by John Harris
Gow’s expression didn’t change. He wasn’t given to smiling much.
‘When the guns get here,’ the sergeant went on, ‘they’ll cover us so we can pull back, but until then it’s up to us. Right?’
‘Aye,’ Gow said.
He knew exactly what the sergeant meant. One Guardsman was equal to half a dozen infantrymen of the Line, fifteen or sixteen Frenchmen and ten thousand Peruvian field marshals. In the Guards orders were expected to be carried out. Buttons will be polished. Goals will be scored. The Brigade will advance. Berlin will be taken. The bridge will be held. In terms of Guards discipline, the order was extraordinarily simple.
Tuesday, 28 May
Only one thought was in the minds of those who knew anything about it and could see the picture as a whole on that Tuesday morning as Lance-Corporal Gow lay on the banks of the river near Helluin, and that was the consequences of the capitulation of the Belgian army.
The German right hook towards the coast had been met at the last moment by armoured cars and the attack had ground to a halt, and though they’d pushed across the Yser into the streets of Nieuport their bridgehead had been held. Now, as they rushed up their supports, men like Gow, the unquestioning men of Fontenoy and Waterloo and Inkerman, were waiting.
The Este was only a few yards wide where Gow lay, and the bridge was a small stone affair of two arches half hidden by bushes. The position he’d chosen was directly opposite a point where the road curved to approach it and where vehicles moving in either direction had to slow down. The Bren he’d set up was a good solid weapon which could be relied on not to jam, and he felt it ought to be possible to do a lot of damage because a Bren was accurate – almost too accurate, because when they were rushing you it was as well to spray a bit.
As the light increased he settled himself and lit a crumpled Woodbine. ‘I’m hungry enough tae eat a mangy pup,’ he growled.
Even as he spoke he heard vehicles approaching, and down the curving road opposite he saw a line of lorries moving forward through the mist, led by an open lightweight truck containing an officer, three men and a machine-gun on a mount.
He jerked a hand at the men alongside him and they looked up, duty and courage struggling with uncertainty on their faces to contort them into wooden grimaces. ‘Get them fellers in the scout car,’ he said. ‘I’m after yon lot in the lorries.’
‘You’ll never get ’em, Jock. Not from here.’
‘No,’ Gow agreed. ‘No’ from here. But I will from yon bank. Gi’e us a wee liftie.’
They helped him carry the Bren to the top of a small rise overhanging the river. From there he could cover the road where the lorries were approaching. But it was not hidden by the bushes and left Gow horribly exposed.
‘They’ll spot you straight away, Jock,’ one of the men pointed out.
Gow was occupied in setting up the gun and seemed indifferent, ‘They’ve got two chances,’ he said.
He squatted down among the young grass, watching narrow-eyed as the vehicles on the opposite side of the river approached. ‘You lot ready?’ he called softly.
‘Yes.’
‘Right, then! Let the buggers have it!’
There was a blast of controlled fire across the narrow river that shattered the windscreen of the truck and lifted the officer over the side, his jaunty cap rolling into the long grass by the approach to the bridge. The driver flopped over the wheel as the vehicle slewed sideways towards the hedge, and the other two men, both wounded, were killed by the second fusillade of shots.
As the Bren roared Gow saw the lorries across the river come to a halt and the figures in the back jumping out. Several of them fell but the rest dived for the roadside and began to return the fire, and he knew it was only a matter of seconds before they started inflicting damage.
He didn’t have long to wait, and as his Number Two reached up to pass him a fresh magazine he yelped and fell against Gow, knocking his helmet off. As Gow pulled him into cover and reached for the gun again, he heard a loud elastic twang and one of the lorries across the river seemed to stagger on its wheels and burst into flames. Behind them, two fields away, a battery of 25-pounders was firing over open sights.
It was wonderful to hear the bark of their own heavy weapons for a change and Gow saw another lorry roll off the road, burning. But as he swung the Bren towards it, something exploded in his head and his long body jerked upright, stiff and straight, then went down like a felled fir tree in his native Scotland. As he crashed against the gun, it toppled from the bank and slithered among the reeds towards the water.
The firing had attracted the men from the position by the manure heap along the bank and they came up at a crouching run. The sergeant was with them. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Out you get!’ He turned Gow over. Blood was coming through his hair and down his forehead over his eyes.
‘Poor bugger,’ he said. ‘Straight through the head.’
Picking up the wounded, they hurried off, keeping their heads down, leaving behind them Lance-Corporal Gow, his bloody face turned up to the morning sky.
As Gow had been fighting his little battle, in the office in the cliffs at Dover the admiral had adjusted his plans again. The emphasis had shifted back from the beaches to the battered port, and personnel ships were signalled to approach the flimsy East Mole. With the setting up of a control system, berthing parties and a pier-master, and with sailors in the town as guides, the flow of men, redirected from the beaches, began to come in and the destroyers started to arrive.
By this time, Hatton was beginning to consider himself an old hand at the game. ‘Come on,’ he kept saying, pushing the weary soldiers aboard. ‘Keep going! Keep going!–’
The soldiers were carrying pets, French cheeses, wine, lace table-cloths, women’s underwear – presents for their families as though they’d been on a day trip; and since they were well-organised and in their own units, reporting as though for manoeuvres, when a worried-looking middle-aged officer with a smart uniform and a curling moustache pushed forward, Hatton stopped him.
‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘Which are your men?’
‘They’re at the other end of the jetty,’ a sergeant behind him said bluntly. ‘The bugger’s abandoned ’em.’
The officer blushed and thrust past Hatton to disappear into the press of men on the deck. As Hatton stared after him a steamer with great paddle boxes and a flat wide deck that had once plied up Southampton Water began to edge alongside and ropes were passed across.
‘We’ll load across you, if you’ve no objection,’ the captain shouted through a megaphone.
Hatton began to direct the men to the wider decks of the paddle-steamer. They were coming along the mole now in large numbers but the stream kept breaking off, as though it were proving difficult in the town to redirect them. Most of them had never in their lives been further to sea than in a pleasure boat and, as it was hard to get them to understand, Hatton soon dropped naval terms. Then, because he was growing a little light-headed with excitement and hunger, he began to behave like a bus conductor during the rush hour.
‘Pass down the bus, please,’ he kept shouting, and as the call was taken up by the petty officers, the weary faces under the bowl-shaped helmets began to split into grins. The soldiers were unwilling to go below, however, feeling they were safer on deck, and the petty officers began to push angrily to get them out of the way of the guns.
There was a brief lull. They’d been working a long time now and the paddle-steamer alongside seemed almost full. The decks of Vital had cleared, however, and the mole looked empty again.
Hough stared along it and examined the town through his glasses. ‘Nip into town, Hatton,’ he called from the bridge. ‘See if you can round up any more.’
Hatton ran down the pier with a petty officer and a couple of sailors. Dunkirk was a wreck and he wasn’t anxious to venture too far in case there were fifth columnists waiting to snipe him. The dock area was full of wreckage – a burning train, cranes can
ted out of true, ambulances punctured with bullets and shell splinters, and scattered brickwork where buildings and walls had been demolished.
Occasionally they came across bodies lying on the cobbles, covered with greatcoats, gas capes or groundsheets, their limbs decently composed, their great boots sticking up in ungainly fashion, and once two men sitting by a wall, killed by blast, a startled look on both the darkening faces. Here and there among the scattered vehicles there was a dead horse or a splintered cart, but there were no civilians and no sign of the town’s life.
They rounded up a few groups of soldiers, and then the petty officer found a bicycle which was far too small for him. ‘I’ll nip round a bit, sir,’ he said. ‘See if I can find any more,’
Hatton didn’t envy him because there were still explosions among the smoke, but he wobbled off and after a few minutes Hatton saw a group of soldiers running towards him.
‘This way! Down the mole!’
Eventually, they rounded up about three hundred more men, all filthy, all tired, and some of them hurt, the petty officer bringing them in like a sheepdog with stray lambs.
By this time, the wardroom, small as it was, was crowded with wounded, and the stokers’ flats, the petty officers’ and ratings’ messes were all jammed with men. There were more of them on the stern and along the deck amidships, and they had promptly lolled over and gone to sleep.
His work finished, Hatton reported to the bridge. Hough seemed to be in a good mood. ‘Made a good job of that, Hatton,’ he said. ‘What were you before the war? Conductor on a Number Eleven?’
‘No, sir,’ Hatton grinned. ‘Inspector. Bags of experience.’
It was full daylight by this time and Hough was staring anxiously at the sky. ‘Time we left,’ he said. He had the megaphone in his hand speaking to the first lieutenant. ‘Single up, Number One!’ He turned to the bridge of the paddle-steamer. ‘We’ll pass your lines ashore.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the shout came back. ‘We’re off, too. We’ve got ’em sitting in the lavatories.’
Gangways were dragged inboard and the lines were dropped. The water churned as the ferry’s paddles thumped and she slowly disappeared astern, and it was as Hatton pushed his way back through the lolling exhausted figures that a man on the point fives called out.
‘Sir! Aircraft approaching starboard side!’
The Stukas were screaming down out of the sky already and Hatton’s heart leapt as he saw one of them hit and swerve out of its dive. It headed over the town to disappear in a flash of flame and a puff of smoke, and he saw fragments of wing and tail whirring down among the houses. The soldiers cheered and began to fire their rifles, the clatter of shots and the working of breeches audible even above the racket of the guns.
The din was tremendous now and Hatton could see the water of the harbour dotted with splashes as the shell splinters dropped from the sky. The howl of engines filled the air and the muffled crash of bombs seemed to lift the ship out of the water. On the bridge, he could hear Hough shouting above the racket.
‘Slow astern port! Hold her there, helmsman! Right–’ he abandoned navalese ‘–let her rip! Full ahead both!’
The paddle-steamer was about half a mile ahead of them when Hatton saw a tremendous flash of flame and a cloud of smoke appear on her port side. Almost immediately she began to settle in the water and he could see brown-clad figures jumping overboard. A destroyer was already moving up, its boats lowered and scrambling nets over the side, and Vital joined it at full speed, Hough swinging the stern to flatten the water. The boats were dropped and the nets flung down, and Hatton dragged gasping men on board as they climbed up, until he was exhausted and his uniform saturated. Several of them were badly wounded and he couldn’t make out how they’d ever managed to swim. As the last living man was dragged from the wreckage the nets were hauled inboard and the boats hooked to the falls. The other destroyer was already moving away.
‘All right, Hatton!’ Hough shouted down. ‘That’s it! Can you shove a few more below to clear the guns?’
The hum from the turbines increased and Vital’s bow rose as her propellers bit at the water. The vibration that ran through her made her feel like a living animal. A soldier touched Hatton’s arm as he passed and indicated the sky. ‘They won’t be back for a quarter of an hour, mate,’ he said. ‘I’ve timed ’em.’
Hatton managed a shaky grin and, wrenching at the peak of his cap, dragged it over one eye. Their arrival in Dover was going to set a few heads turning. ‘Excitement over for today,’ he agreed.
But it wasn’t quite and Hough was staring ahead, frowning. ‘Raft, sir,’ the wing bridge look-out reported. ‘Looks as though it’s made of an old door.’
The raft carried a Belgian officer and two grinning French soldiers who’d escaped from Calais, and they stepped aboard carrying their supplies – two tins of biscuits and six demijohns of wine. Also on board the raft was an ancient and very rusty bicycle.
‘The bastards were going to pedal across,’ Hatton said.
Jocho Horndorff came to wakefulness reluctantly. It still didn’t seem possible that he was a prisoner of war and he lay on his back staring bitterly upwards. The night before he’d considered quite cold-bloodedly bolting for the fields but, as he’d halted staring to either side of him, Conybeare’s voice had come, quiet but steady.
‘Don’t,’ he’d said.
Horndorff had exploded with anger. ‘You will never take me to England,’ he had shouted. ‘It will be dark soon and you can’t stay awake all the time!’
‘I’ve thought of that,’ Conybeare had said. He gestured at the vehicles by the side of the road, their engines wrecked. ‘I’ll find one that’ll lock.’
The accommodation he found had turned out to be a wrecked radio-van, its lockers rifled, its sets smashed, its side perforated with bullet holes.
‘Fully ventilated,’ Conybeare had announced. ‘In you get.’ Horndorff had climbed inside, his face red with rage, and had listened savagely to the bolt being driven home.
All night he’d heard the shuffle of boots moving past, with now and then a steady tramp as some unit, still retaining cohesion and discipline, had marched by. It hadn’t taken him long to realise there was no way out of his prison.
The shuffle and thud of boots was still going on now as the light increased, then Conybeare’s face, his bruised eye black and almost closed by this time, appeared at the small window that separated the rear of the van from the driver’s cabin. A portion of sausage and a piece of bread appeared. Horndorff took them sullenly. He was beginning to loathe Conybeare by this time.
‘My dear chap,’ he said, forcing himself to remain calm, ‘You realise that all this is a waste of time. Your troops are surrounded.’
‘I expect we’ll manage,’ Conybeare said. ‘And don’t call me your “dear chap”. I’ve told you before.’
As he opened the doors, Horndorff’s eyes blazed. ‘Suppose I refuse to get out?’ he asked.
Conybeare raised the Luger and pointed it at a point just to the right of Horndorff’s head. Horndorff stared down the muzzle and, when he still didn’t move, Conybeare calmly pulled the trigger. At the crash of the explosion, Horndorff flung himself down. The bullet had whacked through the side of the van within a foot of his head.
Horndorff straightened up, hating himself for ducking, hating Conybeare more. There was a strange placidity about him that worried the German who was beginning now to realise that this imperturbable boy was a great deal tougher than he looked.
Soldiers resting by the roadside eyed them as they passed. They’d clearly not yet lost their spirit and they were interested in Horndorff, wondering what sort of man had beaten them, what sort of man had thought out this new and ruthless science of war and collected the machinery to wage it.
‘What rat-hole did you get him out of?’ one of them grinned. ‘He’s my prisoner,’ Conybeare said. ‘I’m taking him to England.’
He accepted all the comments un
smilingly, his smooth young face lacking in humour. When he’d first captured Horndorff it had been as much as anything else a salve to his own pride – to make up for being shot down – but gradually, as time had passed, it had crystallised into an obsession. Now he meant exactly what he said. He was taking Horndorff to England and nothing except death or wounds was going to stop him.
Horndorff tramped on, frowning. ‘I think, under the circumstances,’ he grated, ‘that we ought to introduce ourselves. I am Hans-Joachim Horndorff von Bülowius. My family call me Jocho.’
‘Conybeare,’ the boy behind him said.
‘Your first name?’
‘Got three. Don’t like any of ’em much. Conybeare’ll do.’
Horndorff walked on in silence, snubbed. The fields on either side of them had been flooded and the morning was misty, the vapour hanging in chilly folds over a flat countryside that stretched endlessly towards the north. In the distance he could see a black pall of smoke hanging in the sky.
As his mind churned over means of ridding himself of Conybeare, he saw the men in front of him glancing back, then one of them pointed. Aeroplanes turned in the sky like flies and, as the tramping men began to scatter, Horndorff’s heart leapt. Conybeare wouldn’t get much response just now if he called for help.
As the soldiers crouched against the steep banks of earth, he could hear the planes above and behind him. He saw spurts of dirt leap from the surface of the road and move rapidly ahead.
But then he realised that with the flooded fields on either side there was nowhere he could run to and, choking on his rage, he turned and, still erect and indifferent to the bullets, walked slowly to the ditch where Conybeare waited patiently, as though he’d known all the time that Horndorff couldn’t escape.
