The Bridge

by Robert Radcliffe

  ‘So we won’t be seeing them for a while,’ Wallis murmured. ‘What about 1st and 3rd Battalions. Any word?’

  ‘Having quite a time of it apparently. 9th SS Panzer, as we feared, seems to have driven a wedge between them and us. 9th Panzer also controls the high ground north of town, and have begun moving in armour and heavy artillery, including 88s. And tanks.’

  ‘How tedious of them.’ Digby tutted. ‘But what of our missing chaps? C Company I mean, and the other half of Doug’s B Company?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Frost’s gaze flicked to Theo. ‘But I need to.’

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘I was hoping you would.’ Frost turned to Wallis. ‘There’s more, David. Lathbury’s been injured. I don’t have the details but he’s out of the picture. Brigade is being commanded by a Major Hibbert, fine chap, but with no Urquhart or Lathbury he feels out of his depth. And he feels as senior officer I should take over.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Which means you’re in command of 2nd Battalion. Feel you can manage?’

  ‘Absolutely, sir, without a doubt.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Theo waited until full darkness before setting out, by which time the worst of the shooting was dying down. Occasional bursts still rang out and several vehicles and buildings still burned, illuminating anyone caught in the open, so speed and stealth were essential for a safe getaway. Lightly encumbered for ease of movement, he timed his moment, ducked from cover and sprinted away into the shadows.

  His orders were firstly to search for the remains of Crawley’s B Company, cut off during fighting at the pontoon bridge, secondly find out about C Company, missing now for over twenty-four hours, and thirdly get word out that 2nd Battalion was alone at the bridge and badly in need of assistance. Anything else he might learn, concerning supplies or reinforcements for instance, or the whereabouts of 1st and 3rd Battalions, or indeed anyone from 1st Airborne Division, would, Frost said, be much appreciated.

  But in contrast to a relatively clear picture at the bridge, the situation in town was confused and fluid. Small-arms fire crackled in all directions, occasionally accompanied by the rattle of machine guns and crump of heavier weapons. Many fires burned, filling the air with drifting smoke, discarded vehicles and equipment cluttered streets, and bodies too lay abandoned, both British and German. Heading westward, he made for the river, trying to retrace the battalion’s route in, but the enemy’s presence here was heavy, with armed patrols, snipers on roofs, street-corner gun emplacements and armoured vehicles roaming. Twice he heard boots marching on cobbles and had to dart away to avoid a passing patrol. Soon he became confused about his direction; he was lost. Pausing to check bearings in a doorway, he pulled out his compass, then started in shock as a hand gripped his arm.

  ‘Not this way!’ a shadowy figure hissed.

  ‘I… What?’

  ‘Too many Mof!’

  ‘Mof…’

  ‘Yes, Mof! Boche, Jerry, Kraut. You must go north.’

  ‘North? But what about the river?’

  ‘Mof everywhere there. Patrol boats too with machine guns and searchlights. Go north a quarter-mile. Find big church then go to Bakkerstraat, you find many British hiding there.’

  Thanking his unknown guide, he set off again, one eye on the luminous dial of his compass, mind reeling at the speed of the German incursion. Mof everywhere. Yet this time yesterday there were barely any. Harzer’s work, he guessed. Nor was the irony of British soldiers in Baker Street lost on him, even if locating them proved thorny. He found the church, large and Gothic-looking with a tall spire. Bakkerstraat emerged nearby to the north, a long cobbled road of shops and houses intersected by narrow alleys. Its buildings bore signs of fighting, with smashed windows, broken doorways and walls pocked by bullets. A haze of smoke hung in the air from smouldering fires. The street seemed deserted, but he sensed unseen eyes watching and knew venturing down it would be folly, so he circled behind, creeping through gardens and courtyards from one building to the next, pushing through gates and climbing fences as he went. Halfway along he dropped over a wall to be confronted by Paras pointing rifles.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Trickey, 2nd Battalion.’

  ‘Like hell. What’s the password?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Waho Mohammed?’

  ‘That’ll do. Get inside before we’re spotted.’

  The speaker’s name was Galt, an older corporal with a bandaged arm, part of a six-man recce section from 1st Battalion, he said, cut off during fighting that afternoon. When Theo asked about the rest of his battalion, Galt said he didn’t know, but that other ‘random sods’ were sheltering in houses nearby.

  ‘Which sods?’

  ‘Service Corps bods, a REME section, a few South Staffordshire wankers, various others. Maybe thirty in all. Some of your lads too.’

  ‘C Company?’

  ‘B, I think. They’re next door.’

  ‘Any officers?’

  ‘A Recce Squadron lieutenant, but he got killed by a sniper earlier.’

  ‘Germans?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘So you’re the ranking man.’

  Galt shrugged. ‘Suppose.’

  Theo slipped outside, ducked through a gate and into the next house. There he found Crawley’s men, a dozen unhappy survivors of a platoon once numbering thirty, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall. They’d been cut off at the river, they told him, and their friends all killed or captured. ‘Half-tracks with machine guns!’ one said bitterly. ‘What the hell use is a rifle against that?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘We thought we’d been forgotten,’ another lamented.

  ‘Not at all. Major Crawley’s very worried. I’m here to guide you back.’

  ‘Back where?’

  ‘To Battalion. At the bridge.’

  ‘We still hold the bridge?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What about reinforcements?’

  ‘Division’s on its way, 30 Corps expected tomorrow. And you’re needed too.’

  The news brightened them, as did the prospect of purposeful action. Ten minutes later, having collected everyone he could find, Theo assembled them in the yard of the first house. Of assorted units and disciplines, as Galt said, they were variously armed too, mostly with rifles and Stens. And even as he spoke, two more hurried round the corner.

  ‘Is this the bus for the bridge?’ one quipped.

  ‘Yes and it’s just leaving, you dozy tossers,’ Galt replied.

  ‘All right, listen.’ Theo drew his Webley. ‘We’re going now. I’ll lead; Corporal Galt’s section covers the rear. We move quickly and quietly, we don’t stop, we keep moving and we all stay together. Clear?’

  ‘Hold on,’ someone asked. ‘Who did you say you were?’

  But he was already gone.

  He led them the way he’d come, running at the crouch, sticking to side streets and hugging shadows until he arrived at the church with the tower. Here he gathered them beneath an arched window.

  ‘Go that way.’ He pointed. ‘Carry on four hundred yards and you come to a road, then a piece of parkland with trees, then you’ll see the bridge to your right. That’s our perimeter. Pickets are expecting you; they’ll guide you in.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Work to do.’

  ‘What work?’

  But he’d gone again.

  *

  C Company was nowhere to be found. He returned to Bakkerstraat, then began working his way towards its last known position on Utrecht Street, the main road into town. Progress was slow; he had to retrace his steps often, doubling back and forth to find routes around obstructions, or lying in cover until dangers passed. And the further west he went the more exposed he felt, with gunfights raging all round, tracer bullets arcing overhead and exploding star shells bathing him in white light. He could even hear occasional shouting in German. After another hour he final
ly reached the bottleneck between railway and river where the battalion had stopped on Sunday. Pausing there to catch his breath, he glimpsed a flash at a window and ducked as a bullet smacked into the wall by his head. He sprinted away, bent low, skidding headlong round a corner only to confront a vehicle roadblock not twenty yards ahead. He froze, hemmed in by houses, standing in plain view with nowhere to go. Figures in grey guarded the vehicles; he could see them standing about smoking. Any second and they’d spot him. So he vaulted over a hedge, sprawling headlong on to damp grass, expecting shouts or running boots or the crack of a shot to follow. Seconds passed, minutes, and nothing happened. He rolled on to his back, and took stock. He was in the garden of a town house, once elegant, now battle-damaged, with broken windows and scarred walls. Although trapped, he was in cover and undiscovered. He checked his watch, realizing it was four hours since he’d left the bridge. Overcome with strain and fatigue suddenly, he crawled to the house, hauled himself through a window and collapsed to the floor.

  He awoke at dawn to the unmistakable thump of artillery. Enemy artillery, a few miles west, he estimated, somewhere between the town and the DZ. The time was precisely six too, suggesting an organized offensive was under way. Sitting on the floor he listened as the barrage swelled, pitying the men beneath it and recalling Blangy, Tamera, Bréville and the others, the screaming shells, the spurting earth, the choking air and quaking ground. Then he rose and began searching the house. Since leaving the bridge he’d eaten nothing and drunk no water, but the kitchen supply was off and the only food was a solitary pear in a cupboard. He ate it gratefully, treading softly upstairs to reconnoitre the street. Pushing open a bedroom door, a cry of alarm sounded and to his astonishment he saw two figures in the gloom, an elderly man and woman lying side by side in bed, wide eyed with terror.

  ‘Nicht schiessen!’ the man whimpered.

  ‘I won’t.’ Slowly he withdrew the Webley. ‘It’s all right, no gun, look.’

  ‘You are British?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank the Lord! We’ve been lying here all night thinking it was Boche downstairs.’

  He was a retired tax inspector, his wife was ninety and deaf, they’d lived in the house forty years. When they heard British parachutists had landed they’d hurried into the street with the neighbours and cheered and draped flags from the windows like everyone. But then the battle began, the celebrating stopped, and they’d hurried indoors again.

  ‘It was terrible. The fighting was so bad we could only hide up here and pray for it to end. Our windows got smashed by bullets, and there’s a hole in the roof. I kept watch from up here. Your boys fought bravely but the Germans had tanks and rockets and machine guns and many were killed and wounded. Hundreds perhaps. I saw some of them carried over there to the hospital.’

  ‘Hospital?’

  ‘St Elizabeth. Across the road. Where all the vehicles are.’

  He stole a look. The hospital was large and brick-built, with Red Cross flags hanging from windows and railings. How he’d missed it the night before he couldn’t imagine. The vehicles outside it weren’t a roadblock either, but parked or abandoned. Some were British, some Dutch or German, and as he watched a white ambulance pulled up and orderlies jumped out bearing stretchers. Orderlies in khaki.

  ‘Who controls the hospital?’

  ‘Who can say? Civilian staff work there, mostly Dutch doctors and nurses, but I also saw Germans, some with weapons. And I saw your doctors too, coming and going, treating wounded men from both sides. Sometimes right there in the street.’

  Theo shed his Webley and fighting knife. ‘Hide these and stay out of sight. Do you have provisions?’

  ‘Under the bed.’

  ‘Can you spare a little water?’

  He drank greedily, then slipped downstairs through a back door, creeping onward until he arrived at an alley opposite the hospital. There he waited, crouching at the corner, unarmed, and his battledress sleeves rolled to the elbow like an orderly. Minutes passed, then another van pulled up with stretchers aboard. The back doors opened and a British medic jumped out. Glancing left and right, Theo stepped into the open and hurried over.

  ‘Give you a hand,’ he murmured, grasping one end of a stretcher.

  ‘Put this on!’ The medic fumbled a Red Cross armband. ‘And lose the lanyard, for Christ’s sake, you stand out like a dog’s balls!’

  Moments later they were clumping into the hospital.

  Carrying an empty box as a prop, he toured its wards and corridors searching for C Company survivors. Injured men lay everywhere, both friend and foe; most of the staff appeared Dutch, although British field ambulance staff worked among them, all under the supervision of patrolling Germans. Everyone looked busy, nobody challenged him, and eventually he spotted three lone Scotsmen in a corner, clustered together on their stretchers as though for comfort. Kneeling beside them, he pretended to read their cards. Two were awake, he saw, but the third, an ashen-faced boy lying protected between them, looked close to death.

  ‘Theo Trickey,’ he murmured, ‘HQ Company. Colonel Frost sent me.’

  ‘Did we get the bridge?’

  ‘Yes, and we’re still holding it.’ He hesitated. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  C Company was gone, it emerged. Wiped from existence like words from a blackboard. A few lucky ones may have escaped, they recounted, and many were missing, but the main bulk, a full company of over a hundred men, were either dead, injured or captured.

  ‘Please tell me everything.’

  So they told him. Following the failed attempt on the railway bridge, Major Dover had led them into town via the most direct route. By then a good two hours behind Frost, dusk was falling and he was anxious to catch up. But the further they went, the slower their progress, and they were increasingly harried by an enemy closing in from all sides. Then, long after dark, with everyone drooping from hunger and fatigue, they were suddenly caught in a storm of machine-gun fire.

  ‘Blinding, it was,’ one said, ‘like rivers, you know, rivers of glowing fire, the tracer, humming down the road at us like sparks, bouncing off walls and that. It stopped us dead.’

  ‘Lads up front caught it worst,’ the other added, patting the third boy’s arm. ‘Cut down like ninepins they were. That’s when the casualties really started.’

  The column scattered, everyone running for cover into gardens and behind walls and garages. Further forward movement was impossible, so they lay low, then after a while the shooting died down and the order went round to dig in. A cheerless night followed with the Germans shooting off mortars and flares every few minutes to deny them sleep. Engines were heard too as their vehicles circled the streets around them. And casualties still rose as snipers who had infiltrated overlooking buildings picked off the unwary. The Scotsmen shot back with passion, and Dover sent patrols to flush them out, but the snipers always moved on before they could catch them. At dawn the scene was quiet. Dover roused everyone early and they made ready, grateful to be active and done with the night. With the road ahead barred, his plan now was to double back and find another route to the bridge. Stealthily if possible, and without alerting the enemy.

  But the enemy was already alert, and the moment C Company moved off the killing began with a vengeance.

  ‘They were all along the road, waiting in the houses and on the roofs, and in trucks following in the next street, so they could keep pace and pick us off at will, like one of those shooting stalls at a fair.’

  ‘Aye, and we couldn’t stop to fight them, that’d have been suicide. All we could do was keep moving, kneel, loose off a few rounds, get up, keep moving, kneel again. It was murder, like shooting fish in a barrel. You’d be crossing an alley with your mate and he’d fall down dead at your side. And that meant leaving him. Those that could walk we helped as best we could, them that couldn’t we had to leave, and hope to God Dutch medics found them, or Jerry ones.’

  The end came at a crossroads, near where they
’d started the evening before. Low on ammunition, exposed on all sides, and with mortars and grenades now crashing in, as well as sniper and machine-gun fire, plus two Panzer tanks overseeing proceedings from an embankment, the Germans had prepared the perfect trap. There was no stopping, no escape, and no going back. Dover knew it, so did his remaining men, yet none were ready to give up. Using smoke grenades for cover, C Company’s remnants rose up as one, bellowing their war cries, and stormed across the junction, shooting with everything they had. Then they flung themselves into a house on the other side. Fewer than thirty made it, and as the tanks rumbled up outside, and the machine-gun teams set up their tripods, and the first grenades came crashing through the windows, Dover bowed to the inevitable.

  ‘He did what he had to. It was surrender or die.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Got pulled to one side, being a major and that. Last we saw he was being led away to some SS colonel in a Jeep.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Bought it trying to cross the junction.’

  Theo looked at them. The unconscious boy had a blood-soaked dressing over a deep chest wound. His breathing was fast and shallow and his pallor deathly. His friends lay beside him, dabbing his brow and tucking his blanket in like doting parents. C Company, the wild men of Bruneval, the spear throwers of Sidi Bou, heroes of the Nefza Pimples and the bloody survivors of Primosole. Gone.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No. We’re the lucky ones.’

  *

  Still bearing his box and armband, he began making his way down to the street. On the way, a Royal Army Medical Corps officer stopped him.

  ‘You there!’ he hissed. ‘You’re not a bloody medic.’

  ‘Ah, no, sir, you see—’

  ‘In here.’ He opened a storeroom door. ‘Trickey, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but how do—’

  ‘How’s the malaria?’

  ‘Pardon?’