The Black Jackals

by Iain Gale

  Bennett looked at him, grinning. ‘You look a proper sight, Mister Lamb, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so. A really proper nasty Nazzie.’

  Lamb laughed and moved his shoulders around in the unfamiliar jacket. ‘Thank you, Sarnt. Just doesn’t feel right. Not at all.’

  He straightened his cap, catching sight of it in the cracked mirror above the fireplace, until its peak was over his eyes. His temporary demotion in rank amused him. He handed his own uniform to Smart with instructions to stow it in his pack. ‘Come on then. Let’s show the others before they take us for the real thing and shoot us.’

  With Bennett’s men following on they walked through the ruined dining room and into the yard, where the remainder of his small command did a double take.

  Tapley sniggered. ‘Blimey, sir. You don’t ’alf make a good Jerry.’

  Bennett growled: ‘That’s enough now.’

  ‘But, Sarge, you can see as well as me . . .’

  ‘You heard me. As you were.’

  Lamb spoke. ‘Right. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re taking that truck there and we’re going to drive hell for leather towards the Somme. You lot are going to sit in the back and keep very, very quiet and look after our French guest, and Sarnt Bennett, Stubbs and I will sit in the cab and pretend to be Germans. Just pray that we don’t get caught. Corporal Mays, see what’s in the back of the truck.’

  Mays pulled up the tarpaulin covering the wooden rear transport section of the Opel Blitz, and gasped. ‘Blimey, sir. I think you’d better come and have a dekko at this.’

  Lamb walked across to the truck and peered in. Inside lay four German machine guns, MG34s, attached to bipods for light use, and with them several unopened boxes of drum ammunition. Lamb whistled. ‘Quite a catch. They should make nice present for our chaps on the Somme. They can kill the Jerries with their own guns. Stack them in the centre of the truck and arrange yourselves around them. Might be a bit of a squash, but I promise I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  He knew it was not a promise he was likely to keep. Their new acquisition had changed his mind from the route he had planned to take to the sea and by foot across the estuary flats. The quickest route to the Somme was obvious: straight down the D928 to Canchy and then on to Abbeville. Then across the Authie and on to the Somme. But Lamb knew that, just as before, to take the obvious route would mean encountering German units en route. The only option, once again, was to go across country.

  He opened out his map on the bonnet of the German truck and called over Bennett, Mays and Valentine. ‘Right. This is where we should go.’ He moved his finger down the long straight road to the south. ‘At least it’s where we would go if there weren’t so many Jerries in the way.’ He moved his finger to the left. ‘And this is where we’re going to go.’ He traced his finger down the line of a smaller road. The men peered at the map. It was not hard to see the lack of settlements as it made its way through open countryside and woodland. ‘There are fewer towns along there, and if we’re lucky there won’t be any roadblocks. That’s what we want to avoid at all costs. Being stopped. My German’s not worth a shilling.’

  Mays said, ‘Sir, Corporal Valentine speaks German.’

  Valentine scowled at him, furious at having a confidence betrayed.

  Lamb frowned. ‘Do you, Valentine? Do you speak German? You haven’t mentioned it before.’

  Valentine smiled in that particular, insincere way of his. ‘Well, I do have a smattering, sir. Not much. Schoolboy really.’

  ‘Not much is ten times better than mine, Corporal.’

  He turned to Stubbs. ‘Right, get out of that Jerry uniform and give it to the corporal here. You’re changing places.’ He looked back to Valentine. ‘We’ll have you up with the Sarnt and me. You’re travelling in the cab, Valentine.’

  ‘Only too happy to help, sir.’

  Lamb wondered why Valentine hadn’t mentioned his ability before, and also how Mays had come to learn about it. He was sure there could be nothing sinister about it, but all the same Valentine was a rum sort and if he had abandoned his roots, as it appeared he had in refusing to accept the responsibility of a commission, then who knew what else he might betray? He would tackle Mays about it when they next had a chance to talk.

  Bennett interrupted his thoughts. ‘So are we planning to drive in daylight, sir?’

  Lamb nodded. ‘Absolutely. We’ve got to bluff it out. Time is everything. Besides, I’m not worried about being spotted from the skies. We look like the real thing from above now. Whoever we might fail to fool will be on the ground.’

  Lamb climbed up into the cab and eased himself into the driver’s seat. It felt strange to be sitting on the left of the vehicle, and he took a moment or two to acquaint himself with the controls. The German machine felt very different to the Bedford. For one thing it was a fraction higher and longer, although the driver’s seat was ranged lower. But the main thing he noticed was the gears. There were five of them, plus reverse. The speedometer, too, extended over a different range. Of course it was in kilometres, but even working that out Lamb could see that it was set to gauge a good fifteen kilometres an hour more than the maximum speed of the British truck. It was no great surprise. Anyone with a modicum of mechanical experience knew how good German engineering was. Perhaps, he thought, that’s partly how they had managed to come so far into France in so short a time. He pressed the starter button and the machine kicked into life, over-revving as he pushed on the accelerator. He turned to Bennett. ‘I should hold on, Sarnt, if I were you. It might be a bit of a bumpy ride.’

  He edged out of the yard and onto the road, past the body of the German driver, and into the village street.

  He felt as uncomfortable as he had ever been. He was wearing an enemy uniform and driving an enemy vehicle in enemy territory. And he was only too aware that if they were captured he for one would be shot out of hand as a spy. But he told himself again that when he had started off on this mission he had suspected it was going to land him in challenging situations. As far as he was aware he was the only man with any chance of getting word to General Fortune that if he was forced to retreat the only way home would be from the port of Le Havre. And it occurred to Lamb that, if that did prove to be the case – if Fortune were pushed back by the might of the German advance – then for the entire 51st Division, all 10,000 men, he was probably now the only hope.

  Chapter 13

  Bennett was at the wheel again and the truck was moving smoothly. Lamb had laid the map out in front of him, spread across the shallow dashboard, and was plotting their course for the umpteenth time. How, he wondered, could he possibly have any idea where the enemy might be? He presumed they would have occupied and garrisoned all of the larger towns they had overrun in the lightning advance to Abbeville, so those would be out of the question as points on their route. But tanks were cross-country vehicles. They might be anywhere, ready to lob just one shell at their truck and send them all to oblivion.

  Lamb’s dread of tanks preyed on his mind and he could not expunge the image of the poor, half-mad infantryman in Arras who had seen his friend crushed to death in agony, beneath the tracks of a Panzer. Trying to divert himself, he traced their route in the truck with his fingernail across the map.

  As he was studying the possible alternative roads, of which there were precious few, Valentine began to hum. It was not the song itself that irritated Lamb. ‘Where or when’ really wasn’t half bad. In fact he had bought the recording from the local music shop in Tonbridge shortly before embarking for France. Nor was it the tunefulness of Valentine’s version. In fact, annoyingly, Valentine was pitch perfect. No, thought Lamb, it was more the way in which he hummed it, as if he wanted to keep it to himself, and the fact that he did so over and over again. Lamb wondered that he had never noticed it before, and whether the others had been aware of it. Or perhaps, he thought, it was something Valentine had just started to do merely to irritate him, in what seemed increasingly to be a personal v
endetta. Whatever the reason, in the past few hours in which the two of them and Bennett had been sitting together crammed into the cab of the Opel, Valentine’s presence had really begun to annoy Lamb. It was the very fact that his self-control should be compromised by such a man which irked him more than anything. The corporal had not yet had to use his German and had not said a word. But, still, he had somehow got under Lamb’s skin. Now he began to hum again.

  Lamb snapped, ‘For Christ’s sake, shut up, Valentine. If we’ve heard that bloody tune once in the last hour we’ve heard it ten times. Don’t you know anything else? Or, better still, why don’t you hum nothing at all?’

  Valentine looked at him and smiled like a crestfallen schoolboy told off by a favourite master. ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir. I had no idea it was annoying you so much. I’ll stop then, shall I?’

  Lamb said nothing and had to exercise self-control to stop himself wringing the man’s neck. Bennett saw it. ‘That’s right, Valentine. You just change your tune. That’ll suit us all, sir, won’t it?’

  Lamb smiled at the joke and, still saying nothing, stared at the map, unable now, despite the fact that Valentine had stopped, to get the song out of his own head.

  ‘. . . but who knows where or when? . . .’

  At least his hunch had been right. The road, which was really no more than a tiny rural track to the east of the D12, had hardly passed through any built-up areas. Now, though, they were nearing the one village that they could not avoid, and to his amusement he realised that it bore the name of Crécy en Ponthieu. He was wondering whether any of the others might spot its significance when Valentine, whom he had been aware was also looking at the map, spoke.

  ‘It’s really terribly clever of you, sir.’

  ‘Corporal?’

  ‘Well, to take us on such a very clever route. To give us all another history lesson.’

  Lamb smiled. Trust Valentine to have noticed it. He responded grudgingly, ‘Well done. I was wondering who’d be the first to spot it.’

  Bennett looked puzzled. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but can I ask what you’re talking about?’

  ‘Well, Sarnt, the corporal here has spotted that the only village on our route is a place called Crécy. Just as we found ourselves at Waterloo, we’ve stumbled across another battlefield. We beat the French here too, in 1346.’

  Valentine stared straight ahead and declaimed in Shakespearean tones: ‘The English archers stepped forth one pace and let fly their arrows, so wholly and so thick that it seemed snow.’ He turned to Lamb. ‘Sorry, sir, that’s Froissart. John Froissart. The Chronicles.’

  ‘Yes, Corporal. I am aware of the book. Very poetic.’ He looked back at the map. ‘If you really want to know, I didn’t intend to bring you here. It was pure fluke.’

  They were nearing the town now, and on either side of the road the countryside was lush grassland. To their left Lamb spotted a small wooden notice. ‘There you are. We’re on the battlefield now.’

  Bennett looked around as he drove. ‘Hardly seems possible, sir, does it? What was it then, five hundred years ago?’

  ‘Six hundred, Sergeant,’ Valentine corrected him.

  ‘Yes, six hundred years, near as dammit.’ Lamb scratched at an itch on his leg, presumably from the fabric of the German trousers. ‘I wonder if people will come here after we’ve gone and say the same about us.’

  Valentine said, ‘Well, we’re not actually fighting here, sir, are we?’

  At that moment there was an all-too-familiar noise in the sky above them and a vibration that shook the truck, almost making Bennett swerve. Then, seconds later and 200 yards away to their right and it seemed almost directly overhead, three huge aircraft came in low over the fields.

  In his surprise, Bennett barely managed to hold the truck steady and swore as he wrenched the wheel. ‘Jesus Christ. Bloody hell. Sorry, sir.’ He cast a glance at the massive grey shapes, and saw the double black crosses on the fuselage. ‘They’re bloody Jerry.’

  They slowed down and Lamb watched as the three planes, snub-nosed ME110 fighter-bombers, dipped below the tree line off to their right and reached the ground. He looked at the map, searching for the road and a relevant sign. ‘Must be an airstrip.’

  ‘A Jerry airstrip?’

  ‘Well, it is now.’ He was pointing to the sign on the map. ‘Up till a few days ago it was French.’

  Lamb could hardly believe it. They had come this far, and despite all his best efforts to take the most obscure of routes they had stumbled into a hotbed of enemy activity. He marvelled at the efficiency of the Germans. They could not have been here for more than a few days, yet already they had managed to locate and take over an Allied airfield and were apparently flying bombing raids out of it. He also realised that it was likely that around the next bend they would run slap bang into a Luftwaffe roadblock.

  He turned to Bennett. ‘Kill the engine.’

  The sergeant stopped the truck and pulled up at the roadside. ‘What do we do now, sir?’

  Lamb did not have a straight answer. They had two options. They could carry on regardless and push through, by force or guile, any enemy roadblock in the town. Or, he thought, they could stop here and use the captured machine guns to wreak as much havoc as possible on the airfield. Choose the first option and he would be carrying out his orders and getting the message to Fortune. If he managed to do that in time and if he could find the general, and if Colonel ‘R’ had been genuine, then perhaps, just perhaps, his action might save thousands of British soldiers from death or captivity.

  Choose the second way, though, and Lamb knew that, even by knocking out one or two of the bombers and disrupting the base, they would definitely have a direct effect upon the immediate course of the battle raging either side of them in the north and the south, and there was no doubt that their action would save the lives of their comrades in both sectors. It was a terrible dilemma, and for some minutes Lamb sat silent, saying nothing. Even though his faith in the colonel had already provoked him into a court-martial offence and brought him here, endangering the lives of his men, it was hard not to see the absolute logic now of using their new-found resources in direct action. Aside from that, his conscience was still aching from having abandoned Petrie and the men at the canal. He wondered what their fate had been, and part of him felt that he must atone for his actions. He looked at Bennett and saw from his expression that he understood.

  However, it was Valentine who finally goaded him into action. ‘Funny, sir, isn’t it? If we hadn’t come here to find your battlefield, we wouldn’t be in such a pickle. Do you think history’s trying to tell us something?’

  Lamb, finally snapping, turned on him. ‘Shut up, Valentine. I didn’t bring us here to find a bloody battlefield. I came here on orders. Do you think this is easy?’

  But he knew that, for all his insolence, the corporal had hit on something like the truth. If they ignored their circumstances they would be betraying not only their comrades, cowering in their front-line trenches under bombs delivered by these planes, but betraying an entire tradition of British military might that stretched back to the bowmen who had stood their ground on these very fields six hundred years ago. He turned to Bennett. ‘We’ve got to do something here. You know that, don’t you? We’ve got to stop those bloody bombers taking off again. It’s our duty.’

  Bennett smiled, ‘Yes, sir. Anyway I’d had enough of running away for the moment.’

  Valentine shook his head, unable to believe that Lamb wanted to attack a German base. Lamb reconnoitred the road around them.

  Aside from the row of trees alongside which they were now parked, it offered little if any cover. Clearly the entrance to the airfield must be no more than a few hundred yards down the road and off to the right. He thought fast. Apart from the four MG34s in the back of the truck and the mortar, their chief weapon was surprise, and if they were to have any reasonable effect, and also have any chance of getting out alive, they would have to use it to the
full.

  He turned to Valentine. ‘Stay here, and if anyone comes up, use your German. I’m going into the back.’

  Lamb got out of the cab and walked round to the rear of the truck, then, lifting the cover, he climbed inside. Fourteen pairs of eyes looked at him anxiously.

  ‘Look, this is what’s happening. That noise you heard was Jerry bombers. ME110s. There’s a squadron of them, perhaps more, in an airfield over to the right, and I mean to destroy them.’

  He let it sink in. ‘Corporal Mays, I want two of those Jerry guns, three if you can do it, set up pointing out of the tailgate. Two-man crews on each of them. Perkins, Butterworth, Hughes and Tapley, you’ll do. And make sure you have plenty of ammo to hand. You others can help feed them. We’re going to bluff our way into the base. Then wait till I give the word, and when I do, two of you lift the flap at the back and let them have it. Stubbs, how many mortar bombs have we left?’

  ‘Three, sir.’

  ‘Right. When the balloon goes up, you and Parry stay in the back half of the truck near the cab. Get rid of that tarp and use your bombs. And make them count, Stubbs. Right, everyone got it?’

  They all nodded, and Lamb looked at Madeleine. Her eyes were wide and bright – not, as he had expected, with fear, but with real excitement. He had thought to leave her in cover at the roadside, but seeing her he realised at once that if anything went wrong this would be the best place for her, with the men and in the thick of it. A good enough place for anyone to die. He started to drop the flap and go back to the cab, but then quickly he turned back. ‘Smart, give me your bayonet.’