Weaver

by Baxter, Stephen

  A plane came looming out of the sky, following the line of the road, heading straight toward the column. The people slowed. Mary watched in disbelief.

  ‘I think it’s one of ours,’ said one old man.

  The plane howled as it descended.

  ‘That’s a bloody Stuka!’ somebody yelled.

  When the machine guns opened up people screamed and scattered. Mary threw herself off the road, into a field of stubble. Bullets sang off the road surface as the plane roared low overhead. Then a bomb fell with a devastating crash, making a kind of bloody splash in the crowd.

  XXI

  At noon the German column came at last into Windmill Hill. It was just a hamlet surrounded by farmland. Here Ernst heard challenges to the advance in his own language. Elements of the Thirty-fourth, who had landed at Bexhill, were already in possession.

  The column broke. While sentries patrolled, the men gathered in little groups and sat around in the dirt, eating their field rations, massaging their bare feet and swapping horror stories of the landing.

  A few men were detailed to break into the houses and to search the nearby farms. No food was found, no stocks of petrol in the barns, no horses, though some of the men emerged with souvenirs - a photograph of the King, English newspapers, a government leaflet offering advice about what to do ‘If The Invader Comes’, over which the men had a good laugh.

  A motor car was found abandoned. A couple of the men spent some minutes trying to start it, but the rotor arm had been removed. Another man turned up a bicycle, so small it must have been meant for a child. But even that had been disabled, its front wheel bent out of shape and its chain snapped. Still the man tried to ride it, with his legs folded and his big knees sticking up in the air. He kept falling off, and raised a few laughs.

  Ernst, wandering around, saw graffiti on one of the barns, painted in thick whitewash. There was a huge letter ‘V’, perhaps aping Churchill’s notorious gesture. And on another, more bluntly, the words ‘PISS OFF HUN’.

  After an hour at Windmill Hill the column formed up, reinforced with the men of the Thirty-fourth and a few more tanks. The prisoners were sent down to Bexhill, with a detachment of guards. Ernst felt in good spirits as the column set off for several more miles’ walk along the A-road towards a place called Battle - so they were assured by the spotters. All the road signs had been removed from their posts, so the ordinary troops had no real idea where they were, in green English countryside that looked much the same whichever direction you marched.

  They joined a major road at Boreham Street. Again the place was deserted, but the engineers came upon a petrol station. Adorned with metal advertising signs for Shell and Mobiloil, it was abandoned, but the engineers quickly discovered that one of the big underground tanks wasn’t empty. Soon they were siphoning off the fuel and filling up the trucks.

  But after half an hour the first of the trucks coughed, and ground to a halt. The fuel they had taken had burned to a sticky sludge and was wrecking the engine. The fuel had been doped, with sugar maybe. Cursing, the engineers had to stop all the trucks that had been refuelled at Boreham Street, and fill them again from the column’s own dwindling supply, brought from the continent. It was another delay, another hour lost, another vehicle ruined.

  As the column approached Battle the country became more difficult, with narrow valleys and low hills, a carpet of fields and hedgerows and copses - ideal cover. The men proceeded cautiously, as silently as possible. Sheep grazed calmly, watching the column pass.

  Suddenly they came under heavy fire; it just erupted all around them. Leutnant Strohmeyer got a bullet in the arm, and swore furiously. The vehicles pulled off the road, and the men dived into the ditches by the road. A hail of bottles came spinning out of the woods. They were Molotov cocktails; they splashed where they fell, mostly harmlessly.

  ‘I wonder where they got the bloody petrol,’ Breitling muttered.

  XXII

  It was late afternoon by the time Mary approached Battle itself, where the refugees had been promised a convoy of vehicles would be waiting to take them further. There were many walking wounded after the Stuka attack, people moaning as they struggled to take one step after another. Mary did her best not to think of those left behind.

  But an immense plume of flame rose up above Battle, bright in the sky of this late September Sunday. Mary heard the pop of guns and the deeper booming of artillery, and planes stitched the air. The walkers stalled. Mary heard muttering. But they could not go back; they plodded forward, for there was no choice.

  They approached a crossroads. The road signs had been dismantled, but Mary heard mutterings that this was the transverse road that ran just south of Battle, joining two places she’d never heard of, Catsfield to the west and Sedlescombe to the east. The refugee flow pushed on across the road junction.

  But just as Mary reached the junction there was a roar of some heavy engine. People screamed and scattered back out of the way. Mary was knocked to the ground in the crowd; she landed heavily.

  A tank came roaring across the junction, heading from west to east. It stopped with a grind of gears, bang in the middle of the junction. It had a square black cross on its turret. An officer, his head and shoulders protruding from the turret, stared with astonishment at the people before him.

  XXIII

  All that Sunday George picked up bits of news from the folk coming and going at the town hall.

  There was a ferocious battle for Folkestone. The defenders were mostly a New Zealander division. Far from home, they fought well, but by two in the afternoon the Germans had taken the town. But the retreating troops blew up the harbour with its wharves and cranes.

  Some German units had made it over the Channel today. But the hinge of the invasion would come overnight, when the bulk of the second echelon would try to make it across to their landing points at dawn on Monday. In advance of that a major battle was unfolding in the Channel. The RAF was strafing the flows of shipping and bombing the embarkation ports, all the while battling it out with the Luftwaffe, and trying to fend off bomber attacks on London and other inland cities. Its resources spread thin, the RAF was near collapse, so the rumours went. The Royal Navy also had split objectives, with a mandate to protect the Atlantic convoys even while the invasion was underway. But today the Home Fleet was fully deployed in the Channel. The destroyers and torpedo boats were taking on the Kriegsmarine, and were getting among the lines of barges and tugs returning from England.

  And in Hastings, the Germans were here.

  The first German troops arrived on bicycles at about six in the evening. They were soldiers, Wehrmacht as far as George knew, and they must have been scouts. They cycled casually, their rifles on their backs. They were unopposed. George stood at his post at the door of the town hall just off Queens Road, in his police uniform, helmet on, his canvas gas-mask bag slung over his shoulder. The scouts looked him over but otherwise ignored him.

  Next came more infantry. They moved cautiously, walking so they hugged the walls to either side of the street, their rifles raised. They peered at upstairs windows, evidently fearful of snipers. But some of them kicked in the front doors of houses or smashed shop windows, and went in to emerge with clocks or bits of silver. After them came a motor-cycle detachment with route signs in German, replacements for the signs long taken down, cardboard placards which they strapped to lamp-posts and nailed to doorways.

  Then followed a group of military policeman, the feldgendarmerie, with some junior Wehrmacht troopers. The MPs studied the town hall, and glared at George. Muttering in German, they picked out the building on a map. They ordered two of the soldiers to remain here, evidently on sentry duty. Then they strode on.

  The men posted here looked at George, but, seeing he had no weapon and no intention of impeding them, got on with their work. They took a hammer and nails from a canvas bag, and nailed a poster to the town hall door. When they were done they took up their own position by the door, lounging, ignori
ng George, sharing a cigarette.

  George glanced at the poster. It read,

  PROCLAMATION TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND:

  ONE. ENGLISH TERRITORY OCCUPIED BY GERMAN TROOPS

  WILL BE PLACED UNDER MILITARY GOVERNMENT.

  TWO. MILITARY COMMANDERS WILL ISSUE DECREES

  NECESSARY FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE TROOPS AND THE

  MAINTENANCE OF GENERAL LAW AND ORDER ...

  And finally

  SIX. I WARN ALL CIVILIANS THAT IF THEY UNDERTAKE ACTIVE OPERATIONS AGAINST THE GERMAN FORCES, THEY WILL BE CONDEMNED TO DEATH INEXORABLY.

  It was signed by Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, ‘Army Commander-in-Chief’. George supposed that where the Germans had up to now been a blank faceless mass, an amorphous enemy, now he would need to learn names such as this. He turned away.

  Shortly after that, a more substantial column came rolling through the town: a couple of tanks, trucks, men on foot, horse-drawn carts and weapons. The troops looked weary to George; he saw salt stains on their boots.

  At the head of the column was a rather fine car, a magnificent Bentley, silver grey. George wondered where they had liberated this beauty from - he could see why its owner hadn’t had the heart to follow orders and disable it. A Wehrmacht soldier chauffeured it for a man in a black uniform, accompanied by a woman in a similar uniform, with bright blonde hair.

  The car pulled up outside the town hall. The driver opened the car for the officer and the woman; the two sentries smartened up and saluted, military style. The man in black responded with his right arm outstretched. ‘Heil Hitler.’ It was the first time George had ever seen a Nazi salute, save in the newsreels.

  The man and his woman companion approached George. ‘Well, well,’ the woman said. ‘A British bobby! Years since I’ve seen one of these specimens. And look, Josef, he’s not afraid of you.’

  ‘Good for him,’ the man said, also in English. ‘Constable, is it?’

  George felt confused. The man’s accent was German, but the woman’s was icy upper-crust English, Noel Coward stuff. And there was something very unsettling in the way she stared at him: blonde, tall, she was extremely beautiful. He said, ‘I am Police Constable George Tanner, number—’

  The man waved him silent. ‘Yes, yes, man, I can see your wretched number on your shoulder board. I am Standartenfuhrer Trojan, and this is Unterscharfuhrer Fiveash. We are of the Schutszstaffel. That is the security service you may know as the SS. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Oh, how formal,’ the woman said.

  George blinked. ‘You’re English,’ he said to the woman.

  ‘As you are,’ said Trojan, ‘but rather brighter, as she is fighting on the right side in this unnecessary war. So tell me, this is the centre of your town government? Your mayor is here?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I shall need to speak to him. We have much to discuss, the details of the occupation, and so forth.’

  ‘I’ll call him for you—’

  ‘No.’ Trojan held up a hand. ‘Not yet. You will do for now. I think I rather like you, Constable Tanner! Now tell me - who is left in this town? It’s pretty much deserted, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’ve tried to move out the bulk of the population, yes, sir. But there are a few who couldn’t be moved - or wouldn’t. The hospital is pretty full, what with the air raids and the land battles. The nurses and some of the doctors have stayed on for that. The mayor’s essential staff are here, as are units of the police.’

  ‘Very good. But why are you here, Constable Tanner? Why aren’t you in the hills taking pot-shots at our tanks? Are you going to prove a useful collaborator?’

  Fiveash laughed.

  George stiffened. ‘I have my orders. I’m here for the benefit of the remaining civilian population. Not to collaborate.’

  Trojan nodded. ‘No doubt that will be a fine distinction to make in the coming months.’

  ‘I imagine it will, sir.’

  ‘Well, we will have orders for you to implement. A census to be taken. Identity cards to be issued. Wireless sets to be collected from the population. Soon we will be arranging the delivery of food, and so forth. We will get your pretty little town functioning again, Constable!’

  George said, ‘What about clean-up?’

  ‘Clean-up?’

  George gestured. ‘The bomb damage.’ Buildings reduced to heaps of bricks and beams were visible even from here, and the air was still stained by the smoke of the fires.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think we’re terribly interested in that. As long as you all have roofs over your heads - yes? Now’ - he studied George - ‘do you know where “Battle is, man?’

  ‘Of course I know. Sir.’

  ‘I intend to drive there later this evening.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Another hour or two should see the place secured. This Wehrmacht fellow of mine is rather an oaf, and a clumsy driver. We are in England; it would be appropriate for me to have an English bobby as my driver, don’t you think?’

  Fiveash laughed. ‘Oh, what a spiffing idea! But, mind, Constable, the Germans will insist on your driving on the right, continental style.’

  George kept his voice steady. ‘If you order me to come with you to Battle, I’ll do it, sir. But I won’t drive for you.’

  ‘Ah, that fine distinction already! Even knowing that I could have you shot in a second if you refuse my requests?’

  George said nothing; he stared back at Trojan, unblinking.

  Trojan turned away. ‘It would be a pity to waste such a promising character so quickly. And besides, I need to give these Wehrmacht chaps something to do while the SS gets the country sorted out. Very well, then - ride with me, Constable. Now then, where is that mayor of yours?’

  XXIV

  So, at about eight p.m. that Sunday evening, George found himself gazing at the back of a Wehrmacht soldier’s crisply shaven neck as he was driven in Standartenfuhrer Trojan’s Bentley at speed along the road to Battle. The mayor had to content himself with a ride in a Kubelwagen following on behind. Of course this was a not very subtle slight, but Harry Burdon had shrugged. ‘We’ll have to put up with a lot worse before this wretched business is over, George.’

  There were still refugees from the day’s earlier flight limping up the road, lumps of misery and humiliation, some of them heading back to the town. Trojan insisted that the driver stick to the right, and men, women and children had to scramble out of the way; George was only glad that they got through the journey without anyone being run down.

  At Battle more refugees lined up in the streets of the tiny old town, sitting on the pavements, hundreds of them controlled by a handful of strutting German soldiers. Remarkably a couple of officers were making their way through the crowd, asking questions, jotting down notes. Always methodical, the Germans, it seemed. The town itself showed signs of war damage - blown-out windows, the tarmac chewed up by tank tracks.

  The car pulled up outside the Abbey gatehouse. The standartenfuhrer looked around curiously. ‘So this is Battle; this is the Abbey - commissioned by William the Conqueror to commemorate his famous victory, am I correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ George said uneasily. ‘It’s now a school ... Look, Standartenfuhrer Trojan - the refugees - there are old people. Children. The ill. Some of them are wounded from the strafing. A night without shelter will be harsh. I mean, the most fragile could be taken into the Abbey.’

  ‘Ah, but I need the Abbey as a billet for my soldiers.’

  Julia grinned. ‘The Germans have a name for such people, Constable Tanner. Useless mouths!’

  George flared at her. ‘They are English, madam, as you are.’

  Julia made to snap back, but Trojan touched her arm. ‘No, my dear, let it go. And besides, we have no wish to appear callous to the British, a people with whom we have no genuine quarrel, none at all. Constable, I’ll see to it that something is done for the neediest. You may advise, if you wish.’

  ‘Thank you
, sir.’

  ‘Well, well,’ came a familiar voice from the crowd. ‘Just where I’d expect to find you, George - in harm’s way.’

  ‘Mary?’ He turned around. She was walking towards him, limping a bit, and her hair was still grimy from the raids. But she was healthy enough. George took her hands. ‘I wish I could say it’s good to see you.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, so much for fleeing; I didn’t get very far.’

  He forced a laugh. ‘You should have stayed with me and hitched a ride in a Bentley. Listen,’ he whispered, ‘never mind these posturing arseholes. The invasion’s not won yet ...’

  ‘Is that an American accent?’ Trojan approached, with Fiveash at his heel.

  George took a breath. ‘Standartenfuhrer Trojan, this is Mrs Mary Wooler. She’s a friend of mine, from Hastings. And, yes, she’s an American citizen.’

  ‘Ah. Then you have no need to hide amongst this rabble, Mrs Wooler. You are a foreign neutral, and your rights will of course be respected. Tell me, what brings you to Britain?’

  ‘Long story. I’m a historian by profession. Since war broke out I’ve been working as a correspondent.’

  He puzzled over the word. ‘You mean a reporter? For which newspaper?’

  ‘The Boston Traveller.’

  ‘Really? Then I am very happy indeed to have met you, Mrs Wooler, at this propitious moment.’

  Tired, grubby, she was wary. ‘Propitious?’

  ‘Come, please.’ He offered her his arm.

  Mary stared back. ‘I’ll come with you. But I won’t take your SS-UNIFORMED arm, Standartenfuhrer Trojan.’

  ‘Very well. But remember, I am not your enemy. Constable, would you lead the way?’

  So they walked through the gatehouse and into the grounds of the Abbey, and past the abbot’s hall and the cloister. George looked out from the terrace over the shadowed hillside where once Saxons and Normans had fought over the destiny of England; now German voices echoed there. Then George led the party back through the grounds, past the ruin of the old dormitory, to the site of the Abbey’s first church. It was long demolished, but there was a particular point on the ground that Trojan wanted to see.