Trafalgar

by Nicholas Best

  On the quays, a last stand was made after the destroyers had left. The fiercest fighting was around the Bassin Napoleon, the semicircular inner harbour that Napoleon had constructed for his invasion barges. British stragglers held one side of it, Germans the other. The battle was bravely fought, but there was never any doubt as to the outcome. With no hope of escape, and no chance of reinforcement, the British were forced to surrender when their ammunition ran out.

  These were the same quays that the Grand Army had occupied while waiting to embark for England on the morning of 21 August 1805. Believing the invasion was really going to happen this time, they had sold their rings and watches on the dockside so as to have spending money in London. As the Germans searched their British prisoners, another exchange of rings and watches took place, but without any money changing hands. The Germans simply helped themselves to whatever they wanted.

  Afterwards, they went up to the cliffs to look at England through their scissor telescopes. Another few weeks and they would be marching up the Mall, something Napoleon had never achieved. The Germans already knew what to do when they had conquered England. They would arrest everybody on Dr Goebbels’ list to begin with, all the prominent Britons likely to cause trouble for the new regime. They would ban cars and radios, seize control of the newspapers and dismantle the heavy industry, transporting the machinery back to Germany for reassembly in the Ruhr. They would also dismantle Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square and reerect it in Berlin as a trophy.

  After that, they would turn their attention to other matters. There would be a host of new regulations as to exactly which British citizens were allowed to own a business or sit in the park or go to the cinema. There would be a visitation of the universities, German troops clumping up the staircases of Oxford and Cambridge to drag out the Jews and homosexuals and make a bonfire of their books. There would be executions of left-wingers and slave labour for all men between seventeen and forty-five. And there would be photographs – partisans decapitated in the Welsh mountains with cigarettes dangling from their lips, East End rabbis with their ringlets cut off, passers-by strung up like poultry in the market place, lone English girls cowering naked among grinning, strutting men in jackboots. All of that there would be, and a lot more besides, when the Germans were safely across the Channel.

  They folded their telescopes after a while and went down to the harbour again to begin clearing up. The Bassin Napoleon was their first priority. They wanted it back in working order as soon as possible. They needed it for their landing craft.

  Behind them, just across the water, the fishermen and ploughboys of the Walmer Home Guard patrolled the beach where Caesar had landed, wondering if rifles would be delivered to them any time soon. Royal Navy warships patrolled further out, defending the approaches to the shore. And the Channel rolled ever onwards, with its tides and cross-currents, its shifting sands and treacherous undertows, its unpredictable swells and atrocious, never-to-be-relied-on weather. To the British, it is the most beautiful stretch of water in the world.

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