The Dearest and the Best

by Leslie Thomas

  The four sub-lieutenants lay flat behind the piled hawsers on the tug’s deck. ‘If she goes up now, we’ll all go with her,’ forecast Jones. His teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘S . . . sorry.’ Simmonds laid a hand across his back and the teeth stopped. They felt the gentle collision as the two ships met, a nudging kiss, and the padded nose of the tug began to push the larger warship away.

  Everywhere there was a stench of burning, the destroyer creaking and groaning as the tug pushed her. Suddenly the four young men lying on the deck heard a screaming, high above all the other noises of the hell around them. Harry looked up and saw a man, aflame like a brand, running the deck of the destroyer. The man jumped overboard. Harry started up but Jones pulled him back. ‘There won’t be anything you could do for him,’ he said quietly.

  Then, like the rush of a mob, a dozen more men appeared on the destroyer and ran towards the stern. Two of them were being carried like battering rams by others. The deck of the tug was well below the rail of the destroyer but they began to clamber over. ‘This time we’ve got to,’ said Harry. All four clambered to their feet and hurried towards the bow. They clasped the men climbing down or being lowered. One of the men who had been carried was burned black, his eyes uncomprehending, white teeth grimacing grotesquely through charred cheeks. The other had the entire side of his head stripped to the skull.

  The petty officer who had stood with them on deck as they approached Dunkirk now came forward with a stretcher party. ‘Out of the way, sirs,’ he ordered briskly. ‘Let the dog see the rabbit . . . oh, fucking hell, sirs. What a thing.’

  They got the two burned men on the stretchers and hurried them away. The others sat on the deck, stunned, staring. One suddenly put his arms around a comrade and began to cry. Harry moved forward. ‘Don’t cry,’ he told him helplessly. ‘Men don’t cry. Don’t cry. There’s some tea coming.’

  Both men, only boys less than his own age, nodded dumbly. The one who had wept wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, leaving a streak across his sooty face. All around the other men were being carried away. ‘Anybody else left aboard?’ asked Harry inadequately.

  ‘Nobody, sir,’ replied the man who had comforted the other. ‘Not living. They’re either dead or they’re in the fuckin’ ’oggin.’ Harry helped both to their feet. They were not wounded; they trembled like babies.

  ‘They’re pushing her away, Bert,’ said one strangely, staring at the tug now nudging the burning ship well clear of the harbour. ‘They’re going to push ’er back to Blighty! Ha, ha, ha! They’re pushing her back home!’ He began to laugh hysterically and his friend, trying to calm him, burst once more into tears. Harry put an arm around each and, choked with emotion himself, helped them amidships, one weeping, one chortling like a madman.

  The destroyer was now out of danger of fouling the port entrance, wallowing well offshore and being carried gradually west by the current. Small boats were out picking up men from the sea. Three German planes shot across the scene without firing or dropping bombs. ‘Came back to see how they’d scored,’ muttered Harry. The tug was now backing off hurriedly. The captain’s order was none too soon, for as the warship drifted further west, now half a mile away, she was blown out of the sea by another immense internal explosion. When the watchers picked themselves from the tug’s deck they saw that she had split into three sections, like small volcanic islands, each one smouldering and steaming as it settled into the sea.

  Another warship cruised in calmly on the other beam of the tug. A hollow, unhurried voice came over the intervening waves. ‘Well done, Doughty. Proceed now according to orders. Proceed as normal.’

  ‘Normal,’ muttered the petty officer, handing mugs of tea to the survivors and then one to Harry. ‘I like his idea of normal. I don’t want to be here when something bloody abnormal happens, do you, sir?’

  Captain Finn backed the tug off, like a pondering bull preparing for a charge, and then went forward again towards the harbour mouth. There was little space there, but she bustled her way into the port and went alongside the burned wreckage of half a dozen Dunkirk fishing boats. They were black and ragged-edged like charred paper. Harry and the other three young officers with the four sections of sailors made ready to go.

  ‘Landing party ashore,’ sounded the flat voice over the ship’s loudspeaker. Harry Lovatt glanced behind him. The dozen sailors, steel-helmeted, webbed-belted and carrying rifles, returned the look expectantly. Somewhere on land a fuel tank blew up with a red and yellow tulip of flame; smoke and noise mixed in the air. With a strange realization Harry found that, after all the boyhood games, the countless imaginary parts he had played in his adolescence and his romantic disguises since, after all that, he was about to take part in something real. With the acrid noise of battle all about, he was about to become a leader of men.

  Barraclough’s party went first, clambering down over the side of the tug and across the burned fish-boats, picking up their gaitered boots as if they were tramping through a black morass. ‘Number two party, forward.’ Harry was aware of the nervous thrill as he moved ahead of them, down over the thick hull of the Doughty, then feeling the crackling black wood of the gutted trawlers beneath his feet. He heard the seaman behind him mutter, ‘Bleeding ’ell, Nobby, we’re going to get dirty.’

  ‘You been dirty ashore plenty of times, mate,’ mumbled Nobby.

  ‘Cut the small talk, lads,’ warned Harry. An obedient silence answered him. He was glad he had said it. He climbed up the broken stone of the jetty and moved a few paces forward so that the rest of the party could follow.

  Having done that he stood and took in Dunkirk. For the first time he was at ground level and could see directly into the town. It was blazing all along the waterfront, the flames like skirts caught by the wind. Black smoke from the Saint-Pol refineries blotted out the summer day. A thick stench of oil, gas and cordite hung over the port. ‘What d’you reckon to that, then, sir?’ said a voice from slightly behind him to his right. ‘Make a nice opera, don’t you think?’ He turned to see an army sergeant, black-faced, ragged-uniformed, pointing dramatically as if there might be some doubt of the scene to which he was referring.

  ‘I don’t think this will be so entertaining,’ answered Harry solemnly. ‘God, you can smell the garlic.’

  The sergeant laughed. ‘Very good, sir. Best one today. Just keep moving along the jetty, sir. Dunkirk is right at the end.’

  Harry said: ‘Very good of you,’ as he might have thanked an English policeman who had given him directions. ‘Party forward,’ he ordered in a level voice. He felt the men move behind him as he strode out. A plane crossed above them, low, whistling, and they crouched without breaking their step, like a party of hunchbacks. They watched its bombs straddling the buildings ahead where there seemed nothing else left to destroy.

  Big holes had been gnawed from the jetty. There were the masts and funnels of sunk ships protruding with an odd sadness from the harbour, as if hoping to be remembered. At the far end a line of phlegmatic soldiers was waiting to embark on a small coaster. As Harry neared he saw their faces were black and blank, they shuffled a few inches at a time, the utterly fatigued steps of chained prisoners.

  The deck of the coaster was already crowded and as Harry’s party approached a shout went up from someone below. ‘That’s enough for this trip. Any more and she’ll go under.’ There was no reaction from the soldiers. They stopped shuffling and merely stood. Not one of them turned to look at the fresh naval party that strode by eyeing the soldiers, but when the sailors were almost past, there was a clatter as a rifle fell on the broken cobbles and a man dropped with it. Harry hesitated but then moved on. An old infantryman at the end of the queue, a man in his forties who looked eighty, laughed, showing toothless gums, and shouted: ‘Another bugger having a kip.’ No one joined in.

  As they reached the end of the jetty Harry saw that there were spectral groups of soldiers moving through the streets, taking no notice
of the fires or the bodies of dead men which lay across the stones. A civilian bumped by on a bicycle, a man in a big cap and French blue working clothes. He took no heed of the mayhem around him, but paused at the junction of the street with the port and produced from a bag a length of bread which he began to eat reflectively.

  Among the tumbled shadows of the buildings Harry saw the town hall, standing up amid the smoke, and made for it. Barraclough’s party, which had gone ahead, had vanished into the debris but when Harry’s section reached the rendezvous he saw that they were being formed up in proper parade order by a naval officer with a megaphone who was standing on a chair in the street. ‘Come along, come along,’ he called towards Harry and the other sections behind. ‘At the double, sir. At the double.’

  Harry gave the order and they trotted quickly into position along the littered street. A singed dog came from a doorway and sat licking its wounds. Two women, holding each other and crying out unintelligible curses, stumbled among the broken buildings.

  ‘Welcome to Dunkirk,’ said the naval officer, once all four landing parties were in position. ‘By now most of you will have realized that we are here trying to get as much of the British Expeditionary Force home and dry before Jerry gets here. I’m afraid the whole damned thing is terribly difficult and it’s not made easier by the fact that the brown jobs are thoroughly fed up with the entire story. There are soldiers all over this town, lost, some drunk, some half crazy. It will be your task to round them up and get them to the embarkation points. These are few and far between at the moment since most of the port is unusable, although we are managing to improvise a little. The chaps you organize you should transport to the beaches of La Panne, to the east, and sit them down quietly there until somebody can come and collect them. You may commandeer any transport you think necessary, always supposing you can find any.’ His chin went up with a rugged breeziness. ‘Any questions?’ and immediately, ‘No, I thought not. All right. Get going. And don’t get lost.’

  Barraclough suddenly ventured: ‘Sir, there is one question.’

  ‘What is it, sir?’

  ‘How far away . . .?’

  ‘Is the Hun? Difficult to say. He’s in heavy artillery range, that’s for certain. Either that or the French have turned on us.’ He took on an official look. ‘The salient is about ten kilometres out, all around. It’s being held by British and French troops and that’s going to be fine until Jerry brings up his big tanks. After that it’s good night Irene. Questions answered? Good. Off you go then.’

  With a taut stomach and his heart clanging like a bell, Harry led his party towards the piled fires of the town. He had a terrible need to urinate and once out of sight of the town hall and its beachmaster he called a halt before some gutted shops.

  ‘Right, chaps,’ he said, in the way of a leader of a boy-scout troop on a hike, ‘it’s going to be some time before we can have a widdle so I suggest we all do it now.’

  He saw the men grin and some look around at the rubble, reasonably wondering why the needs of nature had to be served on one particular place. They formed a line along the shop fronts, facing towards them, and thirteen silver arches played into the gaping windows like the efforts of an ineffectual fire brigade.

  Harry had been afforded, by a curious acknowledgement of rank, a wider space to urinate, an interval between him and the men, and the privacy of a shop doorway. A man the other side of the broken wall began to pray vigorously as he peed. ‘Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name . . .’

  Dumbstruck, Harry finished his task and stepped back to observe the man, whose pee-ing and the prayer were timed to finish together. He buttoned his fly and saw Harry and several of his comrades regarding him. ‘I am religious,’ he said frankly, as though he owed everyone an explanation. ‘It seemed a good time for a prayer, sir, before we venture into Sodom and Gomorrah.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ answered Harry, taken aback. ‘Don’t worry. That’s fine. What’s your name?’

  ‘Leading-seaman Andrews, sir.’

  ‘Good, Andrews. Well, don’t go far away. We may need you.’ He looked at the grins on the faces about him. ‘Come on. Let’s get on with it,’ he ordered. ‘To Sodom.’

  It was only as they went deeper into the stricken streets that Harry began to realize what a widespread and undignified defeat had been inflicted upon the British Army. The eyes of soldiers, white and sly, spied out at the fresh arrivals from holes, doors and broken windows. They remained half-hidden, like troglodytes, watching the naval party trudge by: ambushers awaiting a signal.

  They discovered half a dozen military vehicles at the corner of a square, with a Royal Engineers corporal casually about to set fire to them. He was like a boy making a Guy Fawkes bonfire, building wood and straw and some bales of paper around the wheels of the vehicles. Two canisters of petrol stood waiting to be thrown on to the pile. Eighty yards away two of his comrades had righted a fallen table and two chairs of a pavement café, and sat idly, rifles thrown negligently, as if in disgust and distrust, on the ground. ‘Ha!’ bellowed one, ‘The bloody navy’s here, ’bout fucking time too.’

  Harry glanced their way and saw that they had a bottle of something on the table and were taking it in turns to pour the contents into mess tins, which, at each swallow, they raised in a toast to each other.

  ‘Here’s to the Frogs,’ shouted one soldier.

  ‘The Frogs,’ the other responded. ‘The fucking Frogs. And the bleedin’ Belgies too. And all the other poor bastards.’

  ‘The Dutchies,’ remembered the first man. ‘The good ole Dutchies.’

  ‘The Jerries,’ toasted the second. He shouted to Harry who had halted his party across the littered cobbles of the square. ‘Yes, mate, the Jerries. They got officers what don’t run off.’

  Harry’s inexperience caused him to hesitate and the two soldiers laughed sourly at him. Their mockery jerked him to reality. He stepped forward towards the man who was intent on burning the trucks. ‘Hold on,’ he said informally. ‘We’re going to need one or two of those.’

  ‘These?’ the sapper said, apparently amused. ‘This junk? Why? There’s no-bloody-where for them to go, is there? We’ve run out of road, mate.’

  ‘Where are your officers?’ asked Harry firmly. ‘Who is in command?’

  ‘Command!’ exclaimed the man, as if the question came from a madman. ‘Command! Ha, that’s a good one, a bloody good one.’

  Harry took a further firm pace. ‘I am a naval officer,’ he said brusquely, hoping his voice did not quake. ‘Stand to attention.’ The man blinked and did so. Harry’s relief nearly choked him.

  ‘Officer?’ trembled the man. ‘Officers, sir. They went. Cleared off. Took the unit transport, they did. We just walked, legged it, thirty miles, we reckon. And . . . and when we got here we find these . . . look, these trucks. That’s why I’m going to burn the bloody things, sir. That’s why . . .’

  The soldier shook with emotion and tears channelled his face. His inebriated comrades left the table and staggered comically, dragging their rifles by the straps, like dogs on leads. ‘’Ere,’ said one, pointing with difficulty at Harry, ‘don’t you go upsetting our Alan. Look at ’im. See what you done. ‘E’s ’ad enough to put up with, ’aven’t you, mate.’ He wrapped his arm around the heaving shoulders of the sapper. His expression changed to one of pleading. ‘You ought to see ’is feet,’ he suggested. ‘They’re ’orrible. All gone yellow.’

  ‘Right,’ said Harry firmly. ‘Let’s get one of these trucks out of this mess. Then we’ll get you home.’

  The trio looked at him in astonishment. ‘Home?’ inquired the second soldier who had been at the table. To Harry’s amazement he produced a teddy bear from inside his tunic and held it by its hand. ‘Home?’ he repeated. ‘’Ow we going to get home, then?’

  ‘By getting down to the beaches and embarking on the ships that are waiting there,’ said Harry with more assurance than he felt.

  ‘Fucking
’ell,’ said the first man. ‘In that case we ought to consider it, didn’t we.’

  ‘Get the truck free,’ ordered Harry. He turned. ‘Come on, let’s get on with this.’ The sailors moved forward determinedly, pulling the conflagration material away from the vehicles. Harry called to Andrews. ‘Take these gentlemen back to the café,’ he said, pointing to the wreckage of that establishment. ‘Sit them down and have a talk to them.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Andrews, patently pleased with the assignment. ‘Come on, chaps,’ he encouraged. ‘You’ve done quite enough. Let the navy do a bit.’

  ‘Good idea,’ decided one of the soldiers and they turned docilely and stumbled back towards the table and its seats. They set up two more chairs and Andrews sat down with them. They explored the bottle but it was now empty. The sapper began to lick around the inside of a mess tin. Something blew up in the next street, a huge detonation sending smoke up like a tree and showering stones and tiles on to the square. The sailors all ducked, but the three soldiers sat bemused and smiling. Harry returned his attention to the vehicles. Men were getting into the cabs and testing the starters. To his amazement he heard, from behind him, the quartet singing in a hushed way at the table and then break into a blatant and enthusiastic chorus:

  ‘A sunbeam, a sunbeam,

  I’ll be a sunbeam for Him.’

  His men had started the engine of a fifteen-hundredweight platoon truck and then that of a one-tonner, and were backing them away from the debris into the more open part of the square, when they heard carnival sounds coming from one of the streets that led off it. Harry paused and turned. The sailors had just succeeded in getting the vehicles clear. Into the square came a fearful sight, a gang of staggering British soldiers, maddened, drunk, all pride lost, defeated in every way.

  One man was dressed in women’s clothes and performed a sickening dance on the cobbles to the cheers of the others. Another was wearing a woman’s hat and carrying a naked dummy from a store window. Two others were wheeling a dead man in a wheelbarrow.