by John Harris
I could see the outline of the town now, a dark huddle of ruined buildings and the stark bones of houses, with a flickering flame here and there; nothing but tragedy and desolation. On my starboard side, by the harbour entrance, were the remains of ships, half submerged, blackened and charred. Still burning some of them were, their masts and upper works still visible. In through the harbour mouth the destroyers were loading against the one serviceable mole, a slender lifeline pitted and broken and repaired with planks, doors and wreckage, and broken and repaired again. Along this, in unbelievable order, plodded long queues of men, shuffling forward, edging along in the darkness towards safety. You could see them when you got close in, silhouetted against the glare in the sky. But there was no shouting, no excitement, only that steady and never-ceasing shuffling stream moving towards the ships.
Outside the entrance the sweepers were at work. Backwards and forwards they went, too and fro, up and down, never stopping, like terriers after a rat.
And all around us on the oily water were the dark, looming bulks of ships and the smaller shadows of boats, their hulls outlined by the glow of the phosphorus their wakes churned up. Away on the bow I could see the wreck of a big vessel, still glowing and white-hot from the flames that clawed away the inside of her and showed through her ports and the shell-holes in her sloping decks. She was settled low in the water, the sea around her a litter of wreckage: smashed lifeboats, lifebelts, ropes, planks, boxes, a mast that trailed over her side.
Ahead, I could see beaches and the lighter line of the surf glowing through the darkness, and beyond it great black masses that sprawled across the sand, stretching from the dunes to the water’s edge like dense forests.
Then I suddenly realised these were men. These were the men we’d come to fetch.
There must have been tens of thousands of them on those beaches, hungry and thirsty and probably scared. But they waited silently, huddled into the dark masses that looked like trees, or organised into orderly queues right down to the water and out into the surf itself, ending in a line of bobbing heads. That was the most miraculous thing about Dunkirk. It stuck in my mind afterwards far more than the danger and the din. The orderliness of those men, the incredible patience, and the trust they put in us.
Everything was quiet when we first went inshore. There was no firing, though here and there on the beach I could see flames licking round the dim shape of a lorry or the wreckage of an aircraft.
“OK,” they told us “You can get in. Never mind the whalers. Go right in on your engines. We can save the whalers for tomorrow.”
We started up engines and cast off the tow, and I remember a feeling of doubt as we found ourselves alone, dependent on our own skill and our own resourcefulness.
“I reckon we’d better get busy,” I said. “I don’t suppose it’ll be as quiet as this when dawn comes.”
As I spoke a machine-gun somewhere on shore chattered and a stream of green tracers flew across the dark sky. Then it stopped and the darkness was unbroken again. All around us were other small boats, their engines drumming, their exhaust steam like pale feathers against the black water, moving with us nearer to those masses of men who waited so patiently.
I took the wheel from Dig and swung the bows round at right angles to the shore.
“Steady as she goes, Jess!” Old Boxer’s voice came unexpectedly from beside my ear. “Men in the water on the port bow.”
His voice seemed suddenly even, as though he’d got a grip on himself at last. “Take it easy, lad, or you’ll run ’em down.”
I indicated the wheel of the boat. “Take her over,” I said, sensing that responsibility would help him to control his courage. “I can p’r’aps be more useful forrard.”
He flashed me a glance, his eyes glinting in the glow from the dashboard light, then he took the wheel silently.
I went forrard, just as the bow of the boat nosed up to where the queue of soldiers ended, up to their necks in the dark water, each holding on to the man in front, the current eddying past them in foamy flurries.
“Thank Gawd, mate,” a tired voice said. “Thank Gawd you’ve come. I’m bloody nigh perished. Got a cup o’ tea ’andy? Me throat’s like sandpaper.”
A grimy hand reached up over the gunwale and clung on. I leaned over and grabbed its owner by the seat of his trousers and heaved. Dig joined me and between us we yanked the soldier aboard.
“Thanks, chum,” he said. “’Adn’t got the strength to do it meself.”
“Get aft,” I said, “and sit down.”
“OK, chum,” he said, and clumped along the deck.
All around us there was the sound of voices, cursing or shouting orders, and the splash of bodies in the water. The sound grew to a crescendo, then, as the hurrying of the ships ceased for a moment, died away again to a murmur.
Dig looked at me in silence, then we reached over and grabbed for the next man in line…
Six
All night and all the next day from first light to darkness, and through the night and the day again, we were at it, yanking men aboard as fast as we could grab them, pulling till our arms ached and we had to rest. Then, when we were fully loaded, we ferried them out to the destroyer that waited in the fairway and shoved them aboard, up the boarding nets – dozens of them, load after load of ’em – till we were drenched by the water that dropped back from their saturated clothing.
I’d never have thought we could have carried on so long without rest or food. The time flew past with the hurry of a house on fire. The urgency of the situation and the tremendous task we had to do made us forget the ache in our backs. We stopped only when we couldn’t get inshore for the crowd of boats that jostled each other in the surf and made manoeuvring difficult, or to swallow a sandwich of bully-beef from the destroyer and a mug of tea.
When the sun rose we were hard at it again, and when it set we were still there, dog-weary and hungry, our legs buckling under us, asleep on our feet, but still heading backwards and forwards between the beaches and the ships, fisting our fuel aboard in cans.
And all the time, in regular doses, Jerry shelled us from the shore and hammered us from the sky until the noise put the fear of God into us. I wouldn’t like to live those two days again. I can’t remember much of what went on now, but I’ll never forget the racket and the hurry.
There were times when the sky seemed to be falling about our ears and the sea seemed to be heaving upwards in vast, rumbling explosions that flung the water in spray across the decks. When I stopped to think about it I felt like turning the boat round and belting off home at full revs. When I had the time I got the wind-up properly, and it grew worse as the hours went by and I grew more tired. There seemed to be so little protection in those small boats from the stuff they flung at us. Everything but the kitchen stove it was at times. But the Navy had to use little boats like ours because they couldn’t get the troopships in in daylight. They’d already lost more destroyers and troopers than they dared think about before we went across. The wrecks of them littered the fairway till it looked like a graveyard and made navigation difficult and dangerous. There was no backing out. I’d have liked to have done so many times, but one look at the beaches stopped all thoughts of hurrying away.
They were white, with grass waving on the dunes behind, just like on the Lincolnshire coast or round the Wash, and it made it all the more unreal that this drama was being acted in what seemed to be so familiar a place.
Those crowded ranks on the sand were still moving with incredible order down to the water’s edge where the litter of debris lay. Washed-up equipment mingled with great-coats and every article of clothing imaginable. Smashed and swamped boats were surrounded by boxes and planks and tarpaulins and ropes. The whole beach, vivid in the late sunshine, was dotted from end to end with packs and equipment. Here and there were wrecked vehicles, one or two still smoking, and out in the surf stretched an improvised pier of lorries, shattered into broken heaps by the waves and the bursting sh
ells.
In the shallows, boats were being pulled laboriously out to tugs or launches, sweating sailors, soldiers and civilians handling the heavy oars. As they reached the surf their bows dipped sharply and their crews had to pull fiercely in desperate strokes to give them way to combat the current. Just off shore a destroyer, her funnel dribbling smoke, was moving slowly ahead, boarding nets down, By her side, in her lee, was a huddle of small boats from which men clambered up her steel sides. Ashore, a few of the brighter spirits were playing football and even paddling.
“Look at ’em,” Yorky had said in amazement. “Only wants a few winkles to make it like Cleethorpes!”
As the sun began to lose its brassiness we drew off and drifted while we snatched a breather and a hasty meal. Even as we ate, though, we moved about, getting her ready for the next trip in. My legs were like lead by this time and my eyes were smarting for want of sleep.
Yorky, a borrowed steel helmet on the back of his head, was cramming discarded equipment into the forecastle and the after hatch.
“Best tidy up,” he said. “Them Nazzies will be back soon and then the balloon’ll go up again.”
I sat near the bows, numb with weariness. The decks, which had been clean when we started, were now a slushy mess of grey mud. Old Boxer listlessly pulled up a bucket of water on a heaving-line and sloshed it across the deck, too tired to care whether it cleaned the planks or not.
He’d stood at the wheel almost without relief throughout the dark nights. Only the desperate necessity for keeping going had prevented him from succumbing to the fear that had still not left him. The rum in the bottle was low now and I could tell he was afraid of what he’d do when it was gone. I think it was only those swallows of raw, burning spirit that had prevented him from cracking up.
Dig, his eyes bloodshot, was eating a sandwich at the wheel, almost asleep on his feet but exultant at the job he’d proved himself capable of doing. It was only his elation and his sheer dogged guts that had kept his skinny body moving long after it should have stopped.
There was a smell of oil smoke in the air from the great black pall that blew across the town. It mixed with the greasy black clouds from burning buildings and deposited a layer of fine ash and cinders and soot on the deck. The water around us as we drifted was black and greasy with oil, and here and there, patches of shining, iridescent light on its surface marked the grave of a ship or an aircraft.
Suddenly Yorky flung out an arm and my eyes followed the pointing hand that was silhouetted against the sky.
“Here they are, the bastards!” His voice was sharp and cracked with excitement. “Jeeze, if I’d only got a gun I’d learn ’em a thing or two!”
Old Boxer looked up over his shoulder, slowly, as though his weary head wouldn’t drag itself round, then he dropped the bucket with a clatter and hurried in a shambling run to the wheelhouse, elbowing Dig from the wheel.
High in the sky, faint and silvery, like midges in the sun, a group of ’planes were heading towards us. The destroyers’ guns opened fire with a crash that nearly split my eardrums, the harsh racket of her pom-poms mingling with the crack of the heavier ack-ack.
The ’planes came in low through a sky that was pockmarked with bursting shells and criss-crossed with the lines of tracer. The din was deafening as the screech of projectiles interrupted the peevish crack of cannon.
Old Boxer was looking backwards over his shoulder, I remember, as the first of the ’planes approached. My stomach went sick inside me as I saw the bombs coming down out of a cloudless sky. Then Old Boxer flung all his weight on the wheel and the boat heeled over, turning in her own length.
The kick of the bombs jarred the spokes in his hands and the boat rocked violently, throwing us to our knees.
“Christ!” Yorky yelled. “You’d think the bastards was only after us!”
The formations had broken now and the aircraft were coming individually with their machine-guns blazing. Lewis guns from the tugs and smaller craft and the rattle of rifles from the beach joined the general clamour. The sea was flecked with small plumes as the bullets struck its surface and the shell splinters came singing down. Mounting high over our heads were the swirling, monstrous fountains of water the bombs threw up, breaking into spray at their summits, and coloured by the sunshine into rainbow hues.
The destroyer was moving at speed now, the boats cast adrift, twisting and turning, heeling over on her beam ends as she took evasive action. Suddenly she seemed to rear out of the sea as she was straddled by bombs, and as the vast fountains of water crumpled and collapsed upon her she limped slowly away, steam and smoke belching out aft. Beyond her, a tanker was sending up a vast funeral pyre as the flames consumed her.
Dive-bombers were peeling off above us with a howl of motors that added to the havoc and the racket of the bombs. The whole of the sky seemed to be coming down on top of us, pressing us noisily into the sea below the wreckage of boats and rafts and furnishings and planks.
“Get her in!” I shouted. “Get her inshore!”
“Christ!” Yorky popped up out of the engine-room hatch by my side. “It’s Sat’day. If I was ’ome I’d be in me ratting suit and out on the ran-tan with a young lady.” Then his head vanished as he dropped below again.
We headed stubbornly towards the shore, Old Boxer at the helm flinching with every explosion. He was dreading every second, I knew, but he was unable to leave the wheel and obey the urgings of his mind and run terrified for cover. I was glad then I’d given him the job to do. My eye caught a pool of blood on the quivering foredeck just in front of me. It had been there all day, ever since we’d moved the dead soldier who’d lain there, his staring eyeballs covered with grit, and no one had thought to wash it off. It was congealing now, and my weary stomach was queasy as I looked at it. I knew what Old Boxer was feeling.
“It’s the booze,” he kept saying to him. “I’ll be all right when it’s worked itself off.”
Then I saw Yorky running along the deck to the wheelhouse, his eyes wild. “Switch off, ’Orace!” he was shouting. “She’ll seize up, else. There’s a oil-pipe bust. That last bomb did it.”
Then I saw he was drenched with oil that ran black and greasy and shining in the sunlight over his chest and arms and down his legs so that his trousers and vest clung to him in sticky folds.
“You’ll ’ave to ’ang on a bit, Jess,” he was yelling, “or she’ll run ’erself red-’ot.”
“Can you put it right?” I demanded.
“Gimme time an’ I can. The planks is sprung, too. It’s the concussion as does it.”
“Want any help?” Dig’s voice asked quietly and Yorky nodded.
“Not ’arf,” he grinned. “It’s a bit of a bloody muck-’eap down there, though.”
Dig laughed with him, and they vanished below while the boat wallowed and rolled in the wash of moving ships.
The bombing had slackened a little by this time, and Old Boxer came out of the wheelhouse on trembling legs and sat down. I stood beside him on the wide deck, staring at the sky, conscious of our helplessness without the engines that gave us motion. Every minute while Yorky worked, every silent second when the engines were useless, I must have sweated blood with anxiety, staring at the sky all the time, jumpy and nervous, miserably aware of being responsible for three men and a useless boat…
The noise had lessened a lot, and you could stand still without wincing at the shock of bombs and speak without shouting. The boat was drifting gently with the current, the wreckage around her thicker than I’d seen it all day. I squinted at the sky and the growing dusk. There were still aircraft about but they were being chased away overhead by a few Spitfires.
I turned, glancing down the hatchway into the engine-room where Dig and Yorky laboured in the hot and dripping oil, their feet slithering on the slimy decks. Old Boxer crouched near me, cowering almost, on the fender where he was huddled, and I saw him lift the rum bottle to his lips.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Tired,” he replied. “Shall we have to come back here again tomorrow, Jess?”
“Suppose so.” I was non-committal. “Suppose we’ll have to stay till we’re told to go back.”
“Not another day,” he said between gritted teeth. “Not mother day like this one.” Then he turned away, and I heard that insistent mutter as I’d heard it on and off all day: “It’s the booze, you old fool. That’s all. You’ll be all right when it’s worn off.” He lifted the bottle and had another mouthful of the rum.
He’d been drinking all the time. There was an empty bottle already in the forecastle. In fact he was so stale with the smell of rum it was hard not to comment on it. But I’d said nothing. He hadn’t let us down.
I shrugged wearily and moved aft where I could hear the clang of a hammer through the engine-room hatch and Yorky’s tuneless whistling. I was fingering frayed rigging, chafed with rubbing against the steel sides of bigger vessels, touching the scarred and splintered deck with my boot toe. Impatiently I squinted down the engine-room hatch and again at the sky. There were still ’planes about, but the rattle of anti-aircraft fire had died.
I knew I ought to try and take the boat home, but I’d no wish to turn my back yet on the evacuation. I preferred the crowded excitement and desperation of this embarkation to the loneliness I knew I’d feel at home. But the boat was no longer in a fit condition for work, with her oil-pipes severed and patched, her engines missing and her planks leaking.
Then I began to think of Kate and what she’d said to me just before we left Wiggins’ wharfside. “God bless you,” she’d said. “I’ll be here when you come back.” And she’d kissed me – for the first time since I’d known her.
As I recalled her pale, tranquil face, calm with the courage in her, I remembered the warmth I’d felt at her words. Suddenly I realised she’d meant what she said, and I knew she’d got over her fear of me, that she’d learned she could trust me.
