by Colin Forbes
'Driver, right, off the road, right. Besa. Besa. Right. Well right. Fire!'
Penn's trigger hand jumped to the Besa. Reynolds swerved off the road, through a low wire fence, over the grass, heading straight for the running men. The Besa began to stutter, a hail of bullets catching the man on the right-most flank, catching him in mid-stride, in mid-air as he began to flop, his body hiccupping convulsively, the machine-pistol falling from his grip.
'Besa. Traverse left, left...'
Coolly, without panic, Penn's mind and hand paralleled Barnes' intentions and the turret began to swing, taking the flail of bullets with it. Get the one on the far right first, then sweep left against the forward movement of the running men, catching all five men as they desperately tried to spread, depressing the Besa to sweep it at ground level over those who had dropped to the grass. In half a minute it was all over and Barnes gave the order to take the tank back on to the road.
The smashed truck sagged grotesquely to one side, still on its wheels but keeled over at a crippled angle, flames licking over the bonnet, the torn canvas at the back catching alight. Then the petrol tank went up, a dull thump. Flames soared up and the canvas flared, burning rapidly, exposing the metal framework. Halting the tank, Barnes waited until the conflagration had died down, his eyes' scanning the summer sky constantly for aircraft, but it was empty of any sign of war. Only on the ground death disfigured the gloriously sunny day. As soon as the flames began to peter out Barnes gave the order to move the tank forward. The shelled truck now blocked the way, the wreckage standing in the middle of the road. Carefully he guided the tank along the grass verge, turning it so that the front hull faced the truck broadside on.
'Driver, move forward slowly and tip it over the edge.' The tank crawled forward, its tracks bumping the side of the truck. Foot by foot, it thrust the truck backwards towards the slope at the end of the bridge, a slope which Barnes now saw led down to the canal. From the turret he could see over the hump of the bridge and the road beyond was clear for miles. He could also see on the floor of the cab and inside the truck itself a huddle of clothes which bore little resemblance to uniformed soldiers. The truck was almost on the brink now, pushed backwards by the tank which was manoeuvring the vehicle like a bulldozer shifting waste material. As the truck began to topple a helmeted figure scrambled out from under the bodies, dropping to the roadway and swinging his machine-pistol round in one movement. God knew how he had managed to survive the holocaust but now he survived only seconds. As the machine-pistol came round Barnes fired his revolver at the same moment as the Besa began to stutter. The German fell back over the edge a few seconds before the truck toppled, crashing down the slope on top of him with a jarring grind of crumpling metal as the vehicle landed on the edge of the canal, settling like a crushed concertina. There was an unpleasant smell of burnt rubber as Barnes gave the orders to reverse, drive forward over the bridge, and halt on the far side. Then he clambered down into the road and went back over the bridge.
He saw Pierre in the distance, climbing up out of the ditch where he had jumped as soon as the truck appeared. Now he walked slowly along the road as Barnes scrambled down the slope to investigate the carnage. It was like a miniature battlefield. In its fall down the slope, the truck had thrown out its grisly load, scattering bodies along the canal bank. One man lay half in the canal, face downwards. The smashed and twisted bodies were all dead, all except one^ Grimly, Barnes walked over to the moaning man, the moans reminding him of an animal in mortal pain. Both his legs had been blown off and he lay on his stomach, the lower part of his body a bloodstained stump. He had lost his helmet and appeared to be biting the ground. It was quite clear that in a short time, half an hour at the most, he would be dead, but during that half an hour he was a creature who would be racked by unendurable agonies. Christ, thought Barnes, why didn't you have the sense to die too? He clenched his teeth bitterly. You poor bastard. He mouthed the words silently for fear that the man might hear him, might even manage to turn his head. Leaning down, unaware that his teeth were locked rigid, he held the muzzle of the revolver within an inch of the man's head and before he could think about it he pulled the trigger. The German gave a quick convulsive movement and lay still. Barnes let out his breath. As he straightened up he sensed that he was not alone and he turned round. Over the parapet of the bridge two faces stared down. Penn and Pierre.
'Pierre,' shouted Barnes, 'come down here a minute.'
The lad came down slowly, watching his feet as he slithered down the slope, not looking at what lay beneath him. Up on the bridge Penn still looked down, his face like stone. When Pierre reached the bottom he stopped and looked at Barnes, his hair freshly combed, his expression blank.
'Take a good look, Pierre,' invited Barnes. This is the war you were so eager to get mixed up in. When you reach your age group you'll get called up - and it's my bet the war will last long enough for that. But don't ever think that it's going to be fun.'
Pierre's eyes wandered over the bodies, his face still devoid of all emotion. He stood very erect.
'Take a good look,' went on Barnes, watching him closely, 'These are the bastards who machine-gun women from tanks and planes.'
'Can I go now?' Pierre asked coldly. He omitted to add the word 'sergeant'.
'Yes, go straight back to the tank and wait there with Trooper Reynolds. Perm, come down here a minute.'
He waited. Pierre had disappeared over the bridge when Penn reached the tow-path, his eyes blazing, his voice sharp-edged.
'Did you have to do that to him?'
'I had my reasons. Now find two machine-pistols in working order and as many spare magazines as you can. That'll give us one each and they may come in handy.'
They worked in silence. Barnes counted the bodies and as far as he could make out the truck had carried a complement of twenty men including those lying in the field on the other side of the road. He would have liked to search the clothes of the officer who had undoubtedly sat in the cab beside the driver, but in; this jumbled horror such a search would have taken hours. Instead, he went back to the man without legs, felt under the body, and extracted his Army pay-book. Gustav Freisler, the 75th Field Regiment. At least that's what he thought the long German word identifying the unit meant. He put the pay-book in his pocket. It would positively identify the unit when he reached the Allied lines and also he wanted the report of this poor devil's death sent back to Germany via the Red Cross as soon as possible.
When they returned to the tank, Barnes spent a short time explaining to Penn and Reynolds how the German machine-pistols worked and he made them practise using them without magazines. While this was going on Pierre sat on the engine covers and gazed up at the sky without taking the slightest notice of Barnes. Penn practised with his pistol diligently and said hardly a word, climbing up into the tank when the exercise was over with an expressionless face. Only Reynolds seemed unaware of the coolness in the atmosphere and he spoke with conviction as he turned to get down inside his hatch.
'Good old Penn. He can really use that two-pounder.' 'Good job he can - there were twenty of them inside that truck.'
Good old Penn. Reynolds was right there. If he hadn't clobbered that truck with his first shot, the dead German officer might well be examining their pay-books now. But it was what lay ahead of them that was occupying Barnes' thoughts now, and as he screwed up his eyes to check the late afternoon sky he felt sure that they couldn't hope to get through the coming night without very serious trouble.
There was an element of danger in his decision, but Barnes took a calculated risk when he decided to spend the night by the river bridge. Since leaving the shelled truck by the canal they had experienced an evening of tension which had played havoc with their already strained nerves, and since both Penn and Reynolds had taken it in turn to mount guard during the four nights when Barnes lay unconscious at Fontaine, all of them were in a state close to physical exhaustion. Probably the factor which more than any other dr
ained their resources was the knowledge that they were moving behind the enemy lines, that at any moment they might encounter an overwhelming German force which would easily annihilate them in a matter of minutes. Most of all, Barnes feared that they would meet a Panzer column head-on.
The rising tension made itself felt in different ways. Two hours had been wasted by the roadside when the engines broke down and they struggled to find and repair the defect. During this time Pierre, who had to leave the tank when they pulled open the engine covers at the rear, sat on the grass verge without speaking. Barnes suspected that even Penn was beginning to wish that he hadn't been so keen to bring the Belgian with them, but he couldn't be sure because the corporal himself was unusually silent. Reynolds worked stolidly on the engines, noticing nothing wrong, but then Reynolds was never oversensitive where atmospheres were concerned. They found the cause of the trouble eventually, repaired it, had a drink of water, and then moved on, leaving the road to circle round a town. So far they had avoided three towns by moving across open country in wide sweeps, returning to the road well beyond each town. This tactic, too, had caused an argument with Penn.
'Why don't we risk it?' he had pressed. 'We have Pierre and one of us can sneak in with him to get some news.'
'We may have to do that later, but not yet,' Barnes had replied firmly. 'I want to have some better idea of where we are first.'
'Doesn't the map tell you that?'
The engine had just been repaired and before starting out again Barnes and Penn had wandered off into a nearby field as Reynolds made his final checks.
'No, it doesn't, Penn. We'll go round this place like we went round the last one.'
From where they stood they could see the town in the distance. A tall church spire, several factory chimneys, a long line of buildings. A flight of Stuka dive-bombers crossed the sky very high up, heading for the north-west. Since leaving Fontaine they had stopped four times while enemy planes flew out of view. Irritably, Penn persisted.
'But if you just trace the road down from Fontaine ...'
'Penn, the road we're travelling on doesn't correspond with the road we thought we were taking. It doesn't correspond with it at all. We're travelling south-west now, I know, but for a long time we were heading due south.'
'The compass may be playing up. It does sometimes with all that metal..."
'I'm going by the sun - that isn't affected by the metal, is it?'
'You mean we may have got back on to a different road when we made one of our detours?'
'I mean there's something damned peculiar about the whole business. So,' Barnes spoke emphatically, 'we're not going near any town today. We'll go round this place, wherever it is. We'd better get moving.'
It was very close to dusk when Barnes saw the bridge, a large stone affair with a broad span which could easily take two lanes of traffic. They were in the middle of open country miles away from anywhere and within half an hour they wouldn't be able to move without putting on the headlights, a course of action he was anxious to avoid at all costs. As they came closer he noticed a copse of trees to the right of the bridge. He stopped the tank and went forward with Penn to investigate.
'This might be a good place,' Penn suggested. 'Bridges are lucky for us. We could park Bert in these trees.'
But the copse was a hopeless cover. It was simply a handful of thin-trunked saplings staggered at intervals through the grass. No matter how they parked the tank, Bert would still be visible from the road, and it was the road which worried Barnes. Penn thought differently.
'This is an ideal spot, particularly at night.'
'Not correct, Penn. Any vehicle coming over that bridge from the south will swivel its headlights straight over this spot. We've been lucky so far — I think the German invasion has cleared all normal traffic off this road but that doesn't mean Jerry won't be sending more troops this way. We've got to find somewhere we can park Bert completely out of sight. Under that bridge might do the trick.'
'Under the bridge? ...'
But he was talking to himself. Barnes strode off-back to the road and scrambled down the bank by the side of the bridge, pushing his way through thick brambles to the river at the bottom. Yes, there was ample room under the high stone arch, but how deep was the river? Bert could comfortably wade through three feet of water provided the fording flap was closed over the rear air outlets. He found that under the bridge the water was less than a foot deep and blessed the fact that it hadn't rained for over a fortnight. Even better, the bed of the river was surfaced with smooth rocks and between the rocks was a fine gravel.
An old footpath ran along the north side of the river, a footpath half-submerged under weeds and tall grass, and this would give them a place to sleep close to the tank. Looking up under the arch he judged that there was sufficient clearance to take Bert's overall height of eight feet. Now for the question of concealment. He walked along the footpath under the bridge, pacing out the distance. Twenty-six feet. Bert's overall length was eighteen feet so he would rest well inside the archway. The only problem lay in getting the tank down to the river bed - the banks were at least twelve feet high and steeply inclined, their slopes covered with a jungle of brambles and undergrowth. He went back to the tank and issued instructions, leaving Pierre by the roadside while he guided the vehicle some distance across a sun-baked field and well away from the bridge before they attempted the descent to the river bed: he was determined to leave no traces of their presence by smashing down undergrowth close to the bridge.
He checked the river depth again, returned to the tank, and ordered Reynolds to switch on the headlights, disliking the precaution but knowing that it was essential because it Was almost dark now below the level of the banks. Then the tracks began to descend, smashing down undergrowth, dropping with a bump as the tank's centre of gravity pivoted on the brink and then plunged downwards, slithering and grinding over the brambles, hitting the water with a splash, the tank turning as Reynolds briefly halted the right track so that the revolutions of the left one swung the hull round through an angle of ninety degrees to face downstream. When Barnes shone his torch beam he saw that the river level was no more than a foot up the side of the tracks. As usual, Reynolds was handling the driving brilliantly even in this unusual environment. The tank advanced .towards the bridge, a clearance from the banks on either side of several feet, moving forward over the firm river bed until they halted under the archway. Inside the hull Penn sat listening to the peaceful lapping of water round the tracks.
'Now,' said Barnes briskly, 'time for supper. Penn, you take up temporary guard duty on the bridge while Reynolds brews up - I'll come up and relieve you as soon as it's ready. I wonder what the devil has happened to Pierre?'
He climbed down to the footpath and started to climb the bank when he heard Pierre coming along the footpath from upstream; the lad was carrying something in bis hands. When he switched on his torch he saw that Pierre was holding a large fish.
'I caught it in a pool higher up - we can have it for our supper. There are many more - easily enough for one each.'
Penn paused, halfway up the bank on his way to the bridge. 'What a marvellous idea - my mouth's watering already. Pity we haven't some chips to go with them.'
'Give it to me!' Reynolds thrust an eager hand forward and Barnes remembered that the driver had been a fishmonger before he had signed on. 'I'll start cleaning it as soon as I get the brew-up going.'
'You really want raw fish for supper?' Barnes asked quietly.
'Raw?' Penn protested. 'We can cook the damned thing in no time.'
'There'll be no cooking here tonight. It's a warm evening, the air's absolutely still, and a cooking smell could linger round this bridge for hours. I'm not risking it. We'll have to make do with tea and bully beef. We've got the French bread Pierre brought, too,' he added.
'For Christ's sake!' exploded Penn.
'You're supposed to be up on that bridge keeping a lookout,' replied Barnes with deceptive
calm.
'Sorry,' Penn spoke stiffly, turned away, and clambered up to the top of the slope.
Reynolds said nothing and went back to preparing a brew-up on his little stove. Barnes waited for the Belgian lad's reaction with interest. Putting his hands back behind his head, Pierre hurled the fish as far as he could downstream and sat down on the footpath, not looking at Barnes. Under the archway, Reynolds worked in silence, unpacking his spirit stove, inserting white metaldehyde tablets, applying a lighted match, and then replacing the metal cap over the flame. When he went off upstream to fill his kettle he was gone for several minutes and Barnes guessed that he had taken water from Pierre's pool so he could look at the fish.
The stove was not standard issue, but many of the items they carried, such as their sheath_knives, had never appeared on any official list of equipment: Barnes had long ago decided that his tank must be able to operate as a self-contained unit without the normal supply facilities when necessary, although never in his wildest theorizing could he have visualized a situation like this where they would find themselves behind the enemy lines, cut off from all contact with their own army, let alone their own troop. I took the right decision, he told himself as he thought of Penn's irritability and watched Reynolds' abnormally slow movements in preparing the supper. Those two haven't enjoyed more than four hours' sleep a night since we landed at Fontaine and today was no picnic. Until we get some rest none of us is capable of taking part in action against the enemy, so the only thing to do is to keep our heads down until we've recovered. I hope to God we get a peaceful night. He went up to the bridge to relieve Perm.
