours I've lain in my lumpy sack asking myself that question.'

'Captain Stein refused repatriation, colonel,' said Fincham.

'Nobody shoots at me here as long as I behave myself,' Stein explained.

Prisoners had gathered at the bay entrances to watch the tableau on the second floor. It was seldom they had such diversions. Bonzer was standing at attention.

'Sir?' he boomed.

'Oh,' said Fincham. 'You still hanging about? Muck off.'

'Sir!' cried Bonzer, sprinting off.

His hobnails struck sparks on the cement.

'Soldierly type,' said Ryan. 'First one I've seen around here.' 'He's round the bend,' said Fincham, grinning.

'Round the bend?'

'Daft,' Fincham explained.

'Nutty as a fruitcake, to put it in precise medical terminology,' Stein said. 'Would you mind sitting down while I have a look at that wound? Finch, you want to move the stool out here where I can see?'

Ryan resumed shaving while Stein removed the bandage. He did not wince when Stein pulled the adhesive tape away and worked the bandage free of the crusted wound.

'Ugh,' Stein grunted. 'Doctor who did this should have stitched you up. Hurt?'

'Only when you fumble around with it.'

'My experience with this end of the patient is comparatively recent,' Stein said placidly. 'In civilian life I'm an obstetrician. I'll just run down and get my tool kit out of hock and see if I can't clean you up a little. Your tetanus current?'

'Yes. Also cholera, yellow fever, typhus, typhoid and smallpox. I'm inoculated against everything but flak.'

'Good,' said Stein. 'Since I don't have any anti-tetanus serum. I just asked out of curiosity. Be right back.'

He left carrying the bloody bandage dangling from his hand.

'What'd he mean, get his tool kit out of hock?' Ryan asked.

'The Ites keep his medical kit locked up in the dispensary. Brought it in with him. The Ites bagged him with full kit. Got himself lost behind their lines looking for his billet with a green driver.'

'So that's why he's got a clean uniform. Does he wear it all the time or did he put it on in my honour?'

'He put it on for you but I dare say not in your honour,' Fincham said dryly. 'He wears his clean uniform when he visits any patient. Even an OR.'

'OR? Oh, Other Rank. Enlisted man. Tell me something, colonel. If Captain Stein can keep himself presentable in here why can't the other officers?'

'We weren't all fortunate enough to be put in the bag with full kit, colonel.'

I'm not referring to his uniform, colonel. He's clean and his hair's cut. Which is more than I can say for anyone else I've seen so far.'

'You tell me something, colonel, if you please.'

'Yes?'

'What do you hope to gain with this headmaster manner?'

Ryan saw the prisoners grinning from doorways.

'Let's step inside, colonel,' he said. 'I'm not putting on a floorshow.'

Inside the room, his manner grew icy.

'You can call my manner what you want to, colonel,' he said. 'Maybe if you had some of it this place wouldn't be in such miserable shape. I've seen some hellholes in my time but this has got anything I've seen in North Africa beat. The wogs have an excuse. They don't know any better. But you're supposed to be officers.'

Fincham's eyes glinted in a mask of red.

'You're bloody right, there,' he snapped. 'We're officers. Not chars.'

'You will be before I'm through with you. And a lot more. This camp is a disgrace. It's filthy. And you've let the men get raunchy, childish and undisciplined. They've forgotten what it means to be soldiers, if they ever knew.'

Fincham thrust his face close to Ryan's.

'See here, you bloody Yank! You stroll in from bacon and egg breakfasts and a cushy billet and expect to find things the same here. This is no bloody picnic and you'll find that out if you don't get your bloody head bashed in first.'

Ryan's expression of cold distaste did not change.

'In the British Army is it customary to address a superior officer in such an unmilitary manner?' he asked.

'Bollocks!'

'Do you acknowledge that I am in command here?'

'Worse luck for all of us.'

'If you keep that in mind it'll save you a lot of grief. Now, I've got some questions to ask you.'

Before he could continue, Stein came in carrying a medical field pack.

'These second floor house calls are a pain in the neck,' Stein said. 'Those stairs are steep. If you'll just come back out in the light I'll get to work.'

'Colonel, I'll get back to you after Captain Stein gets through with me,' Ryan said.

Fincham leaned against his bunk, scowling, his arms folded across his thick chest. Outside, Stein cleared a place with his foot and set out a square of rough white cloth on which he placed a bottle of alcohol, cotton and swab sticks.

'You may find this a little uncomfortable,' he said conversationally as he began cleaning the wound.

The prisoners gathered in their doorways again to watch the show. Ryan endured Stein's ministrations stoically though he grunted when Stein took the first stitch.

'Felt that, did you?' Stein asked cheerfully.

'What are you doing up there, brain surgery?'

'That was my dear old mother's dream back in St Louis,' Stein said, tying off the stitch. ' "My son the brain surgeon." That was her dream. She never learned to pronounce obstetrician. She says "baby doctor". Doesn't sound the same, does it? "My son the baby doctor." But that's life. Sometimes it comes up heads, sometimes it comes up tails. There. A neat job if I say so myself. Too bad it's where you can't admire it, colonel.'

'Thanks, captain,' said Ryan. 'I've had barbers who talked less.'

Stein smiled pleasantly.

'It may ache a little but you'll live,' he said. 'Keep it clean and dry and stay out of the sun as much as possible. And if I were you I wouldn't do any swimming or dive bombing the next few days.'

He stored his instruments in the field pack and left. Ryan went back into Fincham's room.

'Now, colonel,' he said. 'I want some answers.'