Ungentlemanly Warfare

by Howard Linskey

  ‘If that’s true then it’s shocking but are you certain?’

  ‘Oh yes, apparently at one point the General asked if I was anybody at all. I can remember the reply word for word “I have it on good authority he’s the son of a commercial traveller”.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘I bet they all wondered how I got my commission in the first place. I was sent for, praised for my outstanding contribution to the defence of the line, then hurriedly promoted to captain. Almost in the same breath I was “volunteered” to stay behind and fight, until the last man if need be, to cover the regrettable but necessary evacuation of the battalion. The Colonel was very decent about it,’ he added dryly, ‘got his batman to sew the new rank on to my battledress for me there and then. He didn’t think I’d have time to do it myself and would have hated me to die inappropriately attired. Then he gave me a section of perimeter to hold and wished me “Godspeed”.’

  Describing long-suppressed events to Emma made the memories fresh again. Harry found he could vividly recall the chaos of that day now. As he emerged from battalion HQ, the rest of his outfit was moving west as swiftly as the battalion’s remaining shred of dignity would allow, the wounded piled into trucks, the able-bodied marching under their own steam along roads clogged by fleeing civilians and burned-out vehicles. Bullets were fired into the radiators of abandoned trucks while the engines were still running, so the Germans could have no prospect of using them, following an arrival considered imminent.

  Walsh had to trudge against the tide as he walked past line after line of exhausted men. And who had been first to greet him? As always, it was Lieutenant Tom Danby.

  ‘Harry, is it true? Do I have to salute you?’ And he grinned at Walsh, his white teeth a stark contrast to the mud and smoke that stained his face. The grin stayed in place until Walsh broke the news.

  ‘They’re leaving us behind, Tom.’

  But Emma did not need to know about Tom Danby. She waited patiently for Walsh to continue then finally asked, ‘How did you get away, Harry? I mean, if you were meant to fight to the last man and you didn’t desert?’

  ‘No, Emma, I did not desert.’ He was aghast at the notion.

  ‘Sorry,’ she flushed, ‘that was a stupid thing to say. Still, it must have been tempting, given the circumstances.’

  ‘I just did it differently, that’s all. At first we spread out along the perimeter we’d been given but it was too wide and there were far too many gaps. I reckoned we could hold the German armour and infantry for a few hours at the very best before we were completely wiped out. But there was an alternative.’

  ‘Go on,’ she urged.

  ‘We advanced.’

  ‘You advanced?’ Emma was shocked. ‘While the whole British Army was retreating, you advanced?’

  ‘Well, moved forward at any rate. We took the fight to them. I split our forces and hit them in little groups as they approached key points we identified. We blew up a bridge, held a road at a narrow stretch, we turned a static line of regular soldiers into a guerrilla army and it worked, for a while. But I made one mistake that came back to haunt me when I eventually got back to my regiment.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I sent some of the men home. Didn’t think I needed all of them for that kind of warfare. I kept some volunteers but the rest drew lots. Forty of them got back to the beaches and away.’

  Walsh had ordered one of his sergeants to coordinate the withdrawal, getting them to leave in small groups during the night, their feet bound with bandages and torn blankets, so the Germans did not hear the sound of men marching over broken glass that littered the town.

  ‘I bet your colonel blew a fuse.’

  ‘He did but I assumed I’d be dead by the time he found out. I didn’t expect to survive, which was the basic flaw in my plan.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We did all right, to begin with. We held up the German advance far longer than anybody could reasonably have expected and inflicted a lot of casualties. Then, inevitably, we were caught in the open, trapped, and it got bloody,’ Walsh looked down at the ground, ‘close quarters stuff, bayonets, all that.’

  Walsh could feel the familiar ringing in his ears, as the blood began to rush to his head and the creeping sense of panic returned, triggered by the memory of the desperate battle to escape. Even if he had wanted to, there was no way to describe the reality of such a fight to Emma. It was too close, too frenzied and Walsh had been right in the middle of it, adrenalin, fear and blood all coursing through his veins at once.

  As the German fire came down on them, Walsh roared at his men to move forward. His heart was pounding and his breath came out in snorts as he powered forward. The bullets missed their moving targets at first. Walsh’s men returned fire and continued to sprint forward, desperate to get out of the open killing ground around them, but the German rifle fire grew more accurate and Walsh’s men were inevitably cut down.

  All about them was confusion; one of Walsh’s men cried out but there was no time to look round let alone stop. Got to keep moving, to break away. They reached a line of enemy soldiers by a farmhouse who seemed surprised these men had not fallen with their comrades. Walsh raised his rifle and shot a man in the face then went further into the melee. He shot a man in the chest then the chaos was all around him. There was a blur of movement ahead as shapes crossed his path and he fought frantically to get through and beyond them, parrying blows, stabbing with the bayonet, sinking it into unprotected flesh then moving on. One of his sergeants was hit and a grenade exploded nearby, deafening Walsh. Ears ringing, unsure if he had been hit by the shrapnel because of adrenalin, he was dimly aware the man who had just killed his sergeant was turning a rifle towards him. Walsh slammed his bayonet into the German’s stomach; even among the carnage he would never forget the look of complete surprise on the dying man’s face as he twisted the bayonet and pulled it free.

  He shot another man and ran forward once more. All about him khaki and grey shapes were engaged in vicious hand-to-hand fighting of the bloodiest and most desperate kind. There were screams from wounded or dying men and roars from their attackers as soldiers from both sides did their best to kill each other. Walsh knew he must keep moving or die.

  He shot his way through, immediately coming face to face with a German captain who had dropped an empty rifle and was now reaching for his pistol but Walsh was on him before he could take it from its holster. The captain realised he was lost and had just enough time to say the single English word, ‘Don’t’ before Walsh cut him down where he stood. Walsh scooped up the captain’s Luger and jammed it into his belt.

  There was movement behind him and Walsh spun to aim his rifle but it was two of his own men. At that moment the shooting abruptly ceased. It was only then Walsh realised they’d done it. A handful of them had broken through.

  The remainder of the German force was falling back to regroup, perhaps taken aback by the fierceness of resistance. More than half of Walsh’s force lay dead or dying, in close proximity to the German fatalities they were responsible for, and the remaining men he commanded found it hard to believe they weren’t among them.

  The elation was short-lived. Behind him, propped unnaturally up against a thicket, like a drunk who has passed out, was the wretched figure of Tom Danby; his eyes lifeless, a large maroon patch on the khaki fatigues where the burst from a machine pistol hit him full in the chest.

  There was no time even to close his best friend’s eyes let alone bury him, so Walsh, moving dumbly, hurried the survivors along.

  ‘Harry? Are you alright?’ asked Emma, when he had been silent for a full minute.

  ‘Yes,’ he said in a manner that brooked no contradiction, ‘let’s go.’

  As they walked back to the camp Walsh explained, ‘I sleep-walked through the rest of it. There were hardly any of us left and all the boats were l
ong since departed. Eventually I gave my final order. “It’s every man for himself. Good luck and off you go.”

  ‘I stayed for a while to cover them, sniping at anything that moved with a bolt-action Enfield, which was all I had left, fully expecting to die as soon as a handful of men found the courage to rush my position, but no assault came. I gave my men twenty minutes start and found I was still alive. Eventually I fell back and that’s all there is to tell.’

  ‘But how did you get out if all the boats had already left?’

  ‘That’s another long story, Emma.’

  ‘Which you are not going to tell me.’

  ‘Come on, let’s get some breakfast.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Harry.’

  Walsh had hoped the nauseating idea of food would discourage further questions.

  30

  ‘Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more

  Men were deceivers ever

  One foot in sea, and one on shore

  To one thing constant never.’

  William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

  Walsh lay awake that night remembering. By recounting his experiences to Emma, he had reopened the Pandora’s box of his suppressed memories and now he was unable to replace the lid. It had got him to thinking. How had he become so trapped? What had made his younger self walk into this life so thoughtlessly? The answers to these questions and more could all be traced back to the nightmare of Dunkirk.

  A few short weeks after his escape from France, Walsh had found himself walking out into the chill of an uncommonly cold afternoon to find Mary. The Danbys had a long garden to the rear of their house. Here, partially shielded by a birch tree, on a white wooden bench built for two, sat Mary Danby, eighteen years old, beautiful, innocent and profoundly damaged, shattered by a brother’s loss.

  Mary wore a thin dress despite the chill, which she seemed unaware of and sat slightly stooped, an opened book in her palms. Walsh was not sure if she was actually reading or whether the book was a prop to insulate her from the outside world. He had thought about the words he would use but, now that they were face to face, he had no idea what he was going to say to her.

  In the end he settled for a simple, ‘Hello, Mary,’ spoken softly, so as not to make her start.

  ‘Harry,’ she looked up at him, ‘have you been with mother and father?’

  ‘Yes, but I wanted to see you. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You said you’d bring him back to me, you promised,’ she reminded him and the words were agony for Walsh. He had promised it true enough and been a fool for doing so. I’ll look after him, Mary, he’d said, I’ll bring your brother safely back to you. It was the sort of thing people said in war, to calm those left behind. Harry Walsh had looked into those beautiful brown eyes and would have promised her anything at that point. He’d meant it too, at the time, even though it was no more in his power to give her that than to hand her the moon. What’s more, he’d promised it to the one girl in England who would take his words literally. Mary still believed men went off to war like the knights in Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, that they could make things happen through pure hearts and by their force of will. What a damned fool he’d been. It was one more mistake to add to all the others he’d made.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘and I tried.’

  She stifled tears, then nodded firmly, ‘I know you did.’

  ‘It’s cold out here, Mary,’ Walsh spoke like he was reasoning with a child, ‘don’t you think it’s time to come inside now?’ It was as if his words had broken a spell. She rose to her feet to follow him and Walsh instinctively took her ice-cold hand in his. Mary gripped it tightly as if she might suddenly fall.

  But she did not want to go inside so, leaving her by the door, he went to fetch her coat. They walked for hours; the army officer and the beautiful girl and Walsh remembered how he had promised her brother he would take Mary to the ‘flicks’ one day, to see a film and ‘bring her out of herself’ as Tom had delicately put it.

  ‘She’s young,’ Tom had said, ‘and a little fragile. I do worry about Mary but I know you’ll look after her, so it would be all right.’

  Yes, I’ll look after her, thought Walsh, if I do nothing else I can do that much at least and in his mind he swore it silently to Tom Danby.

  They linked arms and received approving looks from a handful of Mary’s neighbours. After all, the poor young girl had recently lost a brother, now it seemed she had a fine and handsome suitor, and a captain to boot. They all dearly hoped nothing bad would happen to him.

  Twelve months later they were married, with a fitting symmetry that pleased everyone around them. It was more than six months before Walsh realised he had made a terrible mistake and a full year before he would fully admit it, even to himself.

  The Maquisard commune was in session again. The men were buoyant, flushed with pride following the seizure of Tauber’s supplies and eager to relive the moment when he was deprived of them.

  ‘Well, stealing the enemy’s food was a good start but it is not going to win us the war,’ Harry reminded them.

  ‘So what is it to be next then?’ asked Valvert.

  ‘I think a number of things,’ said Harry and he outlined his plans. Havoc was what he had promised Menzies and that was exactly what he was going to deliver.

  The next night, as darkness fell, small groups of maquisards left the camp quietly in different directions. Montueil took men and explosives; Cooper and Valvert dressed in workmen’s clothes and set off for the rail yard; Emma, Walsh and a handful of men walked half the night to reach a bridge that spanned the river. Earlier, Walsh had taken the chastened and bruised figure of Hervé Lemonnier quietly to one side and showed the young man that he had recently knocked out how to use the Welrod then he gave him an important job to do. Lemonnier seemed surprised to be entrusted with the work but promised Walsh that he would succeed or die trying.

  Cooper and Valvert slipped into the railway sidings at Rouen, eluding a solitary German sentry, just as the French civilian maintenance crew took its break from the night shift. Each man carried a metal can and they moved in a stooping half run, careful not to crunch the shingle underfoot.

  Valvert was nervous but determined, more afraid of letting anyone down than he was of being captured. At any moment he expected to hear the bellowed challenge of a sentry. If it came, he still did not know whether he would surrender, try to run – though it would be hopeless – or stand and fight till the end.

  Every noise was magnified as they crossed the dark yard; each new sound made the two men freeze then peer about them in the gloom of the depot. It seemed to take an age but finally they reached their target, a line of flatbed, rail freight cars.

  Cooper spoke in a hissed whisper, ‘Start at the other end and meet me in the middle. Make sure you spread it thickly into every axle bearing.’

  Miles from Rouen, Montueil’s men were in position, lying on their bellies, spread out on either side of the railway track under cover of the tall grass. If a train came or a German patrol reached this isolated spot then word would be passed down, man to man, with a series of waved signals until it reached Montueil. He would then stop what he was doing and slide back into the cover of the bushes.

  Even so, Montueil felt exposed out here on his knees at the edge of the track. The night was lighter than he would have liked, the moon against him, and the job could hardly be hurried. Montueil had the small torch Walsh had given him. From time to time he risked switching it on to check his handiwork before snapping it quickly off again.

  Montueil considered himself a confident man but tonight he was sweating like never before and his mouth was as dry as sand. He had never handled plastic explosives, or PE as Walsh called it, before. There had been time for just a couple of demonstrations. Montueil could tell some of his men were nervous at the prospect of actually detonating the explo
sives themselves. As the leader, he had reluctantly volunteered himself for the task, which seemed to greatly amuse Walsh.

  ‘RHIP, Montueil, RHIP?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rank Has Its Privileges, my friend,’ explained Walsh and Montueil had failed to see the joke.

  He wasn’t sure how long it had taken him to attach the plastic explosive to the track but the job was almost complete. Now he took the long, thin cigar-shaped time pencil from its case and gently introduced the detonator to the PE. All the while he remembered Walsh’s careful warning. The time pencil could be affected by a number of external factors such as age, heat or moisture, and he should not rely on the accuracy of the timings. Montueil set detonation for forty-five minutes and prayed this would not actually give him forty-five seconds. He gave a signal to his men and they retreated back into the woods, visible relief on the nearest faces.

  They made their way home and, less than half an hour later, there was a massive explosion that tore out a sizeable section of track and could be heard for miles. Montueil checked the time on his watch, scowled and shook his head. Harry was right about the time pencil. The detonation had been nearly twenty minutes early. At least he had been warned.

  Emma watched as Harry scaled the iron stanchion of the bridge. She allowed herself to consider the gruesome possibility that at any moment he could slip, fall and plummet to his death far below. It was a superstition. She felt that if she entertained the horrible notion of Walsh’s death head-on then it would never actually happen. Her thoughts immediately turned to Mary. If he did die out here, would they make Emma go and tell his wife, because they might reason a woman might do that so much better than a man? For the first time she wondered what Mrs Harry Walsh was really like and whether she might actually be able to read the guilt on Emma’s face. Then she reprimanded herself for such foolish thoughts. Emma reminded herself firmly that they were in the middle of a sabotage mission and she should concentrate on this and this alone. She trained her eyes on the empty road ahead of her, which cut through the hills and ran all the way down to the bridge, scanning it for any sign of the Germans. Not a soul stirred.