by Lee Jackson
After Dunkirk
Lee Jackson
AFTER DUNKIRK
Copyright © 2020 by Lee Jackson.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Severn River Publishing
www.SevernRiverPublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-64875-028-1 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-64875-029-8 (Hardback)
Contents
Also by Lee Jackson
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Epilogue
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Thanks for Reading
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Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Lee Jackson
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After Dunkirk
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The Reluctant Assassin Series
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Rasputin’s Legacy
Vortex: Berlin
Fahrenheit Kuwait
Target: New York
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Robert Gordon Hall
You were one hell of a pilot.
Your family and friends are proud of you
and miss you.
RIP
“We really ought to be waterskiing!”
Prologue
June 9, 1940
Sark Island, Guernsey Bailiwick, English Channel Islands
The Dame of the tiny island of Sark in the English Channel hurried from her home onto Rue de la Seigneurie for a better view of the northeastern horizon. Far out over the water, black smoke rose to the sky in huge billowing clouds. She knew fully what caused them: the good citizens of Normandy had blown up their oil storage tanks, an early act of resistance to the armies of Adolf Hitler, Führer of Germany.
Five days ago, the British Royal Navy, in a herculean effort, had evacuated the British Expeditionary Force, commonly called the BEF, and large units of the French army in a ten-day evacuation of over three hundred thousand troops at Dunkirk. They had faced overwhelming pressure from Nazi forces that had flanked the Maginot Line and descended into the north of France in a blistering blitzkrieg. The German divisions pushed south along the Atlantic coast in a wide swath to overrun and control the northern and western regions of France, and threatened Paris.
Hitler would no doubt set a priority on occupying Sark and the other islands belonging to Great Britain in the Channel simply for the propaganda value of taking British territory. And Normandy was only twenty-five miles across the waters.
1
One day earlier
Dunkirk, France
Jeremy Littlefield held his breath, a near-impossible feat after crawling in whatever shallow ground he could find in the low hills and dunes above Dunkirk’s flat beaches. He scrunched under a small outcropping of sand held in place by protruding roots of scraggly vegetation, willing his body to meld into the space he had hurriedly carved at its base.
Just as he pulled in his legs, his back to the crumbly wall of sand whose grains already worked their way between his sweat-soaked blouse and skin, he heard men above him speaking in German. He could not make out how many there were—at least two, maybe three—but they did not seem to be searching for him. On the contrary, these soldiers he had barely avoided seemed to be casually looking out to sea.
Jeremy had used every bit of cover and concealment in his headlong flight to the beach for one purpose: survival, ahead of the German behemoth that pursued the escaping British and French armies. Out of ammunition, the bolt of his rifle broken, he had lost the weapon as he lunged from one hiding place to the next through a wretched night of crackling small arms fire, blasts from tanks obliterating another of their opposite number, brilliant flashes from artillery breaking the darkness, and then the whistle of projectiles followed by ear-splitting concussions until he emerged at dawn among the dunes and furrows leading down to the shore.
Spread before him, the carnage of war assaulted his senses with sights of dismembered bodies, separated arms and legs, animals caught in unworldly repose, crumbling rooftops, cratered roads, and every sort of vehicle cast at odd angles amid the stench of torn and scorched flesh, all under an overcast sky.
Jeremy’s hope, one he expected to be futile, was the same as that of thousands of soldiers who had protected the evacuation and fled to the beach for want of any other alternative to avoid capture: maybe there’s one last boat to take me home to England.
Now, despite the voices overhead, curiosity overcame him to see what remained of the British and French armies that had been trapped there. Far in the distance along the shore, lines of abandoned cars, trucks, tanks, and field artillery vehicles were set in well-ordered ranks stretching into the gently lapping wavelets, with some buried halfway up their wheels in the sand. Rifles leaned against cars and trucks. Boxloads of ammunition had been stacked in neat rows, the machine guns they accompanied still looking menacing.
As the murmur of voices above Jeremy continued, he looked across the vast expanse of sand marked with the patterns of huge formations of soldiers who had waited anxiously to be rescued over nine hair-raising days while being shelled by Hitler’s armies or strafed or bombed by Hermann Göring’s air force.
For indiscernible reasons, Hitler had stopped his ground forces short of finishing off the escaping British and French troops of Operation Dynamo, and he had held back as the flotilla of small boats, yachts, and warships loaded desperate soldiers onto their decks and sailed away ahead of the Nazi onslaught. Hi
gh in the skies, British Hurricane and German Stuka fighters left vapor trails as they dueled, some spiraling downward amid black smoke to crash in the ocean.
The ragged British and French armies had completed an evacuation out to sea four days ago, and then the Wehrmacht had hurled its might at their rearguard north and east of Dunkirk, mercilessly slaughtering any who continued to oppose them, and taking prisoner or executing those who surrendered. As far as Jeremy knew, he was the last of his unit still alive and free. Driven ahead of the blitzkrieg wrought against him and his comrades, he had crawled in the shallow runoff gullies between the dunes on the sides of the low hills and berms down to the beach.
Now, Jeremy slowly, cautiously let out his breath and took in another as he fought panic. To his left, not fifty meters away, a British soldier, mouth gaping, eyes staring, lay sprawled on a low embankment while seagulls wheeled and screeched overhead and then plunged to feast on carrion.
A gut-wrenching cry broke above the breeze beyond a dune to Jeremy’s left. The soldiers above him uttered startled, muffled exclamations and took off at a run, almost stepping on Jeremy’s face and causing more sand to cascade in on him.
He dared not move, and he held his breath. From a distance he heard further shouting and sharp commands. He inched one hand up to wipe the sand from his eyes and peered out in time to see another British soldier being clubbed with rifle butts, hauled to his feet, and led away a broken, wretched man.
All day, Jeremy lay where he was, exhausted, daring to move only his eyes as he searched the horizon for any hope of rescue while resigning himself to the notion that none would come. He was alone. And then, as the sun dipped in the western sky, and despite himself, he slept.
When Jeremy opened his eyes, dawn had broken. Far up the beach, hordes of German soldiers systematically moved among the long lines of abandoned war machines and equipment, searching for and hauling off anything that might be useful. They worked their way down the shore steadily, relentlessly, toward him.
Too tired to be afraid, Jeremy dropped his head into the crook of his elbow, feeling the stubble of five days’ growth of beard pressing against his bare arm. He snickered involuntarily. What would the ol’ man think if he saw me now? Then he remembered the last time he had seen his commanding officer; the man had been face-down in a pool of blood and muddy water.
Jeremy pushed his body against the wall of his hiding place and wedged his face around to scan the beach in the opposite direction. It was empty of men and equipment but provided no cover. Along the edge of the break that marked the joining of sand to the low rise of land, dark seaweed and detritus gathered, thrown up by breaking waves, and Jeremy studied the shallow gullies where rainwater ran down to the sea, the same ones that had covered his escape to the beach. They snaked toward higher ground and at the top, more cover and concealment.
Famished and thirsty, Jeremy glanced toward the enemy soldiers continuing their search of military equipment. I can’t stay here. He took another look at his only possible direction of escape, and began a long, slow crawl to the northeast.
Amélie Boulier scanned the beach below her house. For days she had watched in disbelief as the huge army of British and French soldiers gathered by the hundreds of thousands in endless formations stretching along the shore toward Dunkirk, their vehicles and large war machines parked in long rows. Then, two weeks ago, boats of every description had appeared along the coast, some ferrying back and forth between warships and other larger crafts, while overhead, aircraft from Göring’s squadrons strafed and bombed the soldiers huddled below.
After nine days of steadily emptying the beach, the flotilla disappeared, leaving mounds of waste, the lingering smell of armies struggling to the death, and the moan of wind whipping through the ghostly lines of abandoned equipment.
On the second day after the boats had disappeared from the coast, Amélie had ventured onto the road above it with her younger sister, Chantal. Until then, they had remained sequestered in their home. Situated at the northern extremity of the beach, the cottage was beyond the periphery of furious combat yet close enough to see, hear, and feel its fearsome power. Despite its proximity to battle, the house remained the safest place for the family to shelter, relegating its members to the windows to watch the epic events revealed just beyond their garden gate.
On this first outing, they were aghast at the enormous size of the area trampled by the escaping armies, smoke still rising from the vast number of war machines. Here and there, seagulls and other scavengers fought over clumps that must be the remains of unfortunate men cut down by machine gun fire from the sky in their last desperate scramble over the remaining yards to be rescued.
As Amélie and Chantal walked along the row of burned-out shops along the beachfront at the base of destroyed apartment and office buildings, they ran into friends and acquaintances, each with expressions of disbelief at what they saw in the tragic panorama before them. They greeted each other gravely, mixing the joy of encountering friends safe and well with sorrow for the death and devastation that had come to pass and dread for what must surely lie ahead. Then, the sound of guns and small arms fire had sent everyone hurrying back to their shelters to bide through the further annihilation of the city by the advancing German army.
Guns pounded, and soldiers scurried and bled and died. From their home, the Bouliers had no view of the destruction south and east of them where lay ancient cathedrals, parks, municipal buildings, schools, markets, and the neighborhoods of friends and loved ones. They could sense but did not know the extent to which Dunkirk had been leveled. Finally, an unnerving quiet returned, and with it, the sight of Germans in dark uniforms, moving to the coast and then descending to the sand to inspect the hoard of arms and machines left behind.
Today, Amélie watched intently as the soldiers moved like marauding ants from vehicle to vehicle, throwing open doors or breaking windows, leaning or crawling inside, and sometimes emerging with objects that they placed in a pile or hurried up the beach. She drew back from the window, her eyes arrested when they came to the innumerable flocks of scavengers squawking over scattered dead bodies. Mon Dieu!
Now, as her view trailed toward the stretch of beach far down in front of her house, she caught sight of a long, dark object pressed against the brown line of detritus where wavelets rose to the land at high tide. Seen from hundreds of meters away, the object looked like it could be another body not yet discovered by scavengers.
Amélie sighed. Le pauvre.
She shifted her attention to the activity among the vehicles again, seeing that the Germans worked efficiently, methodically, and thoroughly as they moved northward toward her end of the shore.
Dark clouds intensified in the overcast sky, and rain descended in driving sheets. The soldiers on the beach first pulled out their rain slickers and continued to work, but then as the downpour became torrential, they retreated up the slope to gain shelter.
Amélie’s eyes swept across the sand to the place where she had seen the presumed dead body, and her forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. It was not there, and the tide was not yet high enough to sweep it out to sea. She searched back and forth, and then thought she spotted it several yards north. She peered more intently through the rain and gasped as the body flopped over on its back. Then as she watched, it appeared to lift its head skyward.
Jeremy cast his eyes to the heavens in thanks as heavy raindrops fell. Within moments, he was drenched, but the sheets of rain provided limited concealment. He drank in the rejuvenating water and then struggled onto his stomach and began crawling faster. Daring at one point to look back across the beach, he saw the Germans first cover themselves against the downpour and then climb the slope to seek shelter.
As he watched, fresh energy surged. After a few moments, he dared to rise to his knees and examine the ground nearby. To his front, he saw a gully deeper than the others. It would allow him to ascend from the shore in a low crouch for some distance before again having to revert to
crawling on his belly. Glancing at the dark, looming clouds, he crept into the gully and began his climb.
“Chantal,” Amélie cried, her voice unmistakably urgent. “Chantal, come quickly!”
Moments later, Chantal appeared at her shoulder, staring out the window. “What is it?”
“Shh,” Amélie cautioned with one finger over her mouth. “We don’t want Papa to hear.”
“What are you talking about?”
Amélie pointed. “There. In the gully, the deeper one. I saw a soldier go in there. He must be British and trying to escape the Germans. He’ll come this way.”
Chantal fixed her eyes on the gully. “Are you sure? In this rain, how could you see anything?”
“I noticed him before the rain started. I thought it was another dead body, but then I saw him move, and he crawled into that gully.” She glanced over her shoulder as if checking to see that they were still alone. “We must help him.”
