by John Harris
As they reached the shelter of the town and began to pick their way through the ruins, the German aircraft came over again and Noble ducked and ran, feeling that the rags of his backside were flapping. Gow remained standing in the roadway, as though wishing he could defy the whole might of the German air force and, from his shelter under the wall of a house, Noble leapt up and took a running dive at him so that they went staggering together from the centre of the road to fall through the hedge into a garden behind.
The bomb hit the house where Noble had been sheltering and he watched the walls bulge outwards and collapse in a ballooning cloud of smoke and dust. The last few slates sliced murderously through the air and the last few bricks came rolling across the road, bouncing and jumping as though they were alive. Awed by the near miss, Noble let his head sink wearily to the hard pavé’.
Gow pushed at him gently, his voice concerned. ‘You hit, mon?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Noble said. ‘Just bloody terrified.’
The admission changed Gow’s tone. ‘You shoved me,’ he accused. ‘Why’d you do that?’
Noble turned his head slowly and looked at Gow’s indignant face in the glow of the flames. ‘Because you’re bloody soft in the head,’ he exploded. ‘Somebody’s got to look after you!’
They looked round for Chouteau, but he and Angelet had disappeared. Gow’s indignation increased. ‘And look what you’ve done! Ye’ve made us lose oor pals!’
Noble stared at him, not understanding him. He’d never understood him from the moment they’d met.
Gow stood up and stared about him. ‘Call his name,’ he said.
‘I don’t know his bloody name! You call!’
‘I forgot it. Yon French hae such bluidy queer names. What about yon little feller? Somethin’ aboot angels, I think.’
As they moved away they bumped into a soldier stumbling past with a bottle of wine under his arm. ‘Where you get that, mate?’ Noble demanded.
‘None of your business.’
Noble swung on the soldier’s arm. ‘Look, mate–’ he gestured at Gow ‘–I’ll get my mate to shove his Bren up your nostril if you don’t cough up.’
The soldier looked at Gow’s stark haggard features and glittering eyes. ‘Down there.’ His arm moved. ‘You have to pay.’
Noble patted his back pocket where the takings from the NAAFI were tucked. ‘I can pay,’ he said.
As Gow and Noble went in one direction, Allerton was moving in the other. He didn’t feel ill, just incredibly weary and cold despite the heat of the flames.
By this time the beaches were a bedlam of different tongues, increasing difficulties and lack of discipline, and the town a mad-house of rumour and counter-rumour, disorder, exhaustion, growing apprehension and failing communications. No one knew anything and lives were being lost as orders contradicted each other. It was the debit side of the success.
After a while he met a man wearing a kilt who was either drunk or shocked.
‘They said Ah kidnae wear ma kilt,’ he was announcing at the top of his voice. ‘“Battledress,” they said. “Everybody wears battledress.” Battledress!’ he spat. ‘“Wee Alec Galt has worn his kilt sin’ he joined an’ long before,” Ah said, “an’ he’s wearin’ it the noo. So up yer, Jock.”’
He had a bunch of pamphlets in his hand and he offered one to Allerton. At first Allerton thought they might be instructions on what to do but they were German propaganda leaflets.
‘The Game Is Over,’ he read. ‘The Stumps Are Drawn. British Soldiers, your troops are entirely surrounded. Put down your arms.’
‘They must hae known we were short of bum fodder,’ the Highlander said.
Passing them now were groups of men who’d got hold of drink. One man was wearing a fur stole. ‘Tell Lord Gort,’ he shouted, ‘that Trooper Forrest of the Yeomanry presents his compliments and tells him he can stick his bloody British army where the monkey sticks its nuts.’
The Highlander looked shocked. ‘For Christ’s sake, mon,’ he said. ‘Hae ye no pride?’
‘Arseholes to you, you kilted bastard,’ the man in the stole said, and the Highlander dropped his pamphlets to the ground and jerked his rifle butt up. The man in the stole was lifted off the ground and lay draped across a hedge.
‘That’s shown yon bastard!’ the Highlander said, carefully picking up his pamphlets and stalking off. ‘No bastard insults a Scotsman’s kilt.’ He turned to Allerton. ‘You’ll be all right, mate. There are thirty thousand marines coming ashore later the day. This lot’s only temporary.’
Allerton watched him stalk off, a stocky figure with a grimy face, wearing his helmet on the hack of his head, his kilt swinging as he walked. The man in the fur stole still lay on his back half through the hedge. Several men who had watched the incident crossed the road and pulled him free.
‘There’s vicious for you,’ a high Welsh voice said indignantly. ‘His jaw’s broke.’
‘Serve the bugger right! You can’t insult a Highlander’s kilt.’
Allerton couldn’t see why not. Plenty of people seemed to be doing more than merely insult each other that day.
The corned beef he’d eaten had given him a raging thirst and he moved into a nearby house to find a drink. He tried the tap but nothing came out, and he thought of the lavatory cistern. The water brought life back to him as it went down his cracked throat. Picking his way through streets that had long since become impassable to vehicles, he passed a church that seemed to be surrounded by a rising and falling sound of sighing he could hear even above the explosions. It puzzled him and then, as he saw ambulances, he realised it came from the throats of wounded men.
He went inside and the scene shocked him. It was packed with Frenchman, turbaned Moroccans, British and Belgians. They seemed to be mostly half-conscious but as he recoiled he saw the haggard eyes of one man fixed on him, feverish and piercingly bright. ‘Got a fag, mate?’ he asked.
The air raids had stopped as Scharroo and Marie-Josephine headed along the beach. Baffled and defeated, Scharroo was aware of Marie-Josephine’s honest young eyes on him, all her courage and determination displayed in them.
‘If you’re so goddam set on going to England,’ he said in desperation, ‘and if they’re only taking the army, then, the hell with it, let’s be part of it.’
They began to search the shoreline and eventually they found a pair of trousers, two damp battledress blouses and two steel helmets. Marie-Josephine slipped out of the cream coat without a word and pulled the trousers up round her waist over the flowered dress. As she did so, Scharroo realised she was laughing. Startled that she could manage to find any humour in the situation, he held the battledress blouse for her, pushing the collar of her dress down while she pulled the army jacket round her. Her neck was soft and warm and feminine under her hair, and as the back of his hand touched her throat, she turned silently, and put her arms round him. He pushed her away roughly and struggled into the second battledress himself.
‘Let’s go see what we can do,’ he said.
As they moved along the beach, they could see the pin-pricks of thousands of cigarettes and the occasional flash of a torch in the blackness, and could hear the putt-putt of engines.
An officer was directing men to the boats and they joined the group around him.
‘Where do we go?’ Scharroo asked.
‘What’s your unit?’
For a moment, Scharroo was at a less. ‘Well, hell,’ he said, trying to remember names he’d heard. ‘Royal Durham Light Infantry.’
A torch flashed in his face immediately.
‘There’s no such bloody regiment,’ the officer snapped. ‘Do you mean the Durham Light Infantry?’
‘Yeah. I guess that’s it?’
The torch remained on Scharroo’s face. ‘Then why did you say “Royal Durham Light Infantry”. Who the hell are you, anyway?’ The officer stared, then he turned. ‘Sergeant!’
Scharroo grabbed Marie-Josephine’s hand and in a
moment they were lost in the darkness. The elation he had felt in the Germans’ victory had turned to disgust at their methods, yet he could find little to admire in the British and French failure. His lips were cracked by the salty breeze and he found swallowing difficult as he peered into the darkness with eyes that were gritty with tiredness.
‘We’d better look for something to eat,’ he said gruffly and, swinging his jacket over his shoulder, he began to walk up the beach.
The town was full now of men from the rear-guard, fighting troops trudging through the Place Jean Bart and down the Boulevard Jeanne d’Arc and past the ruins of the church of St Eloi. They still had excellent discipline but were too tired by this time to do anything more than just put one foot in front of another.
In the rue Gregoire de Tours a baker and the owner of a bar had joined forces, and Scharroo was able to buy a bottle of warm beer and half a loaf of newly baked bread. The charge was monstrous but he didn’t argue and took the food to Marie-Josephine who was sitting on the edge of the pavement alongside a man in a navy blue jersey. He was drunk and, even as he approached, Scharroo could smell the rum on his breath.
‘I had me own boat,’ he was saying loudly. ‘And I worked up and down that bloody beach till I was ready to drop. And then they go and run me down with a bloody destroyer. Just like that.’ He belched loudly and moved restlessly inside his clothes. ‘Ford eight engine she had,’ he went on. ‘Go for days. Not a nut or a bolt or a piece of wire I didn’t know.’
In her prim fashion, Marie-Josephine was embarrassed by the sailor’s drunkenness and she finished the food quickly and brushed off the crumbs. ‘What must we do?’ she asked.
As Scharroo’s weary thoughts churned, they heard aeroplane engines again and everybody started to disappear. ‘We’ve got to find shelter,’ he said.
Somewhere above them they heard the scream of a bomb starting, faint as a whisper, then growing louder until it filled the air. Pulling Marie-Josephine into the shelter of a big square building, Scharroo crouched with his arms about her. The crash flung them together and, as he felt her cheek against his, he realised it was wet with tears, the first real chink he’d found in her hard little armour. As he stood up, he noticed men running and, guessing they were heading for a shelter, he dragged her after him. He was just in time to see a wooden door in a warehouse slam to, but he flung his weight against it and they fell inside to stumble down a flight of stone steps.
The air was warm and stuffy with the smell of hundreds of bodies. There was a dim light in the distance, and as they moved towards it he saw they were in a cellar. There seemed to be dozens of men there, most of them French, and a lot of bottles circulating. A few people were singing but the smell was one of fear. The moving flames from the candles, sucked and whipped by the eddies of blast, caught the faces and the haze of cigarette smoke, and as they cast their shadows on the brick walls, it seemed to Scharroo like the pictures by Doré for Dante’s Purgatorio.
They stopped dead, and he saw Marie-Josephine’s eyes were large and frightened. The men in front of them were all clearly trying to behave as though they were indifferent, but Scharroo saw their eyes lifting every time the thud of a bomb brought dust from the roof.
‘Let’s get of here,’ he said.
They struggled back towards the door but as Marie-Josephine stumbled along behind him, her helmet fell off. There was a shout and several Frenchmen reached out to grab her. Scharroo swung at them but they came back and one of them seized her round the waist. She started to scream and, as his own arms were held, Scharroo could see her eyes dilated with terror and was certain he was going to see her raped.
Then a small man with a sleek black moustache and side-whiskers brought the butt of his rifle up and Scharroo heard the clop as it caught an unguarded jaw, and a tall white-faced man with dried blood on his face and a bandage under his helmet pushed forward and, plucking the girl aside, shoved the Frenchman away.
‘We’d be best oot o’ here,’ he said.
Scharroo had lost his jacket with his wallet containing his papers, but he didn’t attempt to search for it, and as they reached the steps a bomb hit the other end of the building. There was a flash, then the air seemed to be sucked away and, as it came back with clouds of dust and yells, they saw the end of the cellar cave in.
The bombs were still coming down as they stumbled clear and they had just fallen flat on a patch of open land when they saw the corner of the warehouse come down in a thundering cascade of bricks, slates and splintering wood. Several rats bounded across the road, like symbols of doom. Then there was an explosion that rocked the earth and lumps of brick and masonry were hurled hundreds of feet in all directions, and brilliant flashes like magnesium flares illuminated the black heart of the wreathing smoke. When the rain of debris stopped, Scharroo lifted his head. One of the rats was running round in circles in the roadway, its high squeal quite distinct above the din, but there was no sign of life from the ruins of the warehouse.
‘There must have been ammunition in there,’ Scharroo said.
Marie-Josephine drew a deep breath. ‘I do not believe our friends escape,’ she whispered.
‘I guess not.’
‘We must go to the beach.’ Marie-Josephine’s voice was flat. ‘They take us soon, I think. They take everybody in the end.’
It was beginning to seem they might, but in Dover where they were working out the day’s totals and balancing them against the losses, the admiral stared bleakly at a map of the coastline. ‘There are now only seven and a half miles between the front and the mole,’ he pointed out. ‘Bray Dunes will be under shellfire now and Malo-les-Bains tomorrow.’
‘All the same, sir,’ the SOO said encouragingly. ‘Sixty-eight thousand men. Twenty-three thousand from the beaches alone. And here’s something that’ll warm your heart, sir.’ He read out from a signal flimsy. ‘From captain of Oriole, sir. She’s a paddle minesweeper, 12th Flotilla. “Submit ref. KR and AI 1167. Deliberately grounded HMS Oriole Belgian coast dawn May 29th on own initiative. Objective speedy evacuation of troops. Refloated dusk same day no apparent damage. Will complete S232 when operations permit meantime am again proceeding Belgian coast and will again run aground if such course seems desirable.”’
‘Who is it?’ the admiral asked. ‘Anyone I know?’
‘Shouldn’t think so, sir. RNVR type. I gather he decided to use his ship as a pier, and three thousand men passed over her before he finally brought her back with seven hundred of his own.’
The admiral allowed himself a small smile. ‘It brightens the day,’ he said.
Saturday, 1 June
Vital had been hit somewhere before noon and had rolled over shortly afterwards. When the badly burned boy died, and because he could think of nothing else to do, Hatton had found a notebook in his saturated pockets and written down his own name and those of a wounded petty officer, a leading seaman and a medical orderly of the 12th Field Regiment who were the only other occupants of the boat. None of them seemed to think it odd and they gave him their names automatically.
How long they bobbed on the oily water Hatton didn’t know because he drifted into sleep and when he finally woke up it was almost dusk and the other three men were silent. The petty officer had died.
It grew darker but he could only guess what time it was because his watch had stopped. To his surprise he found he didn’t feel as ill or shocked as he thought he should; merely tired out because it was days since he’d slept properly. Sometime towards midnight a ship loomed up alongside and he became aware that a light was shining down on him.
‘Anybody alive down there?’ a voice was shouting.
He sat bolt upright, wincing from the pain in his injured ribs. ‘Three,’ he shouted. ‘What ship’s that?’
‘Eager.’
The leading seaman, a middle-aged man who looked as though he ought to have been in Portsmouth with his wife, children and grandchildren, grinned. ‘I was in Eager, sir,’ he said. ‘In thirty-
six. She’s a good ship.’
At that moment to Hatton she was the most wonderful ship in the world.
The destroyer swung, putting one engine astern so that she could make a lee, and they paddled with a broken oar and a plank to her side. Because he felt it was his duty to be last, Hatton insisted on the leading seaman and the medical orderly going first, and as he reached out for the nets he looked back. The petty officer was leaning against the thwarts as though asleep and the boy was lying in the bottom of the boat, grey white now, and quite anonymous. No one had known who he was or what service he’d belonged to, and no one ever would now.
As he was pulled to the deck of Eager, Hatton’s eyes were stinging and he wasn’t sure whether it was because of the fuel oil or the tears. His mouth was filled with a bitter taste that might have been from the salt water he’d swallowed or the bile that came with fear and he felt that when he got back – if he got back he’d seek out Nora Hart and wheel her off to the altar at once. In his exhausted emotional state, at that moment the only thing he felt he needed out of life was a quiet room and Nora Hart in his bed, and the thought of Dover and peace left him feeling weak.
He turned to the petty officer who’d helped him aboard. ‘When are we going home?’ he asked.
The petty officer’s eyebrows rose. ‘Home, sir?’ he said. ‘We’re not. We’ve only just arrived.’
Moving through the town, Noble and Gow picked their way through the ankle-deep sand of the dunes to the gaunt ruins of the promenade. The whole front was a high wall of fire now, roaring with darting tongues of flame, the smoke pouring up in thick folds to disappear into the black sky. Towards the sea the darkness was thick and velvety but it was just possible to see wrecked ships and the shapes of small boats. Nearby, a pier stretched from the beach into the darkness, its piles silhouetted against the glare. Shells burst about its shore end with monotonous regularity.
