by Colin Forbes
'Wait for it,' he warned the others, but mainly to warn Reynolds who was driving.
They heard it coming., a high-pitched whistle growing to a piercing shriek which easily dominated the engine sound, penetrating the armoured walls as though they were papier-mache. It's a direct hit this time, thought Penn. He looked at Davis, but the gunner's eyes stared fixedly at the turntable floor, his jaw muscles clenched, his forehead moist with sudden sweat. Penn looked at Barnes, but the sergeant had his eyes glued to the periscope as he watched the tunnel coming closer. God, thought Penn, he's got no nerves at all. The thing was screaming like a banshee now. Would it never land? Up in the nose of the tank Reynolds could hear it coming, too, but he was wrestling with two separate fears. Reynolds had no imagination but as he saw the mouth of the tunnel looming towards him through the slit window he remembered a story he had once read in a newspaper. It had happened in Spain during the Civil War - a scout car racing towards a tunnel to escape bombing had met an express train coming out of the tunnel at high speed... But nobody would be running trains in the battle area. The tunnel mouth yawned towards him and the bomb exploded.
The shock wave dealt the armour-plating such a blow that it rattled the plates, seeming for a moment about to blow the tank off the embankment. Fitments clattered down on to the turntable floor and the detonation reverberating inside the metal room was so loud that they were all deafened. Then they heard the next one coming. First the whistle, then the scream. This time Barnes felt fairly sure they were going to get it: the scream was much louder, its aiming point seemed to be dead centre down the turret. It had to happen to someone during the war - a bomb dead centre through the lid, exploding inside that confined space... The bomb hit, detonated. It rocked the tank like a toy, smashing at the plates with a hammerblow, the acrid smell of high explosive seeping inside the fighting compartment. That one had been close! He glanced at Davis, who still stared at the floor as though his life depended on it. Penn had gone as white as a sheet, his small neat moustache quivering before he clenched his lips together and then unclenched them to speak.
'Knock, knock. Who's there?'
Nobody laughed, nobody smiled. They just looked at each other strangely, as they heard the next one coming. In the driver's seat Reynolds kept the tank going full out, conjuring up reserves of speed from Bert that even he hadn't known existed. The tunnel mouth now filled the breadth of his slit window. He had forgotten all about trains coming out of hillsides. His hands holding the steering levers were as wet as though he had ^dipped them in water. Sweat streamed off his broad forehead and dripped into his eyes, but he kept them open, seeing the beams of his headlights inside the tunnel now. Then the third one started to come down. The tunnel rushed closer and closer as the bomb fell lower and lower, louder than its predecessors. Please, Bert, please! Reynolds whispered to himself. The walls of the tunnel rushed forward and they went inside as the bomb detonated. The force of the explosion seemed to take hold of Bert's rear and shove him inside the hill, followed by an appalling clattering sound, a low rumble behind them, then the ground under the tracks shook and they felt the vibration inside the tank. Barnes swore, swivelled the periscope through one hundred and eighty degrees, and stared back to where should have been an arched frame of daylight, seeing nothing but pitch blackness. The last bomb had caught the top of the entrance, blowing the hillside down over the track and sealing off the outside world.
'Halt,' Barnes rapped out into the mike, 'but keep the engines revved up.'
The last thing he wanted inside this tunnel was an engine failure. He looked at the others and they stared back, stunned now by the nerve-racking silence. Except for the engine sound it was uncannily quiet. No shells whining past, no projectiles screaming down from above.
Cautiously, he climbed into the turret and pushed back the lid on its telescopic arms. It was like emerging into an underground cavern, a subterranean cave weirdly lit by Bert's headlights. Barnes felt a tightening of his stomach muscles as he swivelled his torch beam into the dark corners, moving it slowly over the enormous rock pile. Through the intercom he told Reynolds to switch off the headlights and at the same moment he doused his own torch. Not a glimmer of light anywhere: the entrance was well and truly blocked. He climbed down off the tank and used his torch to guide him to the rock wall. Still no sign of daylight. The only way out was forward to the far end of the tunnel. When he climbed back into the tank he found Penn was still examining the wireless set. He put on his headset and ordered Reynolds to switch on the headlights. The corporal looked up and pulled a wry face.
'It's hopeless. Two valves went when the bullet charged in. Mind you, I'd sooner have it nestling in there instead of in my pelvis, but I haven't any spares so we'll have to wait till we get back to squadron HQ.'
Barnes tested the intercom again. At least that was still working, but being cut off from Parker was serious. Thank God, he had sent out one warning about the gap in the French lines. Taking the map case out of the rack he climbed down on to the hull and Penn followed, watching over his shoulder as he spread out a large-scale map of Belgium and Northern France over the engine covers at the rear of the tank. His torch focused on the area round Etreux.
'This tunnel's a damned long one, Penn. We'll just have to jog through it and then make our way back as best we can, Jerry permitting. At least we'll have a pretty good report on the area when we do eventually land back.'
'It's going to be a long way round, isn't it?' queried Penn. 'As soon as we get out of the tunnel that canal bars the route back for miles. We'll have to go over that bridge, then follow this road...'
His finger traced a wide semi-circular course which would take them back into the rear outskirts of Etreux. Barnes agreed that this was the only way and he cursed inwardly at the breakdown in wireless communication. Parker would be wondering what on earth had happened to them and meanwhile he'd have to fight the German onrush with two tanks instead of three. It couldn't be helped, but they'd better get cracking. Climbing back inside the tank he explained the position to Reynolds and Davis, giving Reynolds a word of caution over the intercom.
'This tunnel won't be straight, you can bet your life on that, so keep your speed down to five miles an hour or less and watch for bends. I'm going up into the turret to help guide you. What's the matter, Davis?'
The burly gunner with the squarish face and red hair had a hunted look and an air of tension radiated from him. He opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking.
'Come on, spit it out, man,' snapped Barnes.
'You'll think it's stupid, Sergeant, but I've always had a horror of tunnels. I was a miner once, as I told you. I was in a colliery disaster in 1934 - we were locked in for five days and we thought we'd been buried alive ...'
'Well, Davis, this happens to be a railway tunnel and we'll be through it in ten minutes, so get your mind on your guns. You never know,' he smiled grimly, 'we might meet a Panzer division coming up from the other end.'
He had reached the turret and given the order to advance when the hollowness of his joke struck him. If the Germans had just happened to break through at the other end, it might seem a very good idea to send tanks along the tunnel in the hope of taking Etreux on the flank. He decided that he'd better keep a close lookout ahead and his mind began to calculate the possible effect of two-pounder shells exploding inside the railway tunnel. The powerful headlights penetrated some distance into the tunnel and soon Barnes was warning Reynolds of a curve in the line. Now that they were away from the battle area the driver had rolled back the hood from the hatch and jacked up his seat so that his head protruded above the hull like a man in a Turkish bath cabinet. The journey along the tunnel was eerie and strange, the grind of the tracks and the throb of the engines echoing hollowly, probably very much like riding through a mine shaft, Barnes thought, and he glanced down into the compartment below. Penn was still fiddling with the wireless set as though hoping to perform an act of faith, but Davis sat rigid as a sto
ne behind his guns, his body thrust hard into the shoulder-grip, his hand on the two-pounder's trigger. Undoubtedly, Trooper Davis' idea of a private hell was meeting a Panzer column deep underground.
The engine noise sounded far too loud with its reverberations hemmed inside the tunnel and the grind and clatter of the steel tracks conjured up the advance of the biggest tank in the world. Barnes looked at his watch again and then gazed ahead. They should be seeing daylight soon now if the map was anything to go by, and leaving the tunnel was going to call for some pretty careful reconnaissance. Barnes had absolutely no idea what the position might be on this sector of the front: what he had seen from the embankment gave him little cause for optimism as to what might face them once they reached the far end. One part of his mind concentrated on the probing beams while another considered the various possibilities they could encounter - calling on the one hand for a swift dash out into the open or, on the other, for a more cautious passage. As far as he could tell from the map, the railway emerged into open country with no sign of an embankment; there should be fields on both sides with the canal barring the way to the west, the way they wanted to go. They'd just have to see. The headlights were now beginning to sweep round a gradual bend. Somewhere round this bend they should see daylight, probably a first glimmer, then a distant archway. What that happens, Barnes told himself, I'll halt the tank and go on foot for a recce. Just so long as we don't have any trouble with Davis. He glanced down again and saw that Davis was sitting in exactly the same position, gripping the two-pounder as though his very life depended on it, a posture of such implacable rigidity that Barnes was none too happy about his gunner's likely reactions.
'We'll soon be there, Davis,' he said down the intercom. 'Perm, get back to your seat just in case. Be ready to halt, Reynolds, as soon as I give the word.'
The tank ground on, the left-hand track rumbling over wooden sleepers while the right-hand track scattered pebbles, so that the tank was tilted very slightly to the right, the three sounds complementing each other - the throb of the engines, the grumble of the tracks, and the slither of pebbles. Abruptly, Barnes gave the order to halt, saying nothing more while he wondered how to break it to them. The headlights penetrated the darkness and then halfway along the full extent of their beams they splashed out over solid surface, a wall surface with boulders protruding from a scree of soil and rubble which resembled a landslide. This end of the tunnel was blocked, too. They were sealed off inside the bowels of the earth.
On May 10th the BEF had moved from France into Belgium and Barnes' unit had moved with it. On May 10th, four hours earlier at 3 am, General von Bock's Army Group B had advanced across the frontiers of Holland and Belgium with the express purpose of tempting the BEF and three French armies to leave their fortified lines. Before the end of the day the movement of these vast forces was quite apparent to London and Paris, but a third movement of even more massive forces had so far gone unnoticed.
At the point where Belgium, France, and Luxembourg meet lies one of the least known areas of Western Europe - the massif of the Ardennes range, a remote zone of high hills enclosing steep wooded gorges along which snake second-class roads. This was the sector of the huge front from Belgium to Switzerland which the French High Command had long ago declared 'impassable', and it was opposite this sector that they had placed their weakest forces.
During the early hours of May 10th General von Rundstedt's Army Group A began its secret forward movement through the 'impassable' Ardennes, an army group more powerful than any the world had ever seen. It comprised a force of forty-four divisions, including the main mass of the Panzer divisions which contained over two thousand armoured vehicles. All night long the army group penetrated into the twisting defiles, drawing ever closer to the French border. The tanks drove in close formation, each vehicle guided by the hooded rear light of the tank ahead, an exercise they had practised over and over again. Seen from the air through the eye of an infra-red camera the German host would indeed have resembled a snake, or rather a series of snakes - armoured snakes threading their way through the darkness towards the Meuse near Sedan.
The leading Panzer division was commanded by a thirty-two-year-old general who had won his spurs - and his promotion - in Poland. His unit had led the Wehrmacht into burning Warsaw and now he looked forward to leading it into burning Paris. Without aristocratic connections, on sheer ruthless ability, the general had risen in a few brief years to command the very tip of the spearhead aimed at the heart of sleeping France. His was, in fact, the first tank, and now he stood in the turret erect as a fir tree, night field-glasses dangling over his chest, the Knight's Cross suspended from his neck, his eyes fixed on the motor-cycle patrol ahead.
Under his high peaked cap his hawk-like face was calm and without a trace of emotion. His gloved hand rested lightly on the turret rim, without tension, to correct his balance as the huge vehicle made its way along the insidious road. He might well have been on manoeuvres, looking forward to the congratulations of the umpires later and a drink with his fellow officers in the mess. Except for the fact that the general neither smoked nor drank, and except for the further fact that he was leading the advance guard of the coming onslaught, confident that he was about to play a decisive part in the total annihilation of the British and the French.
The tip of the German spearhead reached the Meuse on May 12th, crossed it on May 13th, and by Thursday May 16th, the general was in Laon, deep in the heart of France. He led the advance still erect in his tank, still wearing the peaked cloth cap in spite of the earlier entreaties of Colonel Hans Meyer, his GSO, to exchange it for a steel helmet.
'It won't be necessary, Meyer. You will see,' the general had said, 'we "shall cut through them like a scythe.'
Meyer withdrew the helmet as he sourly recalled a conversation he had had with the general,a month earlier during the final war manoeuvres near Wiesbaden. To Meyer it now seemed that the conversation had taken place at least a year ago since already the Panzers were pouring over the pontoons across the river Meuse.
'There will be two or three major battles,' the general had said, 'and these will take place soon after we have crossed the Meuse. We can expect the fiercest resistance for two or three weeks and then a total collapse of the enemy.'
'I wonder,' Meyer had replied dubiously.
The general was a little too confident for Meyer's liking, particularly when he remembered that this commanding officer was a nobody whereas Hans Meyer was descended from one of the oldest families in East Prussia. One must move with the times, of course, and Meyer was only forty-three years old. As he watched the endless Panzer column advancing into the fields of France, Meyer reminded himself that he expected high promotion in this war and that this largely depended on the general's good-will. So he must compromise, keeping his doubts about the general to himself.
Once beyond the Meuse the Panzers met with only sporadic resistance - the frantic firing of a few shells from artillery pieces, a rattle of machine guns, an irregular thump of mortar bombs falling somewhere. The general drove his division forward non-stop along the main road, thundering across France in a cloud of dust while the early summer sun beat down on the iron column. Away from the road, women working in the fields stopped to watch that dust cloud which rose like a smokescreen against the hot blue sky. It was a beautiful morning, the sky cloudless, the sun building up the intense warmth which suggested leisured ease rather than total warfare. Some of the women thought that the dust cloud marked the progress of a French column, although it was travelling in the wrong direction. Others stood and wondered, a feeling of depression and fear clutching their hearts, but still not able to accept the fact that the German army had broken through.
For this is exactly what it had done - it had broken clean through the French lines where the Ninth and Second Armies met - the least defensible point along any continuous front. And so far, since the dive-bombers had smashed all resistance on the west bank of the Meuse, there had been no f
ierce battles, none at all. Because the general was young, in the prime of life and endowed with enormous funds of energy and optimism, his sixth sense was beginning to tell him something. It was a matter of keeping going, of not stopping for anything. This mood was not shared by Colonel Hans Meyer.
There was an ugly scene when the general's tank halted briefly in the centre of a French village. Behind him four more heavy tanks rumbled into the square and halted, their huge guns revolving slowly round the upper windows of the old square, menacing even the thought of resistance. Meyer climbed down from his tank and approached the general, who remained in his turret, still standing erect, his face expressionless as he handed down his map.
'Meyer, the patrol has taken that road,' he pointed with his gloved hand, 'but is it the right one? They have assured me that it is - what do you think?'
Meyer examined the map quickly, looked round at the exits from the square, consulted his own map, and handed the other back to the general.
'I'm sure they are right, sir.'
'We'd better check with the locals. You speak French. That man over there - ask him.'
The general took off his glove, unbuttoned his holster flap, extracted his pistol, and pointed it at a middle-aged man with a grey moustache. It was an astonishing scene: the sun shining down so that it was almost hot, the inhabitants standing in the old square rigid with fear, like waxwork figures out of a tableau. Only five minutes earlier they had been going about their daily routines with a touch of anxiety but with no real fear. Then it had happened - the scared boy running into the square shouting something about a huge dust cloud. He had hardly finished telling his story when the motor-cyclists had flashed across the square, tyres screaming at the corners, vanishing as they raced off to the west. People had come out of their houses at the commotion, completely bewildered. A woman had seen German soldiers in the side-cars, helmeted figures carrying machine-pistols. Arguments had broken out. She must be mad, must be seeing things. And while they argued and wondered the general had arrived with five tanks. The village was paralysed as he unsheathed his pistol and aimed it.
