Dunkirk

by James Holland

  ‘Who does he think he is, ordering us around?’ said Drummond, who was rummaging through one of the dead men’s kit.

  ‘Found anything, Charlie?’ asked Hebden.

  ‘Got a nice little pistol,’ said Drummond, holding up a small black leather case.

  ‘Come on, Charlie,’ said Ibbotson, standing over the dead man. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  ‘We don’t want to be too keen,’ said Drummond, ‘or they’ll start making us pick up body parts.’ He now held up a small horseshoe-shaped ring of metal, which had a cross-piece on to which were attached a screwdriver end, a corkscrew and a pick, folded back into the ring. ‘Here, what do you make of that? Ingenious. I reckon that’ll come in handy, that will.’

  ‘Perks of the job, eh, Charlie?’ Hebden grinned as he and Hawke stood over the second dead man.

  ‘You got to take them when you can,’ Drummond replied.

  ‘Come on, Johnny,’ said Hebden, ‘let’s get to it. I haven’t quite got the same urge to scrounge off this poor chap, have you?’

  ‘No,’ said Hawke, bending down and grabbing the man’s ankles. ‘I just want to get back and have something to eat. I’m starving, but this is putting me off my food.’

  ‘Don’t go throwing up on us again, Johnny,’ said Drummond.

  Hawke smiled. ‘I won’t. I think I’ve become hardened.’

  ‘There speaks the voice of experience,’ said Hebden. ‘Sixteen years old and already a battle-hardened veteran.’

  Hawke grinned bashfully. But what Spears had told him had been true – the first sight of death had been the worst. A couple of days of hard fighting and his stomach had become lined with steel. When they reached Matherson, the dead Rangers had already been laid on a rug each and the wool wrapped around them and pinned together. They now laid down the Germans and watched the stretcher bearers reach down and find the dead men’s identity tags. Unlike the British ones, which were cardboard, the Germans’ were aluminium, and oval shaped with a perforated line across the middle. Matherson snapped both, pocketing the two halves and leaving the remainder on their chains. Then he deftly wrapped and pinned them.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s get them out to the truck.’

  A short while later, they were back in the walled garden, sitting around the Primus.

  ‘We should have taken some of that beef with us,’ said Hebden. A billy can of water and tea leaves was already beginning to boil.

  ‘What, and have large chunks of bloody meat stuffed into our packs? No, thanks,’ said Drummond. ‘I’ve seen enough raw flesh for one day. Anyway, we hardly had the time to start hacking up bits of cow before we left.’

  ‘I can’t believe we only left the farm this morning,’ said Hawke. ‘Seems like days ago.’

  ‘Don’t it just,’ said Hebden. ‘Sad to think it’s all burned down. It makes me think of our own place, back home. I’d hate for anything to happen to it.’

  ‘What did you farm?’ asked Hawke as Hebden gave the tea a stir with his bayonet.

  ‘A bit of everything. Sheep, a bit of arable, and a few dairy cows. It’s not big – a couple of hundred acres, but we did all right. Never went hungry, anyway.’

  ‘Didn’t you? Blimey, I did,’ said Drummond. ‘I was starving nearly all the time – well, not starving, but hungry.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Ibbotson. ‘There was only the three of us – my mum and my sister, Betty, but it was hard. With Dad gone, my mum had to go out and work in the mill, but they didn’t pay her much, the thieving swines.’

  ‘We didn’t have much by way of money either,’ added Drummond, ‘not with five of us kids to feed. Didn’t even eat meat that often. At least me being here makes a bit of a difference at home. Not only do I save them food, I can send them home some of my pay too.’

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ grinned Hebden.

  ‘Yeah – not much. But I tell you I’ve eaten better since I joined the army than I ever did in civvie life.’

  ‘Apart from now,’ said Hawke.

  ‘Yes.’ Drummond rolled his eyes.

  The tea began to boil.

  ‘Brew’s up,’ said Hebden, calling out to the rest of the section. Pouring hot, sweet tea into the outstretched tin mugs, he said, ‘We’ll all feel better for this – although what we’ll do if we run out of tea and sugar, God only knows. Then we will have a calamity on our hands.’

  ‘Frogs don’t really drink tea, do they?’ said Drummond.

  ‘No,’ said McLaren, now standing with them. ‘No wonder they’re struggling.’

  ‘I wonder what’ll happen to the people who lived here,’ said Hawke. A fair few had remained when they’d first reached the town – people who had since been ordered to leave. The town, until the war had erupted, must have been a thriving, busy market town, Hawke guessed. Now it was a desolate war zone.

  ‘I suppose eventually they’ll come back,’ suggested Hebden. ‘Even if the Jerries take it over. Once the battle stops, people will feel it’s safe to return.’

  ‘And they’ll find their homes burnt and ruined,’ said Drummond.

  ‘And their cellars cleaned out,’ said McLaren. ‘Zut alors, les Anglais have stolen les vins!’ Everyone laughed.

  ‘It is sad, though, isn’t it?’ said Hebden, echoing Hawke’s own thoughts. ‘I mean, right now, we’re just thinking about ourselves and making sure we’re all right, but this is some French bloke’s house we’re in. We haven’t asked his permission or anything.’ He smiled. ‘I’m still grateful to him, though. Might even get some decent kip in here tonight.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Ibbotson. ‘I feel dead to the world.’ He sat down next to Hawke, his hands clasped round his enamel mug.

  ‘Your mother never remarried, then?’ Hawke asked him.

  Ibbotson shook his head. ‘No. They were childhood sweethearts. I was only three when he died – it was at Arras. April 1918.’

  ‘Near where we were before here,’ said Hawke.

  Ibbotson nodded. ‘Yes, it’s made me start thinking about him a bit, to be honest. I saw all those cemeteries around the town. He’s buried in one of them – which, though, God only knows.’

  ‘You’ve never seen his grave?’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised, Johnny. We didn’t have money for trips to France. Not even my mum. We were sent a photograph of it, though. One day I’ll make sure she gets out here. I know it broke her heart. She’d want to see where Dad’s lying now.’ They were silent a moment and then Ibbotson said, ‘Your dad died too, didn’t he?’

  ‘But not in the war. A few years later.’

  ‘But if it weren’t for the war, he’d still be alive?’

  Hawke nodded. ‘I suppose so.’

  Ibbotson sighed. ‘I missed him, growing up. I don’t really remember him. I like to tell myself I do, but I don’t really. I wish I had. I wish I could just have – I don’t know … I wish I could have had a chance to talk to him properly, ask him a few things.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Hawke. ‘I think that all the time.’

  Ibbotson looked at him. ‘Do you?’ He sighed. ‘I also worry about Mum. She hated the idea of me joining up.’

  ‘I didn’t tell mine.’

  Ibbotson grinned. ‘You don’t say.’

  Hawke felt himself flush.

  ‘But I just felt I had to,’ Ibbotson continued. ‘I wanted to know what Dad had gone through. I suppose I wanted to be closer to him in a way.’

  ‘That’s how I felt,’ admitted Hawke.

  Ibbotson sighed again. ‘But now … I don’t know. I worry what would happen to her if anything happened to me.’

  ‘I can’t even think about it.’

  Ibbotson looked at him again, then picked up a stone and lobbed it gently away. ‘No,’ he said at length. ‘It’s probably best not to.’

  Spears and his gang of foragers return
ed not long after. They had not been the only ones looking for food, but despite the competition had brought back a couple of cured hams, some old bread, plenty of cheese, some more wine and several dry boxes of last season’s apples, as well as an assortment of other supplies. Food was carefully divided up into sections, with enough held back for the following day.

  Having eaten, and knowing that he was on prowler guard from midnight until three, Hawke took Hebden’s advice and went into the house to find himself a place to sleep. Remembering the cupboard he had seen in the attic, he climbed the stairs, found a wool rug and a quilt and made a rough bed for himself on the floor. Outside, it was almost dark, the stars just beginning to twinkle through the open window. Hawke closed his eyes, and in moments was fast asleep.

  Spears had insisted that Lieutenant Farrish should get some sleep – and in one of the beds still made up on the first floor. The lieutenant had half-heartedly resisted, but soon gave in. ‘If you’re absolutely sure, Spears,’ he said.

  ‘I am, sir,’ Spears told him. ‘You look knackered, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ It was true. Dark rings lined Farrish’s eyes, while his lean face looked gaunt and smudged with dirt.

  ‘I think we’re all pretty done in.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t mind saying, Spears, I had never really imagined finding myself in a situation like this.’

  ‘It was hard fighting today, sir.’

  ‘Yes – and the men did magnificently. I’m only sorry that we’ve lost so many. They were my responsibility.’

  ‘It could have been a lot worse, sir. But you’re right – they did do well. They kept their heads.’

  ‘You know, I’m proud of them. All of them. I really couldn’t have asked for more.’ Farrish ran his hands through his hair. ‘I wonder what will happen tomorrow. I know we’re surrounded now, but do you think we’ll ever get away from here? The future suddenly seems so … so damned bleak, and yet it’s our job to try and keep their morale up.’

  ‘Best not to think too hard about these things, sir. All we can do is whatever’s asked of us to the best of our ability. We’re not the generals. We get given a line to defend and we do it. But don’t worry about the lads. They’ll be all right.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. Some of them have lost close friends.’

  ‘Try not to worry about it, sir. Get some kip and you’ll feel a lot better.’

  Farrish nodded. ‘All right, Spears. But make sure you get some sleep as well. I’m going to need you tomorrow – and fit and fresh too.’

  Farrish left him alone in the kitchen – the only room in the house not heavy with already resting Rangers. Spears had found another bottle of Calvados and, taking a tumbler from a cupboard, he poured himself a generous measure, then filled up his hip flask, and sat down at the table. On the wall, an old clock ticked rhythmically. Leaning his elbows on the table, he drank the Calvados and rubbed his face, and thought of Maddie. He wondered what she had been doing that day and was glad that she had not witnessed what he had seen. That lad at the mortars. Jenkins had been his name – he’d seen him about a bit before the balloon had gone up. He’d even shared a drink with him once or twice, but to see him lying there, his guts in his hands, the look of terror on his face.

  Spears shook his head and poured himself another large drink, and prayed that when it was his turn he would go quickly. Shooting Jenkins had not been easy, but it had been the right thing to do.

  He remembered a time when he had been young, no more than ten or so, when one of the farm horses had become ill. Those horses had been like pets – beloved by them all, part of the working team of the farm. But Chester was in pain and not going to live, so his father had asked him to steady the horse and put a pistol to the big fellow’s head and shot him.

  Now, some fifteen years later, Spears had done the same thing, but not to a horse, to a man, a human being. It had been the right thing to do, he told himself again – Jenkins would never have lived – but that had not made it any easier. Jenkins’s face – the sheer terror – would haunt him until his dying days. Of that he was certain.

  He wished he could tell Maddie – she was the one person who might be able to help, who would understand, but he knew he could never inflict such a memory on her. Maddie was an innocent, and he loved her for it. No, he thought, whatever images of Jenkins remained would have to stay his, and his only. That was a burden he would simply have to carry himself.

  He drank again and then pulled out his pad of pale blue writing paper, mercifully still clean despite the mud and bloodstains on his battle blouse.

  My darling Maddie, he began, then thought of the half-dozen letters he had written and never sent and wondered whether he ever would and whether they’d ever reach her. I hope you are well and enjoying as warm an early summer as we are over here. The blossom is out, the hedgerows full of green and the birdsong incessant – although less so today. The Germans attacked us but we managed to beat them off. That was true, he thought, although he could not say the enemy now had them surrounded. We lost a few good lads, but fortunately both Johnny and myself are fine and still in good heart. He paused again, then added, Your brother is a brave fellow – he’s always the first to volunteer, even though I keep telling him not to. Today he came to help me and then ran to help a wounded man in his section. I keep saying to him that he has nothing to prove, but I think he does these things on instinct. From what you and your family have told me of your father, it seems as though he must be a chip off the old block.

  Spears paused again. The figure of John Hawke, Maddie’s father, was a big presence in the family. He had not been forgotten over the passing years. There was that photograph of him on the mantelpiece above the grate in the drawing room – his gentle brown eyes gazing out at them all, and Spears could not remember a visit to their Headingley house when their father had not come up in conversation. To begin with, he had wondered how Richard Mallaby had felt having to listen to endless references and tales about his wife’s first husband, but then realized that Richard spoke of him just as often. The two had been best friends – close mates since they were little. Spears got the impression that Richard missed him as much as anyone.

  And it had been Richard who had told Spears about John Hawke’s heroism in the last war. It had been one night the previous summer, when the two of them had stayed up, at Richard’s instigation. Lucy and the girls had left them to it and over a bottle of whisky the whole story had come out. There had been the storming of the German trenches at Loos in 1915, when officers had all been cut down and the company had found itself leaderless. He had won the Military Medal – the MM – for that. At the Somme, John Hawke had rescued their lieutenant, carrying him back from a shell-hole to their lines, across no-man’s-land, despite being hit twice himself in doing so.

  He had been given the Distinguished Conduct Medal for that one. The bullets had been pulled out and he had been patched up and back at the front by April the following year, in time for the spring offensive at Arras, where he had once again shown both extreme bravery and considerable leadership skills. And finally there had been Passchendaele. With the company commander wounded, John Hawke had again taken over command, leading the men in an attack that had seen them reach the third line of German trenches and in the process capture more than two hundred of the enemy. That had gained him a bar to his MM, although if Richard was to be believed – and he had been there, at John Hawke’s side – had he been an officer he would have been given a Victoria Cross. Later in the battle, as the rain had fallen and the ground turned to slurry, the Germans had used mustard gas and it was this that had finally brought John Hawke’s war to an end. He had recovered, had fathered three more children in Molly, Joan and Johnny, but the wounds he had suffered and the gas that had damaged his lungs had left him weak. In the November of 1923, five years after the armistice, John had caught the flu, which had then become pneumonia. And that had killed him.

  It had been R
ichard Mallaby who had saved the family from destitution. Richard, who had solemnly promised as John had lain sweating and dying, that he would look after his friend’s family. So he had, and in time he and Lucy had come to an understanding and married.

  Spears remembered that evening vividly, despite the whisky. ‘Don’t you feel as though you’re living in the shadow of another man?’ he’d asked Richard.

  ‘He’d have done the same for me,’ Richard replied. ‘How could I let my best friend’s family face destitution?’

  John Hawke might have died, but his spirit remained. Spears had felt even more keenly that he had to live up to that reputation, that he had to prove he was every bit the soldier Maddie’s father had been. Perhaps that was why he had been so ready to tell Johnny stories of fighting Pashtuns in the North-West Frontier, and of subduing the Arabs in Palestine. He had been careful not to mention the crippling fear he’d felt as a boy soldier, heading overseas for the first time, or the terror he’d felt when he’d faced a sword-wielding tribesman in the Swat Valley. He cursed now – cursed John Hawke, cursed his own bragging, and cursed the fact that now he was sitting in a house somewhere in Flanders, not so very far from where Maddie’s father had performed such feats more than twenty years earlier. Because they were now surrounded and he honestly did not know how he was ever going to get himself or the boy Johnny out of there.

  19

  TEA RATION

  All morning, the men had stood to, watching from their trenches, farm buildings, houses in the town and from behind the piles of rubble and sandbags barring all routes into Cassel. Yet despite steady, regular shelling, there had been no sign so far of any enemy attack.

  At Somer Force Headquarters, there was concern about the dwindling supplies of ammunition and the shortage of food. The latter had been partially resolved by authorizing looting of the town. It had sat uneasily with the brigadier, but had been considered a necessity. The shortage of ammunition, although not yet critical, could not be so readily resolved. Instructions had been sent round to unit commanders telling them to ensure their men fired only when strictly necessary, an order that was easier to uphold when the enemy was doing little other than lobbing shells towards them. It was why every passing minute and hour that the enemy did not make an all-out attack was something of a godsend.