by Max Hennessy
The tank commander who had called him came on the air again. ‘We ran into an ambush,’ he said. ‘There aren’t many of us left. I’m going to have a go at those trees with my machine gun now. I think they’re full of Germans.’
As they opened fire on the foliage, men and pieces of equipment began to fall to the ground. They were either snipers or men who had taken refuge there when the tanks had appeared. By this time, field gun fire was falling close by and it seemed to be time to move. As the British tanks climbed the ridge they were met with a tornado of fire and one after the other they were knocked out. The survivors backed off, moving uncertainly as though their commanders didn’t know what to do next against the overwhelming German weight.
There was only one way to go and that was back through the array of wrecked tanks. They were facing all ways, their tracks run off the bogeys, their engines smoking, the ground scattered with the equipment they normally carried on the hull. It was like passing through a lot of ghosts because no one appeared; and, as he reversed, Josh saw that the side of the commanding officer’s tank he had been trying to radio had been blown in and he could even see the crew inside in a mash of blood, uniforms, splintered bone and torn flesh.
Leduc was in a grim mood as he reported back. ‘The counter-attack’s fizzled out,’ he said. ‘We’ve stopped the Germans but we can’t go any further. The whole bloody thing’s becoming a shambles. The Grenadiers have been decimated at Pecq, but the Coldstream are in a château there overlooking the river and managing to hold off everything that comes along.’
As they withdrew north, every town they passed through seemed nothing more than a heap of rubble. They were streaming back now through the pill boxes and trenches of the earlier war, passing iron corkscrews which had once supported barbed wire to hold back the Germans but now contained only cattle. For miles there wasn’t a tree taller than twelve feet where the barrages of the earlier war had blasted whole woods to nothing. The villages were empty, cigarettes left to burn themselves out on bar counters, glasses half-drained, games of cards and dominoes abandoned unfinished.
Josh and his crew slept in an unsanitary heap in a small town where songbirds lay dead in cages, rabbits in hutches and cats and dogs in back rooms, while abandoned cows bawled in the fields to be milked. In the station a bombed train lay in a pyramid of splintered carriages. On the grass alongside were khaki-clad bodies which had been dragged from the wreckage.
‘The Germans have reached the sea.’ Leduc appeared as they gathered together the next morning, their faces strained, their eyes red with lack of sleep. ‘They’ve taken Boulogne and they’re now heading for Calais. This is a hell of a war but I suppose we’d better make the best of it. It’s the only one we’ve got.’
That night the area round them was lit with the flashes of bursting bombs and shells and the flames of large fires. Tracer bullets and Very lights made Disney-like designs in the sky and they soon learned that the white rockets they saw indicated that the Germans had captured some new objective.
All round them were anarchic bands of French soldiers from the shattered Ninth Army, roaming along the lines of communication, looting bars and grocers’ shops for wine. Among them were the refugees, none of them with any sure haven of refuge, simply keeping ahead of the fighting, carrying or pushing their belongings in wheelbarrows or perambulators because by now their cars and carts had been abandoned in the vast traffic jams that choked every town and crossroads.
To their astonishment, on the St Julien road they ran into a German horsed cavalry patrol, bumping forward as if on parade. As the machine guns roared, the patrol dissolved, leaving dead men and animals. Late in the afternoon, the boot was on the other foot and two of Ellesmere’s cars were hit. A sergeant and two men were killed and one car was lost. The other was towed away under fire, its wounded commander still inside.
The confusion was unbelievable by this time. On one occasion, Josh and Ormonde kept a whole regiment of Germans at bay by popping up at different places on a ridge to fire, to make them think there were more of them than there were. On another, heading north-west at full speed, they came on a line of tanks by the roadside, their crews making coffee. It was only as they roared past that it dawned on them that they were Germans, and on the Germans that the armoured cars were British. By the time everybody had recovered from their surprise they were clear.
As they stopped, Josh remembered it was Sunday. At Braxby people would just be leaving the church.
‘My wife’ll just be taking the dog for a walk,’ Ormonde observed.
It was clear by this time that a defeat of enormous magnitude was taking place and their minds were all full of a lost war. But discipline had not slipped and the regiment was still holding together in the nightmare of the retreat. Morale should have sunk to zero but it hadn’t, and there was even a remarkably cheerful approach to things. The menace now was less the Germans than sheer exhaustion and at every stop, Josh and Orne went along the halted vehicles, hammering with the butts of their revolvers on the helmets of men who had fallen asleep at the wheel.
‘We’re to head for Dunkirk,’ Leduc informed them the following morning. ‘We’re hanging on to Calais by the skin of our teeth to keep them from coming up on that flank, and a mixed force of French, Belgians and us are holding round Nieuport. The Navy’s trying to mount a rescue operation.’
Furnes was a ruined, smoke-covered nightmare, littered with burning vehicles and abandoned equipment. In the fields outside an aeroplane smoked among a swathe of smashed-down trees, alongside it two broken bodies and a hand, separate from the arm, lying in a puddle. Another airman lay under his parachute, and nearby was a neat row of corpses, the burial parties working among them without interest.
An officer was speaking irritably to a padre. ‘Oh, Christ, stop worrying,’ he was saying. ‘He’s dead. Let him sleep. He won’t worry about going off without prayers.’
‘No,’ the padre said firmly. ‘But I will.’
The padre won the argument, and spadefuls of dirt were tossed on to the blanketed shapes. A mound of earth disappeared and the ground was flattened down. Somewhere in the distance a man was singing drunkenly and a long line of ragged wounded straggled past. The air was full of smoke, sweat, dirt and the smell of death. By a wrecked building was a pile of dead rats which had once inhabited it and a group of men were staring at them as if they were important, one of them, unwashed, unfed and lacking sleep, scratching himself slowly, his face full of sadness.
The following morning found them near the Yser. The Belgians had thrown their hand in during the night and the attitude of the villagers to the disaster was obvious from the number of white flags they saw. There had been a tremendous movement north during the night as the British pushed forward to fill the gap. They slipped into place just in time, and as dawn came, Leduc called for Josh.
‘The Germans are heading for the bridges over the river,’ he said. ‘The 12th Lancers are taking care of those at Dixmude and Nieuport. We’re to look after the one at Woumen. Get up there, Josh, and make sure it’s blown. An Engineer officer will join you.’
Woumen seemed deserted, the only sign of life the movement of stray dogs and cats. The streets were littered with scattered bricks, tiles and broken glass, and telephone wires hung in loops over the pavements. As they reached the town centre Josh edged forward between the buildings, and was just in time to see a big black Mercedes carrying a white flag and containing four heavily-armed Germans moving away eastwards from the girder bridge that spanned the river. As it gathered speed and disappeared among the houses, he saw a group of French and Belgian officers talking earnestly in a doorway and it dawned on him that the Germans had been coming to terms with them.
The armoured car moved cautiously forward, with Orne’s car in support and the rest of the squadron drawn up among the buildings behind. Leaving Ormonde in command, Josh gestured to Orne to fo
llow and headed for the group. A fat French major waved him away.
‘I am taking over the defence of the bridge,’ he announced in English.
As he spoke, a car drew up with a squeal of brakes and a young Engineer officer climbed out with his sergeant.
‘I’ve been instructed to destroy this bridge,’ he said.
‘There is no need,’ the French officer insisted irritably. ‘I have made it my job.’
As they argued, a Belgian sergeant appeared over the side of the bridge, a pair of pliers in his hand.
‘I think these bastards have sold out to the Jerries,’ the Engineer officer observed quietly and gestured with his head to his sergeant. As the sergeant swung over the parapet and began to climb down among the girders, the Belgian ran to stop him but, dragging at his revolver Josh stuck it under the French major’s nose.
‘Call him back,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll blow your head off!’
The Frenchman’s eyes rolled but he called the sergeant back. Orne waved and his armoured car moved forward, its machine gun trained on the group.
The Engineer sergeant re-appeared. ‘The bastards had cut the lead,’ he said. ‘I’ve joined it up again.’
They followed the wire back along the bridge to a bar at the western end. A Belgian corporal was waiting there with a car battery and plunger. The Engineer sergeant shoved him away brusquely.
As he did so, a host of grey-clad figures on bicycles, their helmets gleaming in the sun, appeared among the houses on the opposite side of the river, the first of them already on the bridge as the Engineer officer pressed the plunger. Pedalling at full speed and unable to stop as the centre span dropped into the river, the leading rider performed a neat parabola and splashed into the water. The other cyclists piled one on top of another, just as the Lancers’ machine guns started to chatter, and in no time, the bridge was empty except for a few abandoned bicycles and a few sprawling grey figures. Lorries filled with troops had now appeared among the houses on the opposite bank, however, and men were scuttling into the buildings to keep up a heavy fire across the river.
Men with rubber boats appeared, hurrying in groups towards the sloping banks, but the machine guns scythed them down one after the other. Every attempt to move forward was stopped, but eventually artillery began to take a hand.
‘I think it’s time we got out of here,’ the Engineer officer said.
The Engineers managed to reach their car and miraculously swung it round and headed west, untouched. Running with Orne, Josh had almost reached safety when something hit him in the right buttock with tremendous force, to spin him round and fling him to the ground.
As he struggled to his feet, Orne stopped and turned towards him.
‘Keep going, Eddie!’ Josh tried to wave him away, but something hit him at the side of the head and his legs buckled and he fell back and sprawled on the cobbles.
Three
Britain held its breath. A disaster of incredible proportions had occurred on the Continent. France was tottering on the verge of collapse and the Navy was rounding up small boats to get the BEF off the beaches. The incredible seemed to be happening. Those appalling Nazis were winning! At the very moment Winston Churchill was assuming power, it seemed he was going to have nothing to govern.
To the old woman at Braxby, attended these days only by two Ackroyds almost as old as she was herself because the rest were involved either in farming or fighting, it was hard to believe. She had seen too many men go off to war. She had been waving goodbye ever since 1861, when she’d seen them passing her Virginia home still wearing cloaks and plumes in the manner of the Cavaliers of her adopted country.
As she perused the newspaper she heard a car arrive. It was her son’s widow, Fleur, who, the minute the fighting had started, had gone back to the Red Cross work she had undertaken in the war which had killed her husband.
She sat down opposite the old lady, her eyes dry but with a bleak despair in her face which told how much she was struggling with her emotions. Lady Goff understood. She had lost her son, Dabney, when this younger woman had lost her husband.
‘You look tired, dear,’ she said, aware as she spoke of the pointlessness of her remark.
Fleur nodded. ‘We’ve been busy, Mother,’ she said. ‘We don’t know yet what’s happening, though. It’s a bit like standing on a stage waiting for the curtain to go up, and feeling the play might turn out to be different from the one we were expecting.’
She drew a deep breath. ‘Some of the nurses are a bit on edge,’ she went on. ‘One or two of them have fiancés or boyfriends with the BEF and it’s pretty obvious they’re being evacuated under fire. Yesterday a group of officers arrived. They were dirty, and one was dressed in civilian clothes because he’d lost his uniform swimming for his life after the ship he was in had sunk. They ought to have gone through the normal army casualty routine and been cleaned up, because we’re not a dressing station, but they looked as if they’d come straight from the battlefield.’
The old lady held her breath, trying to steady her nerves. ‘I expect things will turn out all right in the end, dear,’ she said, once again aware of the stupidity of her remark.
Fleur sighed. ‘Then the buses began to arrive,’ she continued. ‘Mostly stretcher cases. There were so many we had to get anybody we could find to help carry them in. They wore beards, Mother, and there were Thomas splints sticking out at all angles. Some of them were French. They were all filthy and smelled appallingly. We had to cut their uniforms off and, Mother, we were told to cut the seams in case the uniform had to be used again. Surely, things can’t be as bad as that!’
Remembering the end of the Civil War in America and the suffering that had occurred then, the old lady thought it could well be as bad.
‘We had to soak off some of the dressings,’ Fleur continued in a shaking voice. ‘And their feet were in a dreadful state from marching. We even had to cut off their socks. There was so much cutting, it blunted my scissors. We got them undressed somehow, but they all had to be cleaned up for the theatre and, of course, they were all so tired they just kept going to sleep and we had to wash them like that. Some had no equipment and some were dying, Mother, and we had to send for the relatives. There was one officer–’ Fleur stopped and caught her breath ‘–Mother, I thought it was Josh.’
She took hold of herself again and went on more firmly. ‘Mother, an army that’s merely withdrawing doesn’t send home its wounded in this condition. And these weren’t lines of communication troops either. These were men from the best regiments. What’s happening, Mother?’
The old woman was silent for a moment. She knew that Braxby Manor was referred to in the family as Headquarters and herself as the High Command. She’d always been flattered by the name because there was an element of truth in the joke. But a certain amount of responsibility went with it, too – such as listening to everybody else’s troubles.
‘Have you spoken with Josh’s wife, dear?’ she asked. ‘What’s her name? My memory’s so bad, I can’t remember names.’
‘Ailsa. No, Mother, I haven’t. She seems to have been caught up in it, too. When I telephoned, her mother said she’d gone to the hospital to see what was happening and she’d had a hurried message to say she’d been roped in to help. She has a son out there, too. Josh’s friend, Toby Reeves. Two, probably, because one’s in the Air Force.’ Fleur stopped, lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, then sighed and went on. ‘I tried Chloe in Scotland because, of course, Angus is also involved.’
‘Who’s Angus, dear?’
‘Chloe’s husband, Mother. Surely you remember? He’s with one of the Scottish battalions.’ As the old lady nodded, Fleur went on. ‘But she’s heard nothing either, though she did eventually manage to get in touch with Toby Reeves’ brother. He’d been flying over the other side of the Channel and he said the whole coast of France was i
n flames.’
Lady Goff sat still for a moment, trying to prepare herself for the worst. It could be her grandson, or it could be her granddaughter’s husband. Tragedy wasn’t selective.
‘I think, dear, we’d better have a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Then I think you ought to go home and have a sleep.’
Fleur lifted her face and the old lady saw her eyes were moist. ‘I can’t go home, Mother,’ she said. ‘The place’s so empty. Can I stay here?’
Suddenly the war seemed to be on their very doorsteps. As the holocaust on the Continent died down, it was obvious that invasion was expected hourly. Signposts were removed and the names of the railway stations were painted out, while the coastline was suddenly smothered in barbed wire and trenches were being dug everywhere. There was still no news of Josh, though they’d heard from Chloe that her husband and Toby Reeves were safely back in England, and Ailsa had telephoned to say that Josh had been on some duty away from the Regiment and no one knew what had happened to him.
It seemed that though the BEF had been saved, it was now totally devoid of arms. The country, however, seemed to he aware at last that it was at war. Known Nazi sympathisers had been rounded up and there was a new spirit abroad. Holidays were cancelled and absenteeism had vanished from the factories, while phenomenally long hours were being worked and production was soaring after the slothful months of the Phoney War. It might have made splendid reading if only Josh weren’t still missing.
Curiously, life seemed remarkably normal. Shops remained open when one felt somehow they ought to be closed. People even still played games. Only a few things were different. Rationing had been stepped up and the Government was asking for aluminium pots and pans to make Spitfires. Winston Churchill, breathing defiance at the Germans, was working day and night – though he still managed to address a short note to Lady Goff, whom he’d known since he’d first run across her husband at Omdurman, to indicate there would be no surrender. Then the post brought a letter from a hospital near Reading signed ‘Edward Orne, Squadron Sergeant-Major, 19th Lancers,’ enquiring about Josh. Orne had seen him wounded by the bridge at Woumen, he said, and had managed to carry him clear. At that time, however, things were growing critical and units were being overrun and he had no idea what had happened after that because he’d been wounded himself in the leg. The Regiment, he pointed out, had lost many good men, including Lord Ellesmere, but they were now back in England, refitting and expecting to be sent to North Africa at any moment to face the Italians.
