WESTBURY, ENGLAND, KIRPAL SINGH STOOD where the horse』s saddle would have lain across its back. At first he simply stood on the back of the horse, paused and waved to those he could not see but who he knew would be watg. Lord Suffolk watched him through binoculars, saw the young man wave, both arms up and swaying.
Then he desded, down into the giant white chalk horse of Westbury, into the whiteness of the horse, carved into the hill.
Now he was a black figure, the background radicalizing the darkness of his skin and his khaki uniform. If the focus on the binoculars was exact, Lord Suffolk would see the thin line of crimson lanyard on Singh』s shoulder that signalled his sapper unit. To them it would look like he was striding doer map cut out in the shape of an animal. But Singh was scious only of his boots scuffing the rough white chalk as he moved down the slope.
Miss Morden, behind him, was also ing slowly down the hill, a satchel over her shoulder, aiding herself with a rolled umbrella. She stopped te above the horse, unfurled the umbrella and sat within its shade. Then she opened up her notebooks.
「 you hear me?」 he asked.
「Yes, it』s fine.」 She rubbed the chalk off her hands onto her skirt and adjusted her glasses. She looked up into the distand, as Singh had done, waved to those she could not see.
Singh liked her. She was in effect the first Englishwoman he had really spoken with since he arrived in England. Most of his time had bee in a barracks at Woolwich. In his three months there he had met only other Indians and English officers. A woman would reply to a question in the NAAFI teen, but versations with women lasted only two or three sentences.
He was the sed son. The oldest son would go into the army, the brother would be a doctor, a brother after that would bee a businessman. An old tradition in his family. But all that had ged with the war. He joined a Sikh regiment andwas shipped to England. After the first months in London he had volunteered himself into a unit of engihat had bee up to deal with delayed-a and unex-ploded bombs. The word from on high in was naive: 「Unexploded bombs are sidered the responsibility of the Home Office, whreed that they should be collected by A.R.P. wardens and polid delivered to ve dumps, where members of the armed forces will in due course detohem.」 It was not until that the War Office took over responsibility for bomb disposal, and then, in turn, ha over to the Royal Engineers. Twenty-five bomb disposal units were set up. They lacked teical equipment and had in their possession only hammers, chisels and road-mending tools. There were no specialists.
A bomb is a bination of the following parts:
A tainer or bomb case.
. Afuze.
. An initiating charge, aine.
. A main charge of high explosive.
. Superstrualfittings—fins, lifting lugs, ks, etc.
Eighty pert of bombs dropped by airplanes over Britaihin-walled, general-purpose bombs. They usually ranged from a hundred pounds to a thousand. A ,ooo-pound bomb was called a 「Hermann」 or an 「Esau.」 A ,ooo-pound bomb was called a 「Satan.」 Singh, after long days of training, would fall asleep with diagrams and charts still in his hands. Half dreaming, he ehe maze of a der alongside the picric acid and the gaine and the densers until he reached the fuze deep within the main body. Then he was suddenly awake.
When a bomb hit a target, the resistance caused a tremble