Then, above the snarl of the Stukas’ engines, a new sound intervened: a sound that Yeoman knew too well; the scream of Rolls-Royce Merlins under full power. He risked a glance skywards, just in time to see a dozen Hurricanes hurl themselves on the dive-bombers. The latter’s Messerschmitt escort came tumbling like an avalanche from their vantage point, several thousand feet higher up, and a whirling dogfight developed over the beaches.
Yeoman saw one Hurricane pursuing a fleeing Stuka over the sea, flying along the line of the beach so low that the dive-bomber’s undercarriage almost touched the water. He saw the Stuka explode, its burning debris falling into the sea, and the victorious Hurricane weave away through a cloud of shellbursts, its pilot doubtless cursing naval gunners whose aircraft recognition was not of the best.
His attention was captured by the sound of tortured engines above his head. He looked up and saw a Hurricane and a 109 turning round and round, chasing each other’s tail and striving to gain the advantage. At last, as though by mutual agreement, they both rolled out of the turn and charged head-on at each other, firing with everything they had. Yeoman dug his fingernails into his palms as they raced towards what appeared to be certain destruction. Then, just when a collision seemed inevitable, the Messerschmitt pulled up sharply. The Hurricane’s last burst of fire slammed into its vulnerable belly, where the fuel tank was situated, and the German fighter instantly became a fireball, falling like a comet towards the ruins of Dunkirk.
The Hurricane had been mortally hit, too. It went into a dive, trailing a ribbon of smoke that quickly became thicker and shot with flame. Yeoman cheered inwardly as the dark shape of the pilot detached itself, falling for long, agonizing seconds before its parachute opened and brought it drifting steadily towards Yeoman’s bit of beach.
The next moment, the young pilot was running frantically through the sand, screaming at the top of his voice to a group of soldiers who had raised their rifles and were firing rapidly at the man dangling helplessly beneath the parachute.
‘Bastards,’ he screamed. ‘Stupid bastards! He’s one of ours!’
It was too late. The figure under the parachute jerked several times, then hung limply. It hit the dunes in a flurry of sand and the parachute floated over it like a shroud.
Yeoman reached the spot, gasping for breath, and barged through the men who had converged on the collapsed parachute and its burden. Some were weeping unashamedly. No one could blame them for their mistake; they had seen so few Allied aircraft during the past weeks that everything in the sky had come to be classed as enemy.
He threw himself on his knees by the side of the motionless pilot. The man lay on his back, blood soaking into the sand around him. His eyes were wide open and he was dead.
It was Flight-Lieutenant Rogerson.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They went down to the water’s edge after dark, to embark in the armada of small craft that closed in to take them to the larger vessels that were hove to in deeper water. Yeoman shuffled forward with the rest, part of a long, dark snake of men who were so tired that they would probably have marched into the water until it closed over their heads, had someone ordered them to. Away to their left, the fires of Dunkirk formed a great glow in the darkness, punctuated by the more vivid flashes of exploding bombs and shells.
The queue Yeoman had joined moved slowly out along an improvised jetty made of army lorries, standing nose to tail in the shallows. Apart from the rumble of explosions to the rear, the period of waiting passed relatively quietly. Yeoman was troubled badly by thirst, but no one had anything to drink.
After four hours, the group he was with reached the head of the queue. Quietly, without any fuss, the weary soldiers and the pilot clambered into one of the naval whalers that were providing a ferry service to the waiting ships. Yeoman squashed in near the stem; the craft was laden to the gunwales and salt water slopped over his legs as the ratings who manned her pulled away from the shore.
The drone of engines overhead lent impetus to their efforts. They had almost reached their goal, a freighter that loomed like a great wall ahead of them in the darkness, when the first flares cascaded down.
‘Oh, Christ,’ someone said quietly. ‘Now we’re for it.’
In the brutal light of the flares, impressions stamped themselves vividly on Yeoman’s mind. The great bulk of the ship, the glittering sea, and above all, the white and terrified faces of the men. Among them, one in particular stood out; that of the German, Richter, crouching at the opposite end of the boat.
A stick of bombs wailed down, the noise of their fall swelling until it blotted out everything else. A great concussion slammed at them, and Yeoman’s world turned upside down.
He was choking, drowning in oily water. He struck out blindly, searching for something, anything, that would help him to cling to life. A wave lifted him and hurled him brutally against something solid, hard and cold. The hull of a ship. Half stunned, he floundered along it and his groping fingers closed around a rope net. He clung desperately to it, fighting the rise and fall of the ship and the battering of the sea.
Someone was slipping a rope under his armpits, prising his fingers loose from their iron grasp on the ropes. ‘Come on, matey,’ a voice cried in his ear, ‘it’s all right now.’ His body bumped painfully against the side of the ship and then he was collapsing over the rail, a sodden bundle, retching up sea water. Someone threw a blanket round his shoulders and he sat on a coil of rope, shivering. Sometime later, the deck beneath him vibrated to the steady rhythm of the ship’s engines as she got under way, nosing out into the darkened Channel with her exhausted human cargo.
*
The German soldiers moved slowly to the water’s edge, picking their way past the piles of abandoned equipment and the groups of Allied prisoners who clustered on the beach, under guard.
One soldier, an engineer, looked with interest at a wooden jetty built by the British during the early stage of the evacuation. It had withstood a great deal of pounding.
Well, he thought, no one would be using it now. It was the morning of 3 June, and most of the beaches were in enemy hands. Only a small pocket of the enemy, mostly French, still held the shrunken perimeter in Dunkirk itself, and they would not last for much longer.
The engineer went forward until the waves lapped his boots. Suddenly he leaned forward, peering at a dark shape that lay half in and half out of the water underneath the jetty.
It was a man, his arms locked around one of the wooden posts. The engineer waded in for a closer look, and his mouth dropped open in amazement when he saw the insignia of a Luftwaffe officer.
He shouted for help, and with the aid of a couple of soldiers managed to release the man and drag him out of the water. They laid him down on the sand and looked at one another.
‘He must have been shot down and taken prisoner,’ the engineer said, ‘then got away and hidden under the jetty. God knows how long he’d been clinging on like that, with the Tommies tramping over his head. Days, probably.’
One of the other soldiers nodded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s a goner now, that’s for sure.’
The engineer, on an impulse, knelt beside the inert figure and placed his hand on the Luftwaffe officer’s left breast, underneath the drenched tunic.
Startled, he looked up at the others.
Then he jumped to his feet and ran up the beach, shouting loudly for a stretcher.
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[1] HQ Advanced Air Striking Force.
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Hurricane Squadron Page 15
