Dunkirk Crescendo

by Bodie Thoene

  Silence from the other plane.

  “Cross, did you hear me?”

  A very meek voice replied, “Don’t kill me, Meyer. Don’t let me die. I’m trusting you.”

  “Cut your engine now! Now, Cross, do it! You’ll overshoot the field! Trust me, Cross, cut it now!”

  The engine of Cross’ fighter stopped, and it began to drop away from David toward the ground.

  David put his Hurricane into another gentle circle of the field to observe the result of his coaching. He held his breath as Cross swept down toward the pasture below. The extra moments of power caused by hesitation carried the plane farther out than David had planned.

  At the far end of the grassy area were a hedge and a row of trees. As David watched helplessly, the other aircraft touched down, bounced, and ran on at high speed toward the end of the field. “Brake!” David ordered sharply. “Brake again! Now kick it around to port, Cross. Do it!”

  The Hurricane ran headlong into the hedgerow. David could not tell if Cross had ever applied the brakes or had remained frozen in place. When the Hurricane connected with the brush, the tail flipped into the air. The fighter plane collapsed sideways toward the ground and ended the crash upside down.

  “Cross!” David radioed. “Cross, do you read me?”

  There was no response.

  David’s fuel gauge showed that he had enough fuel to make Auberive, but just barely. He circled the downed plane a final time, looking for any sign of life, and then flew off toward the west.

  ***

  “Are you completely clear on your orders, Major?” General Rommel’s question was very pointed. With many other commanders a subordinate would have been intimidated into acquiescing whether he understood or not. But Rommel was different, a natural leader. He had personally directed river crossings and had stood his ground while artillery shells rained down, killing men as close as a few feet from him. If there was a remaining question, he would not ridicule a man for asking it.

  “No, sir,” Horst admitted. “That is, I am clear on the order, but not the intent. I am to spread my entire command into six columns at the extreme left flank of the division. On your signal we are to thrust north and then east around the town of Cambrai. The columns are to remain separated by one-hundred-yard intervals, and we are to make as much dust as possible. Is that all correct, sir?”

  “Perfectly,” Rommel agreed. “Do you know the history of Cambrai, Major?”

  “Just what I remember from the war college classes, sir . . . in fact, I believe it was in one you taught. Cambrai is the site of the first major tank engagement ever. It is recorded as a British victory in the Great War, although they were unable to hold their gains.”

  “Very good, Major. Highest marks. From that battle came the standard doctrine that tanks must always accompany the infantry and never operate as independent units. The French and the British still believe this, which is why there are no true armored divisions such as our panzers among the Allied forces.”

  “I am sorry, sir, but I must be failing this class. I don’t see the connection between the history and our present plan of attack.”

  “The chief benefit of tank attack is fear, Major. Fear of being overwhelmed. Fear of facing a steel-hided beast, while you are armed with a popgun. The British General Fuller had the right idea, but he was before his time. His tanks could travel at only five or six kilometers per hour. Ours can do close to fifty! Today we will see what intimidation can really accomplish. Go on now. We move out in one hour.”

  Armored cars in the lead, flanked and followed by motorcycles, Horst ordered the drivers to weave as they drove among the plowed fields and country lanes, stirring the dust into plumes.

  ***

  Mac’s view of the countryside around Cambrai was excellent, since he and the city’s mayor were standing in the belfry of the cathedral. From his perch he could look down on the walls of chalky white stone that distinguished the ancient city of Cambrai from its redbrick, industrial-age neighbors.

  The mayor pointed out the gateway called the Porte de Paris, built in the 1300s. “And 150 kilometers south is Paris,” explained the short man with an ill-fitting toupee and a warlike attitude. “A great many of the cowardly among our citizens have taken that road in the last week, Monsieur.”

  Mac scanned the sprawling municipal plaza, over which hovered the cupola of the Hotel de Ville, the city hall. The large square was crammed with people thronging the pavement, gawking at the exotic Oriental statues on the clock tower, and leaving behind their discarded garbage. “But your population does not seem to have shrunk, Monsieur the mayor.”

  “They are not our people,” replied the official, shaking his fist. “They are Dutch refugees, Belgian refugees, even—” he paused to load his words with disgust—“deserters among the crowd, Monsieur. Men who should be at the front defending France from the Boche!”

  Mac panned his camera over the plaza, giving his viewers a high shot of the mass of humans who had run before the Wehrmacht. The truth of the mayor’s words was apparent. There were a number of French soldiers in the throng. Some had discarded half their uniforms and their equipment; none seemed to have weapons. Over his shoulder to the mayor Mac remarked, “What is the plan for the defense of the city?”

  “Defense?” the administrator repeated, one hand holding his hairpiece against a gust of wind. “We have a garrison of infantry here, Monsieur, who will fight to the death. No tanks, no cannons, no planes. But we are a bulwark of the southern line of our army. We will hold the Germans here and give our forces time to launch the counterattack. We will arm the citizens for the love of France!”

  Mac raised the camera’s lens and swung it slowly around the horizon, then turned to study the little man. “I think you’ll soon get your chance, Mayor. Take a look there.” He indicated the rising pillars of dust that grew in the south and crept closer, encircling the city from the west. Black masses of moving vehicles could be seen below the swirling columns.

  “Sacre bleu! They are supposed to go west! They are not supposed to come here. Not today!”

  Mac had pivoted the camera from the approaching German forces to record the mayor’s reaction—warlike, defiant. What he got was the back of the man’s coat as he retreated abruptly down the stairs and a shot of a forlorn toupee, blown off by the wind and lying on the stones.

  ***

  As soon as the German advance swept toward Cambrai, hundreds of civilians began to appear. They carried baskets of clothing, pushed carts loaded with furniture, toted bottles of some precious vintage wines. Among the throngs that walked with heads down, not looking at the invaders, were weaponless French soldiers in dirty uniforms.

  Horst studied the dispirited faces. One French soldier glanced up and caught Horst looking at him. The man quickly turned his head to the side, moved to put a horse-drawn cart loaded with children between himself and the major, and shuffled even faster away from Cambrai. Horst thought that for that man and the others, the war was over. He could imagine what the effect would be on French morale when they saw the number of deserters, and they had not even fired a shot.

  Nor did the Germans. The mayor of Cambrai advanced to meet the encircling force with a bedsheet as a flag of truce. It was longer than the little man was tall and threatened to trip him about every third step. “Mon general,” the mayor addressed Rommel. “Will you please spare our city? When the garrison saw the immense size of your force and we heard it was the Phantom Division, with your terrible and unstoppable tanks, we knew that resistance was futile. We surrender completely. Only please do not unleash your tanks on Cambrai.”

  ***

  Mac moved northward away from Cambrai with a mass of others who did not trust the goodwill of the Germans enough to either remain in the city or try to cross the battle lines by heading south. North was where the Allied Army lay and some hope of stopping the Germans before they reached the Channel.

  As Mac hiked along the dusty road toward Lille, he fell
in step beside a man wearing the uniform trousers of a poilu. The man had no tunic, no helmet, no weapon. He looked at Mac without interest, then returned to staring at his shoes, as if seeking something in the dirt.

  “What is your name?” Mac asked casually.

  “Jardin,” the man said without looking up.

  “Where is your regiment?”

  “I do not have any idea.”

  “Are you trying to find it?”

  “What for?” the man asked suspiciously.

  There was no reply to this that did not sound antagonistic, and Mac remembered the quick tempers of the deserters who had fled the battle at the Sambre. “Your rifle?” he said instead.

  “Too heavy for this hot weather,” Jardin replied. “Besides, it was rusty. And there are plenty more.” He pointed to the side of the road where discarded rifles, cartridge belts, even a French machine gun lay alongside grenades.

  “Did you fight the Germans?”

  “Proudly,” said the man in a voice of bitterness and no pride at all. “At Dinant, on the Meuse. And later, at . . . I forget the name.”

  “After Dinant, did you see Germans?”

  Jardin frowned. “It was not required. We know they are unstoppable. Someone yelled, ‘Save yourself,’ and . . . that was all.”

  “And now?”

  Jardin finally looked at Mac. “It was not supposed to be this way, Monsieur. All I wanted was some money to send home to my children and a pension for my old age. What will happen to them? The politicians have betrayed us. They did not tell us the truth about this war, which they said was no war at all.”

  ***

  “Phantom Division. I like that,” Rommel remarked to Horst at a conference after the town of Cambrai had capitulated. “How little they know about the accuracy of that statement.”

  “Sorry, sir. I guess I still do not follow.”

  “It is all right, Major. No reason why you should, but I can explain now. You see, your battalion was the ‘immense force.’ My tanks are still back east of the town, waiting for fuel and ammunition to catch up with us. Intimidation is a very real and effective weapon.”

  18

  Across the Lines

  By the time Blitzkrieg was in its ninth day, the Allies were falling back everywhere, giving ground, abandoning defensive positions. On the May 17, Colonel de Gaulle had counterattacked near the fourteenth-century battlefield of Crecy. It was a brave attempt to break the Nazi momentum but failed for lack of coordination. One hundred fifty French tanks were ambushed by, in de Gaulle’s words, “a forest of antitank guns.” The promised infantry support failed to materialize. The air arm of the French forces could not hold off the Stukas. In the end, the panzers brushed de Gaulle aside and swept onward.

  On the eighteenth, General Guderian’s Second Panzer took the town of St. Quentin before eight o’clock in the morning. Forty of the precious few French warplanes that remained were somehow caught on the ground near Cambrai and shot to pieces. And Cambrai itself had surrendered to Rommel without a struggle.

  It was clear that by the end of the day on the nineteenth, all Hitler’s panzers would be in place for the final push to the Channel. General Weygand, a feisty old campaigner, was reportedly in Paris to replace Gamelin as French commander in chief. But what any one man could do to stem the tide was impossible to say.

  The mood around Andre Chardon’s home was one of unrelieved gloom, despite the fact that Lewinski had deciphered the change in the Enigma settings. It had taken the genius only ten days to figure out the new substitution, but it was almost too late to matter.

  It was anticlimactic. The movements of Guderian and Rommel were not exactly secret any longer. And with the speed of the advance, the panzers were outstripping their own orders. How could any message decoded in even one day be valuable when towns were being overrun in a matter of hours?

  Andre, Lewinski, and Bertrand pondered what was to be done. All knew that the information they possessed was valuable only if it could also be made timely.

  When the Wehrmacht reached the sea, as would likely happen in a day or two at most, the Allied forces would be cut in two. The French and British armies that had advanced into Belgium when the conflict began would be surrounded and pressed against the seashore.

  The three friends pondered. “When the Nazis went into Poland,” Lewinski recalled, “the only thing I could think about was getting out.”

  Andre nodded, then shrugged, uncertain how that observation helped. “We may all wish to be somewhere else soon. Especially the soldiers caught in the pocket at the Channel. And they will be caught unless they can walk on water.” He slapped his hands together, punctuating the importance of the thought. “It is the only solution, of course.”

  “Evacuation?” Bertrand said.

  “Certainly! The British navy might be able to rescue a hundred, maybe even two hundred thousand men, to fight again.”

  “But no one in our High Command talks anything but nonsense. They are convinced that the British army is not trying hard enough to break out. It is almost as if they have been watching some other war and are still trying to draw a line and dig some trenches!” Bertrand snorted his derision. “I do not think Weygand will have any better ideas, either.”

  “I bet the British General Gort would listen,” Andre said.

  “Even if he did, how could we get the Germans to stop rolling over everything? Can we say to them, ‘Excuse us, but would you please stop shooting long enough for us to rescue a couple hundred thousand troops?’”

  “What if a major counterattack punched a hole in the weakest point of their lines?”

  “At least it would slow them down, make them blink,” mused Bertrand aloud.

  “And Enigma can tell us where that fragile link is found!” said Andre with rising excitement. “Look at this!” He read over the most recently deciphered messages. “It tells Rommel to expect to be joined on the east by a newly formed SS infantry division.”

  Bertrand caught the idea at once. “New ground troops, coming late to an operation where the experience and the heavy armor are in advance of them. Rommel’s division is already stretched thin and is the closest to the Allied forces.” Then Bertrand’s enthusiasm waned. “You know the High Command will never go for this.”

  “I know,” said Andre, “but Gort will. His eyes are open to reality.” Then to Lewinski, Andre urged, “Decode any remaining intercepts and keep doing it as they come in. It is critical that we have the most current information possible about the positioning of the SS troops.”

  When Lewinski had retreated back down the stairs, Andre drew Bertrand aside. “I know that I am the one who will have to go. And even if our plan succeeds, I will not be able to get back across the lines. Take care of Lewinski for me, will you, Bertrand?”

  Bertrand grinned ruefully. “Why do you get all the easy jobs?”

  ***

  Josie and the children rode from Belgium to the Ecole de Cavalerie in the front seat of an ambulance. The officer roared over the road like a demented taxi driver.

  Outside Armentieres, he crossed the Lys River on a bridge that was already wired with explosives and barricaded on both sides. Which side of the river would the Germans attempt to cross . . . if they came?

  “It is a precaution only, Madame,” the officer said. “The Boche will never get this far.”

  But Josie wondered about it all the same.

  Yacov slept soundly in her arms as if he had toddled all the way from Belgium and now could not keep his eyes open one moment longer. Juliette, her stubby legs jutting out toward the gearshift, slept against Josie’s arm with the same exhaustion.

  Josie and the officer talked about the Americans. Would they again come to the aid of France? Josie remembered the songs the veterans had sung at Fourth of July picnics at the Fort Smith Electric Park beside the Arkansas River. “Oh! Madamoiselle from Armenteer, parlay-voo . . .”

  This time the Yanks weren’t coming. The old songs would not
be sung on the banks of the Lys in 1940. Roosevelt had too much at stake with a third-term election coming up to enter a war.

  The ambulance passed ragged pilgrims with their battered luggage and their bent birdcages and their crying babies and the old people in wheelchairs. All had tear-swollen faces and bewildered eyes. They looked up enviously as the ambulance sped by. What they would give for a lift to anywhere, Josie knew.

  A short time later, the high, elegant walls and the red roof of the Ecole de Cavalerie loomed above the budding poplar trees. A line of lorries and ambulances was stopped at a checkpoint manned by a dozen armed youngsters who wore the dark tin hats of the poilus. They took their duty with a seriousness Josie had not seen anywhere else in her long journey. Beneath the brim of their helmets, their beardless faces were solemn as they narrowed their eyes and studied the documents of each ambulance crew and lorry driver. Teams of youths opened the backs of the vehicles and, rifles at the ready, peered in to search for secreted enemy who might wish to take the hospital and the school by treachery.

  It was an oddly comforting ritual. Even with the ever-present threat of Stukas appearing overhead, she felt almost safe for the first time since the bombs had fallen on Brussels. How many days ago had that been? Or was it years?

  “And this is Madame Marlow.” The driver indicated Josie with a jerk of his thumb. “American.”

  “Papers, please.” This boy had a scruffy attempt at a goatee sprouting on his chin. His eyes were dark and earnest.

  Josie passed him her precious documents and those of Juliette and the baby. The thought occurred to her that the young cadet might wish to frisk the baby before he was finished.

  “I am a good friend of Captain Paul Chardon,” she added.

  The boy’s goatee jutted out with new interest. He smiled. “Ah yes! I remember now! You are the . . . the . . . very, very good friend of our commander’s brother; is it not so? I am Sepp.” He tugged his beard. “You see. It has grown; has it not?”