‘Thank God for that,’ breathed the officer. ‘I do believe it’s actually going to work.’
Harry watched jubilantly as the soldiers moved forward quickly now, one upon one, dropping into the large boats at the far end of the makeshift jetty. He realized that he was watching part of a miracle.
The Sirius, with her strange cargo of scowling Germans and grimacing black Africans, moved out into the Channel, making for HMS Benbow again. It was evening, a rose sky, pale violet and a touch of yellow. The wind remained subdued and the sea soft.
‘Jerry will be back for a last try before dark,’ forecast Petrie slowly. ‘If they do give us a going-over, I think we should order all the Jerries to stand up and wave.’
‘It’s not a bad idea,’ agreed Robert thoughtfully. ‘After all, transporting prisoners, we’re technically Red Cross.’
They had not long to wait. From the east came a fleet of warplanes circling at a height, nosing out their targets. The paddle steamer was in open sea with twenty or thirty other random craft spread for half a mile either side. ‘The buggers are picking us out,’ muttered Peter Dove looking up into the sun. ‘Can’t we get this lot to wave their arms or sing or something?’
The first run of attackers came right across the small ships caught between shore and their naval vessels on the horizon. They came in threes, waggling their wings with the fun of it, firing their machine guns.
A prettily painted herring drifter, to the starboard of the Sirius, blew up with a vivid carbuncle of flame. The men on the paddle steamer looked away first, then ducked. A first Messerschmitt banked insolently across the top, then the second came in low and firing. She was too late and the fusillade tattered the water. ‘Rotten shooting,’ commented Robert. ‘Let’s get these Huns on their feet.’
The third fighter had peeled off and was making another run on a distant ship. One of the trawlers was firing a Lewis gun hopefully at the sky.
Robert went with Lampard across the passenger deck through the now cowering Senegalese soldiers, some moaning and incanting in their own language, until they confronted the twenty-five Luftwaffe men. Robert addressed them with gestures to indicate the diving planes and then raised his hands like a papal blessing to show that they should stand and show themselves clearly when the next attacker went overhead. The Germans heard him out sullenly and he turned back to the wheelhouse. ‘Well, I told them,’ he shrugged. ‘Let’s see how they feel about it. It’s their skins as well as ours.’
They could see planes, remote above now, twenty or thirty of them, manoeuvring in the paper sky. The naval vessels were sending up puffs of anti-aircraft fire. ‘Here they come again,’ muttered Petrie.
Almost platonically, with the casualness of men who know they are helpless, they observed the approach of one aircraft; it was a thin view, head on, soon followed by a second, which Petrie saw first and indicated with an unspeaking nod. Everyone braced themselves, but now turned their eyes on the German prisoners. ‘Get up, you bastards,’ said Petrie pleadingly. ‘Please.’
The Englishmen were crouching, but Robert abruptly stood and, facing the grey group of Germans in the body of the little vessel, he performed his Pope’s blessing movement again, the palms of the hands held upwards and the arms raised, except that this time it was much more hurried. ‘Ooops,’ he ordered hopefully. ‘Standen oop!’
Nothing happened, except the planes kept coming. Their machine guns grunted and the wings blinked like lamps as their pilots pressed the triggers. ‘Ooop!’ bellowed Robert. ‘Ooop, you rotten swines! Ooop!’
The bullets tore into the hull, rattling along the length of the ship, but too low to hit anyone on deck. The second plane loosed a small bomb which exploded on the port paddle wheel, shaking the ship like a fury and sending debris and flame shooting into the sky. ‘Dammit,’ said Lampard, sitting up and spitting out the words with dust and splinters. ‘That’s torn it.’
Then, as the smoke drifted off, the Luftwaffe men in the bow all stood, their faces towards the sky, and, raising their arms in the Nazi salute, shouted as one: ‘Heil Hitler!’ A man in at the fore shouted in English, ‘Heil to our Führer! We march against England!’ They all began to sing the famous threat while the crew of the Sirius stood aghast. Then the tall black Senegalese soldiers, some of whom had not realized until the salute that their fellow passengers were German airmen, rose up with a tribal cry and closed angrily on the upright enemy.
The giant Africans charged among the ranks of the Luftwaffe and in a moment there was a wild battle of fists. Blacks and whites rolled and roughed about the deck.
Above the milling and the shouts Willy Cubbins piped alarmingly: ‘Mr Lampard! The boat’s going round in circles!’
He was right. The spokes of the crippled paddle now hung down into the water like the broken branches of an old willow. The intact paddle was still revolving, sending the vessel on a circular course. Peter Dove appeared from below like a steaming ghost and shouted: ‘We’re holed, sir. There’s a foot of water down there.’ He stopped in astonishment on seeing the pitched battle. ‘What next?’ he asked himself mildly. While the Germans and French negroes fought on its deck, while the sea gulped into the hold, and while an air battle still droned and exploded above them, the crew of the brave Sirius watched dumbly as their helpless ship described a large, lazy circle in the middle of the battle-scarred English Channel.
‘My goodness,’ said Robert, inadequately surveying the disastrous scene. ‘Whatever do you suggest, Lampard?’
‘We’ll be disappearing up our own arse soon,’ said Lennie Dove. ‘As the saying goes, Mr Lovatt, and begging your pardon.’
The second paddle stopped then with a long sigh and the Sirius, a few veils of smoke wafting from her insides, began a slow drift back towards the French coast. On the deck the Senegalese had overpowered the Germans and were sitting on them or pinioning them with huge arms, grinning whitely. The final pocket of resistance was overcome at the bow when one of the prisoners was thrown discourteously over the side.
‘We’re listing,’ put in Lampard more practically. ‘We’re holed below the port waterline.’ He glanced towards Petrie. ‘Will you go and have a look, Mr Petrie?’ he asked. Petrie went. Lampard mentioned to the others: ‘When a paddle steamer capsizes she does it most spectacularly.’
Petrie was back quickly to the wheelhouse. ‘She’s breached just at the waterline,’ he said. ‘It’s coming in by the gallon.’
Lampard said precisely: ‘Take the Dove boys down and stuff anything into the hole that might help. Mattresses are the best thing.’
‘Right,’ said Petrie firmly, making for the companionway. The brothers followed him. Lampard said to Robert: ‘How is your French?’
‘Better than my German.’
‘Good, I’m pleased. Tell this rabble, all of them, white and black, that we’re sinking and the only way to save themselves is, one, to stop squabbling, and, two, to get to the starboard side of the ship. Everybody over on one side. Get them into the two lifeboats as well. We want all the weight we can get. It’s the only way to get the breach clear of the water.’
Laboriously Robert stepped outside the wheelhouse and began to speak, sporadically, in French. The Senegalese began to grin and then laugh uproariously at his accent. Then the seriousness of the message became apparent to them and they looked with wide eyes at the listing side of the ship and made a hasty rush to the other rail. The Germans, thoroughly battered, remained prone and half-prone on the deck boards. Robert now spoke to them and indicated the starboard side. Glumly they glanced around and then, at a word from a sergeant who had begun the singing of ‘We March Against England’, they moved across there also, standing in a hurt group and separately from their former assailants.
‘Us too,’ said Lampard. ‘Everyone but me. I’ll stay at the wheel, not that it makes any difference now. We’re not going anywhere.’ He called to Robert, ‘Tell them to get into the boats. We’ll get them slung out so that the weight ratio is
greater.’
Petrie returned anxiously to the deck. ‘We’ve tried to plug it, but it’s not much good,’ he reported. ‘These wooden hulls start giving all over the place once the sea gets in. I’ve got the Dove boys on the pump, but it’s coming in faster than we’re getting it out.’ His eye took in the motley passengers on the starboard side. ‘Good idea,’ he approved. ‘If we swing the boats out on the davits we’ll get even more weight.’
‘Get it organized, will you?’ asked Lampard. ‘I’m trying to signal one of the million ships around here. They’re all too busy to notice. At least Jerry’s gone.’
An RAF Sunderland flying boat came low across the hapless paddle steamer. Lampard waved a tea towel which he took from Willy who had been wiping up the tea cups. ‘SOS, Mayday, Mayday,’ he called hollowly like a private joke.
Petrie was firmly organizing the swinging out of the two starboard lifeboats. The Germans, who appreciated organization, helped now, only to be abruptly assaulted once more by the Senegalese who thought that the whites were going to abandon ship in the boats, leaving the blacks to sink into the cold and alien sea. Petrie and Robert calmed them, although the Africans lingered, muttering suspiciously.
The list, which had become a distinct tilt, was looking dangerous. Petrie kept glancing over his shoulder at the angle. If she went another couple of degrees they would turn turtle. ‘Come on, hurry up,’ he called to the men trying to sling the boats out. Robert urged the Germans as they tried to get the elderly davits to work.
‘I hadn’t started refurbishing the davits,’ apologized Lampard. He looked around at the wreck of his steamer. ‘The job looks beyond me now,’ he said.
With a Teutonic cheer the prisoners got the first lifeboat out and prudently stood back while the Senegalese scrambled, one over the other, into it. Then the other, more easily, was slung out and into that boat climbed the bedraggled Germans. Immediately Petrie looked behind him. He grinned. The hull was partly righted. He glanced towards Lampard who made a tentative thumbs-up sign. Petrie then ran quickly to the companionway and went below, returning in a moment. ‘I think that’s done it, skipper,’ he called to Lampard. ‘The breach is just about clear. With the pumps going we might make it.’
‘Good, good,’ sighed Lampard mildly. He glanced at Robert, now back by the wheelhouse. As if confessing to a secret weakness, he said: ‘I don’t want to lose the old girl, now. Not if I can help it.’
‘No, of course not,’ replied Robert doubtfully, as he might have done in consoling someone with a terminally sick relative. He looked around. The Sirius, the lovely, small, placid paddle steamer, was hardly more than a hulk now, wheezing and groaning at every sough of the sea.
Petrie took two of the Germans below to relieve the tiring Dove boys on the pumps. As he did so the African soldiers began to shout and demand that their lifeboat be lowered into the sea. One of them had produced a long bayonet.
‘Don’t like the look of ’im,’ mentioned Willy.
Lampard glanced across to the grey horizon and nodded: ‘It’s all right. It looks like the navy’s come for us.’
A destroyer was steaming towards them and as it hove to, a few cable lengths away, the Germans began once again to sing heartily: ‘We March Against England’.
‘Well, I’ve seen some rum sights, sir,’ commented a leading seaman to Lampard as they were finally helped aboard the naval vessel. ‘But never one like that.’
‘Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Rum,’ said Lampard with deep sadness. He looked at the helplessly drifting Sirius now moving away from them like a castaway’s raft. ‘She was mine.’
The sailor nodded understandingly. ‘Know how you feel, sir. Lost one or two myself. Right from under my feet.’ As if to add to his statement a single shot was dispatched from one of the destroyer’s forward guns. It tore through the hull of the paddle steamer. Lampard covered his eyes with his hands and when he took them away his lined face was damp with tears. Willy Cubbins stood gazing in disbelief at this sacrilege and Robert patted Lampard on the shoulder without speaking.
‘Have to see she’s put away properly,’ mentioned the sailor. ‘Danger to navigation, you understand, sir.’
Twelve
FROM HIS TALL window at the War Office, James had a view across the towers, the roofs and finger spires of London, widespread under a June sky. Only the friendly silver paunches of the barrage balloons, today floating at their medium height, made it appear any different from a summer scene of the previous year. The capital city of the nation, confronted with the most dire defeat in its history, lay bathed in calmness and light.
James stood and went to the window, staring out from east to west, as if to make sure that it was really all right, that nothing untoward had happened. The telephone rang.
‘Major Lovatt? Ah, good. Would you step down to the Prime Minister’s office, please? Yes, right away. Thank you so much. What a pleasant day, isn’t it.’
He straightened his tunic, picked up his hat and went out across the squares and along the sunlit walls to Downing Street. The sentry at the door of Number Ten came to attention and the policeman examined his papers and saluted. It was the first time he had seen an English policeman wearing a gun, a gruesome revolver, almost an artillery piece, in a huge holster. James wondered how quickly he would be able to use it.
An unhurried butler greeted him inside and took his hat, and he was passed to a smiling and equally tranquil civil servant who asked him if he would like some tea. He refused, a decision which seemed privately to please the man, and was then shown into Winston Churchill’s office. The Prime Minister was standing, legs astride, facing his window, looking out intently, as if counting every brick and stone. When he turned the round face was grave, sulky.
‘We have suffered a great reverse,’ said Churchill eventually. He sat down, the enormous desk around him like a fortress, and motioned James to take a seat. ‘It has become a most serious thing.’
James said nothing. But Churchill raised the great folded forehead and eyebrows and regarded him, awaiting an answer. ‘A most serious thing,’ he repeated. It was almost as if he required to be contradicted, to be told that matters were not that bad.
‘Yes, sir, that is so,’ agreed James. ‘But not, I believe, as serious as it might have been. Three hundred and fifty thousand men brought away from Dunkirk.’
Churchill nodded ponderously but approvingly, as though he had been lent the encouragement he needed. ‘I thought, at the best, it would be thirty-five thousand,’ he agreed. ‘The Daily Mirror has a blasphemous headline today, you must have noticed. Never seen a word like that in a British newspaper before.’ With an almost juvenile grin he held up a copy of that morning’s edition. The headline above the leader column said simply: ‘Bloody Marvellous’.
‘Not that I approve of bad language,’ rumbled Churchill, ‘but in this extraordinary instance I think it is fitting, don’t you, major?’
‘Very much so,’ smiled James. ‘My father and younger brother were there, at Dunkirk. So my mother told me last night on the telephone.’
‘Good for them,’ approved the premier. At once, however, he lapsed into heaviness, sitting with his pale hands over his paunch. He picked up a paper from the desk. ‘Unfortunately we had to leave behind many guns, vehicles, all our tanks, and those of our gallant soldiers who, with the splendid Frenchmen, kept the perimeter secure. This morning I have given them permission to surrender their positions.’ Churchill looked at him squarely. ‘I have not, however, sent for you to tell you of our woes. You will know enough of them. I am preparing to tell the people the bald truth, the odds we now have to face. They won’t mind. In war there are few things so bad for people as optimism.’
James smiled inwardly. He realized that the phrases were being tried out on him. ‘We shall fight the Nazi everywhere,’ said Churchill thoughtfully, writing on his pad. ‘On the shore, the landing grounds, in the fields, in the streets, in the damned public houses, if necessary.
And we will not surrender. Never.’ He paused and considered his listener. ‘Unfortunately,’ he continued, not writing now, ‘if the German comes today or tomorrow or next week, we will not be in any real position to resist him.’ The fey smile fell on his lips again. ‘I have a plan,’ he said. ‘But only the Almighty and Adolf Hitler between them can put it into operation. I plan that he doesn’t try it. I plan that for some reason he funks it . . . that this time, as dear Neville Chamberlain so erroneously forecast only a few weeks ago, this time Hitler truly and literally misses the bus, or rather the boat.’
In a moment he became businesslike, staring truculently at the clock ticking loudly like a reminder on his desk. ‘Yes, now let me see, major, I have a particular task for you. And I want you to report personally to me, in detail and, of course, in writing. The very sort of thing for which I originally brought you into these environs.’
‘Yes, sir, of course.’
‘In former days, commanders, the Duke of Wellington for one, used to walk about the tents on the night before a battle, listening to the soldiers.’ He gave an odd, slanted grin. ‘Do you know “Sam, Sam, pick up thy musket”, Stanley Holloway . . .?’ He began to recite. ‘ “It occurred on the evening before Waterloo . . .” ’
James could not restrain a smile. Churchill seemed suddenly embarrassed. ‘Well, this is before our battle,’ he said. ‘I want to know what our men coming back from Dunkirk think. What they think of the war, Dunkirk, the way things have happened, if they feel betrayed . . . well, let us say, let down. I want to know about their morale and their feeling for the fight. I also want to know what they think about the future and the way they expect things will go. Go and see them. Talk to them, question them, at all levels, commanding officers to cooks. Tell me how their spirit is.’
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