by John Harris
He became aware of Hamcke standing on the wing alongside him. He was endeavouring to put things right, trying to allow for the fact that, like himself, Stoos was over-tired and affected by the strain of the campaign.
‘She’s all right now, Herr Leutnant,’ he said. ‘She’s ready for testing.’
Stoos turned his head and eyed Hamcke coldly. ‘At the moment, Hamcke,’ he said, ‘I’m not on the flying roster. As you well know.’
Hamcke flinched as though he’d been struck again and climbed off the wing. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘someone’ll have to do it. Everything we’ve got’s going to be needed before we’re finished.’
It was a feeling that was echoed by the men on the other side as well, and particularly by the admiral at Dover.
With the news of yet another destroyer lost in the first hours of the morning, came the information that several personnel ships which had left England during the night had vanished entirely in the darkness, and the admiral dared not risk any more of them to crowd the narrows until he knew where they were.
‘We’d better suspend sailings until we learn a little more,’ he said.
The SOO glanced at a list in his hand. ‘Perhaps the position’s not as bad as it seems, sir,’ he suggested.
The admiral frowned. ‘We can’t take any chances. What about the French? Are they co-operating?’
‘I understand they’re arriving on the beaches and the mole in increasing numbers. The formal instruction that they’re to be given equal opportunity with our chaps has arrived from London. During the night, though, there was heavy mine-laying from the air and Vimy reported seeing a submarine off the Goodwins.’
The admiral made no comment and the SOO went on. There’s one other thing, sir. These batteries they’ve set up near Gravelines – Mardyck, it’s believed – they’re only four miles away now and they have the range of all ships coming out of the harbour area. They’ve been engaged, of course, but it’s not known with how much success.’
The admiral took a turn up and down the room. ‘I breakfasted with General Brooke,’ he said. ‘He thought we’d have to continue for a few more days.’
The SOO raised his eyebrows. ‘It’ll be difficult, sir.’
‘Gort’s people seem to think we might manage.’ The admiral gestured. ‘We’ll move what’s left of the small craft from Ramsgate to make their main effort after midnight tonight. I think if we proceed on the same lines we’ve got a fair chance of success.’ He paused. ‘I hope so,’ he ended.
Hatton hoped so, too.
With daylight, his uneasiness had increased. Vital was built for speed and was light and fragile. Her side plating was astonishingly thin yet Hough had slammed her against the pier as though she were a tough old ferry reinforced with rubbing strakes.
Among the men now waiting were several stretcher cases. ‘Sorry about these chaps,’ the piermaster called across to Hatton. ‘But we can’t get them aboard from the beaches, and orders have been given to leave ’em. After these, you’re only to pick up unwounded who’ll be able to fight again. There’s no room and no time for the others.’
He saw Hatton staring at him, worried by the instructions. ‘It’s the only intelligent thing to do,’ he explained. ‘It’s bloody awful for them, I know, but we’ve no alternative.’
He took off his helmet and ran his hand through his hair. He looked exhausted and gratefully accepted the tot of rum Hough’s steward brought down for him. ‘Look, for God’s sake,’ he said to Hatton as he left. ‘Ask your captain to make a signal to Dover that we can take as many ships in here as they can send. They’re still going to the beaches and, because of that, so are the men.’
Hatton himself carried the signal to the radio cabin and heard the cheep-cheep of the set as it was sent off. Back on the bridge, Hough was looking worried. The piermaster was right. The supply of men moving along the mole was already dwindling.
‘You’re the expert, Hatton,’ he said. ‘Nip along there and see if you can round up any more.’
His flesh crawling, Hatton moved warily into the town. There was a monument at the shore end of the mole where the shells were bursting with terrifying regularity, but the ruined buildings nearby seemed to have emptied and he stood alone on the littered pavé, his feet among the abandoned packs and steel helmets that were strewn among the pulverised bricks and scattered tiles.
‘Any more for the Skylark?’ he yelled.
Three or four men appeared and he directed them to the pier, but no one else came, and he reported back to the ship.
‘They must all be on the beach, sir,’ he said.
Hough cursed. ‘Damnation! All right, let’s go. Number One, grab all the boats you can see and get them to feed the troops to us. Nothing’s to hold us up. Understand?’
Among the boats Vital’s first lieutenant called on the loud hailer was Daisy.
The whalers that had been feeding soldiers to her seemed to have disappeared, and in the end Gilbert Williams had decided to go into the shallows himself. All around them were other boats, their engines drumming, their exhausts like pale feathers against the water, and as Daisy nosed up to a queue of soldiers, the men surged forward, desperate to get aboard. Several disappeared from sight and failed to reappear. There was no struggle, as though in the extremities of exhaustion there was nothing left to give, and Kenny saw a man he was reaching out for simply sink out of sight, his agonised eyes beneath the helmet vanishing as he made no attempt to save himself.
For a moment, he stared at the ripples on the surface of the water. Then he came to life with a jerk, aware of dozens of hands grasping the side of the boat, clinging desperately to what seemed like a rock in their distress. He reached down and grasped one. With the weight of water in the man’s clothes it was impossible to haul him aboard.
Ernie Williams joined him and the man flopped on the deck like a stranded fish before dragging himself to his knees and crawling aft.
‘There’s a bunch of wounded on a pier just over there,’ an officer pointed out.
The pier was made from lorries and trucks and there was considerable difficulty with the lifting swell and the crowded conditions on Daisy’s decks, and Gilbert Williams was beginning to watch the lightening sky nervously. ‘Get them fellers aboard,’ he kept saying. ‘Get ’em aboard quick!’
As they headed towards Vital, they passed a group in a rubber dinghy paddling with the butts of their rifles.
‘Give us a hand, mate,’ one of them croaked. ‘We’re sinking!’
‘You’re doing better than you think.’ Gilbert shouted back. ‘Save your breath for baling.’
‘What’ll we bale with?’
‘What about them things on your ’eads?’
The soldiers stared at each other then, almost to a man, snatched off their steel helmets and began to scoop.
As they neared Vital, they passed three large Carley floats, all tied together and all filled to capacity with men standing up to their waists in the water inside. Though Daisy was wildly top-heavy this time, they took them aboard.
Alongside Vital, however, the wounded couldn’t climb the nets, and slings had to be rigged to hoist them to the decks. Hatton climbed down to speak to Gilbert.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘No more of these, old boy.’
Gilbert looked indignant. ‘These fellers is ’urt,’ he said.
‘I can’t help it,’ Hatton said. ‘We can’t jeopardise the ship and all the men in her. They’ve had signals ashore about it. They’re being sneaked out by their pals.’
But when Daisy returned to the beach for the next trip, there was a soldier waiting with his arm missing, his whole left side swathed in bloody bandages. His face was grey white but he was still incredibly on his feet, supported by two of his friends.
‘They said no wounded,’ Gilbert mumbled, unable to look them in the face.
‘He’s not bad hurt,’ one of the men supporting the injured soldier said.
‘He’s lost his sodden arm,’
Gilbert hissed, trying not to let the injured man hear,
‘For Christ’s sake, mate, we’ll look after him!’
Gilbert glanced at Kenny and his brother. Then he nodded. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Just the one.’
But the one was the sign for more to appear and when they went out to Vital there were six of them, all unable to help themselves. Hough was furious as the slings had to be rigged and Hatton almost fell down the net to board Daisy.
‘I said no more wounded,’ he snapped.
‘Christ, I can’t turn the poor sods back,’ Gilbert said. ‘There’s hundreds of ’em.’
‘Off we go!’
Lieutenant Wren, of the York and Lancaster Regiment, threw down the piece of wood with which he was patting his dug-out and pointed to the beachmaster.
Conybeare banged on the roof of Horndorff’s hole with the butt of the Luger. ‘Our turn, I think,’ he said.
Horndorff crawled out to see the beachmaster waving from the shallows and Wren gazing at his dug-out sadly. ‘Sorry to see the back of the old place,’ he was saying cheerfully.
Horndorff stared about him. He’d spent the whole of the previous day crouching like a dog in its kennel while Conybeare dragged up a box to block the entrance and squatted outside, holding the Luger and talking idly to Wren. He was furious at the humiliation, and desperately hungry. His lips were dry with the salty wind and the bite of the flying sand.
‘Officer Conybeare,’ he said bitterly. ‘I think you are a cold fish.’
As they headed for the sea the aeroplanes returned, and as the first bombs fell the alarm began to scream.
‘I think it’s designed to go off after the bombs drop,’ Wren said.
They splashed into the shallows where a motor boat was waiting. The guns of a destroyer half a mile away began to crash, and the sound was taken up by every ship within reach and every man with a rifle or a machine-gun until the racket was earsplitting.
‘Look lively, you lot,’ a man on the foredeck of the motor boat shouted as they struggled towards her.
‘Always thought paddling vulgar,’ Wren observed as they waded chest-high in the water. ‘Besides, I never did have much time for the seaside this time of the year. August’s the month.’
‘Who’s this bugger?’ The sailor on the boat’s foredeck was staring at Horndorff.
Conybeare sighed. ‘He’s my prisoner,’ he said. ‘I’m taking him to England.’
‘We ain’t taking prisoners,’ the sailor pointed out.
Conybeare frowned. ‘I am,’ he said.
As the bombing stopped, soldiers began to emerge from their holes and trenches and the cellars of houses, spitting out dust and gritty sand, to form queues once more.
Tired as he was, to Allerton the stink of blood and mutilated flesh seemed stronger than it had ever done. There was no escape from it, and scarcely a breath of wind to dissipate the still more appalling odour of the corpses that had been lying in the town now for days.
He and Rice had found their way back to the queue they’d joined the night before. It was standing in the water now, fixed, immovable, as though nailed there. No one spoke as they tagged on to it, everyone staring silently out to sea, waiting for the next boat. The dead weight of waterlogged boots and sodden clothes seemed to pin Allerton down. His trousers had ballooned out with water and felt as heavy as mercury, so that he was filled with dread that when the time came he’d be unable to move. Just ahead of him, a sergeant and a corporal were supporting a man who was barely tall enough to keep his chin above the water. Every time a swell came they lifted him bodily and, every time, he turned to them and said politely, ‘Thanks, Sarge. Thanks, Corp.’
The minutes seemed to tick by like hours and Allerton, who couldn’t see much for the men around him, began to be afraid he’d have to stand there half submerged for ever. A leaden depression took hold of him, as heavy as his own waterlogged body. The man in front of him seemed to be asleep standing up and Allerton found that he himself kept starting out of a warm coma that even the chill of the water couldn’t penetrate.
Suddenly, he realised a boat had appeared and some wag at the end of the queue, standing neck deep, started to shout – ‘’Urry up, mate, me feet are getting wet!’ They all edged warily forward again, the two NCOs in front supporting the small man. ‘Come on, short-arse,’ the sergeant said. ‘Nearly there.’
‘Thanks, Sarge. Thanks, Corp. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’ The politeness was intense.
As they moved further out, the water began to lap Allerton’s chin and the blind urge to reach safety drove him on until his feet just maintained contact with the bottom. Two sailors in tin hats were hoisting the men in front of him out of the water. It was difficult, because the soldiers were so weary they lacked the strength to climb unaided. The sailors didn’t spare them.
‘Get a move on, you sloppy bastards! Just because you’ve lost the bloody war there’s no need to hang about!’
The sergeant and the corporal pushed the small man up and climbed after him. Then the sleeping man in front of Allerton suddenly slipped away beneath the water. One moment he was there and the next he was gone, and Allerton found that in his weariness he was quite indifferent to his fate. He could just reach the boat with the tips of his fingers but when he tried to pull himself up, the weight of his waterlogged clothes made him as helpless as a sack of lead, and he hung there terrified of being left behind. Then two strong hands reached over and grasped his arm-pits. Another pair grasped the back of his trousers and before he had time to realise it he was head-first in the bottom of the boat.
On the deck of the destroyer, underneath a gun turret, he found himself with a lot of Frenchmen but then a head popped up out of a hatch in the deck. ‘This way, sir,’ it said. ‘You don’t want to be with a lot of French bastards. Come and have a cup of tea.’
The wardroom carpet was covered with treacly black oil, and here and there on the bulkheads were hand and feet marks and smears where grimy uniforms had rubbed. But a Maltese steward gave him a whisky and a sausage sandwich, and as he lay sprawled on a cushioned seat, uncomfortable but without the energy to move, the great burden of responsibility had gone from his shoulders. All the accumulated strain of the last few days had vanished and a sense of luxurious security flooded over him.
Hatton was working near the scrambling nets, shouting instructions through a megaphone to the boats as they came alongside.
Above him on the bridge, he could see Hough anxiously watching the sky, turning his head occasionally as a shell exploded on the beaches. ‘How many, Hatton?’
‘Damn near a thousand, sir.’
‘Just a few more.’
The wind was increasing a little now and Hatton could hear the boats’ crews shouting furiously at the soldiers. But no one argued, no one took offence. The soldiers seemed to accept that the job now was up to the navy.
On the bridge, Hough was moving anxiously from one side to the other, watching the floating wreckage and the long coils of floating grass line. Then his eyes flickered to the sky again. The lull had been a long one and he knew they had little time left.
‘Hurry ’em along!’ he shouted down. ‘Keep ’em moving!’
As they hauled the men aboard, one of the petty officers gestured. ‘Good God almighty,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve seen everything.’
Hatton looked up to see Thames barges passing them, broad-beamed and beautiful, heading towards the shore, their great spritsails soaring to the sky. As they glided past, a hospital ship, the sun on her sides, moved towards the harbour. A flurry of shells from Hinze’s battery at Mardyck screamed over to drop near her but she held her speed, heading towards the mole in stately fashion as though it were peacetime and there were nothing to fear. The sight took Hatton’s breath away.
‘How many, Barry?’
The call from the bridge attracted his attention and he noticed that Hough had got around at last to calling him by his first name and felt vaguel
y flattered.
‘Well over a thousand now, sir.’
Hough was staring at the sky. ‘Just this lot then,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the look of things.’
The bus conductor’s rigmarole was wearing a little thin by this time but the petty officers and sailors were all using it now – ‘Pass down the car, please. No standing on the platform. Plenty of room inside–’ and the weary soldiers seemed to appreciate the joke.
Then, just when he was so absorbed he hardly noticed the guns start in the distance, Hatton heard the klaxon go and heard Hough shouting.
‘Get ’em on board, Barry,’ he was roaring. ‘Jerry’s back.’
As the ropes dropped and the last man was dragged from the scrambling net, Vital began to pick up speed, a boat still attached by her rope bucking in the wake so that the men in her began to shout with alarm.
‘Cut that boat adrift,’ Hatton yelled and he saw a sailor reach out, knife in hand.
The sky seemed to be full of aeroplanes now and Hatton’s cars throbbed with the din they made. The sea was erupting in great gouts of water that dropped across the decks, drenching the crouching soldiers and the running men in blue, and the guns were yammering in an insane chorus.
Up ahead a mat of small boats was clustered near another ship. At first Hatton thought Vital was going to plough through them, but the telegraphs clanged and she began to go astern, the storm of bombs still dropping about her, the brilliant sunshine picking up the lights as the fountains of water dissolved into a rainbow-hued spray. She was just beginning to swing her stern towards the west when there was a crash and a blinding flash, and the ship seemed to leap out of the sea. As she flopped back like a landed fish, vast columns of water collapsed across her, drenching him, and he was surrounded by thundering steam and showers of ancient soot from the funnel.
