‘It seems to be leaving an awful lot to chance, Spears,’ said Farrish.
‘I don’t think we have much choice, sir. If we push on up this track, those tanks are going to see us and get us with their machine guns. They’re faster than us. At least in the wood we can lie low.’
Farrish sighed and rubbed his eyes. ‘You’re right, Sergeant. All right, let’s make for that copse.’
They moved on, crouching along the hedge until they reached the copse, a mixture of chestnuts and oaks. Below, the undergrowth was thick and the men lay on the ground in their sections. The three tanks were advancing steadily. Several artillery rounds had been aimed at them, but so far all had missed. Two of the tanks suddenly swung off the track along which they had been advancing, and turned towards the copse.
‘Would you believe it, Hawke?’ said Spears, grinning. ‘They’re heading straight for us.’
‘Sorry, Sarge,’ said Hawke. ‘I-I didn’t think that they’d –’
‘No, no,’ said Spears. ‘That’s good, trust me. They’re thinking the same thing: they see this as cover.’
‘But won’t they kill us all, Sarge?’ said Hebden.
‘Not if they don’t know we’re here. And I don’t think they do, because if they did they’d have opened fire already.’
Hawke glanced across at Spears then back at the tanks. Steadily the two vehicles rumbled towards them, tracks squeaking and groaning, their grey bodies jolting across the field at around twenty miles per hour.
Hawke barely dared watch. In moments, he thought, the tanks’ machine guns would open fire and then that would be the end.
14
PANZERS!
It had already been a frustrating morning for Brigadier Somerset. The early Stuka attack had been as clear an indication as any that the Germans were preparing to renew their attack, but as he had been dictating messages to his various subordinate commanders, a runner had arrived with a message summoning him to the Hotel Sauvage in Le Grand Place where, he learned, senior British and French generals were holding an unexpected meeting.
Somerset had assumed there must have been some mistake, but having hurried down the hill to the town square he had been astonished to see several staff cars and accompanying outriders outside the old hotel, even though the place had been hit and damaged several days before. Inside, he had been ushered into the hotel’s dining room, where standing around a side table were General Adam – commander of III Corps, and Major-General Pakenham-Walsh – the BEF’s Commander of Engineers, as well as the French General Fagalde and an assortment of staff officers. Somerset recognized none of them except Colonel Bridgeman from Gort’s staff.
‘Ah, Brigadier,’ said Bridgeman.
‘Forgive us for descending on you like this,’ said General Adam, extending his hand. ‘But Cassel was the one place we could all get to with comparative ease. You’ve heard the news, I take it?’
‘Which news, General?’ Somerset replied. He wondered what was coming next. Would it be another change of plan? Or perhaps Somer Force was about to be redirected somewhere else.
‘We’re evacuating through Dunkirk. The order was issued last night. Operation Dynamo has begun.’
‘I see,’ said Somerset. So, he thought, it really is happening.
‘General Adam has been commanded to set up the perimeter defences around Dunkirk,’ Bridgeman explained, ‘but General Fagalde here commands XVI Corps. Both French and British troops will be defending Dunkirk.’ He smiled amiably. ‘We just need to establish which troops are going to defend what.’
Somerset looked across at Fagalde, who gave a forced smile. The brigadier noticed the Frenchman’s jaw muscles clenching. The man was seething with anger, Somerset thought.
Somerset coughed. ‘I should warn you, gentlemen, that we have recently been bombed and that we’re expecting the enemy to attack at any moment.’
‘I’m sure this won’t take long,’ said Adam. ‘I think we’re all agreed on the principles.’
Fagalde turned to Somerset. ‘It seems you and I have much the same job, Brigadier. We will hold the line while the rest of the British escape.’ He smiled thinly.
General Adam was about to reply when they all heard the screech of a shell hurtling over. For a moment they looked at each other in silence and then the shell exploded somewhere behind them. The building shook, the bottles still lining the bar chinking together. At the far end of the room, a chunk of plaster fell from the roof.
‘I think you should hurry,’ said Somerset.
Bridgeman nodded and quickly outlined his thoughts. The perimeter would make use of the extensive canals that lined the coastal area. The French would hold the western part of the perimeter from the town of Bergues as far as Gravelines, while the British would hold a line along a canal that ran from Bergues, some seven miles inland, all the way to Nieuport, fourteen miles down the coast.
Another shell hurtled over, this time landing further away, but, Somerset thought to himself, the beginning of the enemy barrage was doing wonders for the Allies’ willingness to cooperate. Fagalde may have been furious to discover the BEF was leaving, but he nodded readily enough at Bridgeman’s suggestions. In less than ten minutes, an agreement had been reached.
The meeting had broken up immediately after, the generals speeding off as more shells crashed into the town. Somerset envied them. As he’d hurried back towards Brigade Headquarters, he’d felt overwhelmed by how alone he and his force now were. He doubted any more supplies would reach them, or whether there would be any further contact with the rest of the BEF. They were marooned, isolated on this hill. And facing an unenviable future. He wondered how it might end – were these his last days, or would he soon be a prisoner? Or could they possibly still escape? That seemed unlikely.
It had been with a heavy heart that he’d arrived back at Somer Force Headquarters, although, as more shells screamed over, his maudlin thoughts of earlier quickly evaporated: the men had been looking to him for leadership, and the time for defeatist thoughts had passed. At HQ, now shared with the Ox and Bucks, the mood had been tense, yet Somerset had busied himself looking at the map, getting confirmation of dispositions and making half-hourly trips to the top of Mount Cassel to scan the south for any signs of enemy movement.
Everyone at Brigade had replaced caps with tin helmets and Somerset had noticed how with every screech of a shell the men would stiffen and visibly flinch at the resulting explosion. Headquarters had thankfully been spared, although one shell had landed close by, hitting a house just a stone’s throw away. Half the lower storey had survived, but the rest of the building now lay strewn across the road, a pile of stone, brick and collapsed timbers.
When the news arrived that the ground attack had begun, the brigadier had felt something close to relief, and had once more hurried up to Mount Cassel and with his field glasses had watched the enemy advancing to the south. Returning soon after, he quickly realized that the best intelligence he was likely to get would be what he saw with his own eyes, and, as the smoke of battle quickly filled the ground below the town, that was not a great deal. Staff officers and clerks were frantically trying to make calls on both field telephones and the local network, but most information was arriving by despatch rider or runners from the various companies. It was patchy and, the brigadier knew, often out of date by the time it arrived.
Inside Headquarters, the rooms were filled with a faint haze and a stench of dust, smoke and cordite, mixed with tobacco. Typewriters chattered, runners came and went, but despite all this apparent activity the brigadier could not help feeling both cut off from higher command and his men on the ground. When a runner from the Glosters arrived to report the news that Zuytpeene was under attack, Somerset had been unable to hide his exasperation.
‘I know the outposts are under attack,’ he snapped, ‘I can see that with my own eyes. But what is the situation there?’
‘I don’t kn
ow, sir,’ replied the man. ‘It’s hard to tell, sir.’
Somerset sighed and looked down at the map spread out on the table. With a crayon he marked the enemy advance from the south, then stood up again. ‘This is hopeless, Bully,’ he said. ‘It’s impossible trying to run a battle with runners and DRs. Why the hell haven’t we got more radio sets? That’s what I want to know. It’s ridiculous.’ He sighed again, then said, ‘I’m going to get out and see the men. At least that way we can talk and make decisions immediately. I’ll see the Glosters first, then head over to the Yorks Rangers.’
‘All right, sir,’ said Bullmore. ‘Will you take anyone with you?’
‘Yes – Captain Dillon can come.’
‘And some runners, sir?’
The brigadier gave a wry smile. ‘Yes, Bully, and some runners.’
Around forty minutes later, at around eleven, the brigadier reached Battalion HQ of the Yorks Rangers, where he found Colonel Beamish in a state of considerable concern about the fate of his B Company.
‘It’s impossible to know what’s going on, sir,’ said Beamish as he led the brigadier through to the rear of the building. ‘We had a field line running down to them but that’s obviously been cut because the line’s dead.’ At the back of the house they passed through an old oak door, down several stone steps and out on to a terraced garden above the old town ramparts.
As at the Châtellerie de Schoubeque, the brigadier reflected, further along the southern edge of the town, the view to the south was superb.
‘We’ve sent several runners as well,’ said Beamish, pausing with his field glasses in his hand, ‘but so far none have come back.’ He peered through his field glasses. ‘It does seem as though the village has been overrun, though, sir, but there’s so much damned smoke it’s hard to say. We’re obviously praying the chaps managed to do the sensible thing and pull back.’
Brigadier Somerset looked through his own field glasses. Away to the south-east he could see tanks and men moving across country, and beyond, behind the woods a couple of miles to the south, he spotted the muzzle flash of an enemy field gun. Further west, too, enemy troops and armour were pressing forward. From Zuytpeene, fighting could be heard, the crack and splutter of small-arms resounding clearly. But directly in front, towards Oxelaëre, it was indeed hard to see much. The village itself was lost in smoke, while further to the south-west he could see a farm burning fiercely.
‘Communication – or the lack of it – has been the story of this campaign,’ said Somerset. ‘It’s more than frustrating. The modern army needs radio. We’re learning that rather too late.’
‘What news of Zuytpeene and Bavinchove?’ asked Beamish.
‘It seems the company of Ox and Bucks have pulled back from Bavinchove, but we can’t make contact with the Glosters at Zuytpeene. Judging from what we can see and hear, though, it seems they’re still there.’
‘Brave men,’ muttered Beamish.
‘Yes.’ They were silent a moment. Somerset had hoped he’d made it clear to all his commanders that the small forces in these outlying villages were to put a brake on the enemy advance and nothing more. They were not to sacrifice themselves, and yet it seemed a company of his old battalion was doing exactly that, while Beamish’s company of Yorks Rangers at Oxelaëre appeared likely to have similarly left it too late. The losses were mounting. His old battalion had suffered particularly. A week earlier, the battalion had been bombarded from the air near Tournai. Because of the congestion, the men had been trapped. They had lost nearly two hundred men that day. And now it seemed likely another company was about to be lost. Somerset cursed silently to himself.
‘Look, sir!’ said Beamish suddenly, pointing towards the woods in front of the village. ‘Enemy tanks!’
Somerset followed with his field glasses and saw three enemy tanks emerge from the trees perhaps fifty yards apart. One took the main track that led from Oxelaëre directly up to the town, while the other two sped across the fields in front of them.
Several rounds from a two-pounder anti-tank gun rang out, fired from its position on the barricaded road just in front of them, but the range was too long. The tanks now moved to their left, away from the track, and briefly disappeared behind a fold in the hill. Somerset lowered his field glasses and then saw a small column of platoon strength a few hundred yards to the south-west.
‘Look,’ he said to Beamish, ‘are they some of yours?’
‘Good God!’ muttered the colonel. ‘Those damned panzers are heading straight for them.’
The men were disappearing into the cover of a copse as the three enemy tanks reappeared, cresting a rise and hurriedly making towards the cluster of trees.
The two-pounder fired again, but once more missed.
‘The question is,’ said Somerset, peering through his binoculars once more, ‘do those Hun tanks know our chaps are in that copse, or are they simply looking for cover?’
‘I think, sir, we’re about to find out,’ Beamish replied.
The lead German tank was now just twenty yards away, and positioning itself towards the edge of the copse. A short way behind were the other two. From the undergrowth beneath the trees, Hawke watched, mesmerized. He could feel the rumble of its engine pulsing through the ground, and whenever it moved its tracks squeaked and rattled like a giant angry beast. Painted on to its side was a black and white cross, the white vivid against the dark blue-grey of the hull. He noticed now that the one closest was different from the other two – it had a small narrow gun and single machine gun in its turret, while the other two appeared to have machine guns only in the turret. What began to worry him now was the ease with which these three panzers could crush them all, should they move towards the wood itself.
One of the men moved, crunching a twig, and Hawke froze. A moment later, a head appeared from the turret of the nearest tank. With his rifle ready in front of him, Hawke felt his finger brush the cold metal of the trigger, and as the German scanned the town above with field glasses Hawke thought, I could hit him – I could hit him now. But then what would happen? One German dead but three enemy tanks would bear down upon them and then they really would be finished.
A bead of sweat trickled down Hawke’s face, tickling him, and he desperately wanted to move and wipe it, yet dared not flex so much as a muscle. The German shouted over to his colleagues now pulling up alongside. Another figure appeared, similarly dressed in a black jacket and large beret, and for a moment the two men spoke, pointed, then, much to Hawke’s relief, both withdrew into the bellies of their tanks once more.
Spears was now whispering to McLaren and then suddenly both men were up and running in a crouch. Hawke watched open-mouthed as Spears sped low towards the second tank while McLaren slid down beside the tracks of the first and then, pulling the pin from a grenade, stood and pushed it through the open viewing vent. Desperate shouts came from within the tank, then first one and then a second explosion rang out, bits of shrapnel flew from the forward and side vent followed by wisps of smoke. Another explosion, then a third and fourth in quick succession and the turret of the nearest tank came apart with a burst of fire, shooting into the air and landing several yards behind. McLaren, crouching beside it, arms clasped over his head, now sped back to the safety of the trees, followed by Spears.
From the second tank, machine-gun ammunition had caught fire and was pinging manically inside the metal hull. The third tank now reversed frantically, the gears grinding, but no sooner had it pulled back from the cover of the trees than two anti-tank shells smacked into it one after the other, the first disabling the tracks, the second striking the turret. Moments later, a crew man emerged.
‘Hold your fire!’ shouted Farrish, then said, ‘Hände hoch! Hände hoch!’ The German looked at him, his eyes wild and terrified, and thrust his arms into the air.
‘Sergeant Spears,’ called out Farrish, ‘get those men.’
‘Sir!’ replied
Spears. Having recovered his Bren and rifle and pointing the machine gun towards the enemy tank crew, he said, ‘Sid, Hebden, you come with me.’
McLaren and Hebden followed him, as the three stunned German tank crew clambered down, hands high.
‘Sarge!’ said Hebden, pointing back down towards the woods below, ‘look!’
Spears pushed the three men forward towards the copse, then turned. More enemy panzers were emerging from the trees, but now accompanied by troops as well.
‘Sir!’ called out Spears, ‘Jerry’s pushing out of the woods!’ Pushing the three prisoners forward with a jab of his rifle, he hurried over to Farrish. Just as they reached the edge of the copse, a volley of mortar shells whined over.
‘Take cover!’ cried Spears, diving to the ground. The mortars landed well short, but Hawke still clutched his hands over his helmet. His ears were ringing, the air was once again thick with smoke, this time from the burning tanks, but then Farrish was yelling orders for them to fall back. His senses numbed, Hawke had barely registered the command when around him the men were scrambling to their feet and pushing their way back out through the undergrowth and clear of the trees. As he got up himself he saw Spears running forward with the Bren, reach the crest of the ridge and then pour several long bursts of fire down towards the enemy.
Without thinking, Hawke ran towards him, diving down beside him, and handing over several magazines from his pouches. Spears barely looked at him, but snatched them, deftly pulling one magazine out, tossing it to one side and slotting in another, and then opening fire again. Hawke saw several men drop, then pulled his own rifle into his shoulder, aimed, held his breath and squeezed the trigger. An enemy soldier jerked backwards and fell. Hawke now pulled back the bolt, rammed it forward again and fired, missing his target. He pulled the bolt back a further time, steadying his aim and firing again, this time seeing a second man tumble. A further mortar shell whined over, but Hawke barely flinched as it landed forty yards behind them among the trees. In no time at all, he’d fired all ten rounds in his magazine and was fumbling in his pocket for two more clips of five when Spears was tugging at his battledress.
Dunkirk Page 13
