She was still holding the postcard. It had got crumpled when she had hugged Gary. She turned it over dully. It was from Doris Keeler, the young ARP warden who had been so kind to her during the air raid back in August. They had stayed in touch since, with cards and a couple of letters, sharing their experiences. Now, Mary read, Doris had had a letter from the headquarters of the Children's Overseas Reception Bureau. On Tuesday evening the SS City of Benares, carrying refugee children bound for North America, had been torpedoed. 'Forgive me for writing like this out of the blue as they say with such an awful shock and I know you never knew Jenny but I'm writing to tell everybody I can think of…' Mary imagined her, alone in her home without her POW husband and lost child, scribbling card after card, obsessively.
Somewhere a church bell started to chime, the first church bell Mary had heard in England for months. And then an air raid siren coughed and wailed.
X
Ernst sat in a crowd, all of them men of the Twenty-sixth Division of the Ninth Army, on the road above Boulogne's harbour wall. His pack was heavy on his back, and his rifle gleamed in his hands, polished until it shone. The men sat about, smoking gloomily, complaining about their officers, swapping stories about French women and wine, and tending to their feet – doing what soldiers always did. Ernst's Wehrmacht uniform was stiffly laundered, made smart for England. The men had dreaded these hours of waiting at their embarkation points, for they, and indeed the waiting fleet, were so obviously vulnerable to air attack. But there had been no sign of the RAF. Perhaps Goering had at last done what he promised, and beaten back Britain's planes for the day.
It was misty and cold. This was S-Day Minus One, the eve of Sea Lion Day itself. Ernst was looking out to sea. And before him an astounding spectacle unfolded.
Beyond the harbour the sea was crowded with ships. Heavy steamships glided in the deeper water, shadows on the sea, laden with stores and the vehicles of the motorised units. Smaller vessels plied the nearer waters, motor-boats and fishing smacks and even a few rowing boats. There were some exotic craft, such as the new varieties of assault boats like the one Josef had played with, and 'Herbert ferries', actually sections of pontoon bridges fitted with motors, stable and massive enough to carry over a complete anti-aircraft unit. All these specialised craft had been designed and built in the fever-pitch hurry of this invasion summer.
But it was the barges themselves that were the most remarkable sight. Many of them had already been towed out of the harbour, and they were forming up in great columns, convoys miles long. Black smoke rose in threads from the steamers that dragged them. There had been no rehearsal for this immense choreography of wood and iron and military force, for none had been possible.
And then yet another wave of planes went roaring overhead, sweeping out to sea: Messerschmitts and Junkers and Stuka bombers, ploughing determinedly towards England, to beat off the RAF and the Royal Navy, and to soften up the landing sites. A wave of Ju-52 transports followed, bearing paratroopers to begin the invasion from the air.
It was a magnificent spectacle, he told himself: a conjunction of forces, on land, at sea and in the air, the largest invasion across this ocean since the Romans. He would write a book about it one day. But for now Ernst felt very small, very vulnerable, a tiny disregarded piece of a vast machinery.
And somehow none of it seemed real. After the months of playful training, all the saloon-bar arguments about the relative strengths of navies and air forces and the sea-going capabilities of river barges, suddenly the order had come. It was strange to sit here and share a cigarette with a man, trying to believe that by this time tomorrow you might be in England, and there was a good chance that either he would be dead, or you would, or both, trying to believe this was serious, not just another exercise.
And here, out of nowhere, came Josef. He strode along the harbour wall, his black SS uniform standing out against the camouflage green battle dress. The men glared at him, or deliberately ignored him. Traditionalists in the Army had never accepted the SS. But Josef rose above it all. When he spotted his brother he beckoned.
Ernst glanced at his obergefreiter, who shrugged, his head wreathed in cigarette smoke. Ernst slipped his arms out of his pack, leaving it on the ground, and stood and crossed to Josef.
'Brother.' Josef shook his hand warmly. Then he studied Ernst's face. 'You don't seem very pleased to see me.'
'I'm pleased enough.' He glanced back at his unit. 'It's just, I don't know, I feel like a junior worker in a factory favoured by the manager.' In fact, that was the aura Josef gave off, with his strutting about in his glamorous uniform. But then, Ernst thought, 1940 was a good year to be a Nazi with ambition.
'Never mind these jealous dolts.' Josef said this loudly so the others could hear. 'Look, you should appreciate me being here. I've been pretty busy these last hours.'
'Doing what? Shagging that English girl?'
He laughed. 'No. Planning. Preparing. You must be aware of the detail involved in an operation like this. The Fuhrer's final commit order has been broken down in the planning until we are visualising every footfall of every soldier on every beach. As for Julia, don't mock her. She, and the rest of her Legion of St George, will be crossing in the second wave with me. I have a feeling Julia Fiveash is going to be very useful to us in the days of the occupation to come.'
'She's as mad as a rabid stoat.'
'You're much too cynical, Ernst. Look, I found you because Mother would want to know that we shook hands at least before we parted for England.'
Ernst was touched. 'Well, that's true. Thank you for finding me.'
'Not that that was easy, in a mob like this. Now listen to me, Gefreiter Ernst. You are caught up in the detail, you will be a mere pebble on those shingle beaches. But you must see the bigger picture. The Fuhrer has determined that Churchill will never be reasonable, that England must be eliminated from the war – and that we have just enough to make Sea Lion work. And so by the force of his personality he has brought his great generals together for the project. Even Goering!' He waved a hand. 'And now we are ready; you can see it. Goering has beaten back the RAF, just enough. The Kriegsmarine with its barriers of mines and purloined French ships can keep the Channel clear for the crossing, just enough. Even the weather is behaving itself – just! And so the Fuhrer has ordered that we go. Within six weeks we will have half a million men in England, the British army, weakened by Dunkirk, will be scattered, and Churchill will be suing for peace, if he has not been deposed or shot.'
Ernst said, 'Six weeks? In the ranks it is said that the Panzers will run out of petrol in three days.'
Josef snorted. 'I believe there is petrol in England.' He gripped his brother's shoulder. 'Listen to me. We will find each other tomorrow or the next day, the two of us, brothers on English soil. Yes?'
The obergefreiter nudged Ernst. 'Hey, Trojan. Smile for the camera.'
A truck was driving along the length of the sea wall, with a camera crew set up in the back, and a woman shouting directions. It was Leni Riefenstahl, who had followed the Nazis from Nuremberg to Poland, and now to the edge of the sea. The men waved and shouted cheerful obscenities.
More planes thundered overhead, in layers stacked up tall in the air, so many of them that they turned the grey afternoon sky black.
XI
Once the raid started it went on and on, the planes rumbling across the sky, and the little shelter shuddered and rattled as the bombs slammed into the carcass of the town. Mary supposed the whole south coast was getting it, a final softening-up before the invasion forces landed.
Oddly she wasn't afraid. She had lived through too many raids.
When the others had gone running off to their posts, Mary had pulled on an overcoat, collected her bag and gas-mask, and went down to George Tanner's Anderson shelter. She got there just before the first planes came over. George had made the shelter a bright little place, like a den. He had painted the interior white, lined it with canvas to keep out the damp, a
nd brought in blankets and deck chairs and a wireless set. There was even a camping stove to make a cup of tea. But the wireless delivered only static. Maybe the raids had knocked out the transmitting towers, silencing the BBC.
She had been back to the house a couple of times, trying to remember what needed to be done. She'd turned off the lights, switched off the gas, and filled sinks and the bathtub with water in case the mains got cut off. She had her briefcase with her research materials, and she packed a small rucksack with clothes and bathroom stuff. But then it was back to the shelter. She felt useless stuck down here, contributing nothing.
There were safer places to be than this. The best shelter in Hastings was a system of caves called St Clement's, which had been fixed up to hold a few hundred. And it would be safer yet to get out of town altogether and head off inland, where she could evade both the bombs today and, presumably, the stormtroopers that were likely to land here tomorrow.
But she didn't want to leave the house. This was the last point where they had all been together, she and her son, his new wife and her father, and even poor sweet Ben. She wished she had thought to arrange a way they could contact each other.
It occurred to her that even if the house was bombed flat, as seemed highly likely right this minute, the Anderson shelter might survive. Here, then. She scrabbled in her bag for her lipstick. It was an American brand, and she used it sparingly; cosmetics were just one item in desperately short supply over here. She made an experimental mark on the white-painted wall. The lipstick was bright red; you couldn't miss it, and, in the interior of the shelter, it wasn't likely to get washed off or rubbed away.
But where should she tell them to meet? Nowhere in Hastings itself; the place would be crawling with Germans if they landed. Somewhere nearby, somewhere memorable. She held up her lipstick, and wrote clearly:
MEET AT BATTLE. MW 20/9/40.
It was just as she dropped the lipstick back in her bag that the big bomb fell.
XII
Ben and Hilda had driven off in Mary's car, her rented Austin Seven. Hilda had to get to her radar station, and Ben to his Home Guard assignment at Pevensey.
With Hilda at the wheel they barrelled along the coast road, heading west through Bexhill and onwards. They drove past the long fortified beaches with their huge coils of barbed wire and emplacements of superannuated Navy guns. The traffic was heavy, as the men of the Home Guard and the army detachments struggled to get to their pillboxes and machine-gun nests, and WAAFs and Wrens hurried to their naval gun emplacements. But the road was clogged with civilians, fleeing from the towns. There were a few cars, and carts drawn by horses and donkeys, amid files of pedestrians pushing prams and wheelbarrows heaped up with luggage and furniture. All of this got in the way of the military vehicles, and of the ambulances straining to get through.
Overhead, a war was being fought out in the air, Messerschmitts and Spitfires and Hurricanes tearing into each other over fleets of German bombers. Nobody looked up to watch.
Hilda grunted and swore as she rammed the car through the clogged traffic. Ben could see the ring on her finger, her mother's ring, just a little too big for her; Hilda, focused, seemed to have forgotten it was there.
'So, Pevensey,' she said. 'We'll reach my radar station first.'
'I can drive on from there. I'm a lousy driver, but I know the way.'
'It's an observation post, yes?'
'And a defensive point, and a headquarters… There are a bunch of Canadians there. They fortified the old castle. I'm surprised your radar station is still operational.'
She glanced at him. 'I suppose it doesn't matter if I tell you now. The RAF is withdrawing, moving the fighters back from the forward bases. They'll operate from deeper inland now. Before sunset we'll have to decommission my station. Scrap the gear if we can't bring it back out of the threatened zone. Well, here we are.'
She lurched off the road, throwing Ben sideways.
An unprepossessing station lay ahead, locked behind a fence of barbed wire. Ben glimpsed masts, seven or eight of them, hundreds of feet high, and blocky buildings. The station had already taken damage, Ben saw; part of the fence had blown down.
'This is it. Good luck.' Leaving the engine running, Hilda leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, and hurried out of the car. Then she was gone, off at a run to her station.
'You too,' Ben murmured. He slid across to the driver's seat. He gave himself thirty seconds to familiarise himself with the strange controls of this English car. Then he turned the car around with a squeal of tyres and rejoined the traffic stream, heading west towards Pevensey.
XIII
Hot air pulsed over Mary, a compression that squeezed her chest. The whole shelter lifted and shuddered, and bits of stuff, the wireless and the tin cups, rattled and fell off their shelves. The shelter's roof clattered, as if handfuls of gravel were being dropped on it.
But the noise was muffled. She touched her ears to see if they had been stopped up by dirt or dust. They were clear. She could hear little but a ringing noise.
It made her mind up. Whatever came next, she couldn't just sit in here, waiting to be bombed out. She had her handbag with her papers, and all her cash, her gas-mask, her rucksack, her briefcase. She glanced around the shelter. She picked up the camping stove and set it carefully on the floor.
Then she clambered up the little ladder and emerged into George's garden. The soil, and George's potatoes and carrots, were covered in debris, bits of brick, wood slats, slates, and a layer of dust. There was heat in the air, and a smell of dust and sewage. Yet she could still hear little. The planes washing overhead sounded dull and distant.
She made her way through the house and out to the street. She locked George's front door carefully behind her.
She walked down the street, heading for the sea front. This was Hastings' Old Town, a tangle of streets crammed into a valley between two sandstone hills, steep and crowded, long terraces of houses assembled over centuries. Today there was chaos, brick and broken glass spilled all over the road, people running, distant screaming.
She found that the big bomb had fallen slap bang on top of a large corner house on the High Street. Mary just stood and stared. A crater had been dug deep into the ground, and broken pipes and cables jutted out like snapped bones. The house itself had been sliced open, exposing the interiors of rooms, so it looked like an immense doll's house. In one upper storey room a big iron bed dangled perilously over the drop. There was an extraordinary, repellent stink, of dust, ash, burned meat, sewage.
People swarmed all over the smashed house. A fire tender was pulled up outside, and firemen grappled with a hose, spraying the lower floors with water. Men of a Heavy Rescue Squad were hauling their way through heaps of brick, trying to get through to rooms at the back of the house. Some worked with bare hands, and others laboured to get joists and blocks and tackles in place, to lift heavier beams and slabs of wall. They were already streaked with dirt and sweat.
And people were being brought out of the building, some walking, some not. Stretcher parties bore their inert loads, sometimes just on bits of planking. At hastily assembled first aid stations the victims were treated and marked with labels, a code Mary had come to know through her experience of such raids: X for internal injury, T where a tourniquet had been applied. Two kindly ladies from the WVS, in their bottle-green uniforms and felt hats, handed out the inevitable cups of tea, the reward for every 'bombee'. But others had been less fortunate. Mary saw a row of bodies lined up on the ground like fish on a slab. An ARP warden, a woman, was checking names off a list, and studying the bodies for identity cards and rings and other means of identification.
Somebody touched her shoulder.
It was George. His face was caked with sweat and dust and dirt, and blood was smeared over his dark uniform. He was speaking to her.
She shook her head. 'I can't hear you.' She tapped her ears.
He leaned closer and shouted, 'I said, what are you doing her
e? I thought you were in the shelter.'
'I couldn't stay.'
'If you're not going to a shelter, get out of town.'
'George, I can't go. Not while this is going on.'
'It's not your fight.'
She shook her head. 'But it's Gary's. Look, I'll go help those WVS women. I can pour a cup of tea.'
He eyed her, then stood back. 'All right. Your funeral.' He glanced at the sky. 'What time is it? The light's going. I don't think this is going to let up all night-'
There was another shuddering crash. They both staggered, and a bit more of the ruined property collapsed.
George ran off towards the latest catastrophe, blowing a whistle. It occurred to her that she should have taken the opportunity to tell him about Battle. But it was already too late.
She walked determinedly towards the WVS team.
XIV
20-21 September
Transport Fleet D sailed from Boulogne at 1800 hours on 20 September, S-Day Minus One. It was one of four fleets setting off that day, carrying Army Group A, the Ninth and Sixteenth Armies. From west to east, Fleet E was to sail from Le Havre, D from Boulogne, C from Calais, and B from Dunkirk, Ostend and Rotterdam. Fleet A, a figment of Wehrmacht planning, had only ever existed on paper. It was the beginning of an elaborate marine choreography, designed to land nine divisions, two hundred thousand men, on the beaches of southern England in three days.
Ernst's barge, one of a group of four, was towed by a tug out of the harbour. The men gripped the barge's reinforced sides, nervous even before they passed through the harbour mouth.
The noise was tremendous. The great guns at Boulogne had been shouting for hours, mighty twelve-inchers firing across the Channel to bombard the English defensive positions even before a single German landed, and when Ernst looked up he saw a curtain of shells flying across the sky above him.
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