The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  One second later and something took the top off the breakwater, blowing the prop behind Mickey into a thousand pieces. A huge jagged splinter of wood embedded itself in the sand beside him, missing his leg by inches. Now he had to move, so searching desperately for cover further up the beach – since there was no going back, only up the beach and on – Mickey saw the burning wreck of an amphibious tank lying on its side. Keeping as low as he could he pelted forward, in full military gear, jumping the bodies of the fallen, the dead, the dying and the terribly injured, until he was ten feet or so from the burning tank. Hurling himself at it, as if doing the long jump, he just made it to the lee side of the smouldering vehicle as the very ground upon which he had been running a second earlier erupted in a huge explosion, filling the air with sand, stones and the remains of soldiers. Minutes later Mickey was another thirty feet up the beach, taking cover this time behind a huge length of severed drainage pipe that had been hurled down the slope by the force of some other enormous explosion. Two other soldiers joined him, both British, one of them with a face almost totally covered with blood.

  ‘You OK?’ Mickey screamed at him. ‘You got hit?’

  The soldier shook his head and wiped the blood from his face with the sleeve of his torn uniform.

  ‘Some other poor sod’s!’ he yelled back. ‘Where to now?’

  Mickey, who was lying on his back against the pipe, turned to his left and pointed towards a headland some two hundred yards to the east.

  ‘Machine gun nest at the top of that! Got everything covered from here to the same distance the other side! If we could get there—’

  He was cut off by a series of huge explosions, seemingly no further away than the other side of the huge pipe which was affording them shelter. The shock of the blasts was so great it threw the three men bodily ten feet or more from the pipe. At once they turned on to their bellies and snake-crawled their way back to its shelter.

  ‘I’m going to try and make it to those rocks there!’ Mickey pointed to his intended destination, an outcrop of scaleable rocks that lay behind the German machine gun. ‘If any of us can get there and up those rocks, we could surprise the gunners and take the bastards out! You with me?’

  Both the soldiers nodded, checking on where they were to go.

  ‘Right! I’m with you!’ one of them shouted. ‘Said to my mate here – this ain’t no place for no bloody picnic!’

  After what seemed like half a day but was in fact only a matter of ten minutes Mickey found himself still unscathed and in one piece behind a huge rock. Another minute or so later one of his companions threw himself down in the sand beside him.

  ‘Where’s your chum?’ Mickey yelled.

  ‘Copped it! Cut down by the machine gun! Nearly bloody made it!’

  ‘All the more reason to get the bastards!’

  Mickey looked upwards. Most of the climb would be protected by the pile of rocks that had formed against the finger of land pointing out to sea. As long as no one was on lookout above, their climb would be slow but a simple one, a matter of keeping round the back of each rock and working their way carefully ever higher. Twenty minutes later they were at the very top of the rock pile, leaving only a stretch of ten to twelve feet of unguarded land to cross to another handily placed lump of rock positioned in the middle of the path that led to the end of the cliff and the enemy machine gun nest.

  ‘Take a breather, mate,’ Mickey whispered in his companion’s ear, pointing to the rock. ‘Then on a count of five, leg it to that rock! I’ll cover you!’

  They both made it, finding on arrival that the rock was not one lump but three, with a cleft in the middle large enough to house them both in perfect and invisible safety, which was just as well, since unbeknown to them not a hundred yards away in a well-prepared dugout ten feet below the level at which they were sheltering was one of the many rabbit-hole tactical sub-headquarters of the defending German regiment.

  ‘I could do with a smoke,’ his companion whispered in Mickey’s ear.

  ‘I could do with several,’ Mickey replied with a grin. ‘How many in a nest usually? Three, isn’t it?’

  One to load, one to fire, one to take over if one of you’s hit.

  They had two grenades between them, and enough rounds to take out half a dozen nests, were they to have the chance. But no amount of ammunition would be sufficient for their survival if there was a look-out posted. Between the rocks and the nest there was nothing but low-lying scrub.

  ‘Bellies,’ Mickey whispered. ‘Snakes right up to near as we can get. Then the grenades. Then open fire if still necessary. Got it?’

  ‘Roger.’

  A hundred yards away a land periscope was trained on the three rocks.

  ‘There is no sign of anyone, sir,’ the watcher reported, eyes still fixed on the target.

  ‘I swore I saw someone,’ his officer replied. ‘As the smoke was clearing I swear I saw someone disappearing into those rocks.’

  ‘Still no sign of movement, sir.’

  The officer picked up his field telephone and cranked it one last time, but it was as dead as before, as dead as the two soldiers lying at his feet and the three who had failed to return from an earlier sortie.

  ‘Looks like it’s going to be you and me, Corporal,’ the officer said, taking a cigarette out of his inside pocket and lighting it with a gold lighter. ‘How much ammunition do you have?’

  ‘About a dozen rounds, sir.’

  The officer, cigarette clenched between his teeth, checked his Lüger.

  ‘I have precisely four. Now.’ He took a deep draw on his smoke, leaving the cigarette where it was in his mouth, allowing the wreaths of smoke to escape down his nose. ‘Now this is what we shall do. If I’m right, if anyone is hiding out up there, their objective will be our gun position number one. If so, they will not be looking in our direction. Their objective will be to take out our gun. We could leave it to the gunners, of course.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But that would hardly be right.’ The officer smiled. ‘And since we have lost all communication it is only right and proper we go to their defence. So I suggest we quietly make our way forwards to our target – those rocks – and take a damn’ good look for ourselves.’

  ‘Sir!’ the observer interrupted with a hiss. ‘You were right! Two of them, sir!’

  ‘Let me see.’

  The officer took a look for himself and saw two British soldiers slowly emerging from the cleft in the rocks, leaning on the back of the huge stones but facing away from them, as if preparatory to making their move.

  ‘Dammit,’ the officer whispered. ‘Your rifle – quickly! Or we shall be too late!’

  The observer had his rifle now, cocked, aimed, and ready.

  ‘In your own time,’ the officer said.

  The observer fired once. One of the soldiers dropped immediately like a stone as the bullet entered the back of his head.

  The second soldier did not even look round. One look would mean his life, so instead he ran round the rocks until he had put them between him and the sniper. Then he kept on running, not caring now whether the machine gunners heard or saw him. He was going to take them out whatever happened.

  ‘Out!’ the officer ordered. ‘Quick as you can!’

  The two Germans scrambled out of their hideout and gave chase, guns at the ready. But Corporal Mickey Todd had more than an adequate head start.

  He was ten yards from the gunners’ nest with the grenade in his hand and the enemy didn’t even know he was there. They were busy non-stop firing, the heavy machine gun clattering its racket out full pelt, drowning out the sound of any approach, helped no little by the general battle thunder of the continuing invasion and now by the scream of aircraft overhead.

  They probably were not even aware of the noise of the exploding grenade as it landed right where it should, right in the bull’s-eye, right in the middle of the nest, blowing the three German soldiers apart as if they were rag dolls.
In a second Mickey was on one knee, sub-machine gun cocked and firing, just in case any of the gunners had survived. Then he was on his feet, running towards the nest to make doubly sure, and once he had seen they were all well and truly dead he turned and ran back, intending to return the way he had come, down the rock pile and back on to the beach – until he saw out of the pale pall of smoke that lay over the cliff two figures running towards him, one firing a rifle and the other an officer with his pistol drawn.

  A bullet from the rifle missed his head by inches. Jumping to his right to make himself a more difficult target Mickey shot a fusillade of bullets at the corporal, killing him instantly and knocking him backwards over the side of the cliff. Now there was just himself and the officer, who had stopped no more than six yards from him to take steady aim with his pistol.

  Mickey found himself almost grinning. A pistol from that range? Against his sub-machine gun? Jerry’s going to have to be one helluva good shot, he thought as he directed his snub-nosed weapon at the enemy. Cheerio, Jerry!

  The officer would much rather not have had to shoot. He would much have preferred it had his target dropped his gun, put up his hands and called it quits. But this was war, and from the look of it his opponent had no intention of dropping his gun and surrendering. And why should he? the officer thought. I have very little chance and he has plenty. So I had better make this one shot tell.

  He had Mickey targeted between the eyes, both hands holding the Lüger steady, feet apart with his right foot slightly behind his left, just as he had been taught by his father. Just as he stood every time he won the regimental pistol shooting tournament. Just as he stood every time he hit bull’s-eye after bull’s-eye.

  He had to kill his enemy before the soldier could raise his weapon to his hip and fire. That was as much time as he had. But still he did not fire, for the soldier’s gun seemed to have jammed. He could see the panic in the man as he fiddled with the weapon, as he slapped it with one hand, as he checked the catch and pressed the trigger yet again. But still the gun refused to fire.

  The officer kept his Lüger steady and called to the British soldier.

  ‘Please!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t wish to kill you! Drop your gun and put your hands up!’

  ‘Go to hell!’ Mickey yelled back as fiercely as he could, cursing everything and anything he could think of for his faulty weapon.

  ‘No, please!’ the German was still calling. ‘Just drop your weapon and put your hands up! I don’t wish to shoot you!’

  Instinctively Mickey knew that whatever had been wrong with his weapon, it was wrong no longer. As if his gun was part of him he swore he could feel its health return and he raised it quickly in the direction of his target and squeezed the trigger.

  A line of bullets spewed out from what to Mickey seemed like his own arm, his very being, his own self. He could see them, he swore he could see every bullet as they screamed through the air in a line of death, hitting his target right in the centre of his chest, knocking him upwards and off his feet, killing him instantly in a shower of his own blood, leaving him lying grotesquely splayed on the path, his hands up above his head as if in surrender to death, his blue eyes staring up at the heaven to which he was now headed.

  I am the enemy you killed, my friend – that was the line that might have hung in the air above the officer’s body. But Mickey did not give his victim another look. Having stopped only to collect the dead man’s precious Lüger and the gold cigarette lighter that had fallen from his pocket, he slung his sub-machine gun back over his shoulder and began the climb down to rejoin the battle below, leaving Captain Heinrich Von Hantzen to his death high on the windswept cliffs above the beaches of Normandy.

  LONDON, MAY 1945

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was now six days since Hitler had killed himself yet there was still no official announcement of the end of the war in Europe. By Monday 7 May all over the country the tension had become almost unendurable, and as Judy fought her way through the crowds in the street to get to work at WVS headquarters she wondered along with all her fellow citizens when the government was finally going to get itself sufficiently organised to make the declaration of peace everyone knew was already well overdue. By midday, when Judy and some of her colleagues took again to the streets during their lunch break a huge crowd had gathered outside Buckingham Palace shouting We want the King! We want the King! Rumours abounded that there was to be a special broadcast at three o’clock that afternoon. Everywhere people were getting out the flags, but three o’clock came and went and there was no broadcast. At six o’clock that evening, when Judy was tidying her desk and preparing to go home, a colleague lugged her old wireless into Judy’s room and they all gathered round to hear the news. But all they learned was that the Prime Minister would not be broadcasting that night after all.

  By now expectation was fast turning into general aggravation as everyone had to keep their emotions bottled up while they awaited the official sanction to celebrate.

  ‘I don’t care,’ Judy’s colleague said after they had switched off the wireless. ‘I’ve got a ten foot Union Jack ready to hang out and I’m going straight home to do so. And probably get a bit tight in the process.’

  John Tate telephoned Judy as she was about to leave, telling her he had learned unofficially that the following day was to be declared Victory in Europe Day with the day after to be a national holiday as well.

  ‘So we’d better keep the hatch battened down till then,’ he said with a laugh. ‘All right if I come round about seven thirty and we go out for a drink?’

  Before they left Judy’s apartment to go out and begin their well-earned celebrations, they learned from a special broadcast at twenty to eight confirmation of the rumour John had reported hearing. The newsreader announced: ‘It is understood that, in accordance with arrangements between the three great powers, an official announcement will be broadcast by the Prime Minister at three o’clock tomorrow.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ John said as they left the flat, ‘the government has done this deliberately. Timed the news of our victory for the convenience of the Yanks and the Russians. It’s absolutely ridiculous. We should all have been dancing in the streets days ago.’

  Twenty-four hours later the atmosphere could not have been more different. Ever since Churchill had announced on the radio at three o’clock on the Tuesday afternoon that hostilities would officially end one minute after midnight the capital exploded into delirious celebration. Total strangers hugged and kissed each other, danced the hokey-cokey on the pavements and in the middle of the roads, dragged pianos out of front rooms to play for the impromptu street parties that were happening everywhere, climbed lamp posts and statues, hung fairy lights from trees and dolled themselves up in fancy dress or their brightest and best clothes. The noise of the celebrations was tremendous, a cacophony born out of the unspeakable and indescribable relief that the horrors of the last six terrible years were finally at an end.

  Judy and John found themselves in the crowd gathered in front of Buckingham Palace just as the floodlighting came on. Everyone gasped, as if some magic had been performed, and broke into spontaneous applause. Even though the Mall was packed with revellers, Judy and John, arm in arm, had found it easy enough to walk through the shifting crowds to a prime position outside the railings with a first class view of the balcony, which had been made ready for the royal family with a rich crimson cloth tasselled in yellow and gold. The mood was much quieter here, a sense more of relief and muted happiness than of outright celebration, yet even so everywhere Judy looked she could see strangers embracing each other, taking each other’s hands and arms, walking about and talking as if they were all part of one vast united family.

  Without warning rockets shot into the air, spraying the skies with coloured stars and drawing yet more gasps and cries of surprise from the throng. Then, almost simultaneously with the explosion of fireworks, the King and Queen and their two daughters stepped out on to the balco
ny. Now the shouts came, the yells of delight, the cheers of joy and elation. Everyone waved their arms, their handkerchiefs, their flags, anything they could wave, and in return the royal family waved delightedly back. Judy could hardly hold back her tears as she joined in the chorus of jubilation, before being whisked away by John and caught up in the crowd that was now headed for the park where a huge bonfire was already ablaze.

  Again the scene was more like dreamland than reality, particularly when Judy remembered it was only a matter of weeks since London had been reduced to a state of near terror by the avalanche of flying bombs the Germans had directed against it. Yet here were the capital’s survivors, linking hands around the bonfire under the twinkling illumination of hundreds of coloured lights hung from the trees and the shrubbery.

  ‘I really think I’m dreaming,’ Judy said, laughing as John danced her in his arms around the perimeter of the huge bonfire. ‘I really can hardly believe this is all happening!’

  Everywhere they went there was the same magical ambience, the great buildings of London that had survived the holocaust of war floodlit once again in soft yellows, with flags and bunting fluttering everywhere. Even the weather had relented, the thunderstorms and heavy showers that had marred the afternoon having cleared to leave a balmy spring night, warm enough for the revellers to celebrate without being encumbered with overcoats.

  By now Judy and John had made their way down to the Embankment and along to the Houses of Parliament which were glowing honey-coloured under the battery of lights. The terraces sparkled with lamps, a huge Union Jack underlit by powerful spotlights flew proudly above the House of Lords, and the tower of Big Ben, an edifice that had somehow come to personify the spirit of Britain throughout the war, rose above all else, bathed in light.

  Beyond the Houses of Parliament the Thames glowed with the reflections of the thousands of coloured bulbs hung from the ships moored along its reaches, while above the multi-coloured river the sky was lit by the huge beams of rotating searchlights. Since it was now only minutes from midnight, the official end to the fighting in Europe, it seemed everyone was converging on Westminster, to stand and stare up at the famous clock as its hands ticked slowly and majestically around to twelve o’clock. With a minute to go the whole crowd that stood facing the clock fell absolutely silent, waiting for the war to end. Big Ben struck, the sound of the most famous bell in the world chiming sonorously over the city and the airwaves to the millions of people who for the past six years had fought for the survival of the free world.