“Grunt and look foolish, laddie,” said the Sergeant. “The girl will do all the talking. But we’ll probably take side roads and won’t meet a German patrol. Just don’t borrow trouble.”
“I’m not borrowing it, it’s here,” grumbled Fingers. But he fell in beside the Sergeant who, at the girl’s order, was pushing the empty cart. Half a mile along the cliff, they came to an abandoned house. The girl explained they were to fill the cart, and soon it was piled high with household goods—a couple of chairs, piles of linen wrapped in sheets, two hens in a coop, a table or two, a rabbit in a wire cage, and a huge pail of kitchen pots and pans. Now they were a family of refugees like the thousands who were crowding the roads every day.
The Britishers wore their wide, floppy fishermen’s pants, the V-necked blouses, and berets. They had hacked away their beards with an ancient razor left by the girl’s father, a prisoner of war in Germany, and looked exactly like two French peasants with their child, being evacuated from a ruined home along the seacoast.
The cart was heavy, but even loaded it could easily be pushed by one man. The Sergeant looked down at the little girl beside him as she trudged along, serious, determined, old beyond her years. How much older, he thought, than my Penny at home. They must be about the same age, too. Here she is, risking her life for us, two strangers she never saw until yesterday. She must know the danger perfectly well, that what she is doing now is treason from the point of view of the occupying forces. She is a heroine. He tried clumsily to thank her, to express his gratitude in his imperfect French, which, because he was anxious to say something, failed him.
She understood and silenced him. “But I am a Frenchwoman,” she said. “Et une Scoot.”
She didn’t call herself a girl; she considered herself a woman, and she was. But that other word. Scoot? Scoot? What could that mean, what was a Scoot? All at once he got it.
“Why, sure, I understand now, Fingers. She’s a Girl Scout.”
“A Girl Scout! That explains a lot. My word, she’s a plucky kid, though, this girl....”
“She doesn’t think of herself as a girl, she says she’s a woman.”
“Whatever she is she’s all right. God bless her, that’s all I can say. Let me take that cart a while, Sarge.”
They moved on slowly, and were six or seven miles along the coastal road with the water on their left, when Fingers spoke up suddenly. “Look sharp, up ahead there, Sergeant.”
Directly ahead was a German patrol. It was perhaps a squad. The soldiers approaching were young, tanned, tall, blond, and lusty. One glance told the Sergeant they were led by a Feldwebel, a non-commissioned officer like himself.
Let’s hope he isn’t too smart or we’ve bought it this time for sure. And the girl? He hated to think about her as the squad swung toward them down the highway.
The Germans looked like what they were—conquerors. Their belts shone, their shoes were polished, their uniforms immaculate. They were well fed and happy. The three behind the cart looked like what they were not—a grubby French family of refugees being evacuated from a ruined house on the cliffs.
“Halt!”
The rifles of the men smacked the pavement. The Sergeant observed that the Feldwebel had a nasty-looking automatic cradled in one arm.
“Papierer!”
Thank goodness he doesn’t speak French. But if he ever inspects those identity cards closely, we’re done for.
The girl dug down in a black cord bag she carried, found her purse, and came up quickly with her identity card. More slowly the Sergeant produced his; still more slowly Fingers fumbled in his trousers and handed his over to the German non-com. The soldiers stood watching.
If he looks closely at that card of mine, if he compares the picture, if he really studies it, we’re through. Despite himself the Sergeant looked around for a chance to run, for an opportunity to escape. Should he snatch the pistol under the Feldwebel’s arm? Ridiculous. They were outnumbered and unarmed. So he had to stand there watching the Feldwebel inspect the girl’s card, ready to break in with a question if his own received too much attention. The German examined the card closely, upside down at first, then righted it, grunted, and handed it back to her.
Exactly at this moment, something caught the eye of the Sergeant. Fifty yards ahead was a familiar figure sitting forlornly beside the road, ears well back, brown head moving from side to side in a gesture he knew.
True, the Feldwebel understood no French. Would he recognize an English accent? It was a chance that had to be taken.
“Candy!”
Her head came up immediately. Her nose sniffed the air. The Feldwebel, about to inspect his identity card, raised his face, wondering.
“Candy!” Louder this time, trying not to sound English. Yet the risk of saying nothing was greater still.
At this she jumped up, paws apart, seeing only a man in a fisherman’s blouse on the road. The Germans watched, curiously attentive.
“Candy!” This time there was no hesitation. She dashed toward him, charging with all her strength. He stepped away from the traces of the cart, arms outstretched, as she leaped at him from five feet away, hitting him on the chest and almost knocking him down. Tumbling back to the road, she jumped up once more, trying to lap his face, and again, whining, squealing with joy. Then she lay down and rolled over on her back on the pavement, paws wiggling, incoherent sounds coming from her mouth. She scrambled to her feet, and began running in circles around him, barking furiously, making little ecstatic leaps into the air.
A more convincing act would be hard to imagine.
The Feldwebel, the cards in his hand, stood watching while the bedraggled animal showed her affection in the only way she could.
He turned to the German non-com. “Mein Hund... verloren.”
The Feldwebel beamed. “Ja, ja, ja wohl...”
A dog lost, separated from her family in the backwash of war, and finding them again by pure chance, this was a touching scene, one that proved the validity of this traveling troupe far more than any papers, which, as the Feldwebel had been warned by his superiors, could be imitated. Perhaps he, too, had left an Airedale somewhere back in Bavaria. At any rate, he hardly glanced at the two identity cards in his hand, returned them to the men, and nodded to the squad with a curt command.
The soldiers slung their rifles over their shoulders and, headed by the Feldwebel, moved past. As they went, the dog was still in her act. Cries of joy and squeals of delight followed the German patrol far down the coastal road.
CHAPTER 18
I SHOULDN’T HAVE IMAGINED she could swim that far.”
“They can dog-paddle forever if they really want to. She simply struck out for shore as we did, and found herself lost and alone again. Pretty lucky.”
“Lucky for us, I’d say. Otherwise we’d have been off for a German Stalag. You never know your luck.”
Sitting on the ground, the Sergeant held the dog in his arms, examining her legs and paws. Occasionally her tail wagged and slapped the ground, occasionally, too, she winced and whined gently as he looked her over. There were cuts in her pads, several bleeding badly.
“Yes, right, pretty lucky all round. She seems to me to be nearing the end, even if she was lively there for a minute or two. Look.”
The panting dog was in bad shape. Her hair was tangled and matted from the salt water. There were ugly wounds on her haunches. All four feet were bleeding, and her ribs showed.
“First thing she needs is water and food.” He dug out a stone jug from the cart, poured water into a saucer, and placed it upon the ground. She limped over, drank up the plateful. And another, and another. The jug was nearly empty.
The girl watched their water supply vanish, yet felt gratitude to the dog for diverting the German patrol. She stroked the animal’s matted coat.
“Ah, la pauvre petite,” she exclaimed.
The Sergeant then rummaged through the cart, found some hard, stale bread, a half a bottle of milk, and an e
gg, part of the food for their journey. He broke the egg, mixed it all up in a kitchen basin, and put it down on the pavement. The dog gulped the food, precisely as the two men had gobbled that food brought them in the barn. She ate, drank, then sat down on her haunches, the left paw in the air.
More, please, she seemed to be saying.
The Sergeant picked her up in his arms. “No more now, lass. Later, maybe. And since you’re in no condition to walk, you’ll ride.”
He hoisted her up on the cart where she scrambled on top of a bundle of clothes tied up in a sheet, and crouched, paws forward, ready for anything. The Sergeant took up the handles of the cart, now heavier, and they moved along toward Calais. On top of the pile, the dog licked her bleeding paws.
Here the girl turned them off the main highway onto a small dirt road. She knew the region by heart, and by avoiding the larger roads, she explained, they could get around Marck. She kept talking about Marck. What was this Marck?
It was a town a few miles from Calais, full of German patrols, she explained. The back road they were on was longer, harder for pushing the cart than a paved highway, but safer. By twisting and turning on the back roads, they could eventually reach Coulogne, where her grandfather lived and where she was taking them.
“He is not like my mother, he does not hate the English. Also, he will care for your dog, if indeed he is there, if his house has not been wrecked by the fighting. Tell me, where did you find this poor beast?”
In his halting French the Sergeant explained how they had discovered the dog at Bergues, how she had attached herself to him.
Soon they were traversing a region that had seen heavy fighting, with an occasional dead horse in a field, a wrecked artillery caisson, here and there a house, pockmarked by bullets or reduced to a pile of rubble. Other refugees, too, had passed that way. On a stone road marker, someone had written in a childish hand:
“I have lost my dog, Lou-Lou. White terrier. Josette Bernard, rue de Dunkerque, Marck.”
The pace was slow, because the pebbly road made the cart difficult to push, although each man took turns between the shafts. At noon they paused under some poplars beside a tiny stream to eat. It was the trees, the Sergeant decided, that made the French roads such a pleasure. He loved the disciplined trees of France—the oak, the birch, the beech, the plane tree, the chestnut, and the poplar. Especially the tall, elegant poplars, edging road and river.
He refilled the stone water jug, gave the dog all she wanted to drink. Then he bathed her wounds with water, tied up the worst of them with bandages, hoisted her again to the top of the jolting cart. There she sat, paws forward, bandages around her flanks, surveying the procession, completely content to be with her people again.
Half an hour, an hour, on they went. Finally they reached a crossroads where a stone marker bore the sign: Calais par Coulogne, 5 k.
This was the back road they wanted, and there were but a few miles left. It was a winding country lane through tree-lined marshes on both sides. The Englishmen, pushing the heavily loaded cart, sweated in the hot sun. The dog panted on the pile of clothes. Nobody spoke; everyone was weary. On they went, the cart creaking and groaning beneath its heavy load. As they came to a sharp bend, there, unexpectedly, was the German army in battle dress advancing toward them.
The dog, knowing well friend from foe, gave two short, sharp barks.
On the right side of the road was a ruined and overturned Mark IV Panzer tank which half blocked their passage. To get by, someone had to give way, as there was not sufficient room for the files and the refugees to pass each other.
Instinctively the two Englishmen slowed down, intending to stand aside and wait. Not the girl. She sized the situation up and took command. “Allons” she ordered.
At the precise moment they reached the ruined tank, the head of the column, with an officer and non-com in front, arrived there also. Someone had to yield ground and it wasn’t that little Girl Scout.
Giving the officer a glance full of hatred that was not assumed, she tugged at her braids, tossed her head, and moved resolutely by. Less resolutely the English with the cart and the dog followed. It was a contest of wills. The officer started to wave them off the road, stopped, looked at her again, turned, hesitated, and gave an order to the Feldwebel. The non-com stood still, barked a command to the long column, which immediately swung to the edge as the girl pressed on.
There was real malevolence in her glance, a dislike of the invader all too plain. She did not disguise her feeling, and the Frenchiness of her was evident. It could not have been invented or assumed. To the officer, she was a native. So also were the men in sabots and smocks at her side.
Anyhow this was what the young Hauptmann decided as he stood under a poplar tree at the edge of the road watching them pass. He was tall, blond, with an agreeable face under his coal-scuttle helmet, trying hard to be liked. If he had any intention of checking their papers, the girl’s scornful look as she went by put it from his mind. Few men would have cared to accost her at that moment.
The troops beside the road, rifles slung over their shoulders, stood like a regiment being reviewed by a general officer. The dog half rose on her haunches at the top of the pile of clothes on the cart, and barked her distrust sharply. It was a convincing act, it was no act, it was the way the girl felt and the animal too. Her head in the air, the little figure in the khaki skirt stalked firmly past the German files standing beneath the poplar trees.
The Sergeant, less firmly, followed with the cart. He desired to imitate her look; it was not easy. Because here was a regiment on a route march exactly like his own. How often they too had lined the side of the road for a flock of sheep, a herd of cows, a farmer with a tractor or a mowing machine, waiting in much the same way as these men, to have them pass. These were soldiers, exactly like his regiment; the dependables, the casual ones, the shirkers, the timid youngsters trying not to show it, the youthful lieutenants, the older non-coms, the graying officer. It was interesting—and frightening, too.
He thought they would never reach the end of that column, every second he expected the officer to call out an order sharply and arrest them. Finally they came to the end. As they did, the dog half stood on the shaking cart, leaned back, and gave a lusty, hoarse bark. It was a perfect gesture of contempt toward the invaders.
PART IV
THE END OF OPERATION DYNAMO
CHAPTER 19
IT WAS CHAOS and confusion on the Admiralty Pier at Dover those early days of June. Round the clock, soldiers of every regiment debarked. The men were quickly fed at the long tables in the rear and soon put on trains that were shunted away to make room for newer arrivals.
The twins, those days, were all over the place, early and late. “Dad’s coming back,” they told each other, “he’s bound to come back. He’ll come back all right.” They knew from their neighbor, the Cap’n, that the Sergeant had been seen on the beach with his men. So they were determined to be on hand to greet him.
Searching the long files of weary soldiers slouching along the jetty, watching carefully the faces of men leaning from the windows of the departing trains, they sought their father, continually on the lookout for the shoulder flash of the Wiltshires. Many Wilts had indeed debarked, but nobody could give them any news of the Sergeant. Yet day after day they ranged the crowded piers, sure that eventually he would be landing.
“Those lads there. They were about here yesterday and the day before. They’ve no right inside the barriers, y’know. Who are they?”
The MP with the red band around his peaked cap, trim, neat, clean, and shaved, in a well-pressed uniform, stood out in contrast to the debarking fighting men off the boats. He watched the Williams twins dart through the throng of soldiers, asking an occasional question, their faces upturned and anxious. The policeman to whom the question was addressed stood next to the MP and chuckled. He knew military policemen were not popular on that pier. The previous day he had seen one MP tossed into the harbor, beca
use he wouldn’t allow troops to debark soon enough.
“Ah... those lads! Yes, they’re local boys; their mother runs a boardinghouse up on the Folkestone Road. That’s her, the lady coming toward us with the coffeepot in her hand. The boys’ father is a sergeant with the Wilts, and they come down every day hoping to find him. I should leave them alone if I were you.”
Wooden barriers had been erected at the end of the jetty to hold back the townspeople. Every one of those anxious women standing there with children beside them had a son, a father, a brother, or a husband with the B.E.F. They crowded against the fence ten deep for long hours every day. Others climbed boxes or barrels behind to survey the passing troops.
“You there... Northamptons! Have you seen my Bill! Corporal Bill Manners?”
“Sorry, couldn’t tell you, missis. But there’s more of our lot coming across later.”
“Coldstreams! Coldstreams! Where is K Company? Is K Company off the beaches yet?”
“They’re on a destroyer, love. Right behind us. There, see, that’s them docking in the Basin now.”
Occasionally you’d hear a cry of grief and despair as bad news was given or, less occasionally, a cry of joy.
“Tom!”
“Daddy!”
Then a weary, beaten man, often wrapped in a blanket in place of an overcoat, would stop short at the sound of that voice, peer hard at the waving arms and the faces behind that barrier, then run across and throw his arms around someone on the other side. It didn’t happen often.
Mrs. Williams, helping with the sandwiches and tea for the starving troops, got past the barricades in her Red Cross uniform. She stayed from early in the morning until midafternoon, went home for a few hours’ rest, then, leaving Penny to get the boys’ supper, returned for the long night watch. Each time she came up the steps of the house on the Folkestone Road, she hoped to see that familiar figure in khaki, or to hear the exultant shout of the girl, which would tell her that a postcard or telegram had come saying the Sergeant had landed at some other port. Each time there was only silence and a solemn-faced child alone in an empty house.
Silence Over Dunkerque Page 8
