The Little Ship

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘Christ Almighty, it’s almost seven o’clock! We should have gone hours ago. Why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘You have not slept for days before this, that is why.’ She shook her short wet hair at him, spraying him with droplets of water. ‘I have been washing under the pump.’

  He pulled her down and kissed her and when he let her go his face was all wet. He smiled up at her. ‘If it wasn’t for this bloody war, I’d stay here for days with you.’

  The dog was waiting for them in the yard. They hacked a big chunk off the ham and filled a bottle with water from the pump and put them in the basket, together with the knife. Before they set off he took her in his arms and kissed her again. ‘Just wait till we’re back in England.’

  The country lane was empty but the sky was not. Wave after wave of German bombers roared overhead. ‘Dunkirk,’ Guy told her bitterly. ‘They must be bombing it to smithereens.’ We have no chance, Anna thought. The Germans will make sure of that. Otto must have known it very well. He lied about that, too, just as he lied to me. I mean nothing to him. I’m subhuman. By late morning they had reached the point where the lane joined up with a main road. A great stream of soldiers, British and French, were trudging northwards on foot, mixed up with a slow cavalcade of vehicles: lorries, trucks, and tanks and cars, all overloaded with more soldiers, and more soldiers riding on tractors, dustcarts, bicycles, children’s scooters, horses. She saw how shocked and appalled Guy was at the sight. The dog trotted behind the bikes, weaving his way after them. They could hear the distant booming of guns and ahead a giant cloud of black smoke rose into the skies.

  She quoted aloud: ‘“And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them the way. And by night in a pillar of fire to give them light.”’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s from Exodus, Guy.’

  Three hours later they came into the town of Dunkirk.

  * * *

  From Ramsgate Matt had sailed due east to the Gull and from there to the North Goodwin light. He was far behind the main convoy by then, but from time to time a motor torpedo-boat appeared, circling like a sheepdog. As he crossed the Sandettie Bank, south-east of the North Goodwins, he encountered a large paddle-steamer thrashing her way back from Dunkirk. As she approached, less than a quarter of a mile away, he could see her decks crowded with men – so many that she was low in the water. He didn’t spot the German dive-bombers until they swooped down suddenly out of the skies upon her. Their bombs sent up great spouts of water round the steamer and the spray fell on him like heavy rain. There was a burst of Bren-gun and rifle fire from her decks and the three dive-bombers turned for another run to rake her with their machine-guns. Then they climbed steeply and headed eastwards in the direction of Dunkirk. Matt felt not fear, but fury. More ships passed him, returning home – a fast Royal Navy vessel, its heavy wash tossing the Rose around like a cork, the cross-Channel ferry, Maid of Orleans, a minesweeper, a car ferry – its sawn-off platform wallowing through the waves – all of them packed tightly with troops.

  ‘Steer for the black smoke and the sound of the guns,’ someone had yelled at him from the wheel of a launch at Ramsgate. ‘And watch out for mines.’ He’d seen no mines so far but the black smoke billowing up over Dunkirk was visible from miles away and he could hear the constant thunder of guns. As he sailed nearer and darkness began to fall, flames showed up among the smoke as leaping tongues of orange. It looked as though the whole town was on fire. From the naval ships anchored offshore came the rapid blinking of Aldis lamps and the unearthly keening of sirens, and yet more flames from a sinking ship and gun flashes from the shore. He sailed closer still and saw big ships tied up along a concrete breakwater at the eastern end of the outer harbour and long lines of troops boarding them. It would be no place for the Rose. Matt took her instead further east beyond the breakwater and towards the beaches.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The town was a mass of burning, smoking rubble; its streets a shambles of broken glass, fallen masonry and twisted girders, dangling cables and wires, wrecked military vehicles, dead soldiers, dead civilians, dead horses. The heat from the fires scorched the skin and there was a hideous stench of blood and rotting flesh and bad-eggs cordite. An ambulance klaxon had jammed and was blaring non-stop, a herd of loose French cavalry horses cantered wildly up and down, whinnying in terror. In one estaminet drunken Tommies sat round a bottle-filled table, singing and swaying, in another that had been drunk dry, French poilus were smashing shelves. A platoon of British infantry marched smartly down the street, heavy boots grinding glass to powder. Guy stopped their officer.

  ‘What’s happening? Where the hell are we all supposed to be going?’

  The lieutenant eyed him caustically. ‘Where’ve you RAF chaps been? The Navy are taking us off at the harbour. The bloody Belgians have surrendered and the Jerries aren’t losing any time breaking through. Our rearguard can’t hold them back much longer. I’d look sharp about getting on a ship, if I were you.’ His eyes moved to Anna. ‘You’ll have to leave the girlfriend behind.’

  As he marched his men away he called back over his shoulder, ‘There’re some small boats working the beaches, too. You could try those.’

  More enemy bombers roared over and they ran for cover down some steps into a cellar. ‘The dog … we have left the dog. We must fetch him.’ Guy yanked Anna back as the bombs shrieked down and exploded, shaking the cellar walls. He held her tightly while all hell broke loose above. When the raid was over they crawled out of a ruin. New fires blazed and thick smoke and a worse stink of explosive choked the air. Their bikes were a mangled heap; the dog nowhere to be seen. One of the cavalry horses flopped around in the middle of the road, a hind leg blown off, the gutter running with its blood. Guy took out his revolver and shot the beast between the ears where it lay. Tears were pouring down Anna’s cheeks and he put his arm round her. ‘Come on.’

  ‘The dog …’

  ‘We can’t waste time looking for him.’

  A Tommy lay face down close to a deep crater in the road. Guy knelt and turned him over. He was a slightly built boy of no more than eighteen or nineteen – stone dead, but unmarked other than by a small gash on his forehead that had spattered his greatcoat with blood. ‘We’ll take his uniform.’ He fumbled with buttons and began tearing the filthy clothes off. ‘Get these on.’ Anna recoiled. ‘I can’t, Guy.’ ‘You damn well have to. Get them on.’ He was undoing laces, tugging at the army boots. ‘These, too. Good job he’s small.’ He tore the soldier’s vest into strips and used them to stuff the boots. When she was dressed he put the steel helmet on her head, the rifle in her hands and redid the tie that she’d made a hash of. ‘You’ll pass – in the dark, at least.’

  ‘What about my bag? It has my photographs, my passport, my papers.’

  ‘You can take what you can put in your pockets, that’s all.’

  The water-bottle was broken and they left the remains of the ham, fearing it would make them too thirsty, and started walking in the direction of the harbour, clambering over mounds of rubble and past more bomb craters and row upon row of abandoned trucks, tanks and guns. At the port, burning oil tanks poured out a great pall of dense black smoke and fires raging all round the harbour lit up the smashed docks and broken cranes, and the silhouettes of half-sunken ships – funnels and masts poking up from greasy black water. Long lines, three and four deep, of ragged soldiers were formed up, waiting patiently. ‘Been here for hours,’ one of them told Guy. ‘The big ships can’t use the docks since the Jerries clobbered them. They’re having to tie up at a breakwater on the outer harbour. We can get to them along it – if Jerry doesn’t put a spoke in.’ Guy went back to Anna. ‘We’ll try the beaches first.’

  Outside the town, away from the heat and smoke and flames, what power was left in the torch battery showed forlorn holiday houses squatting behind grassy sand dunes. They climbed up onto the dunes, their feet sinking deep into soft hummocks of sand. Anna
sat down. ‘My feet are too sore to walk more.’

  ‘OK, we’ll stay here and wait for daylight.’ At a faint sound behind him Guy swung the torch beam round sharply, and picked out two shining eyes. ‘Good God, it’s the dog! Come on, old chap.’ The mongrel, who had waited for the invitation, came forward, tongue lolling, flanks heaving but wagging its tail. ‘He likes us,’ Anna said. ‘He trusts us.’

  He’s wrong, Guy thought. We can’t take him with us. Not possibly. It will be a miracle if we get away ourselves. He climbed to a higher point of the dunes and stared into the darkness. The stink of death still clung to his nostrils but now he could also smell the clean, salt smell of the sea and he could hear it in the distance – the regular shushing of waves breaking onto the shore. He listened carefully. It sounded a long way out – perhaps even as much as half a mile. Must be low tide, the depth probably very shallow, shelving gently, and not much deeper at high tide. The tides would come in very fast and go out very fast. There would be no chance of any big ships getting anywhere near this beach. Nothing drawing more than two or three feet would be able to manage it without running aground. Smaller ships – if there were any – would have to be very small and what use would that be to move an army? He went on staring into the dark. As his eyes grew more accustomed to it, he could make out thousands of tiny pinpricks of light all over the beach. He took them for fireflies until he realized that they were the lights of thousands of cigarettes being smoked by thousands of soldiers.

  Matt felt the Rose rocking gently. In the darkness, the night before, he’d sailed along the coast and run her aground, bow on, into soft sand and sat waiting for dawn. With the incoming tide, she had refloated herself.

  The pre-dawn light spreading gradually across the sky revealed sandy beaches extending for what looked like several miles, all the way west to the great mushroom of smoke over Dunkirk. He had come much further east than he’d thought or intended. As the daylight grew he could see that closer to the town, the beaches were black with troops and littered with wrecked equipment. Lines of men wound like snakes across the sands and into the water. Several big ships were anchored offshore and small craft – lifeboats, cutters and whalers – were moving between them and the men queueing at the water’s edge. He hoisted the mainsail quickly and took Rose out seawards, bringing her about and back into shore towards the closest line of men. Those in front were standing shoulder-deep in the water, rifles held over their heads. He lowered the sail and let the Rose drift gently towards them. Twenty Tommies or more, in full kit – steel helmets, greatcoats, gas masks, capes – waded over and sprang at her gunwales, almost capsizing her.

  ‘I can’t take you all … I’m sorry. Not more than ten or she’ll sink.’ He dragged one on board who was too weak to manage it for himself; the rest of them hauled themselves up clumsily, weighed down by sodden uniforms and waterlogged boots. ‘Thanks, mate,’ a corporal said to Matt, grinning as he rolled into the boat. He had a week’s growth of beard and looked like a tramp. ‘Start the engine.’

  ‘Sorry, no engine. We have to row. Can you give me a hand with one of the oars?’

  His face fell for a second. ‘Blimey … You’ll have to show me how.’ There was hardly enough room for the two of them to wield the long, heavy oars but the corporal, who had sat facing the wrong way at first, spat on his palms and soon got the knack. They pulled towards the nearest large ship, a cross-Channel ferry. ‘Here comes Jerry,’ the corporal announced. ‘Right on bloody time.’

  The Stukas came screaming in from the eastern end of the beach. Men on the sands flung themselves to the ground or scattered to the dunes; the ones already in the water stayed put. Bombs exploded, blasting sand high into the air and sending up giant spouts of water in the sea. Messerschmitts, following on the Stukas’ tails, roared over at a hundred feet, machine-gunning the length of the beach. The Stukas flew on to drop more bombs on the harbour and wheeled out to sea to attack the bigger ships. AA guns opened up furiously but a steamer took a direct hit amidships, broke up, ablaze, and began to sink. ‘Reminds me of the Serpentine,’ the corporal yelled above the din, pulling energetically on his oar.

  They came alongside the cross-Channel ferry and the lowered scrambling nets. She was already loaded down with troops and getting ready to leave. The corporal, last to jump for the nets, hesitated and turned back. ‘I’ll stay, if you like, mate. Give you a hand for the next trip.’

  All morning they went to and fro from the beach out to whatever large ship was there waiting to take troops on board. Some of the men were too weak or too badly wounded to manage the scrambling nets and fell off. More and more troops were pouring onto the sands, the queues growing longer, not shorter. Only the smallest of the boats could get close enough to pick the men up from the beaches, the larger ones came in as near as they dared and the men had to swim out to them. Those who couldn’t swim grabbed planks of wood or pieces of wreckage and kicked their way along. Matt saw two men float past on a door, using their rifles as paddles, another sitting in an inflated tyre, propelling himself with his hands. They picked up another trying to swim out in overcoat and boots, weighed down by a large pack. The men in the queues grew more desperate – so many of them fighting to clamber on board that, again and again, they threatened to swamp the Rose. The corporal fended them off ruthlessly with his oar. ‘Get back, you bastards. You’ll sink the ruddy lot of us.’ Sometimes men clung onto her gunwales all the way out to the ship, or lost their grip, exhausted, and simply disappeared. The corporal leaned out and grabbed a steel helmet floating past upside down and handed it to Matt. ‘I’d put this on sharpish, mate, if I were you.’ Civilians crewing other small boats were wearing enamel basins and bailers and buckets on their heads. At regular intervals, the German bombers and fighters came back to strafe the beaches. Matt learned to ignore the hail of bombs and shells and bullets – to carry on, like the corporal, without flinching. ‘If one gets us, it gets us,’ the corporal maintained firmly. ‘No good trying to dodge ’em.’ The sea grew red with blood and bodies bobbed around the Rose, nudging her bows as she went from ship to shore and shore to ship. Some of the dead faces were already bloated.

  ‘What’s this old girl called, then?’ the corporal asked on one trip.

  ‘Rose of England.’

  He nodded. ‘Not a bad name for her, I reckon.’

  For three days they had waited impatiently for orders from High Command, expecting the advance towards Dunkirk to be resumed. Instead the Panzer divisions were directed south. Stephan was torn between frustration at being denied the chance to finish off the British and delight at the prospect of dining in Paris.

  ‘The British are done for in any case. The Luftwaffe is already pounding them to pulp and the infantry will do the rest. It’ll be no more than a mopping-up operation for them. Our talents will be better used elsewhere, don’t you agree, Otto?’

  ‘Well, it’s true that the marshy terrain of Flanders is not ideal for tanks, but perhaps it would have been better to make quite sure of the British. To stop her army escaping.’

  ‘A few of them may get away but most will not. If they are not killed, they will be captured.’

  ‘A few?’ Otto said drily. ‘I heard that large numbers are being rescued and taken to England. They will live to fight another day. And we may live to regret it.’

  Guy had been prepared for the sight of troops on the beaches but not for the sheer numbers of them. Black masses swarmed over the dunes and long lines wound across the sands; it looked as though some gigantic ants’ nest had been stirred up. He watched the larger boats waiting offshore and smaller ones shuttling to and fro, cramming as many men as they could on board. Not naval ships, as he’d expected, but civilian ones – dozens and dozens of them, working ceaselessly all along the beaches.

  He knew that, sooner or later, the Luftwaffe would come, and when they did, Junkers and Dorniers and 109s shrieking across the beach, he protected Anna with his own body, lying flat in the sand dunes, the d
og crouched beside them. Men were firing their rifles in hopeless desperation, from the dunes, from the open sands, from the water, aiming wildly in the general direction of the attackers. Men were throwing themselves into the sea and thrashing about, weighed down by their uniforms. Some of the small boats had been hit and had capsized or were sinking, spilling men overboard; he could hear their cries for help. On the beach, the dead were everywhere, the wounded groaning and screaming. A soldier stood shaking his fist. ‘Come down you fucking bastards and fight fair!’ Jesus Christ, Guy thought, what a bloody, bloody mess.

  The Germans would be back but taking refuge in the dunes would not get them a place on a boat. They joined the end of one of the long queues, the dog still following them faithfully. He had been afraid that Anna would soon be spotted but the men were too dead beat to notice or care. They stood, one behind another, leaning on their rifles, shuffling forward a few inches at a time, some asleep on their feet. ‘Got any water, sir?’ one of them croaked hopefully. His lips were cracked and dry and smeared with sand. ‘Awfully sorry, I’m afraid not.’ He was thirsty himself – so was Anna – and he cursed his stupidity in not taking proper care of the water-bottle. ‘Cigarette?’ he offered instead. ‘No, thank you, sir. Makes it worse.’

  The Germans returned, bombing and strafing the length of the beaches. Men scattered, diving under the water, flinging themselves to the sand, burrowing into the dunes. When the planes had gone the dead were covered with their greatcoats; precious little could be done for the wounded, some of them crying out in agony.