Dunkirk Crescendo

by Bodie Thoene

  “The Pont Corneille still stands!” Lewinski shouted back.

  Then Jerome added the warning, “There is a small vessel sunk beside the piling. It will be a difficult passage, Madame Rose!”

  Rose chose to navigate down the left branch, past the sunken boat that lay, bow up, against the arched piling of the low bridge. Close enough to touch the shattered hulk of the unfortunate ship, the new coat of paint on the hull of the Garlic scraped against the iron mooring rings set in the stone beneath the ancient structure.

  The river was up. Josie held her breath and ducked instinctively as they slipped under what seemed more a tunnel than a bridge.

  Beyond the two islands the Seine straightened, and in spite of the fact that the wreckage of a dozen larger ships lay half submerged, navigation became easier. The Gothic towers and chalk hills of the town slid away before the children sleeping belowdecks awakened.

  Even after the sun came up, however, the smoke above Rouen still obscured the sky behind them. Josie was certain that the same planes that had destroyed the ships and quais of Rouen would soon be skimming like hawks over the river in search of new prey.

  ***

  When Andre awoke on June 2, dawn was breaking. The destroyer was still on station off the beach, but Lord Gort had departed for England. Sometime in the middle of the night, the former commander of the now-defunct British Expeditionary Force had left by speedboat for Dover. The general would be facing an inquiry into how the disaster in France had happened.

  But also during the night, hundreds of battered and weary soldiers had boarded the Keith—men who would now be in a German prisoner-of-war camp if it were not for Gort’s leadership during the withdrawal and the French rear guard. In every compartment and companionway, Andre stepped over soggy uniforms that contained worn-out British troops.

  The same steward, his white uniform still neatly pressed, offered Andre another steaming cup of tea and a hard biscuit. The servant apologized for the poor fare, but to Andre it was a feast. Sunday brunch at the Ritz could not have been more appreciated.

  Feeling refreshed, Andre went back on deck to help aboard men who could hardly stagger and to translate the worried questions of his non-English-speaking countrymen.

  The destroyer wallowed in seas that were much rougher than the night before. The rising wind increased the height of the waves. When Andre regained the rail he could see the whalers and lifeboats being tossed around as they made their interminable journeys back and forth between the beach and the destroyers. The increasing roughness of the sea and the extra effort required to pull against the wind made the job even tougher for those just now arriving alongside the Keith.

  As the pale wrap of early morning light replaced the cloak of the night, Andre was startled by the huge number of ships around him. From his vantage point at the stern of the Keith, he could see destroyers, minesweepers, and tugboats. Each of these larger vessels was surrounded by a flotilla of smaller craft, coming and going, unloading men and leaving again for the shore. It was like watching multiple hives of bees, each with a queen served by hundreds of drones. The activity was astounding.

  By eight o’clock, the Keith was packed full and ready to steam for Dover Harbor. Andre helped the last of a platoon of Royal Irish Fusiliers over the side. The small boats headed back for shore, to continue the evacuation by ferrying soldiers to the nearby destroyer Basilisk.

  As the Keith got under way, Andre’s view was toward the southwest. A pall of black smoke had replaced the reddish glow that identified Dunkirk. Andre was reminded of the biblical account of the Exodus—the pillar of cloud by day . . . the pillar of fire by night. Still, he was pleased to be going away from and not toward that menacing gloom.

  A smaller shadow detached itself from the cloud and rose into the sky. As Andre watched, it resolved itself into half a hundred tiny specks. The swarm aimed directly for the Keith and the ships around her.

  Three Stukas peeled off from the formation and dove for the destroyer. Andre watched their plunge in fascinated horror, knowing that nothing he did could possibly make any difference.

  A pair of antiaircraft guns began their rhythmic pounding, and black bursts of smoke appeared in front of the swooping warplanes. Andre saw the release of the bombs and shuddered in anticipation of what was coming.

  Two bombs plunged into the water near the Keith’s bow, raising geysers of water that fountained over the deck. Five sailors were washed overboard, just before the third bomb went down the destroyer’s smokestack.

  There was a tremendous crash, as if the ship had run into a stone wall at full speed. Andre bounced off the armor around a gun housing and was thrown to the deck. He felt the deck plates lift under his feet, as if a geyser were trying to erupt there, too.

  The Keith gave an agonized groan of twisting steel and failing seams. From his prone position on the shuddering metal, Andre watched a burst of flames, smoke, and steam shoot skyward. The destroyer leaned to port and kept heeling, tumbling Andre against the gunwale.

  As the ship settled lower in the water, the shriek of whistles, the bellow of Klaxon horns, and the clang of gongs all mingled to scream its death knell. More Stukas dove on nearby rescue vessels, attacking a pair of minesweepers and another destroyer.

  “Abandon ship!” came the cry. It was picked up and carried forward and aft and down into the ravaged insides of the dying ship. Those not killed or wounded in the blast swarmed on deck. Some did not wait but dove over the side, whether they had life jackets or not.

  A heap of life preservers on the aft deck was blown apart and scattered by one of the bombs. As the ship listed, several of the jackets slid across the deck. Recently rescued soldiers chased them across the tilted surface like children after runaway pets.

  One scooted straight into Andre’s hands. He slipped it on, tightening the straps with a savage tug since his safety depended on the grasp of the device. As he balanced on the rail before jumping over the side, another dive-bomber targeted the nearby minesweeper Skipjack. It took two direct hits and exploded with a roar.

  The concussion rolled across the water, breaking Andre’s grip on the rail and pitching him headfirst into the sea. His head struck a floating piece of debris, but he managed to stay conscious and fling an arm over the beam. Choking and sputtering, Andre paddled away from the rapidly sinking destroyer as waves continued to roll over him.

  ***

  Horst von Bockman stood up in the turret of his PzKw-III. Through his field glasses, he studied the outlines of the town of Lys beyond the intervening screen of trees. The orders Horst had received were simple. They told him that this area was held lightly by a cobbled-together force, including some military school students. He was to punch right through their undoubtedly feeble resistance and drive on to the Channel. Time was of the utmost importance. The Führer, while not admitting that his halt order had been a mistake, was now screaming at the German High Command not to let any more Allied troops escape.

  Horst directed his armored reconnaissance patrol forward to scout the bridge and the main road. He moved his tanks to the edge of the river, flanking the highway on both sides.

  The lead armored car approached the trestle. Like a chase scene from a motion picture, three Kfz-231s in succession turned the corner at high speed. Each tipped up slightly as they rounded the curve.

  Almost at once they were hit by converging streams of machine-gun fire. From both sides of the town and from the island in the center of the river, bullets ripped into the scouts.

  The first driver immediately lost control of his vehicle, bouncing it off a low stone wall. Then as the driver overcorrected, the car turned in the opposite direction and smashed headlong into the wall on the other side.

  The second car plowed into the first, knocking the already damaged unit onto its side. Metal shrieked as the force of the impact scrubbed the side of the armored vehicle along the pavement of the bridge.

  Machine-gun fire continued to pour into the span, and to this
was added the sharp crack of a small but well-aimed antitank weapon. The first round punched through the roof of the overturned scout car, passed completely through it, and exploded on the front armor of the second. There was no further motion from either vehicle, both of which now burned furiously in the center of the bridge.

  The remaining armored machine did not even turn around. It drove in reverse at high speed back to the safe end of the bridge. But even here, no protection was guaranteed. A round from another antitank weapon, located somewhere on the far bank, reached out and tagged the scout car and spun it around.

  “Covering fire,” Horst ordered, and the guns of his tanks opened up on the town’s defenders. A building on the island was crumpled by the first blast, and a shot fired by Horst’s own tank crashed near the location of the first antitank weapon.

  More antitank rounds came toward his position from a slightly different angle. It was clear that the defenders knew well the lesson of how to use mobile weapons: fire and move, fire and move. Horst had only just buttoned up the hatch when a shell splattered against the front plating of the panzer.

  “We will have to withdraw,” he said, “and bring up the artillery.”

  33

  That Could Have Been Me

  Andre’s inflated life vest and the death grip he had on the wooden plank kept his head out of the waves part of the time. But the swells that did roll over him covered him with oil and diesel fuel. Opening his mouth to gasp for air at an inopportune moment filled Andre’s throat with the guck. He gagged and vomited.

  His eyes were sticky with oil and burning until they swelled almost shut. He paddled with his free arm, peering through blurred vision and hoping that someone would pick him up before his strength gave out.

  A tugboat picked its way among the wreckage. It twisted and turned to avoid running over survivors and dodged Stuka attacks as it gathered in men who called for help. Andre could barely see its shape looming ahead, but he tried to swim and push his bobbing makeshift float toward it. Once he attempted to wave, but the motion pushed him under the breakers and set off another seizure of coughing and retching.

  The plank bumped into someone else drifting in the sea. “Grab on,” Andre called in English. “Help me! We’ll try for the tug.” There was no reply. He nudged the silent form. “I said, grab on,” Andre tried in French.

  When the body was rolled over by another wave, a drifting corpse reproached Andre with sightless eyes. Andre pushed so hard away from the apparition that he dunked himself again. This time he lost his grip on the plank. Flailing wildly, Andre shouted, choked, and sputtered. He called for help in every language he could think of and called on God to save him.

  The knotted end of a rope bounced off his head, and the cable fell across his outstretched arms. “Hold on, chum,” a cheerful voice called. “You’ll be all right!”

  The rope slipped through Andre’s numb and oily fingers, and he cried out that he was not going to make it. At the very end of the cord, his hands closed around the knot, and he was dragged through the water by the motion of the ship. At any second the pressure of the wave would break his hold and he would spin off astern of the rescue boat.

  Andre felt the rope being pulled toward the ship, felt himself being drawn close to the hull he could only dimly make out. Two pairs of strong hands reached down and grabbed him under the arms. He was hoisted aboard the tug St. Abbs and laid on the deck. Soaked, oil-covered, puking, and half drowned, he attempted to thank the crew. But they simply nodded and went about their business of rescuing others.

  When Andre had recovered some from his own near drowning, he watched the proceedings as the tug’s crew methodically loaded and stacked men who were without any ability to help themselves.

  Captain Berthon of the Keith had been picked up by the tug also. A major of the Grenadier Guards and some of his men rowed to the larger vessel in a lifeboat. When they climbed over the side, the rowboat was made fast and towed behind for use in other rescues. Over a hundred men snatched from the embrace of the sea were sprawled on the decks of the tug.

  The man propped next to Andre was dying, punctured by multiple shrapnel holes. A chaplain bent low over him, murmuring words into his ear. The man’s hand gripped the parson’s, seeming to cling to the world by that touch alone.

  A Stuka appeared overhead. Its siren screaming, the dive-bomber plunged toward the tug. There was no way to fight back. Even those who still carried weapons were too tired to raise them.

  In the pilothouse, the helmsman spun the wheel. The tug slithered over the surface of the sea like a mouse avoiding the rush of a hawk. It was all guesswork, really. No way to predict which move would equal safety and which might carry the boat under the falling explosives.

  What impressed Andre the most was the way people carried on their tasks. As bombs exploded on both sides and then in front of the tug, a brace of burly seamen went on throwing lines to men in the water, lifting them up, and shouting words of encouragement. A medic moved among the injured, wrapping wounds with gauze and dispensing what comfort he could.

  An explosion close astern lifted the aft portion of St. Abbs clear of the water and slammed it down again. Several men near Andre panicked, thinking the tug had been hit and was sinking. The chaplain, now hugging the dying man to his chest, ignored the blast and continued to repeat, “I am the resurrection and the life. . . .”

  The medic asked Andre if he was injured and gave him a bit of rough sacking to scrub the worst of the oil from his face. A canteen of freshwater was passed for Andre to bathe his face. The cool fluid was amazing relief to his inflamed and swollen eyes. It was an oddly commonplace action that Andre felt the irony of: washing your face while there was an immediate likelihood of being blown to bits.

  Twice more the Stukas attacked the tug, which seemed to bear a charmed life. The old coal-burning firebox belched black smoke and cinders from the stack. The wind over the Channel blew the smoke into long streamers, marking the tug’s path as it twisted and turned in the fountains of water thrown up by the bomb blasts. Andre heard the terror in many voices as men in the water cried for rescue and men already on the tug cried out in fear of the Stukas.

  Like a chronicler of every tragedy, St. Abbs was present as ship after ship was struck and sank. The wreckage of the Keith slipped below the waves. Basilisk went down. And the minesweeper Andre had seen bombed rolled over and floated belly-up. Andre shuddered with relief when he remembered that he could have been belowdecks instead of topside and blown clear. Though still in danger themselves, the men on the tug observed with fascinated horror and despair as the minesweeper went to the bottom. Hundreds of men were still trapped inside. The face of every soldier expressed the same thought: That could have been me.

  The Stukas swooped away to the east. For a time the only sounds Andre heard were the steady thrumming of the tug’s engine and the cries for help that still came from every side.

  Then a new sound was added to the rest. Faint at first, a buzzing reached Andre’s ears that was not the high whine of the Stuka engines but a lower-pitched hum.

  A single dot detached itself from the shoreline and rose overhead, as if following the plume of the tug’s smoke. A lone Heinkel bomber floated lazily into view. There were no fighters to harass it and no antiaircraft fire to annoy it, so it came forward with no evasive maneuvering at all. Like a sightseer out to view the carnage, it flew straight and level at no more than a thousand feet off the water.

  Whether it had really tracked the ship’s exhaust or if St. Abbs was the only object still moving on its own through the floating wreckage, the bomber was definitely attacking. All those who were able to watch the warplane did so, willing it to pass by. Andre’s mind was screaming to be left alone. Hadn’t they been through enough already?

  Andre held his breath as the Heinkel passed overhead. No bombs fell; no machine guns opened fire. In concert with a hundred others, Andre breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps the bomber was only on an observation mi
ssion, to report on the success of the Stukas.

  Just past the bow of the tug, dark objects began dropping from the belly of the plane. They hit the water in the path of the ship, but all failed to explode. A soldier near Andre laughed. “Good luck for us at last! A poor pilot and a rack of duds!”

  But the skipper of the tug knew better. He threw the helm hard over to avoid the delayed-action explosives, but they were too near and the tug too sluggish. The prow swung to starboard, and the hull of the ship drifted broadside toward the floating bombs.

  The first explosion blew up the low freeboard of the ship. A hole was torn below the waterline and the plates buckled upward. Shards of the hull pierced men lying on the deck, and others were dead from the concussion before being flung into the water.

  The ship corkscrewed from the force of the first blast, exposing its keel to the full impact of the second. St. Abbs broke in two and rolled over as she sank into the Channel. In her dying convulsion, she carried most of her passengers with her to the bottom, leaving in thirty seconds no more trace of her existence than a handful of floundering men.

  Tossed into the air, Andre was surrounded by a jet of steam that was the tug’s last breath. He landed in the water again, while all around him rained chunks of coal and flaming embers from the firebox. For the second time in an hour, he was near to drowning, sucked under by the demise of the tug.

  Sinking until he thought his feet would touch the bottom, Andre’s lungs were flaming for want of air. He struggled to get back to the surface, endlessly far above. Andre’s thoughts ran down sluggishly, like a clock about to stop. Perhaps it was time to open his throat to the sea and get this over with. What was the point of further struggle?

  With his last despairing lunge, he strained for the surface but thumped into something floating on the water. His hands scrabbled over a rough exterior and found a trailing cord. Pulling himself upward on the rope as if climbing out of the depths, Andre emerged near the one thing anywhere nearby that was still intact: The lifeboat being towed astern of the tug had been blown free of its cable.