Dunkirk

by James Holland

  ‘All right,’ said Spears. ‘Let’s go, then.’

  He stood up, stumbled, then clutched his head and leaned forward a moment, his hands on his knees. Hawke tried to help him, but Spears waved him away. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘We’ll take it steady, Sarge,’ said McLaren, slinging his rifle over his shoulder.

  Slowly, carefully, they moved back through the dunes and down to the sea wall. A number of other troops were also heading towards the mole, most looking equally exhausted and staggering rather than marching briskly. No one so much as glanced at Spears, despite his sling. Eventually, they reached the edge of the port. From the far side, smoke was still billowing skywards from the burning oil tanks on the far side of the harbour, so that although it was now not even nine o’clock it was already nearly dark. Sunken and wrecked ships littered the inner harbour, while behind, towards the town, the quaysides were filled with abandoned vehicles.

  ‘Just how many vehicles did we have?’ asked Drummond. ‘I never knew it was this many.’

  ‘Such a waste,’ said McLaren. ‘We might have got most of the BEF back home, but an army can’t fight without kit.’ He shook his head. ‘What a mess.’

  They were now being shuffled slowly forward along the stone outer quay. Beyond that, stretching out into the sea, was the east mole, little more than a narrow wooden jetty. Already the outer quay and mole were thick with troops.

  ‘Where are the ships?’ said Drummond.

  ‘They’ll be waiting until it’s dark,’ said McLaren. ‘What worries me is that mole. It doesn’t look strong enough, does it?’

  ‘Seems to have worked so far,’ said Hebden.

  McLaren cursed under his breath. ‘I’m beginning to agree with Charlie. I’m not sure I’m going to relax until we’re back home safe and sound.’

  Hawke turned to Spears, who was resting against the jetty wall. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Spears breathed in heavily. ‘All right.’

  ‘There’s no wounded allowed on,’ said a soldier behind them. ‘Passage on ship is saved for the fit and able.’

  ‘Shut your trap,’ snarled McLaren.

  ‘What unit are you?’ asked Hawke.

  ‘RASC,’ said the man.

  ‘Well, we’re Rangers,’ snapped McLaren, ‘and we’ve been defending you lot in Cassel. We’ve gone through a hell of a lot here, and if you think we’re going to leave our sergeant behind, you can think again.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said the man, ‘no need to be so testy. Just pointing out the orders, that’s all.’

  ‘You let us worry about that,’ said Drummond.

  Spears turned to the man. ‘So long as I’m standing, I’m not taking up any more space am I?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ the soldier replied.

  ‘We’ll all get on tonight. They’re not going to leave any of us behind. Not now.’

  Soon after, the first of the ships arrived, a Royal Navy destroyer, which gently edged alongside the mole. Two more followed, one lashing itself alongside the first ship. The line began to move, shuffling forward once more as the loading of men began. Spears held on to the jetty wall and then, as they inched on to the mole itself, he clutched the wooden railings. He was keenly aware of Hawke looking at him repeatedly, checking on how he was. The boy had done well, really well. He was proud of him – proud of all his men in the platoon. They had suffered so much and now, at long last, salvation was within reach. Against all the odds, they had so nearly made it.

  But Spears knew that he was not a well man. It was true that he had felt better earlier that evening, but the walk to the mole had taken more out of him than he cared to admit or let on to the others. His arm hurt like hell – a persistent stabbing pain that coursed all the way to his fingers and across his chest. He was weak, his strength sapped by his wound and by his fever and by long days of battle. His head felt light and his balance unsure. He desperately wanted to lie down, but he knew he could not. Water, that was what he needed, because his mouth was parched, his throat dry. Spears gripped the railing and briefly closed his eyes, and then they shuffled forward once more, small steps along the wooden walkway, a mass of men to the front and behind. The end of the evacuation.

  His thoughts turned to Maddie once more. Just hold on, Spears told himself, just keep going. One foot in front of the other. A few days earlier, he’d not really thought it possible that he would ever see her again, and yet now that reunion was tantalizingly close. And yet, and yet … He was weak, he was ill, his wound, he sensed, was going bad. He brought his hand to his brow. Be strong, he told himself. Not long now …

  It was around half past eleven when it was, at long last, their turn to board a ship home. Two more destroyers had pulled alongside the mole and, after waiting such long hours, the three-man-wide line of troops stumbled forward with a surge.

  ‘Move along, move along,’ called out one of the naval officers, ‘quickly now.’

  For Spears, who had been gripping the wooden railing, his mouth as dry as sand and his head spinning, for the past two hours, the sudden movement was too much. Stumbling, he fell, collapsing on the wooden walkway.

  ‘Sarge!’ called out Hawke, and immediately crouched down to help him with the other Rangers. Behind, men, impatient and exhausted, began to shout out.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ cried out a naval officer, hurrying towards them. ‘Who let this man on?’ He looked at the Rangers angrily. ‘Don’t you know the orders? Wounded to be left behind. Now look! Get him up, and quickly!’

  As McLaren and Hebden tried to hoist Spears to his feet, the mass of men behind began getting increasingly restless.

  ‘Get a move on!’ shouted one.

  ‘Get him out of the way!’ yelled another.

  Hawke now stood up and turned to face the angry line of men.

  ‘This man,’ he hissed, ‘this man – he – he’s the bravest man I ever met. This man helped defend Cassel while the rest of the BEF fell back to Dunkirk. He helped us find our way here. He saved us. We’re all that’s left of our entire company – all that’s left of our battalion. And we are not leaving him behind. He stays here over my dead body.’

  For a moment, no one spoke. Hawke blinked, his anger suddenly spent.

  ‘Well said, lad,’ said one of the men at last, then turned to the others and held out his arms. ‘Give this man a bit of space. Come on, lads, let them get their sergeant aboard.’ Hawke saw others nodding in agreement.

  ‘Yes,’ said the naval officer, ‘you’re quite right. Let’s get him aboard. I’m sorry, it’s easy to lose sight of …’ He let the sentence trail.

  With an arm round Hebden and McLaren, Spears was carried forward to the gangway, then two sailors were hurrying forward to help, taking Spears’s legs. Hawke followed behind, stepping from the mole on to the gangway, and from the gangway on to the ship, the destroyer, HMS Winchester.

  ‘Well done, Johnny,’ said Hebden, as they clambered across the deck towards the prow of the ship.

  Hawke smiled. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘A new side of Johnny Hawke,’ chuckled Hebden. ‘You don’t want to cross him when he’s angry.’

  Spears was propped against the bulkhead of A Gun, the most forward of the ship’s four guns, with the rest of the Rangers gathering around him.

  ‘Sorry, lads,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Don’t be, Sarge,’ said McLaren. ‘You’re on board now. We’re nearly home.’ He patted Spears on the shoulder. ‘We’re very nearly home.’

  32

  SPITFIRE OVER THE CHANNEL

  Around 6 a.m., Monday 3 June, Pilot Officer Archie Jackson craned his neck as the CO led them south, the morning sun now thankfully on their port side, and the continental coast stretching away from them. It was their first sortie over to Dunkirk in three days, but already it felt as though it had been a long morning: up before first light,
a weary clamber into the blood wagon, rumble down to dispersal, fire up the Spit, then fly to Eastchurch. At Eastchurch, a mug of coffee and a bit of bacon and toast, and then into the Spit again as the whole squadron was ordered to patrol Dunkirk.

  They had climbed to eighteen thousand feet, and from that height could see right across the Channel back to southern England. Down below, steaming across the sea were two ships, the lines of their wakes starkly white against the deep blue of the water. As was so often the case with ships returning from Dunkirk, they had taken a wide circuitous route, forced upon them by the number of minefields, and so were well north of Dover and still out at sea. Jackson had been told that the northern route was more than eighty miles long, more than three times the normal distance between the two ports.

  Jackson kept his eyes peeled, constantly swivelling his head, looking behind him, then out across the continent, then ahead, and then out across the Channel. He had bought himself a new scarf on his return to England, heading into town with some of the other pilots and choosing a navy blue pattern with small white polka dots. It was, he’d decided, a vast improvement. He wondered what had happened to those Rangers who had rescued him and that young boy to whom he’d given his orange scarf. He hoped they’d got out all right, that they had been rescued in turn.

  Suddenly he saw a formation of aircraft crossing the coast. The huge plume of thick oily smoke from Dunkirk still rose some ten thousand feet into the sky, but the formation was to the north of that. Heading for the ships still crossing the Channel, Jackson guessed.

  ‘Nimbus Leader this is Blue Two,’ said Jackson. ‘Twelve bandits at angels twelve crossing the coast now.’

  ‘Blue Two, this is Nimbus Leader,’ crackled the CO’s voice in Jackson’s ears. ‘Good spot. We’ll turn back north, dropping height, then attack them out of the sun. All of you keep a close watch out for little jobs. Over.’

  Jackson, on the port side of the formation, followed the CO and banked his Spitfire and, opening the boost, surged northwards, once more scanning the skies and praying that no enemy fighters had seen them, and that they wouldn’t suddenly arrive out of the sun. A couple of minutes later, they banked again. Jackson had kept a close watch on the enemy formation, but had briefly lost them when the squadron turned once more.

  ‘Where are you?’ he muttered to himself, but then saw the wake of the two ships and moments later spotted the enemy machines again, now only a few miles away and just a couple of thousand feet below them. He glanced at his altimeter. They were still losing height, the CO trying to make the most of the sun, which was low in the sky, and which, with luck, would mask their attack.

  Jackson strained his eyes, then smiled as he realized the enemy planes were Stukas. To anyone who had seen the newsreels of the German attack on Poland, the Stuka had seemed a terrifying weapon, but as he and his fellow pilots had discovered this past week, they were wonderfully easy to shoot down. The trick was to let them carry out their dive, because as they pulled out again they were moving so slowly they were almost at a standstill and made for a very juicy target indeed. Jackson had already added to his score once since his escape from France. Now he hoped he might add to it again.

  The Stukas were now just a mile ahead and only fifteen hundred feet below them and, it seemed, still oblivious to the threat above and behind them. The CO had obviously judged it about right, Jackson thought to himself, because the Stukas had a rear gunner who was presumably there to keep a good lookout as well.

  ‘This is Nimbus Leader,’ crackled the CO’s voice once more, ‘get ready.’

  Jackson put his goggles down over his eyes and then switched the gun button to ‘fire’. And then the Stukas began to dive.

  On board the Winchester, the small group of Rangers had met up with the rest of the platoon, all of whom had safely made it on board, and who had apologized profusely for suggesting that Spears should have been left behind. The ship had been full – over a thousand troops were on board – but her MO had found time to examine Spears, clean and re-dress his wound and to give him both some water and medication. At first light, and having slept several hours, he had felt a little better.

  His spirits had been lifted further by the sight of the English coast emerging on their starboard side, but no sooner had the men started pointing excitedly than the claxon had sounded, the Stukas were spotted and with orders and shouts ringing out across the deck, the gun crews had prepared for action.

  Hawke had followed Hebden and Drummond over to the wire railings near the prow and a few steps away from A Gun, and now, with his hand shielding his eyes, he looked up, squinting into the sky.

  ‘There!’ he said, pointing, as above them the first of the Stukas peeled off and began its dive, its siren screaming.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ muttered Drummond. ‘We survive everything Jerry can throw at us in France, finally get away and are within sight of home and then the ruddy Luftwaffe turns up.’

  ‘I reckon it’s quite hard for them to hit a moving ship, though,’ said a voice beside them and all three turned to see Sergeant Spears standing next to them, gripping the metal rail tightly with his good arm. ‘We’re travelling at thirty knots or so.’

  Suddenly the guns opened fire as one, a deafening boom that made Hawke clutch his ears. Black smudges of flak peppered the sky. Behind them, beyond the bridge, they could hear the pom-pom pumping shells into the sky. The first of the Stukas was almost on top of them when suddenly the Winchester lurched to port. The men gripped the railings and Spears nearly lost his balance, but a split second later a bomb was falling from the Stuka and landing well wide, exploding as it hit the sea. A huge plume of water erupted into the sky like a geyser.

  More bombs were dropping as the ship continued to zigzag and swerve across the sea. Again and again the guns rang out as more and more fountains of water spurted high into the sky, but although several bombs landed only thirty or forty yards from them, and although the spray of the explosions lashed the men on deck, not a single bomb hit either Winchester or Venomous, a short distance behind them and zigzagging out of trouble with every bit as much energy.

  Suddenly, Hawke heard another roar, a deeper, more guttural engine, followed by the sound of machine guns. Looking up he now saw a number of aircraft diving down after the Stukas.

  ‘Look!’ he grinned, ‘Spitfires!’

  Jackson had watched the CO flip over and dive down after the Stukas now attacking the second of the two destroyers, but his flight commander, Pip Winters, had led Blue and Green sections down towards the Stukas attacking the lead ship. He saw Pip open fire on one as it emerged from its dive and in the corner of his eye saw smoke burst from its engine, but already his attention was focused on a different Junkers, one that had jettisoned its bomb and was now desperately trying to turn away.

  Jackson followed it, watching it fill his sights. Hold on, hold on, he told himself, then at about two hundred yards, opened fire. His Spitfire juddered, tracer fizzed in wispy trails across the sky and appeared to strike the cowling of the Stuka. In a split second, however, he was overshooting and his Spitfire roaring past the enemy machine. Craning his neck backwards, he saw there was a puff of grey smoke bursting from the Stuka’s engine. But was it enough?

  On board the Winchester, Hawke and the others watched the Spitfire attack the Stuka.

  ‘BM!’ exclaimed Hawke. ‘Look, the squadron letters on the side – it’s BM. That’s Jackson’s squadron.’

  ‘Maybe it’s Jackson,’ said Hebden.

  ‘He certainly owes us one,’ said Drummond.

  ‘Here, Johnny,’ said Hebden. ‘Have you still got that scarf of his?’

  Hawke had forgotten all about it, but now felt for his haversack. ‘Somewhere,’ he said. ‘I think so.’ He rummaged for a few moments, then pulled it out.

  ‘Looks like he’s coming back for another run,’ said Spears.

  Hawke followed his gaze. ‘Yes,’ h
e said. ‘I think he is.’

  ‘Well, give it a wave when he comes past, then,’ said Hebden. ‘You never know.’

  Opening the boost once more, Jackson climbed then rolled the Spitfire, the sky and sea swivelling, and dived back down, righting himself as he did so. His target had banked and turned in towards the ship, but although it was now only a few hundred feet off the surface, Jackson was determined not to let his quarry escape.

  ‘You’re not getting away from me,’ he muttered to himself. Carefully lining himself up behind the Stuka he hurtled towards it and not until he was a hundred and fifty yards away did he open fire. Again, the Spitfire juddered and this time bullets poured towards the stricken dive-bomber. A moment later, Jackson was over it and then past it. He craned his neck to look back, saw a burst of flame and smoke and then the Stuka wobbled briefly and plunged into the sea. Jackson smiled grimly to himself and then streaked past the lead ship on his port side, delighted to have had an audience. As he roared past, something caught his eye – a flash of orange.

  ‘No,’ he said out loud. ‘It can’t be.’

  He flew on, then climbed once more and looked round. He could only see a couple of other Spitfires. One was chasing another Stuka. He wasn’t sure how many enemy aircraft had been shot down, or how many were now heading back east, across the sea and hidden by the blinding sun. He knew he should climb and try to find the rest of the squadron, but curiosity would not let him just yet. First, he had to fly by the lead ship again. Banking, he pulled back on the throttle and then turned back towards the ship, flying alongside its port side as low as he dared. Jackson lifted his goggles and glanced out and saw one of the soldiers near the front of the ship waving an orange scarf in the air.

  Laughing, he waved, then opening the throttle, surged forward, climbing into the sky and rolling the Spitfire. He flew on, quickly scanned the sky to make sure neither any enemy aircraft or the CO were anywhere near, then banked again, turning back towards the ship. He glanced at his altimeter – only a hundred feet off the sea. Oh well, he thought, then grinned to himself and yanked the stick over to port.