David and Georg made it back to the lorry, seeing no one, and after regaining the main road, David turned eastward, following signs to Konstanz. He glanced at his watch "A little past nine thirty. Wonder how Franz and Hans are doing." He blew out a loud breath. "Wonder how we did."

"We'll find out soon enough. The airwaves are now buzzing with this and they're being intercepted and interpreted, so the Germans will tell us. The worst thing that can be done with missions such as this is to stay and watch. Some seem mesmerised by the damage they've caused and they stay around and get caught. Stupid."

"Colonel Picot was saying it's easy to sense how important the disruption was by the difference between the reality and the newspaper reports. There's a very tight control on what is published and how. A lot of the papers now are more propaganda than reportage."

"Propaganda? Not familiar with that term."

"It's adopted from the Catholic Church, from their Committee for the Propagation of the Faith. That's the organised proselytising they use to convert heathens. Now Germany is using the tactic of distorting reality to control the minds of the people."

"But we do a lot of that in Britain as well. The War Department filters what appears in the papers. Keeps the public from seeing the true depth of the horror happening in the trenches, they distort the situation to keep a flow of recruits to replace the casualties."

"Casualties. A great word to numb people to the reality. What the fuck is casual about being killed, about being dismembered, being blinded, being captured?" David shook his head.

As they approached Singen forty minutes later, Georg pointed to the freight train standing on the tracks. "They stop in a siding to allow oncoming trains to pass, but that's not a siding, that's a dual main line."

"This is the line that goes through Triburg; it connects Offenburg to Konstanz. Franz must have blown the rock." David smiled and shook his fist. "We'll likely see more trains stopped as we approach Konstanz. Rail lines come into there from Munich, from Salzburg, from the whole Austria-Hungary Empire. They've three routes down here in the south. Let's hope we got all three, then they'll have to detour north, through Ulm and Stuttgart, and overload the lines there."

David pulled into the Singen market square at the side of the church, and he manoeuvred into an open space. "I'll set up the table, you go check on mushroom prices."

"Thirty-five for the Judasohr and fifty for the Austernseitling seems to be the going price," Georg said when he returned. He picked up the chinagraph and marked 35Pf and 50Pf on small wooden tags and placed them in the baskets.

Sales were slow but steady as David and Georg relaxed from their earlier tensions. Shortly past noon, they sold the last of the mushrooms, then loaded the scale, table and baskets into the lorry with the empty potato bins. "Good idea to bring some empty bins." David smiled at George. "You're full of clever ideas."

As they drove out of town toward Konstanz, Georg pointed to the left. "Another train stopped."

David smiled. "Colonel Picot said it would be a few days before the disrupted supply line has any measurable effect at the Front. The good thing is that it's being anticipated, and the French are preparing their offensives all along the Vosges."

An hour and a quarter later, at the border crossing before the Rhein Bridge in Konstanz, David explained to the guard that they had been set up at the market in Singen selling potatoes and mushrooms to aid the food shortage. After the guards had inspected their papers and the back of the lorry, the gate was opened, and they were waved onward.

David felt his shoulders relax as he wheeled the lorry onto the bridge. He shook his body as he breathed a loud sigh. "I hadn't realized I was tense."

"You're a good actor. You seemed natural with the guard." Georg chuckled. "He appeared very pleased we're helping them with their war effort."

"We need to continue helping with our disruptions. Get them to stop this madness and go back to feeding their own people, rather than expending all their efforts trying to maim and kill ours."