Back to Battle

by Max Hennessy

  ‘Find ’em, Seamus,’ he said. ‘We’ll get ’em on a ship somehow.’

  Admiral Abrial looked exhausted because he had been conducting his operations for a week before anybody had thought of evacuation, but, though the French Navy seemed to be functioning well, the French military staff seemed to have lost all control of the situation and were still calling for an all-out attack southwards to cut off the German spearheads, something which was quite clearly impossible.

  ‘They seem to know nothing of the decision to evacuate,’ one of the British liaison officers informed Kelly. ‘It doesn’t appear to have been passed down by the High Command.’

  There was a great lack of co-ordination, and a chaos of rumour and uncertainty, but they managed to make a start by getting a few shocked poilus to join the queues on the beaches.

  Boyle returned about midnight. He looked tired and strained, and was dirty from clambering across ruins all evening.

  ‘There was no one there,’ he said. ‘The house was full of British soldiers. They were sleeping in all the rooms – even in the garden – but they knew nothing, and there were no neighbours to ask because they’d disappeared too. Thank God, my wife’s in England. She’d had it in mind to bring the kids over for a summer holiday.’

  It seemed important to contact Gort so, leaving Boyle in charge of the operations round the docks, the following morning Kelly acquired a small Austin staff car with a faltering engine and, taking Rumbelo, Le Mesurier and D’Archy, joined the endless queues heading for La Panne. He didn’t expect any problems because he knew Gort well and had worked closely with him in Shanghai in 1927.

  The town, a favourite place for painters for years, had been a pretty place of parks and gardens, but now houses were burning and there were charred wrecks of vehicles about the streets. Air raid wardens were collecting bodies, and civilians stood at their doorways jeering at the soldiers as they tramped past the small hotels and boarding houses, their rooms still locked after the winter, their windows shuttered and barred. Thousands of men waited on the sand, a few digging shelters in the dunes, more standing bootless in the shallows to cool their aching feet. A few were trying to construct rafts from planks and barrels, absorbed in their task and indifferent to the danger.

  British Army Headquarters had been set up in a château surrounded by pink and white apple blossom and the green of young corn just outside the town. There were soldiers everywhere and lorries and pennanted staff cars were parked down the gravelled drive and round the ornamental pond that fronted the building. A French horse artillery regiment clattered past as they arrived, the drivers shouting and lashing at the horses, the gunners clinging grimly to the limbers, ammunition trailers, mess carts and wagons. The whole area seemed to be seething with movement, and there was a constant flow of figures towards the sea. Grey-faced with tiredness, they tramped silently past, dragging their lurching stragglers and wheeling their wounded in barrows, their sergeants chivvying them like sheepdogs. ‘Keep the steps, lads, it’ll help! Keep the step!’ Exhausted despatch riders, their strained faces blank as zombies, roared up and down the columns, and alongside the road French soldiers were digging trenches for their final stand and covering them with branches from a nearby orchard to hide them from the German dive bombers.

  The château was filled with worried-looking officers. Of them all Gort seemed by far the calmest. He looked a lot older than when Kelly had met him in Shanghai, but he still had the same sturdy figure, his thick legs astride as if rooted to the ground. There had been a tendency among the intellectuals of the army to regard his appointment as C-in-C with dismay because he fussed over detail and ran his headquarters in spartan style. ‘Oh, Gort, our help in ages past’ Kelly had heard several times, and it hadn’t been uttered without sarcasm.

  As they shook hands, Kelly explained his mission and Gort gestured. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the French have distinguished themselves in the fighting, but hardly in other ways. They’ve ignored instructions to destroy their vehicles before entering the perimeter and they’re now disregarding orders for beach and road discipline.’ He frowned. ‘They always were arrogant enough to believe they knew best, of course, but until the 29th nobody seems to have received any orders about embarkation at all, and Abrial seems to be showing signs of obstructing the departure of all fighting troops. Understandable, I suppose, because he feels they belong in France.’

  ‘How many are we expecting to bring out?’

  ‘Thirty per cent of all troops engaged. At least, that was the first estimate but I’m inclined to be more optimistic now. I’ve given orders that all the best-trained men and officers are to go first. Originally I sent non-combatant troops but now I’m sending key men of all ranks and all units because we’ll need them to rebuild. Pownall’s gone, and Brooke will go before long. Alexander stays with the rearguard, because I’ve been informed that I’ve got to go, too. The PM says it’s in accordance with correct military procedure and that on political grounds it’d be silly to be captured.’ He frowned. ‘All the same, I can’t say I like it.’

  He agreed to provide a document enabling Kelly to cut through orders to try to move the French. ‘So long as it hasn’t been agreed that they’re part of the rearguard,’ he pointed out. ‘We’ve assigned the Guards and our best troops to the job, and the French have agreed to do the same. There’ll obviously be little chance of getting them all out, but that’s something we have to face.’

  With the aid of Archie Bumf, one of the staff officers drafted a document in French for Kelly to use that would satisfy French consciences and, borrowing typewriters and carbons, they spent the next hour pecking out as many copies as they could.

  ‘Try Gyseghem,’ the staff officer suggested. ‘The place’s full of troops. It’s the headquarters of General Guyou and he’s been nothing but a bloody nuisance. If you can get him moving north, you’ll be doing us all a favour because he’s not doing a scrap of good where he is and he’s blocking the escape route of the rear-guard. He’s got some good people who’ve done well and are worth saving, but he himself doesn’t seem to know his arse from his elbow.’

  The Germans started dropping shells in La Panne as they left. The sound of them approaching seemed to fill the air and everybody started to run. French drivers began to lash at their horses and swing off the road among the trees, and the place emptied of human beings in a flash. Feeling conspicuous, Kelly’s party flung themselves over a wall, thinking they would have the other side to themselves. To their surprise it was occupied by dozens of soldiers, who moved up to make room. The explosions threw up dust and clods of earth in the fields beyond the château, then the shelling stopped again and everybody began to appear from holes in the ground and from behind trees and walls. Vehicles began to move again and the whole countryside seemed to come to life.

  As they drove from La Panne, they found themselves in countryside that was flat with miles of marshy fields, each one below the level of the network of canals that cut up the area. The whole of the BEF was streaming into it, every road jammed with khaki-coloured transport and great columns of troops, stretching back to the horizon, all of them heading towards the single point on the coast. Ambulances, lorries, trucks, Bren gun carriers, artillery columns, everything except tanks, was crawling north over the featureless landscape in the early sunshine, like slow-moving rivers of mud from some far-off upheaval of the earth.

  ‘They’ve been having a day of prayer for us back in London,’ Rumbelo said conversationally as they pushed past.

  Kelly grunted. ‘That’ll be why the whole bloody thing’s falling apart, I expect,’ he said.

  It was easy for the church dignitaries to make their announcements and equally easy for the politicians to turn up in their top hats and frock coats and bow their heads before the altar, but it wasn’t as simple as that. War contained a wealth of grief and pity and those people in London getting down on their knees and saying a few easily-uttered prayers were a world away from this grimness and fear,
this mounting weariness of body and spirit. For some of the men passing on their way north it was a fortnight since they’d had a decent sleep and some of the drivers had feet so swollen they drove without their boots and fell into unconsciousness every time the column came to a halt at one of the paralysing road blocks, so that they had to be hammered back to life as the military police got it moving again.

  Among the hordes of men heading north were French troops who had tossed away their rifles and helmets and were forcing their way through the rows of horse-drawn and motorised vehicles. They looked the sort of men you didn’t argue with. Their drivers were unshaven, their clothes muddy, and there were no officers or NCOs. As they passed, they gave sheepish smiles that sent a cold chill through Kelly’s heart. They were the ruin of an army and their commanders had thrown in their hands.

  Gyseghem was a dull redbrick little town largely centred round a factory making motor car accessories. The factory had been bombed into stark smoke-blackened spires of brick and twisted girders, and mirrors, fenders, and hubcaps lay everywhere in the square. Firemen and soldiers were still dragging the dead and injured from the ruins, and from every house and cottage – even the church steeple – white flags of tablecloths, sheets, towels or handkerchiefs were hanging. A few people stood in their doorways, watching, their expressions apprehensive at the thought of what the arrival of the Germans might bring.

  The town was full of troops and at the French headquarters in the Mairie they split up, Le Mesurier taking the car and heading out of the town with Archie Bumf to find out what the situation was, while Kelly looked for General Guyou. Outside the Mairie an intact regiment was waiting in the square. Several buildings were burning, and the soldiers were backgrounded by broken walls and blackened brickwork. They had lost their colonel and the major in command was thin, spare and greying, a regular soldier who in Germany would probably have been a general but in the confusion that had gripped France since 1918 had remained only in a junior rank. His men were bewildered but they still had weapons in their hands and their heads were high, and there was something in their faces that showed they were unbeaten. The old major’s face was drawn with weariness and it was also full of disgust.

  ‘We are doing nothing, you understand,’ he told Kelly angrily ‘We are neither fighting nor retreating. We have been here twenty-four hours and the command structure has atrophied. There must be four thousand men in this place who don’t know what to do and have no orders. We would welcome evacuation, so we could fight again elsewhere.’

  While they were talking, a staff car drew up and General Guyou climbed out. He was small, plump and petulant-looking and when he learned what Kelly’s mission was, he started to work himself up into a passion. In reply, Kelly put on his Royal-Navy-In-Adversity act – cold, arrogant and bullying. It didn’t work.

  ‘I have no orders,’ Guyou insisted loudly. ‘And German tanks are approaching.’

  ‘My information,’ Kelly said, ‘is that you’re unlikely to receive any orders, and that it’s imperative that you move to the coast and leave Gyseghem clear for the rearguard to move through.’

  ‘My men are exhausted!’

  ‘Surely not too exhausted to be incapable of movement,’ Kelly snapped. ‘The French government has agreed that their troops shall have the same facilities for evacuation as the British.’

  ‘I have not been informed.’

  ‘I’m informing you now! There are ships waiting to take your men to safety!’

  They were still arguing when the old Austin drew up with a shriek of brakes and Le Mesurier fell out, yelling.

  ‘Tanks,’ he screamed. ‘About three miles away! And coming fast!’

  The square emptied, and Kelly saw some of the old major’s soldiers setting up machine guns, their faces grim. Then his eye fell on all the hubcaps lying about the square and he caught the eye of D’Archy.

  The Frenchman smiled. ‘You are thinking what I am thinking, I believe,’ he said.

  Rounding up a party of men, they set one half of them placing the hubcaps in rows along the road, while the other half brought ashes and pulverised earth and scattered it to hide the shiny chrome. They were all out of sight when the tanks appeared. They stopped by the row of hubcaps, the commander of the leading tank clearly worried by what he suspected were land mines. As they watched, a hatch opened and an officer climbed from the turret and moved slowly forward, accompanied by one of his crew and the commander of the second tank.

  They were still watching when the turret lid of the third tank lifted and the commander’s head appeared. Climbing out, he sat on the edge of the hatch, watching as the other Germans moved closer to the scattered hubcaps. Kneeling, one of them probed carefully under the scattered earth with his fingers, then they heard him say something and saw him straighten up and take a kick at the hubcap. As it skated away, rattling, he turned back to the tank and immediately, every machine gun round the square opened up. The Germans were flung aside like rag dolls and the commander of the third tank fell backwards, draped across the hatch as if he were full of straw, his body sprouting crimson flowers.

  The French soldiers were letting fly with everything they had, with so little regard for direction they were in danger of shooting each other. Bullets clinked and clicked against the walls to whine off into the distance, and a young corporal ran forward and tossed a grenade into the open hatchway of the rear tank. The muffled thump as it exploded was followed by screams, and a crimson horror pushed the body of the commander aside and began to drag itself out. At once every weapon in the place was turned on it and, shredded by the lash of the bullets, it flopped silently back out of sight.

  With their retreat blocked by the third tank, the first two tanks began to move forward over the bodies of their own commanders, but the Frenchmen, infuriated and humiliated by their defeat, were swarming all over them, shouting and cursing, almost fighting each other for the privilege of thrusting a rifle or a grenade through the slits. Within a minute, there was no sign of life from inside them and Kelly stared at D’Archy in astonishment at the unexpected success of their scheme.

  At first, Guyou still refused to withdraw but D’Archy’s title finally overawed him and, catching the angry mutterings from the weary officers and men behind him, he changed his mind. The burning tanks were filling the air with oily smoke as the old major’s men formed up and began to tramp away. As the last man moved off, Kelly noticed that Guyou also turned his car north and drove after them.

  Watching silently, D’Archy turned to Kelly and smiled gravely.

  ‘It’s a measure of the weakness of the general staff,’ he explained, with all the contempt for the army that all naval men, whatever their nationality, seemed to imbibe with their mother’s milk, ‘that sixteen generals have been removed for failing in their duty.’

  Without Guyou, his staff were much more realistic and willing to help, and within an hour they had rounded up the rest of the French troops and had them heading north. They were unshaven and out of step, because the French had never set much store by smartness, but they still managed to look like soldiers.

  ‘What’ll happen when it’s over, sir?’ Rumbelo asked as they watched.

  ‘France will surrender, I suppose,’ Kelly said.

  ‘And then, sir?’

  ‘And then it will be the Germans marching down the Champs Elysées,’ D’Archy said. ‘And those bougres who have bank accounts and mistresses and apartments in the Avenue Foch making terms to get the best they can out of it. There are a few in England, too, I have no doubt.’

  Rumbelo looked alarmed. ‘They’ll not get to England, will they, sir?’

  ‘Not on your life, Albert, old lad.’ Kelly’s face was grim as he spoke. ‘But if France goes, then it’ll be a bloody sight more difficult for us in the navy, because they’ll hold every scrap of coastline from north Norway to Spain, and probably that, too. Think of that in terms of U-boats and bases for commerce raiders.’

  Eight

&nbs
p; As they returned to Dunkirk, military police were forcing everything on wheels into enormous car parks in fields outside the town, and all along the road an orgy of destruction was taking place under a vivid blue sky.

  Engineers were handing out blocks of gun cotton and detonators for artillery officers to place in the breeches of their guns to destroy them, and in a beet field, where thousands of new vehicles were parked – Scammells, diggers, buses, engineering plants, limbers and lorries – men were smashing their petrol tanks and cylinders with sledge-hammers in a steady crunching sound.

  As the jam of vehicles ahead brought the Austin to a stop, a provost lieutenant stepped in front of their bonnet, waving a revolver. ‘In here,’ he said.

  ‘I’m going into Dunkirk,’ Kelly explained.

  The officer lifted the revolver. ‘In here,’ he repeated.

  Kelly climbed out of the car, followed by Rumbelo and the other two, expecting that the four stripes on his sleeve would overawe the officer, but the lieutenant was adamant.

  ‘In here,’ he said once more.

  Without arguing, Kelly pulled out his own revolver and pointed it at the officer’s stomach. Rumbelo did the same.

  ‘I have the authority of the admiral in charge of the evacuation and of Lord Gort,’ he said. ‘And I’ll happily shoot you if you try to stop me doing my job. And if you should just manage to shoot me first, my petty officer will do it for me. Now – do we go into Dunkirk?’

  The officer blinked, startled, then he scowled, pushed away his weapon and waved them on.

  The destruction stretched all the way back to Dunkirk, every dyke jammed with abandoned vehicles that stuck out of the water among the floating straw and the bodies of drowned animals, every road littered with cast-off equipment, caps and helmets. Dunkirk seemed to have grown more battered even while they’d been away and tall skeletons of buildings were silhouetted against a sword-cut of opal sky. Among them fierce fires raged.