Sykes watched the milk squirting into the grass. 'Bit of a waste too.' He looked up. 'There's the farm over there.'
'Go and have a snoop. See if anyone's about.'
Tanner had moved on to another beast by the time Sykes returned.
'It's deserted,' said Sykes. 'There's chickens and geese wandering about. Cats too, and a couple of dogs tied up on chains. They all look very sorry for themselves.'
'For God's sake,' muttered Tanner. When he had finished milking the second cow he went to the lieutenant.
'That place is empty, sir,' he said, jerking a thumb towards the farm, 'and there's two dogs chained up. Shall I set them free or shoot them?'
'Set them free. They'll probably eat the chickens but at least it'll give them a chance.'
Tanner and Sykes did so, then rejoined the others. The milking completed, they walked back to the road, where the remainder of the platoon was still resting.
'I found that more depressing than anything I've seen all day,' said Peploe. 'I know civilians are innocent but we humans are to blame for all this. The animals have no say at all, and to leave them like that, well, it's cruel.'
Just then two shots rang out, the second followed instantly by the yelp of a dog. A few moments later CSM Blackstone was walking purposefully down the road towards them. 'We're moving into the village, sir,' he said, as he approached Peploe. 'T Company are to billet in this farm here. Officers and senior NCOs in the house, junior NCOs and ORs in the outbuildings.'
'What was that shooting, CSM?' Peploe asked.
'Two stray dogs, sir.'
'On whose orders?'
'Colonel Corner's, sir, which presumably came down from Brigade. All dogs to be shot. Can't have them running astray and going feral on us.' He glanced down the road, then turned back to Peploe. 'There's an officers' meeting in fifteen minutes, sir, with the divisional OC. Battalion HQ is in the large house next to the church.'
There was a weary cheer from the men at the news they would be marching no further that night. Slowly they got to their feet, slung rifles over shoulders and hitched packs and haversacks back onto their webbing. Peploe headed off to Battalion Headquarters, leaving Tanner in charge of the platoon. When he saw 12 Platoon, ahead, set off through the village to the farm, Tanner led his men through the field and into the yard. As he had hoped, they were the first platoon in the company to reach their billet.
He scouted the buildings and chose a large, high- pitched barn for his men. Just outside in the yard there was a well, while inside, at one end there were old carts and farm equipment, and along one wall a series of wooden stalls. Above, he found a hay loft, in which there was still plenty of last year's hay and straw. He put his kit in one of the stalls, called the men in and ordered them to bring down some straw to sleep on.
He had just got his own makeshift bedding ready when there were shouts from across the yard. Hurrying out, he saw a number of men running to a small storehouse. Shouts and cheers floated out to him. Tanner strode over. The men had broken open a large vat of cider they had discovered in an outhouse off the yard. 'What the hell do you think you're doing?' he shouted. 'Get out now, all of you.'
'But, Sarge,' said one of the men, 'the CSM said we could take anything we found outside the house.'
'Come on, Sarge,' said another. 'You can't begrudge us a little drink.'
'I can and I do,' said Tanner. 'First, this is theft. Second, we might be fighting tomorrow and, believe me, you don't want a hangover then. All of you, get out. Now!'
Grumbling, and with angry glances of resentment, the men shuffled out. Tanner waited for the last to go, then went inside and did his best to put the room back in order.
A few minutes later, a shadow fell across the threshold. 'How dare you undermine my authority like that?' said Blackstone.
'That wasn't my intention,' said Tanner, facing him squarely. 'I didn't believe you'd have let the men drink freely when we're so close to the front, so I stopped them until I'd had a chance to speak to you and confirm that you'd given them permission.'
Blackstone smiled mirthlessly. 'Are you suggesting I don't know my own men?'
'I'm not suggesting anything, CSM. I'm saying that to let exhausted men drink the local Belgian hooch and get themselves puggled when we could be called on to fight the enemy at any moment is hardly sensible.'
Blackstone took a step towards Tanner, and pushed him in the chest. Tanner stiffened with anger. 'Always the bloody same with you, isn't it, Jack?' said Blackstone. 'Pushing your nose in where it's not wanted, thinking you know it all. The lads deserve a bit of grog. It won't harm them and I don't need you putting your sodding little paw in and telling me how to run the company.'
'I don't have to listen to this,' said Tanner, moving towards the door. But Blackstone blocked him.
'Oh no you don't, Jack. I haven't said you can leave.'
'For God's sake, you can't tell me you're thinking of the men. You're just currying favour - showing them what a good bloke you are. If you really worried about them, you'd make sure they got their heads down and were bright and fresh for tomorrow.'
At this, Blackstone grinned. 'Oh dear, Jack, you really don't get it, do you?' He leaned closer and hissed, 'I told you, I'm the one in charge around here and I mean it.'
'I ought to knock you down right now,' snarled Tanner.
'Go ahead and try, Jack.' He stepped aside and Tanner, his face taut with rage, pushed past him.
Damn it, damn it, damn it! He needed to calm down, he knew, because right now anger could get the better of him. He went across the yard, making for the field, hoping to find somewhere quiet to regain his composure.
'Ah, Tanner, there you are!'
Tanner turned to see Lieutenant Peploe emerge from the farmhouse. Swallowing hard and taking a deep breath, Tanner walked towards him, saluting as he reached him.
I’ve got good news,' said Peploe. 'That is, good news for you but rather disastrous for me.' He took off his cap, squinted, and put it back on again. 'We've now been officially absorbed into First Battalion. As of now, we're D Company, although we're going to lose our fourth platoon.'
'It's under strength anyway, sir, so that won't make much difference.'
'Yes, but it's going to join B Company and be brought up to two full sections. And this is where you come in. There aren't enough officers, so someone needs to be promoted to platoon sergeant-major and take command of that platoon. It's a WO III post.'
Tanner felt his mood lighten. 'And move across to B Company?'
'Yes. As you're the senior sergeant in the company it'll almost certainly be you.'
There was no denying he was the senior sergeant - and by some margin too.
'I see, sir,' he said. He wanted to laugh with relief. Of course, he'd be sorry to leave Sykes and the others, and even Lieutenant Peploe, but the chance to get well away from Blackstone was like the answer to his prayers.
'Bloody hard luck on me, though,' added Peploe, 'but I can see that you more than deserve your chance.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'And you've done a good job getting everyone settled in. I'm afraid it's still a bit unclear what's going on but it seems the French First Army have been getting into trouble to the south of here and so have the Belgians to the north ever since the Dutch surrender, so although our chaps have been doing well, we've all got to fall back to keep in line with the others. Tomorrow we're moving up not to the river Senne but to the Brussels-Charleroi canal. We're going to hold the line there while the rest of One and Two Corps fall back through our position. It wasn't clear to me at first which was the canal and which was the river, but I found them both on my map eventually.'
'At least you've got a map, sir. The lack of them seems to be a feature of this war.'
Tanner left Peploe and went back to the barn, where he lay down on the straw and closed his eyes. He had joked with the lieutenant about the maps but, really, it was no laughing matter. He couldn't shake off the thought that, once ag
ain, the Army had been sent to fight a campaign without the right tools for the job. He reminded himself that at least this time they were better equipped. He had seen plenty of guns - heard them too - and there seemed to be transport on the roads, even if they had been made to march. Nonetheless, it had been a disquieting couple of days - today especially, with the refugees clogging the roads, and enemy aircraft appearing to dominate the skies. And the British Army was on the retreat - again.
Tanner chided himself. Just get on with it, man. There was no point in worrying about matters that were beyond his control. Instead he thought about the platoon he would soon be commanding. A life without Blackstone, now that was a prospect to lift the spirits. This evening, or perhaps the next day, he would be free of the man.
Chapter 7
For Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Timpke the past week had been one of deep frustration and mounting agitation. For two whole days the division had remained at Ludwigsburg, vehicles and kit at the ready, waiting for the signal to move. The order had finally come the previous Tuesday, 12 May, but having sped north of Cologne, then west through Aachen to the Belgian border, they had gone no further. In the meantime, Timpke and his colleagues had had to listen to wireless bulletins proclaiming the sweeping successes of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. In the north, crucial forts had been captured in Belgium; Rotterdam had been bombed and after four days the Dutch had capitulated. As if that was not galling enough, Army Group A had made even more dramatic and far-reaching progress. It seemed General Guderian's panzers had achieved total surprise as they had attacked through the thick forests of the Belgian Ardennes. The gutless French had crumbled, so that the tanks had managed to cross the river Meuse - a crucial obstacle to have overcome - and had swept all before them.
They had not been idle - Eicke had made sure of that, insisting that his commanders keep the men busy, something with which Timpke agreed entirely. None of his men had seen front-line action: most had been former camp guards and SS reservists, and although they had trained continually since the end of the Polish campaign, Timpke was determined that until they were in a position to draw on combat experience, they should fall back on rigid discipline instead. For four days, as they had waited in the rolling border country, Timpke had drilled them, sent them on long marches and given them rifle practice, as well as despatching them on manoeuvres and making them practise their codework and radio telegraphy. He had also made them clean, re-clean, then clean again their vehicles, weapons and uniforms. On two separate evenings, he had sat the men on the banks of a shallow hill overlooking the camp and had lectured them on one of his favourite subjects, National Socialist and SS ideology, reminding them that the German Reich was rising, phoenix-like, from the ashes of despair into the greatest nation the world had ever known. It was their destiny that they, the chosen ones, should be the elite of this new Aryan order.
Then had come the news that Rommel and Guderian had advanced as much as forty miles the previous day, Thursday, 16 May. Forty miles! An advance of that speed was unheard of. A strange anxiety had gripped Timpke. Surely it wouldn't all be over before the division had been thrown into the line. It couldn't be, yet as every day passed, with reports of outrageous gains made, Timpke became increasingly concerned that the Waffen-SS would be ignored once again by the Wehrmacht, left to idle out the campaign in their makeshift camp on the Belgian border.
Although he was not a man who had ever needed much sleep, he had slept particularly badly that night; outside, it had been warm and humid, but his mind had been unable to put aside the news of the day's fighting. Major-General Rommel's 7th Panzer Division had reached Avesnes, only thirty-five kilometres south of Mons. Timpke had never heard of the place before, and had been stunned when he had discovered just how far into northern France the town was. On the map, the French coast had seemed impossibly close to the leading panzers. The huge extent of the German thrust was astonishing, and he had been struck by a wave of despair. Soon the war would be over, and the Wehrmacht would take all the credit.
Unable to clear such thoughts, he had risen, washed and shaved, then turned to his desk, keeping himself busy by writing further company training exercises. As a consequence, he had already been up for several hours when the company clerk knocked at the door shortly after seven. Entering, he had handed Timpke a note.
Timpke read it, grinned, then crunched the paper into a ball and threw it away.
'Good news, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer?' his orderly, Sturmann Reinz, asked.
'Most definitely,' Timpke replied, putting on his jacket. 'Very good news indeed.'
Downstairs, in the officers' dining room, he found his company commanders, Saalbach, Beeck and Hardieck, already there, drinking ersatz coffee.
'Look at his face,' laughed Saalbach. 'Our boss is happy at long last! I'd begun to think we'd never see you smile again, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.'
'Part of Army Group A! It couldn't be better. With luck we'll be at the van with von Rundstedt.' Timpke slapped Hardieck's back, then smacked a fist into his open hand. 'At last!'
A little under seventy miles away as the crow flew, Sergeant Tanner had also woken early. In contrast to Sturmbannfuhrer Timpke, however, Tanner had slept well. After eight years in the Army, he had long ago become accustomed to the lack of a mattress or other home comforts; and a bed of straw in a warm barn in May was considerably more comfortable than countless other places where he had spent the night.
However, it was not long before he, too, was feeling increasingly agitated. By seven, orders had arrived for D Company to move up to the canal, on a line to the south of the village of Oisquercq, yet he had still heard nothing about his promotion and transfer to B Company. With mounting irritation, he had woken the rest of the platoon, chivvied them to their feet, made sure they had breakfast - and still there had been no word.
'An oversight, I'm sure,' said Lieutenant Peploe, as the platoon stood in the yard drinking their morning brew. 'Let me find out what's going on from Captain Barclay.'
Yet the lieutenant had been unable to speak with him before they had moved off, so twenty minutes later, when the platoon had begun the three-mile march to the canal, Tanner was still a platoon sergeant in D Company.
'I expect the appointment had to be approved by Colonel Corner,' said Sykes, as they marched through the village. 'Maybe even Brigadier Dempsey. And there are lots of troops to move and other things to do. You know 'ow it is, Sarge.'
Tanner scowled. 'Bollocks, Stan. They've changed their mind - I know they have.'
'Course they 'aven't,' said Sykes, then added, 'but if they 'ave, at least you've got some good men in your platoon here.'
Tanner glared at him.
'I'm not saying you're right, Sarge.'
'I am, though. I can feel it in my bones.'
'And you like Mr Peploe, don't you? He seems a good sort.'
'Look, just stop talking about it, will you?' snapped Tanner.
They were now almost through the village. Ahead, Tanner could hear a grinding rumble. High above, a flight of aircraft thrummed over to disappear into thick white cloud. Soon after, they crossed a railway line, then turned onto another road where they were unexpectedly confronted by a mass of British vehicles and troops heading towards them.
'Jesus - will you look at that?' muttered Sykes. 'What's going on here?'
'Must be One Corps falling back,' said Tanner. 'They were due to do it last night.'
'Then why are we heading in the opposite direction?' said Hepworth, from behind him.
'Why do you think, Hep?' said Tanner.
'Dunno, Sarge.'
Tanner sighed. 'Use your bloody loaf and stop asking stupid questions.'
'But, Sarge—' Hepworth protested, but Tanner cut him off.
'We've got to guard the canal and make sure Jerrv doesn't get across too easily and harry those boys' retreat.' He knew he had sounded irritable but, really, he thought, Hepworth should know better by now.
The company was halted as a long column
of fifteen- hundredweight trucks trundled past, choking dust swirling into the air. The Rangers could see the soldiers through the open tarpaulins at the back of each truck Most seemed sullen, faces long, cigarettes hanging from their mouths. Several carriers whirred past too.
'You're going the wrong way!' one man shouted at them. A few of his fellows laughed but, Tanner noticed, not many.
Eventually the column disappeared in a haze of dust. Coughing and spluttering, the platoon continued its march, dropping down a long, gentle slope into the village of Oisquercq, where they rejoined the rest of the battalion. More carriers and trucks were crammed along the roads that led into and out of the village. Troops milled around. NCOs shouted. Tanner wondered which group was from B Company, but then they moved on again, past the church and onto a tree-lined path that led out of the village between a single-track railway line and the banks of the broad waterway that was the Brussels-Charleroi canal.
'Some barrier this,' said Sykes. It was at least sixty yards wide, filled with dark, murky water. Opposite, fields rose away towards a long, thick wood, which dominated the horizon overlooking the canal.
Just south of the village, by a white-painted brick station house, the company was halted again, the runner appearing soon after. 'The men to stand easy, platoon commanders and sergeants for a meeting with Captain
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