XII
Such was the pattern, and it went on all day without let-up. Swarms of enemy bombers appeared overhead, and bombs fell in showers, and now and then a vessel was hit and sometimes set on fire, sometimes sunk; small boats came to the rescue and the survivors were transferred to other vessels. Farther down the shore, at a small place called Nieuport, enemy batteries were hidden, firing 5.9 shells at the crowds on the beaches and at the mole; but nobody paid much attention to this, they just went on with their jobs. When British fighter planes came to the rescue, the men looked up for a moment; when a bomber came rushing down under full power and hit the sea and exploded—that was just one more bang to be added to the fireworks. “Good work!” Rick would say, with a grin. The wind had mercifully gone down, and he nibbled a bit of biscuit in between filling the grease cups of his engine. “Don’t be downhearted!” he would call to the men, and they would turn their thumbs up and answer: “Give us another go at them!”
The name of the tug to which they had attached themselves was the Gentle Annie, and she had come all the way from Battersea. Because Rick wasn’t much good for lifting men out of the sea, she loaned him a husky docker with an accent which Lanny would have liked to record on a phonograph. He was unceremonious in his handling of Tommies; he would stand on the gunwale and hook his right hand firmly in the back of a man’s collar and just heave until the man was on the gunwale; after that he could fall in if he was too tired to lift his legs. As a rule the arrival’s first call would be for water, for the German bombers had destroyed the city’s water supply, and the men had long ago emptied their canteens. Lanny would give him a cup with a tot of whisky in it and his gratitude would be touching. Then he would get a sheet of hardtack to munch, and maybe a piece of chocolate, and would settle down in the bottom of the launch and sometimes fall asleep before he had finished eating.
Toward evening a hospital ship, white-painted and with conspicuous red crosses, was dive-bombed and got a great hole in her side; many of the wounded had life jackets put on them and were dropped into the sea. The Admiral’s launch came along and ordered both the Gar and the Gentle Annie to the rescue, and that was a job that took several hours. Lifting wounded men out of the water couldn’t be done quite so unceremoniously; and presently it was dark, and there couldn’t be any lights, not even a cigarette, because that would bring the bombers again. You had to creep here and there at a speed of a mile or two per hour, calling, and trying to hear the responses of men and women in the water. Lanny had to be prepared to give a whirl to the wheel if he saw any phosphorescence which might mean the presence of a swimmer; Rick had to be on the qui vive to stop or to reverse the engine, for the sea was blowing up again, and if you heard a cry it might be a man’s last. They had two husky chaps with them to do the lifting; and because the victims were half dead with cold they had to make frequent trips to the tug.
The time came when they themselves were utterly exhausted, drenched with spray and half frozen by the north wind, and Rick seasick again. They had to turn the launch over to others and seek shelter in the Gentle Annie’s bosom. Rick was lifted on board—he really had no right to be doing this work, with his game leg, and everybody treated him with special care, even while hiding the fact to save his pride. Because he couldn’t bend one knee it was slow work getting up or down a companionway; as a rule he did it with one leg and two arms to let himself down a step at a time; but now, for the first time since Lanny knew him, he had to admit that he was at the end of his strength and let himself be carried, pick-a-back.
Have you ever been inside the boiler room of a tug—one of those soft-coal-burning tramps that fills the air with thick black smoke which in the course of nearly a century has made the London docks and the London dockers as grimy as itself? Ordinarily you wouldn’t think of one of these tugs as especially lovable, but when your very bones are frozen and your teeth are chattering and you are dazed with exhaustion, you are taken into a room where the heat clasps you like a mother’s arms and penetrates to the very center of your being; nor does it fail, but is renewed every few minutes by the opening of an iron door and an outpouring from a golden-hot furnace. You sink to the floor and don’t care how black it is, because it is warm. You strip off your wet clothes and lay them over the boiler and in five minutes they are dry again.
And meantime, the tea! Such tea as British seamen get, made in a big cooker and full of tannin, of which the hygienist does not approve; but it is hot and sweet, and warms your insides and makes a new man of you—especially if you get a ham or cheese sandwich at the same time. You swallow it down quickly, because you feel that your eyes are closing and you know that you can’t hold on much longer. Presently you keel over and are fast asleep; if other men stumble over you you don’t know it, and they have to shake you hard, and tell you that it’s daylight, and the launch is back, and newly supplied with water and food and fuel.
XIII
Such was the life of two men of gentle rearing for a matter of five or six days and nights. They lost track of the time, and thought about nothing but the streams of men who kept magically appearing out of the streets of Dunkirk and wading into the sea. The pair soon lost the maternal care of the Gentle Annie, for a bomb hit her and she went down and they helped to rescue her gentle crew. Her tall, rusty smokestack remained sticking out of the sea, along with scores of others-nobody ever counted them, so far as Rick or Lanny knew. There were officially said to be eight hundred and eighty-five vessels taking part in the rescue, but that didn’t include the many which went in on their own and didn’t come back to report. The British and French navies admitted the loss of thirteen destroyers and twenty-four minor war vessels. The crew of tiny Gar saw many of them go down, and went on with their job of taking men off the beaches.
They attached themselves to that Brighton Belle which was officially classified as a “paddle minesweeper.” She was older than Lanny himself; painted white with gold trimmings, she had been carrying “trippers” at the time of the Boer War. Now a dingy war gray, she was loaded with more humans than ever before in her long history. She struck a mine, and all the load had to be transferred to her sister ship, the Brighton Queen—and then she went down in her turn. But more ships kept coming, and the R.A.F. kept clearing the skies—they were getting four Jerries to one, the navy men reported, and Rick announced, proudly: “I’ve a son up there.” To Lanny he said, no less proudly: “I told you so! We’re better!”
Men, men, men! Endless streams of them, the whole British army, it seemed, and a good chunk of the French, and some black Senegalese. From first to last, Lanny didn’t see a single man, rescued or rescuers, flinch from a duty; he heard tales of Frenchmen rushing the boats, but the ones he helped invariably shook hands with him and said “Merci, monsieu’.” When they discovered that he knew their language, they told him something of their adventures; and Rick, a professional in spite of weariness and seasickness, would say: “Somebody will get a great story out of this!” Lanny met Americans who had been driving ambulances, and what the British called “tea cars” for the Y.M.C.A. He met a British officer who had galloped onto the beach on a stolen French carthorse, and another who had ridden a lady’s bicycle and didn’t say how he had got it. The Tommies had many such tales to tell and were glad of a chance to laugh. They had much fun with French peasant boys who had never seen the sea, and were as much afraid of a small boat as of a German tank.
The docks of the city were blasted and the warehouses burning, and the waterfront became too hot for men or ships; so more and more men appeared on the beaches, and on the jetties which protected the roadstead. The largest of these was made by driving piles into the sand, two parallel rows close together. Nobody had ever contemplated using them as a pier; but some bright fellow had the idea of the mess tables of the vessels, and they were brought out and laid upside down on the pilings, making a gangway of a sort. Over that precarious footing something like a half million British and French boots passed in the course of several
days and nights. The ships drew up alongside and the men stepped aboard, and that was a lot faster than wading into the surf. The Germans bombed that jetty incessantly, but they never once hit it; the Spitfires came in droves and sent many of the bombers plunging into the sea. The destroyers and the ack-ack guns on the beach kept up an incessant pounding at them. Also the cruisers, which had enormous eight-barreled anti-aircraft guns, known as “Chicago pianos.” There was such a racket that you had to shout to be heard.
Rick contributed another bright idea to this haphazard procedure. The wide beach was sprinkled with vehicles of every sort, ambulances, tanks, lorries which had been driven here and could go no further. Why not drive them into the sea, as far as they would go—two of them side by side and then another pair, and another, until you had a pier of a sort. With planks laid on top, men would walk to the end and boats of medium size could come and get them handily. Rick shouted the suggestion to a young lieutenant, who put men to work; and in an hour or so it was done, and things went much faster at that spot. The enemy had a new target, but his shooting wasn’t any too good, and presently a new flock of destroyers would sweep in and put his guns out of action.
XIV
The battle behind the town, and in an arc all around it, went on without a moment’s cessation, day or night, for an entire week. The enemy was in Nieuport to the east and Calais to the west and in the suburbs of Dunkirk all the way around, trying desperately to break through to the beaches, and being as desperately fought by the British and French rearguards. Buildings were shot to pieces, great fires were started, and a black pall hung over the whole scene. The men who dragged themselves out of that battle were pitiful to see, many without shoes and their clothing in shreds. The ambulance men and litter bearers stayed on the job, and carried the wounded to the boats, which never stopped coming. One of the regular Channel steamers made eight round trips to Ramsgate, with some two thousand men at each trip.
Until at last there were no more except the rearguards, and the navy was going to care for them. “Gentlemen, your work is done,” said the Admiral, darting here and there on his tiny flagship. “You can go home whenever you please. Be sure you have enough petrol, and if you want a tow, come to one of the assembling stations.”
Poor old Rick! He was surely glad to hear those words—so glad that he didn’t try to hide it. His face was drawn and every step was pain; the ordeal must have cost him twenty pounds of his not too abundant weight. They had taken the last man off a shoal where once there had been thousands standing; and now they looked about them at the never-to-be-forgotten scene. Hundreds of vehicles had been wrecked and burned on the beach, which was so littered with debris that you couldn’t see the sand. The funnels and masts of vessels of all kinds and sizes were sticking up out of the water, and every sort of debris was afloat, including a number of cork boats which seemed to have nothing wrong with them. Several horses galloped here and there on the beach, trying to get away from the racket; and strangest thing of all, the surface of the water was white with dead fish—millions of them killed by the bombs, and a few with life enough left for a feeble wriggle. Rick said: “If our lads had been Japs, they wouldn’t have gone hungry. Just take out your pocket knife and cut off a thin slice, and you have the choicest table delicacy.”
Lanny’s reply was: “That reminds me!” and he started to open a can of bully beef. They hadn’t had a real meal for a week; just picking up something when they thought of it, and nibbling while they worked, or waited for their small boat to be emptied.
“I think we’ve a right to be towed in,” Lanny continued. “It looks to me as if the weather had about exhausted its patience.”
“Righto!” was the Englishman’s reply. “I won’t mind having a good snooze in a boiler room.”
His friend began, very seriously: “I must tell you something I’ve had on my mind from the beginning. I want you to put me ashore, and work out some way to get to the assembling station by yourself, or pick up someone who can help you to it.”
“What are you thinking of, Lanny?”
“You’re not to say a word about it, understand. I want to join the German army.”
“Good God, man! Are you out of your mind?”
“I’ve thought it out carefully. I want to join Hitler, and find out if and when he means to invade Britain. It’ll be the most important job I’ve ever tackled.”
“But they’ll shoot you for a spy, Lanny!”
“I don’t think so. I’m an American civilian, and the Führer’s personal friend. He gave me a commission—certain things I was to say to people in London and Paris, and I’ve said them, and it will seem to him the most natural thing in the world that I should come back and tell him what they answered.”
“But the army, Lanny—the Germans you will run into in this town!”
“I don’t think there’s much to worry about. I know their language, and how to talk to them. I have reason to believe that Emil Meissner is commanding a division somewhere on this front, and if I say I’m a friend of his, nobody’s going to shoot me until they ask him.”
“Well I’m blowed!” said the baronet’s son. Remembering his lifelong habit of not interfering in other men’s affairs, he added: “You know what you want to do.”
“The main thing is that you should keep the secret—otherwise I might have a hard time getting back into England. You can put me off at our pier; and if you wait there for a bit, someone will be coming along and help you to an assembling station.”
“I’ll manage that part of it all right,” was the reply; but Lanny knew that his friend was so tired he could hardly drag his game leg.
XV
“Our pier” meant the contraption which Rick had invented, and which was now standing deserted in the fast-falling twilight. Its landing stage, at the end, consisted of a number of planks laid across two heavy trucks, or lorries as they are known to the English. (Some tens of thousands of them had been left behind for the Germans to use.) Lanny steered the Gar to the spot and made her fast. He got out his precious bundle, which had been stowed in a closed compartment and appeared to have escaped the spray. “I have an outfit,” he explained, “so that I’ll look like a tourist and not like a shipwrecked mariner.”
“You’ll be wanting food?” inquired Rick.
“Other people will feed me, if I look right. But I must have water, to wash off and shave. I have changed most of my money into francs, and I’ll leave the small change with you.”
“But your passport is wrong, Lanny! It won’t show your entrance into France.”
“I hired a launch to bring me, and when we got to Dunkirk we found everything disorganized, so I just came ashore. I’ve a right to have been in England; that’s where Hitler asked me to go.”
“Well, good luck, old fellow. If anybody asks about you, I’ll say you got on another boat.”
“Everything’s pretty well shuffled, and nobody will worry about any one man. How many do you suppose have been saved?”
“God knows! I’d guess half a million.” When the figures were announced, the world learnt that this civilian effort had saved a total of 122,000 Frenchmen, and just twice as many Britons.
Lanny set his bundle onto the landing stage, also a gallon tin of water. He exchanged a handclasp with his friend—it might be a long time before they met again—and then he climbed up. “So long, Rick!” He tucked his bundle under one arm and took his precious tin in the other hand and started walking cautiously along the irregular planking. Half-way to the shore he saw two figures approaching, a Tommy helping his wounded buddy. They stopped when they were near, and Lanny, disguising his American accent, remarked: “There’s a boat out there that will tyke you, if you can steer her.”
“I can myke a stab at it, pal.”
“I’m tykin’ in some medical supplies. There’ll be another boat a bit lyter, so don’t wyte for me.”
“Back to Blighty for mine!” remarked the Tommy.
31
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sp; Even in the Cannon’s Mouth
I
As background to the beach and its scenes there had stood in Lanny’s eyes for five or six days an immensely long building which he took to be the casino or pavilion of Dunkirk, or perhaps of Maloles-Bains, as part of the beach was called; in an idle moment he had counted sixty windows in one continuous front. He had imagined what had gone on there in happier times—the dining, dancing, and gambling which made up the life of the beau monde of the Continent. Now the building was dead, its windows dark, and every pane of glass shattered by shell and bomb blasts. Had all the people fled—and where to, with the sea on one side and a semicircle of flame and steel on the other? Were they hiding in the cellars, taking their chances of the collapse of the building and the spreading of fire?
Lanny found the esplanade as badly littered as the beach. He did not dare to use his pocket flashlight, but stumbled along in fast-gathering darkness, and when he was past the pavilion, turned up a side street. Not a light anywhere in sight, but from the shape of the buildings he judged it to be a street of apartment houses and pensions. Some were partly wrecked, others intact; he stopped at one of the latter and rang the bell, then stood for a while. When no answer came, he tried the door, and finding it unlocked, stepped in and closed it behind him. He ventured to turn on his pencil of light and flash it about. He was in a somewhat pretentious establishment, with spacious entrance hall and drawing-room beyond; there were heavy portieres and elaborate carvings on the woodwork.
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