In the Company of Sherlock Holmes

by Leslie S. Klinger

  Duffy turned in his seat. Maybe the fatigue, tension, gunfire, and mayhem of the last rescue had finally pushed him beyond his threshold, but he now appeared to be physically ill, green-tinged and enervated. “Colonel Hagin,” he intoned without inflection, “would like to have a look at our charts, Sigerson. Would you please go get them and bring them up?”

  “Our charts?”

  “Our navigation charts.”

  Sigerson knew what charts he’d meant—there weren’t any others. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Below, the boys and Wilkes had gotten both the wounded and the other men arranged for the journey, and already a modicum of order had been restored. Miraculously—they must have packed them under their hats or helmets—some of the men still had dry cigarettes and most of them were smoking. As Sigerson dug around near the radio for their charts, he heard Wilkes behind him on the deck, reporting to Hagin on the bridge. “We’ve got nineteen carbine rifles, sir, with sixteen boxes of ammunition. Twenty-four pistols with about a hundred rounds each. Six Bren machine guns with four boxes of ammunition, no heavier guns, no mountings. Forty Mills bombs. Nothing dry.”

  “I didn’t suppose anything could be dry, Lieutenant Wilkes. My concern is that things work. Please have the men inspect, test, and ready their weapons.”

  Wilkes didn’t ask any questions, but merely saluted. “Yes, sir.”

  Still inside the lower cabin, unseen from the deck, Sigerson whispered. “Is the man mad?”

  Wilkes shook his head quickly—don’t ask!—and turned to convey his latest order from above to the men. He moved aside from the door, whispered to Sigerson. “If you’re fetching something for him, you’d better be moving.”

  Sigerson took his charts and ascended back to the bridge.

  There, Hagin used his good arm to take them from him without any thanks or ceremony. Holding down the bottom corner with the elbow of his injured arm, he unrolled the charts in the lee of the bridge’s windshield and after asking Duffy for their current position, he leaned over to study them.

  The Doll remained in neutral, rising and falling on the chop, as Hagin perused the documents. On deck below them, the test shots from the men’s weapons began to sound. Sigerson and Duffy exchanged a glance, but mostly they both just waited. It was late May. The sun was beginning to shine more steadily, and the chuffing air had suddenly lost some of its distinct chill.

  Finally, Hagin cleared his throat and straightened up. “Captain,” he said to Duffy, “if I’m reading this correctly, and I believe I am, we are about twelve kilometers from the Aa Canal, is that right?”

  Duffy went over to the chart and looked down. “Yes, sir, very close.”

  “So we could be there, at the canal’s mouth, in say half an hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then, set your course accordingly. That’s where we’ll make our attack.”

  Duffy couldn’t help himself. “Attack, sir?”

  “Yes, Captain. Attack. Strike a blow for the king and dirty the Bosch nose a bit.” Hagin turned to include Sigerson. “To say nothing of the strategic value of a rearguard action. If the Germans think we’re coming at them from behind, it can’t help but postpone their advance into Dunkirk. We may give our dear brothers on the beach another day, or perhaps two.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Duffy said, “but with respect you’ve only got thirty men and all of ’em are done in.”

  Hagin bristled. His back went straight as he pulled himself to his full height. “I’ll forgive your question, Captain, because the service you’re rendering now with the Dover Doll is both heroic and invaluable. That said, you should know that I have the privilege to command, and you are currently transporting, one of the best fighting units, if not the best fighting unit, in the entire BEF. The Fourteenth exists and only exists to go into battle for the glory of England.

  “And again, for your information, I am not so foolish as to contemplate an extended campaign on the Aa. My Lieutenant Wilkes speaks Kraut well, you know, and before we were attacked at our last bivouac, he managed to monitor regular German radio transmissions between their advancing units. It seems that all of the tanks now converging on Dunkirk have crossed the Aa, which is only thirty meters wide, by means of two pontoon bridges. Now they’ve abandoned those bridges to small auxiliary forces to protect their tanks’ return. I don’t suppose my men and I will have much trouble taking out one or both of the bridges.” He allowed the trace of a smile. “Even with one hand tied behind our backs, so to speak.”

  Though Sigerson considered Hagin arrogant and ill-advised, he couldn’t deny that the colonel had bravery to burn. He also had a way with the leadership of his troops.

  Soon after he’d conceived of his plan to “liberate” the Aa Canal pontoons, he called Wilkes up to the bridge, where he described the operation he had in mind in some detail. Despite his haste to make the mouth of the Aa, he intended to get there not out of a bloodthirsty and possibly foolish desire to encounter unsuspecting German troops, but so that his men would have a more comfortable resting place—out of the wind and surge of the Channel—for several hours before they again went into battle. They might even get an opportunity to sleep. They would also be hungry, of course, and he told Wilkes that though that worried him, there was nothing he could do about it until they got back ashore, when they would send a couple of teams into the countryside to nearby farms or villages. The locals, he reasoned, would probably be sympathetic after the ferocity of the blitzkrieg.

  While Duffy pushed the Doll back in toward the coastline, Hagin and Wilkes descended to the deck, assembled the men, and went over the plan again with them. There was no cheering—these troops had after all seen what German soldiers could do—but neither was there any sign of discontent. The men had already field-tested their weapons, and now Hagin told them to find a comfortable spot if they could. They should try to get some sleep. He had no intention of exposing them in broad daylight to Germans who might be patrolling either or both sides of the canal. They would anchor in the shelter of the levee, in calm water.

  Hagin then asked for volunteers to leave the boat in search of food when they got to shore, and Sigerson took the opportunity to step forward.

  He noted the look of both surprise and approval in Hagin’s eyes, but then the colonel said, “Good show, Mr. Sigerson, but we’re going to need you to help get us out after we’ve destroyed the pontoons. Besides, as a civilian, if you were captured you would be treated as a spy, and undoubtedly shot. But we all of us appreciate the gesture. Thank you.”

  Suddenly Sigerson had a new understanding of why Hagin’s men had such loyalty to him.

  Twenty minutes later, Duffy cut the engines back again. While all the men except Hagin and Wilkes hunched below the level of the hull, the Doll crossed unhindered through the mouth of a breakwater, and then into a small bay. There were no houses, no commercial buildings, and most importantly, apparently no Germans. Duffy pushed the boat through a kilometer of harbor and then into the mouth of a wide, low-sided canal—the Aa.

  After about another three hundred meters, Hagin gave the brisk, evenly-toned order to kill the engines. When they’d gone still, a profound silence hung in the air. They anchored against the north shore—green fields with livestock, horses, and houses far in the distance. They’d barely come to a stop when four men, two teams of volunteers, Wilkes among them—left the boat and scrambled up over the levee.

  Hagin ordered Sigerson and even Duffy below with the boys and the wounded and ordered them to lie down and close their eyes. He himself would keep a lookout from the bridge and would wake them if they were needed. Meanwhile, he announced to his men, the mission was to rest.

  It wasn’t yet noon.

  Sigerson suddenly was aware of sounds—the slight creaking of the boat, snores and moans of the men around him, crickets. He opened his eyes and knew immediately that he’d slept for a good portion of the day. The sun had eventually broken through t
he cloud cover and now painted the bow wall of the cabin a bright orange. He realized that he wasn’t cold anymore, either. The temperature had risen dramatically.

  Then, suddenly, he knew what it was that had awakened him. The sound of horse hooves. Horses!

  Captain Duffy was out cold, flush up against him on the floor, but Sigerson was careful to leave him undisturbed as he sat up slowly, then got to his feet. Out on the deck, the troops were littered like matchsticks, covering almost every inch of space. Every one of them slept, most with their rifles in their arms. The sky in the east was just beginning to turn a deeper blue, presaging dusk and a warm and still night.

  Stepping around the men on the deck, and their clothes where they’d spread them to dry, Sigerson got to the bridge’s ladder in time to see two men bareback on horses appear as they crested the levee. Wilkes was one of them. He’d ridden up on a fine black Arabian stallion. He gave a general thumbs up as he dismounted and pulled the ficelles—sacks made of heavy string, loaded with food—from his horse’s neck.

  Bread, at least, Sigerson thought, his mouth suddenly watering at the thought of it. He could see the thick baguettes sticking out of the top of the sacks, and also bottles—apparently milk and even wine—and greens, and other items wrapped in paper or cloth. Above him, Sigerson heard the creak of the pilot’s seat. He looked up to see Colonel Hagin standing at the top of the ladder. The colonel looked down at him and motioned with his good hand that he should join him on the bridge.

  “Did you sleep?” Hagin asked when he reached the top.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Don’t be a martyr, Mr. Sigerson. Of course you’re hungry. We’ve continued to be fortunate. Both search parties seem to have found sympathetic locals and some victuals.” He pointed to four more ficelles stuffed under the pilot’s seat. “The other team made it back an hour ago with these supplies, but I wanted to wait to see if Wilkes had some success as well before anyone tore into this batch. Now it seems he has, so break yourself off a piece of bread and some cheese. There. There’s my man! There’s some milk in the bottom, too, a bit warm now I’d imagine, but drinkable.”

  It was thick-crusted, chewy bread, freshly made. The cheese was pure white, hard and pungent, and the milk was in fact warm and thick with cream. Over his long life, Sigerson had eaten at some of the finest restaurants in the world, but he thought he’d never tasted anything so delicious.

  While Sigerson chewed, Wilkes and his partner made their way down to the Doll and on board, laden with their goods. From the pilot’s chair, Hagin consulted his watch, turned to look at the position of the sun low in the sky, made his decision. He stood up and leaned over to Wilkes. “It’s time to wake the men, Lieutenant Wilkes, and there’s more food up here.”

  Before it was full dark, the well-rested men had been fed with bread, cheeses, milk, wine, sausages, ham, lettuces, even chocolate. They had held a brief religious service for the one wounded man who had died, and whose body they elected to leave on the boat and return to England for burial on his native shore.

  Now they were moving slowly up the canal, their running lights out, the Doll’s modest engine noise reverberating like the scream and clank of a steam locomotive. Sigerson was on the point of the bow with Wilkes, watching for the first sign of lights from the pontoon bridges, which were out somewhere in front of them.

  “The Boche must be hearing this bucket of bolts,” Wilkes said.

  In his young manhood, Sigerson had often been impatient to the point of rudeness when he needed to explain the obvious to people who did not see it. Time had softened his approach. “Yes, well, we are, after all, on a canal, are we not, Wilkes? You’d expect to hear a boat from time to time, wouldn’t you?”

  “You’re right. I’m just nervous, I think.”

  “Perfectly understandable.”

  After a pause, Wilkes asked, “How many runs have you made?”

  “I couldn’t tell you exactly without stopping to count. Perhaps twenty.”

  “Round the clock?”

  “Very much so.”

  “The boat’s been raked pretty bad.”

  “It’s had its moments.”

  “Well, I’m grateful you picked us.”

  “You can thank yourself if that was you running the radio. We just happened to be in the area.”

  “Still, though. When I think of all those other poor blokes still waiting . . .”

  They fell silent. Sigerson peered into the night over the bow. A low half moon reflected off the water. On either side, he could still see fields stretching out to the horizon. To the north—Dunkirk. A dull orange glow hung in the sky and every now and again they would hear, or feel, a deep thud—heavy artillery or bombs—even over the noise of the Doll’s motor.

  But for the moment, the fields and the moon were closer, and Sigerson was on still water on a suddenly, unexpectedly warm night. He was well-fed and rested. He might almost have been home on the South Downs. He surprised himself when he spoke. “I did not expect you to show up on that stallion. And bareback.”

  In the darkness, Wilkes asked. “You know horses?”

  “For a time when I was a boy, they were my life. I still love them, though I don’t own one anymore. But I’ll ride every chance I get.”

  “Me, too. That boy today was a treat.”

  “He just let you mount him?”

  “I’d already gotten some sugar. I tricked him. But once I was up, he was in my hand. He was a beauty. Ran like the wind.”

  “Makes me wish Hagin would have let me volunteer to go out for food.”

  “It was a bonus, I’ll give you that.”

  Hagin rasped out from the bridge. “Lieutenant Wilkes, if that is you and Mr. Sigerson making all that racket down there, button it up, would you please?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was close to ten o’clock when the men went over the boat’s side and up the levee. Ahead of them, Hagin had seen lights indicating what he thought was a town, and he’d ordered Duffy to stop the boat and pull up at the water’s edge. For fifteen minutes or more after they’d gone, Duffy and the boys waited in growing suspense on the Doll’s bridge.

  Sigerson was below decks with the sleeping and suffering wounded. He was at the radio, trying to intercept what might be relevant reports of German troop movements, listening to chatter from the ships that were still involved in Dynamo.

  Hagin’s plan, he knew, wasn’t complex. His idea was to “strike a blow for the king,” and hopefully divert some of the Panzer troops now closing the circle around Dunkirk. But nobody—including the colonel—gave much credence to the idea that they would succeed in destroying even one pontoon bridge. The object was to make enough noise so that they might in fact be able to slow some part of the enemy’s inexorable advance. Then they would return to the boat and, if they could, make their getaway to the Channel.

  The battle began with a series of small explosions—the handheld British Mills bombs or grenades. Next came a series of sharp pops that carried down to them over the surface of the canal. Within only a couple of minutes, it grew to what sounded like a substantial firefight. The sky before them lit up with mortar fire as the distinctive crack of the Brit’s Bren submachine guns gave way to the deeper staccato rumblings of heavier mounted guns, the return fire of the Germans.

  It was clear to Sigerson that even if Hagin had achieved the element of surprise for which he’d hoped, he had miscalculated the rearguard strength of the Panzers. Either that or he’d stumbled upon several platoons or more that had been moving to the front. He came up the steps to the deck and stood in the darkness, listening. The firing was almost constant now. Out at the horizon, he could make out some steadier source of what appeared to be significant light—perhaps searchlights or automobiles being assembled with their headlights trained on what Sigerson thought had to be Hagin’s men.

  He could picture them dug into the sl
ope of the low levee. If that were the case, any German troops out on the pontoons or, worse, on the opposite shore, would find them easy targets, unprotected. When at last the steady barrage let up slightly, and Sigerson took the opportunity to mount halfway up the ladder to the bridge. “They’re taking a lot of fire, Duffy.”

  “Sounds like.”

  “We might try to go in and get them.”

  “We’d be sittin’ ducks, Mr. Sigerson. Middle of the canal, Jerry on both sides.” His face, lit up by the glow of his cigarette, was set in worry. “Besides, his majesty ordered me to wait here. At least that way they’ll know where they need to get to.”

  Sigerson looked out over the bow to where the fighting was taking place. A concerted volley of what sounded almost like anti-aircraft fire pierced the night—high-caliber, rapid fire weapons that far surpassed anything Hagin’s men had managed to carry onto the boat. As he watched, there was another flash, then another, then the by-now-familiar whump of each percussion. More mortars. “We can’t just wait here, Duffy. They’re being slaughtered.”

  There was a harshness to Duffy’s voice that Sigerson hadn’t heard before. “If they’re trying to retreat and get to us here and they make it here and we’re gone, what happens to them then? What happens to us?”

  But just at that moment—Sigerson could not believe his ears, but the sound was unmistakable—he heard the steady pulse of horse’s hooves again, this time at full gallop. Close by, and then—”Don’t shoot! It’s me, lads.” Here was Wilkes, astride another horse at the top of the levee. He dismounted and half-stumbled, half-fell down to the water’s edge. Breathing hard, he could barely get the words out. “They’ve got us pinned down by the first pontoon. There must be half a division on the roads. Hagin says you’ve got to come up. There’s no getting out.”