The Black Jackals

by Iain Gale

  Then in the sky, above the cloud, he heard engines: enemy bombers off to destroy the port and make escape impossible. What, he wondered was the point of Arkforce even trying to establish a line around Le Havre if the Germans could simply block the harbour with bombed vessels? He shook his head.

  Valentine saw it. ‘Problem, sir?’

  ‘No, Valentine, not really. I was just contemplating the folly of war.’

  ‘Really, sir? I often do that. Helps pass the time.’

  ‘You think too much, Valentine.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try not to do that. Force of habit.’

  ‘Force of habit?’

  ‘University, sir. I was reading philosophy when the war broke out.’

  Lamb perked up. ‘Really? Oxford or Cambridge?’

  ‘Neither, actually. Not smart enough. Not like you, sir. I went to Reading.’

  ‘I’m not smart, Valentine.’

  ‘But you are an officer, sir. And you did go to Oxford and public school.’ He gave that annoying little smile. ‘You must be smart.’

  Lamb ignored him. ‘We’re almost there, I think. All right, men, prepare to de-bus.’

  The vehicle crossed a bridge at the harbour mouth, drove on for a few yards and stopped. Lamb leaped down from the tailgate, followed by the others. They were in the town square, a pretty place with tall nineteenth-century houses and a few cafés. Apart from British and French soldiers and military vehicles it was now quite deserted.

  In a corner of the square a group was gathering and Lamb could see what looked like a commanding officer issuing officers to his subordinates. He walked over. The CO was standing with his back to Lamb, who coughed, ‘Lieutenant Peter Lamb, sir, reporting to Arkforce with . . .’

  The officer turned, and Lamb stopped in mid-sentence as he found himself looking into the eyes of Captain Campbell.

  ‘Lieutenant Lamb. What a very pleasant surprise. I had heard that you were being sent to us with your merry band. What have you been up to since last we met? Assaulted any more senior officers? Stolen any more trucks? Deserted your post again?’

  Brigadier Stanley-Clarke, whom Lamb now saw standing next to Campbell, looked at the captain. ‘I say, steady on Campbell. What on earth d’you mean? Lieutenant Lamb is here on the recommendation of General Fortune himself. He’s an asset, Campbell. You can’t go slandering a fellow officer.’

  ‘An asset, sir? An ass, more like. And as for slander, do you know, sir, what this fellow officer did to me? He attacked me, sir. Tied me up and then deserted with his men and stole one of our vehicles. And now he has the temerity to try and escape back to England. Brigadier, I would be very much obliged if you would have this officer and his men placed under arrest immediately pending a field court martial and sentencing.’

  Stanley-Clarke looked on in amazement. ‘If that’s what you say happened, Campbell, I’ll have to take your word for it. I don’t know this man, even though he claims to have been sent by General Fortune. But I do know you, Campbell and I’ve no cause to doubt you. Very well.’ He nodded to two redcaps who were standing beside a lorry and came running across. Before Lamb knew it they were holding his arms in a vice-like grip. The brigadier looked at Lamb. ‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I have no idea whose story is correct, but Captain Campbell is the senior officer and for that reason I shall have to place you and your men under arrest. Where are they?’

  Campbell had already seen to that, and a dozen of his men were standing, their rifles levelled around the newly disembarked company. He turned to the military police sergeant. ‘Sarnt, put this man in the town gaol with as many of those men as you can fit in. NCOs first. Place a guard on the door. He’s extremely dangerous. Oh, and make sure you disarm them all first.’

  He turned to Lamb. ‘I’ll deal with you as soon as we get organised here. But you know what to expect, Lamb, don’t you? “Shot at dawn” is hardly the end to a glittering military career that you’d been expecting, I suppose. Take him away.’

  Lamb was marched towards the others. Bennett tried to yell something to him but he could not hear. The gaol was across the square inside the town hall. They walked up the steps and into the hall, which as usual had been requisitioned as Brigade HQ. As one of the redcaps asked a clerk how to get to the gaol and where the keys could be found, an officer came crashing through the doors behind them. ‘Where’s the brigadier?’

  Someone, a staff officer, answered, ‘In the square with his O group. Why?’

  ‘The Division’s been cut off. Jerry’s broken through at Rouen and got up to the coast at St Pierre-en-Port. Your job’s a bit useless, old man. The general’s orders are that the brigadier should make his own arrangements now for a defensive line and try to save what he can of you lot.’

  ‘Are you serious? We’ve only just got here.’

  ‘Well, you’d better jolly well get out of here before you all end up in the bag. St Pierre’s only six miles away. The general says you might want to head for Goderville. There are some good old French positions down there.’

  With that the man turned and rushed out into the square.

  The redcap, apparently oblivious to the revelation that had just occurred, turned back to Lamb and the clerk. He was holding a bunch of keys. ‘Bloke says there are six cells, Bert. Reckons might be enough for three dozen of them. That should do it. Sorry, sir, we’ll have to put you in with some of the men. This way, sir.’

  They walked through the hall, which by now was in a frenzy. So the Germans had broken through and were likely to be closing in on Fécamp before long, and he and his men were about to be shut up in some stinking prison. And what would he do there, he wondered, except wait for the inevitable, and then God knew how many years in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Still, he thought, it was better than being shot on Campbell’s orders. And grotesquely, something inside him began to hope that the Germans would arrive sooner than Campbell was able to hold his kangaroo court. Either way, he was finished.

  * * *

  Kessler moved fast across the plain, the command tank flattening all in its path.

  He might have been beaten to the sea and to Abbeville but he was damned if he was not going to take away some measure of glory from this campaign. He was going to take the town of Fécamp and cut the British off from the sea. He shouted down into the tank from his position up in the commander’s hatch. ‘Keep it up, Hans. Not far now. There’s no one out there. No one.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ve gone already, sir.’

  ‘Nonsense. These are Scottish troops, Hans. Men in skirts. They stay and fight. My father fought them in the last war. They’re waiting for us, somewhere.’

  The air had become noticeably cooler now against his face atop the tank, and the fields seemed to shrink against the horizon. Then he saw it, stretching out ahead of him – a seemingly endless expanse of water. The channel. He yelled down into the tank: ‘I can see it. I can see the sea.’

  On either side of him now the white cliffs came into view. They had reached the coast of France. The ground dipped down below them and they began to descend towards the water, until the beach came into sight. ‘Take her down to the water’s edge, Hans. I want to put my boots in the ocean. We’ve done it. We’ve surrounded them. They’re finished.’

  Chapter 19

  The prison in the town hall of Fécamp had been built shortly after the French Revolution, and the fact that it housed no less than six cells was due largely to the anticipation of the new Napoleonic administration that there would be other Royalist revolts to put down and more heads to lop. For that surprising spaciousness Lamb was now thankful as he woke, stiff and sore, on the stone floor of his cell. At least they were not too tightly packed. Six men to a cell, to be precise. It was not the most salubrious of places at the best of times, but now, neglected by its absent gaolers, some of whom had joined the ranks of the army while others had either moved to Rouen or simply joined the columns of refugees, it was among the filthiest places Lamb had ever had the m
isfortune to spend the night. The slop pails were still full of excrement from the last prisoners before they had been moved to Rouen, and the place stank of long-dried urine.

  He turned to Bennett. ‘I’m truly sorry, Sarnt. I never meant to get you all into this mess. I’m sure that when General Fortune finds out about this he’ll get us out.’

  Bennett shook his head and managed a smile. ‘Don’t worry, Mister Lamb, sir. I know, we all do, that you were only trying your best. We knew that that message had to get through, and the main thing is that you did it. And you got us this far when others have ended up in the bag. I was talking to a bloke in the Norfolks who’d heard that the Jerries had killed eighty of his mob up north – just shot them against a wall in cold blood. And there’s thousands of others been taken prisoner up north by Dunkirk and Calais that didn’t get off last week. So I reckon we should be thankful to you, sir, for keeping us alive and out of Jerry’s hands.’

  ‘Thank you, Sarnt. I really appreciate that, although I don’t know how long we’ll stay out of German hands if we have to remain in here.’

  Another voice spoke, in a familiar drawl. ‘Of course I always suspected I’d end my days in a French prison. Just knew it, somehow.’

  Mays groaned. ‘Oh give it a rest, Valentine. Or I’ll sock you one.’

  Bennett growled at them. ‘That’s enough, Corporal. Both of you. But he’s right. Stop whingeing, Valentine. We’re all in the same fix, the lieutenant here included.’

  Lamb said nothing and stared at the floor. They were cut off from the others, from the Division and from Madeleine. German tanks were on the banks of the Durdent, and where was he? Rotting in a stinking French gaol. But how, he wondered, could he have done it any differently? He had grasped the opportunities as they arose and managed to get the message through to Fortune. Yet this was his reward. Chiefly he felt sorry for his men. Their options were between trial for mutiny and capture by the enemy. And he wondered what the new additions to his command would make of him now, having spent their first night under Lamb in the cells. He was pondering their fate when there was a commotion outside. Lamb managed to smile. ‘Breakfast, I expect, lads.’

  But it was not breakfast. A tall military policeman opened the door to Lamb’s cell. ‘Someone to see you, sir.’

  Lamb stood and walked towards the door. A small, rotund figure entered in the uniform of a British staff officer, and Lamb did not at first recognise him. But then he spoke and Lamb remembered: remembered a farmhouse on a battlefield, and several glasses of good claret. Dewy Meadows blinked in the half light of the early morning cell and recoiled at the stench, before he focused on Lamb. ‘I say. It is you. Extraordinary.’

  ‘Brigadier, what are you doing here, sir?’

  ‘Funny thing, really. Drove west to find Corps HQ and ended up here. Got put in charge of defaulters. Saw your name on the list and I said to myself, Dewy, old boy, you know that name. That chap’s no jailbird. Decent cove. Knows his wine. Had dinner with him in Belgium. Damn good conversation. Damned good claret too. Good food, as I remember. My driver cooked it. What’s his name? Damned good cook. Damned bad driver. That’s largely why I ended up here. Must have taken a wrong turning. Anyway. He went west a little time back. Stukas. Damn shame really. Damned good cook. Damned awful driver.’

  Lamb interrupted the flow of memories. ‘Sorry, sir, but if you’re in charge here, is there any way you can get us out? We’d rather like to get back to the fighting.’

  Meadows smiled at him. ‘Course you would, Lamb. Course you would. Chap like you – ought to be hitting the Boche for six instead of rotting in here. What on earth are you doing in here, anyway? Papers said something about stealing a truck. Was that you? An officer and a gentleman?’

  ‘I did have to requisition one, sir, to get down here with an important message.’

  ‘Message? Ah yes, of course. I gave you that message, didn’t I? Did you get it through?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Delivered by hand to the General Staff.’

  ‘Splendid, splendid. Of course you’d need a truck for that, wouldn’t you? Must be some sort of misunderstanding. Someone’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’ll be it. The wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘Stealin’ a truck? Won’t do. Not at all. Nonsense. And just look at this place. Good Lord, what a stench. Can’t have chap like you locked up in here. I say, you seem to have a few other chaps in there. All with you?’

  ‘Yes, sir, these are my men. And the others too. I command a company now.’

  ‘Do you, by Jove? You see I told you you were no jailbird. Been promoted. I think it’s high time we got you out of here.’ He turned and shouted into the corridor: ‘Sarnt!’

  The redcap came running. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Have this man released immediately. And all his men. There’s been some sort of balls-up. Wrong man.’

  The sergeant stared at him. ‘But, sir, sorry, sir. Captain Campbell said . . . And Brigadier Stanley-Clarke . . .’

  ‘Arthur Stanley-Clarke? I was fighting the Boers when he was still at school. See to it, man. Sharpish. That’s an order. And find his men their weapons.’

  Lamb smiled at Meadows. ‘Thank you, sir. I’m in your debt. You won’t regret it.’

  ‘I certainly hope not. I don’t know what the devil you did to that man Campbell, but he’s absolutely furious. Was it his truck you borrowed to get my message through? Keeps saying if the army doesn’t shoot you he damn well will.’ He rocked with laughter. ‘Bit of a joker, if you ask me. Shoot a fellow officer? What can you have done to him?’

  ‘If only you knew, sir.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said I wish I knew, sir. By the way, is he still here?’

  ‘No. Met him as he was leaving. Sent down the line to the south with part of “Arkforce”. Damned funny name for a brigade. Hate this modern stuff. Not like the old army.’

  ‘No, sir. Not at all like the old army.’

  With the Brigadier leading the way, Lamb led his men out of his cell and past the others as they were opened in turn by the MPs, who were issuing the men with their rifles. The sergeant returned his two pistols, the Luger and the Enfield, to Lamb. Upstairs in the town hall the air was cool and fresh. The clerks had gone now, and with them all semblance of an HQ. All that was left was the detritus of an army: a few unfilled forms, a scattering of discarded webbing, empty cigarette packets, magazines, unwashed plates and cutlery lay on the requisitioned furniture of the town hall, scattered around in unlikely positions, where the staff had left it in their hurry to escape the German advance.

  Lamb turned to Meadows. ‘Hadn’t we better get a move on, sir? The Germans must almost be here.’

  ‘Yes, I dare say you’re right. Probably a good idea.’ He walked across to the doors and then turned back. ‘Good luck, Lieutenant. Good to have you back.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. And thank you for getting me out of there. If ever I can return the favour . . .’

  Meadows nodded, saluted and left the building with another officer who had been waiting for him by the door.

  Lamb found Bennett. ‘Right. That was a close call. We need to get moving, fast, or we’ll be going straight back into another prison.’

  With his company following close behind, Lamb walked down the steps of the town hall and found himself out again on the streets of the town. He watched as the brigadier’s staff car rounded a corner of the square and drove out of sight, and then took stock. Fécamp was now far from the bustling town it had been the previous day. A single British truck, its bonnet left open, stood on the opposite side of the square, which like the inside of the town hall was littered with the army’s rubbish. Of any other British soldiers there was no evidence. As they stood there the two MPs came out of the town hall and brushed past Lamb.

  ‘That’s us, sir. We’re finished here. We’ve got a lift to Le Havre. That’s where the Brigade’s making for now, sir: a line between Octeville and C
ontreville. You’d be best getting out too, sir. Jerry’ll be here any minute. Last we heard he was at the sea, four miles away.’

  ‘Thank you, Sarnt. I’ll take your advice.’

  The policemen ran down the street and vanished from view. Lamb turned to the men behind him. ‘We’d better get moving. Stay together. Any sign of the enemy, take cover. We’re heading for Le Havre.’

  No sooner had he said the words than he knew them to be wrong. Why, he wondered, should he be heading for Le Havre? What earthly good would it do now? As part of Arkforce he had had specific orders, to help hold the line and defend the port to allow the Division to get away. But now that the Germans had cut them off from the Division, what point was there in holding Le Havre? If the Division, and Madeleine with them, were to escape capture and get to England, then their only hope would surely be further up the coast, back the way they had come. He knew that Fortune would have worked that one out by now. But to get there? To get back to the Division would now mean having to cut through the German lines, and that was not something he could ask his men to do. If there was a hope of getting Bennett and the others off from Le Havre, surely he should leave Fortune and his men to fend for themselves and get himself and what was left of his platoon to the port? But then there was Madeleine. While Lamb was wrestling with the problem he did not notice anything else.

  Valentine spoke. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, and not wishing to speak out of turn . . .’

  Lamb turned to him. ‘Valentine, you always speak out of turn. What do you want?’