The Iron Stallions

by Max Hennessy

  It was clear that the Germans’ success in the North was bound to end up with an attack in France, and the officers of the French reserve battalions alongside the 19th Lancers began looking over their shoulders for the best line of retreat. Orders came to move nearer to the Belgian border and Leduc immediately set them practising rearguard exercises.

  ‘We always start a war with a retreat,’ he said flatly. ‘And it looks very much as if we’ll start this with one.’

  Josh found himself billeted in a set of flats on the top floor of which lived two retired madams of brothels whose main pleasure was to bring him titbits for his lunch. The news from Norway grew steadily worse and it was clear from the BBC that the Government at home was under heavy fire in the House of Commons for its inept handling of the war. Many people had derided Chamberlain’s kowtowing to Hitler in 1938 and he had made little attempt since to get the country on a war footing, and half the House of Commons were after his blood. Someone had sailed into Winston Churchill, now back in the Government as First Lord of the Admiralty, but the following speaker had directed his fire not at Churchill, but at the Prime Minister. ‘In the name of God,’ he had said, ‘go,’ and the cry had been taken up in a howl by the Opposition benches. The following morning, from the papers which reached them from England, it seemed as though Chamberlain’s tenure of office was about to be ended.

  As the evening shadows lengthened, heading for his squadron, Josh saw French officers standing in the street, their heads cocked. Then somewhere to the east he heard a faint thudding noise. Reeves joined him.

  ‘I’d hazard a guess,’ he said, ‘that it’s guns. Big ones.’

  Josh made sure his squadron was ready. Then, after the evening meal, he was called with the other officers to the room Leduc had made his office.

  ‘The RAF reports that the Germans are probably on the move,’ he said. ‘We’ve nothing certain yet because it’s too dark to confirm anything but–’ he cocked his thumb ‘–you can all hear that.’

  He gestured at the map hanging on the wall behind him. ‘The French say we should expect them to come through Flanders, which means that the French Seventh and First Armies and the BEF will swing eastwards to the River Dyle. The French Ninth Army, which is not mechanised, will act as the hinge.’

  In the darkness shaded lamps glowed. Generators were throbbing and exhaust fumes were filling the air. Dodgin, now a sergeant, was watching a fitter completing the final adjustments to the carburettor of an armoured car while the crew finished a quick game of brag.

  ‘Nearly done, sir,’ he reported. ‘All in tiptop condition.’

  A truck that had been topping up petrol tanks lurched away as Josh headed for his billet. His heart was thumping but he was quite calm. This was what he’d been heading for all his life. It was in his blood. It had run through his family all the way back through the Crimea to Waterloo and beyond.

  He fell asleep with the faint thudding sound still in his ears, sleeping dreamlessly until he heard the door click. There was just daylight enough to see Tyas Edgar Ackroyd’s face as he pushed forward a mug of tea.

  ‘There’s a bath ready for you, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s a fine morning and the Germans have invaded France, Belgium and Holland.’

  Two

  The 19th Lancers were heading eastwards soon after noon. Behind them were the trucks carrying their supplies and petrol.

  As they reached the Belgian border, an officious frontier guard stepped forward and held up his hand. Behind him the striped pole of the barrier lay across the road.

  ‘Find out what that idiot wants, Toby,’ Josh said as Reeves appeared alongside his armoured car.

  Reeves came back a moment later. ‘He says he must see our permits before he can let us pass into Belgium,’ he announced. ‘He says he’s had no instructions to allow us through and suggests we go back and get permits. I told him we’d come to stop the bloody Germans and he said he’d be quite satisfied if we contacted headquarters and got them to telephone him.’

  Josh gestured briskly. ‘Sergeant-Major Orne! Break down the barrier. We’ll follow you through.’

  As he saw the armoured car approaching, the Belgian held up his hand again. Orne slowed but didn’t stop. The Belgian began to yell and eventually to dance with rage. Still the armoured car didn’t stop and eventually the Belgian bolted for the ditch and the armoured car crunched the barrier to matchwood.

  In no time, they were passing through the battlefields of the old war, and on the signposts Josh began to see the names he remembered from his father’s letters – Armentières, Poperinghe, Ypres, Menin, Passchendaele. In the late afternoon, the names from an older war still – Quatre Bras, Wavre and Waterloo – began to appear.

  Despite the frontier official, they were greeted with ecstatic cheers. British flags of 1914 vintage appeared in windows, flowers and wine were handed over every time they stopped, and a great deal of kissing seemed to be going on. So far there had been no sign of the Luftwaffe but, what was more ominous, no sign of the Royal Air Force either. The bombing was all up ahead and, from the reports they received, was being directed at aerodromes, stations, level crossings and bridges. Towards tea time, a figure in RAF blue appeared from a bar and ran to meet them, waving. As he stopped his vehicle, Josh leaned out.

  ‘You been shot down?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That was quick. The balloon only went up yesterday.’

  The RAF man gave him a cold look. ‘For us,’ he said, ‘it went up nine months ago. I was shot down in January and I’ve been interned ever since by the bloody Belgians. When the Germans came, I did a bunk.’

  The weather was incredibly beautiful. The sun was hot and the roadside was full of flowers. As they roared through village streets, the villagers were sitting on chairs on the pavements to watch them go by. Guns, Bren carriers and motor lorries rumbled past while, on the other side of the road, going the other way, were thousands of refugees, old people, young people and children, riding in cars, on carts, on bicycles, or pushing wheelbarrows or prams with all their possessions. Some of the cars carried mattresses on top or lashed against the side as a defence against machine-gun bullets and it was only then they learned that the Luftwaffe were strafing the roads.

  They reached their positions on the Dyle just before midnight, only to discover the Belgians were already falling back. Dispersing in a small wood, they could see flickering lights along the horizon where they knew the Belgian army was trying to hold back the flood. The Dutch, they heard, were folding already.

  ‘That makes Belgium next for the chopper,’ Leduc said grimly as they bent over the maps.

  That night there were several alarms as young soldiers reported lights in the sky which they believed to be parachutists coming down. Older heads decided they were tracer bullets from the aircraft they could hear droning about in the dark. Then came reports of lights being switched on and off as signals, one of them at a house occupied by an elderly Belgian baroness. They managed to pinpoint the house on the outskirts of the village, where a light could be seen flickering on and off.

  ‘Certainly looks like a signal, sir,’ Corporal Winder said.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Josh pointed out, ‘it could be that someone’s just left a light on and is moving backwards and forwards in front of it.’

  The door was opened by a blushing maidservant and it turned out that the light came from a scullery where, hiding behind a large wine cask, they found a sheepish farm labourer who had been in the habit of bedding down with the maid on a mattress on the floor.

  During the next two days, the stream of refugees became a flood. Farm wagons entirely filled with children led motor cars, crammed with suitcases and shapeless rope-tied bundles and topped by striped mattresses, which chugged slowly along, their engines over-heating as they were forced to the pace of the horse-drawn traff
ic. Cyclists, their machines festooned from handlebars to mudguards with packages, pushed in and out of the stalled vehicles. Old peasants trudged by on foot, among them women tottering along on high-heeled shoes already breaking down under the wear and tear of walking. One carried a sewing machine, one a bird in a cage; some were driving chickens, pigs, even young lambs.

  The following morning, they were ordered forward again and, as they lifted over a slight rise in the land, Josh saw his first Stukas. They came towards him like an arrowhead high in the sky, cranked-winged machines with fixed undercarriages and spats. As they drew nearer, the point of the arrowhead wavered and it didn’t take him long to understand the significance of the wobble as the machines circled, taking up positions one behind the other.

  ‘Take cover!’ he roared and everybody bolted for the shelter of ditches and walls.

  Crouched in a narrow trench with Ackroyd and Sergeant Dodgin, he peered upwards, curiosity stronger than any other emotion. The blue sky was spotted with the white puffs of bursting shells as the leading machine did a half-roll and dived. As its speed built up, his ears were filled with a maniacal high-pitched scream that froze his blood. With Ackroyd and Dodgin, he stared, petrified for a moment, then they all dived for the bottom of the ditch, clutching each other, convinced the plane was heading for them and nobody else.

  A regiment of mechanised French cavalry trying to reach a bridge over a stream at the far end of the village, concertinaed as the leading vehicle stopped dead. The refugees were filling the air with shrieks and cries, and Josh saw a child fall. As the crowd scattered, a woman darted back, snatched up the child and began to hurry away again just as the Stuka’s bomb burst. As if she were paper caught in a gust of wind, she was flung aside and the ground seemed to heave in clouds of grey and yellow smoke, like a heavy swell rolling in on to a shore. Before it had subsided, the second bomb struck and the bottom of the ditch seemed to jump up and hit Josh in the chest, then a nearby house collapsed with a roar, gushing forward like a broken dam, bricks and tiles bouncing across the road and slicing the air through clouds of smoke lit with red flame.

  The raid seemed to go on for hours, while they clutched at the soil of the ditch, their fingers twisted in the long green grass. Through the chaos of sound, they could hear the cries of women, the screams of children and the shrill agony of an injured horse. The bombs seemed to be coming closer but just as Josh was convinced his final moment had arrived, the last bomb burst twenty yards away, then, as suddenly as it had started, the world was silent again.

  The silence lasted for what seemed a full minute, uncanny and unbelievable, before the wailing started. As Josh lifted his head and climbed out of the ditch, he saw other figures, dazed and covered with dirt, plaster and pieces of brick, beginning to emerge, shaking their heads and straightening their helmets.

  The village was now nothing but a mound of rubble, the splintered beams sticking up like broken ribs, the air filled with a red cloud of dust from pulverised bricks. The column of French cavalry was nothing more than a line of twisted, burning wrecks, and a French officer, his hair grey with plaster dust, lay half-buried by a pile of bricks, one hand clawing feebly at the earth as his friends struggled to free him. An old man and an old woman lay side by side, the old man’s coat blown open, the old woman staring at the sky, both shoes missing, a hole in her black stocking.

  News came through later in the day that Holland had collapsed and Belgium was likely to follow. A sergeant observer of the RAF, trudging westwards, his hair stiff with dried blood, told them that the Advanced Air Striking Force was as good as finished. Seventy-one machines had taken off for Sedan two days before and forty of them had failed to return.

  Rumour had it that a German thrust was developing in the south, though in the north the front seemed to be holding firm, and so far they had seen no retreating British, so that it came as a total surprise when Leduc appeared, his eyes tired, his face strained, to say they had been ordered to withdraw to the line of the Escaut.

  ‘We’ve not even been in action yet,’ Morby-Smith complained.

  ‘Don’t let that worry you,’ Leduc snapped. ‘I can promise you that you will be before long. The front of the First French Army’s been broken and it seems there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance of reinforcing it. The Belgians are trying to form a line near Louvain and the French Seventh Army’s falling back on Antwerp. If you’re the praying kind, you’d better say your prayers now.’

  Thwarted and frustrated at not being able to find the enemy, they started heading backwards, beginning now to meet Belgian soldiers moving westwards as purposefully as the civilians.

  ‘I did this as a boy in 1914,’ one middle-aged soldier said in English as he trudged past. ‘Only then it was quicker.’

  The column grew with every minute as more vehicles forced themselves in from side roads. In one village they saw the corpses of old men, women, girls, boys, and infants laid out in rows on the pavement in front of bomb-smashed buildings, as though placed there for burial by the authorities who had then bolted for safety as a new wave of bombers came over.

  They knew the truth now. In the south on a front fifty miles wide the Germans had shattered the French army and tanks were heading at what seemed an incredible speed towards Amiens and Arras, clearly going for the coast near Abbeville to cut off the northern armies.

  ‘That bloody Maginot Line was useless,’ Morby-Smith said. ‘They just came round the end of it.’

  They were still unwillingly in reverse, in front of them now the communication troops who had been following them as they headed east. Armentières had been heavily bombed and the inmates of the asylum were wandering through the streets, standing at the side of the road in brown corduroy suits, saliva running from their mouths. Bleak-faced Belgians watched the British pass through their villages, and, overwhelmed by misery and frustration, all they could do was call out ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be back!’

  By this time, regiments were becoming hopelessly intermingled, but it seemed the 19th were never to be involved in the fighting. Then, as they reached Arras, they were turned into a field and a staff officer appeared, stumbling with weariness. ‘We’re going to put in a counter-attack southwards,’ he said.

  ‘What with?’ Josh heard Leduc say.

  The staff officer shrugged. ‘Clerks, cooks and mechanics,’ he admitted. ‘But we’ve scraped up a few mixed groups and pushed them into the line. A big effort’s being made to join hands with the French in the south.’

  Petrol tankers appeared and topped everybody up and the machine gun belts and radios were checked.

  ‘Mount and start up!’

  Crews scrambled into their seats, signallers bent over their radios, gunners waiting by their weapons. Starters whined and engines roared to life, the glow of dashboard lights throwing vehicles into silhouette. They were on the start line by daybreak and waiting for the orders for the off.

  Tanks, French as well as British, were to spearhead the attack, and, probing forward warily, Josh spotted a long line of humped shapes in the distance, moving slowly across their front.

  ‘Anvil One to Base.’ As Ackroyd pulled the scout car into the side of the road, Josh bent over the radio. ‘We have a column of German trucks ahead of us. There must be an armoured column somewhere about. We need the tanks.’

  Light tanks appeared. Josh could still see the enemy column ahead on a raised road across the plain, lorries, infantry and what looked like anti-tank guns all facing the wrong way. As the tanks’ weapons roared out vehicles burst into flame and debris was flung sky high. Small figures started to run and the armoured cars moved forward to rake the column from one end to the other.

  Reports were coming in now that Arras was surrounded, then information arrived that the armour had lost touch with the French tanks which were supposed to be helping, and Josh was ordered to bring them forward.

 
; ‘It had better be you, Josh,’ Leduc said. ‘They might not take notice of a subaltern. Tell them our tanks are waiting for them at Loigny.’

  Heading north, Josh found eight French tanks outside the village of Verve. They were 32-ton Char Bs and they seemed to be shooting at something on the horizon, hammering away with their heavy 75 mm guns. Drawing up alongside the commander’s tank, he called out and a French major’s head appeared through the turret.

  As Josh explained what he wanted, the Frenchman shrugged. ‘We’re too busy here,’ he said.

  ‘At Loigny,’ Josh yelled, ‘there are about a dozen German tanks, armed with 20 mill. guns. You’d better come or they’ll have overrun us and be shooting you lot up the arse.’

  The Frenchman looked startled, then he grinned, waved and ducked into the turret. Leaving three of his tanks to deal with the lorries, he led the other five after Josh.

  They met the German tanks sooner than they’d expected and Josh waited outside the village while the fight went on. By the time the Frenchmen had finished eight of the German tanks were on fire and the rest had bolted.

  Moving forward, Josh could see no sign now of the German infantry but, looking into the valley, he saw upwards of twenty British light tanks. The CO’s machine, distinguishable by its pennant, was a little in front of the others, and driving towards it, Josh radioed that it was now safe to move forward. There was no answer and as he tried for the fourth time, a voice came on the air. ‘Come over here and join me. I’m by the trees. We’ve had a little trouble.’

  Heading into the valley, he thought it odd that none of the tanks was moving or using its guns. Then, as he moved among them, sheltering all the time behind their bulk, he realised their guns were pointing at all angles and a lot of them had their turret hatches open, and that men were lying half-in and half-out of them. Blood seemed to be spattered everywhere and it dawned on him that every one of them had been knocked out by anti-tank guns hidden by a group of potato clamps.