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luck.
    The colonel had looked at Lennox keenly for a moment before he turned away to attend to the decisions which were being carried out. As senior officer, he had much to organise quickly.
    The wounded were taken to be patched up in the camp hospital across the courtyard. The dead were carried out of the hall, and the Germans’ weapons, uniforms, and papers were removed for future use. Extra men were sent out to join the two who had remained on guard over the captured lorries. A detail was dispatched to the kitchen and store-rooms to forage for food. Officers were in the Commandant’s office, examining papers and maps. One of them was installed at the telephone: he had taught Romance languages at a university, and could cope with any sudden calls to the Commandant from the town. Another, who had been an advertising artist, was making sketches of various sections of the enormous relief-map which was cemented into one wall of the office. A party had gone down to the blackness of the detention-cells, where they found the gaoler had long left his basement post, and seventeen cold, filthy, and truculent Tommies were helped upstairs. Others searched the castle and outbuildings with care.The guard-room was emptied of weapons and ammunition. The commissary was ransacked for useful equipment. Armed sentries, in German coats, were posted round the camp. The searchlight at the gate was manned, ready to give its usual five-minute sweep, so that any Germans in the town would see its customary watchfulness.
    The men and officers accomplished their jobs quickly and efficiently. But there was an underlying cheerfulness which would break out into a laugh, or a quip, or an exchange of good-natured libels. The younger officers were as excited as the men. Only the senior officer, and the two majors who stood talking to him, were grave. Only Lennox and Johann Schichtl, standing together in the hall, were silent. And both were equally impatient.
    But when the colonel came over to them once more he didn’t waste much time in finding out what he wanted to know. Johann, in spite of his obvious impatience, answered each question quickly and directly. Lennox translated, when necessary, with equal simplicity. The officers grouped round the colonel watched the boy’s face as they listened to Lennox.
    First of all, they were assured, they need have no fears about Falcone or the five guards who had been the last to desert from the camp, and who were the only Italians to see the revolt begin. For these men had been strong Fascists like the Commandant. They would never reach the town. (“We’ve taken care of that,” Johann said with a grin. “It is easier to kill them now than to have to search them out later.”)
    Those who had deserted earlier in the day had slipped away, one by one, each thinking he was the only man with foresight in the camp. And so each would believe that the camp was still guarded by those he had left behind.
    None of the Germans in the courtyard had escaped to give warning.
    No house was near the camp, and no one in the town could have heard the shots.
    No one would come to the camp tonight. The first arrivals would be at six tomorrow morning, when the daily food supplies were brought to the camp.
    The staffs of the kitchen, commissary, and post office, who were civilians recruited from the town, generally arrived at seven o’clock each morning.
    So much for the camp’s routine and personnel.
    As to the town (“ Bozen ,” Johann said pointedly, as the colonel again made the tactical error of using the Italian form of Bolzano), only Italians had occupied the barracks until recently. After Mussolini’s fall some Germans had been placed in command. That was what caused the trouble in the town this afternoon. The Italian soldiers had said the war was over. They had put down their guns and tried to walk out. The Germans had shot at them. And then the Italian officers, who until then were not sure what they should do, had