by John Harris
At the next village they’d run into another column coming from the east and the numbers had increased. They hadn’t seemed to regard Conybeare with much affection and it had seemed wiser not to mingle too closely with them. In the village square the column stopped. No one had attempted to help them and they had slept where they could. Preferring to be where he could make a quick getaway, Conybeare had managed to find a chair in the Maire’s office and stayed there until the move west and north started again as soon as the sun had risen. The Germans found them before they’d gone a mile.
When the shooting and the howl of engines had stopped, Conybeare scrambled to his feet and ran along the line of sprawled figures. Men and women were appearing from the ditches, weeping and terrified, some of them cursing and shaking their fists at the disappearing Stukas. Nearby was a woman whose arm had been ripped to shreds by a burst of bullets. Further on were two children sitting in a push chair. One of them was covered with blood and silent. The other was screaming with terror and fighting to get free of the strap that held it in. Conybeare unfastened the buckle and lifted it clear; then as a man took the child from him, he decided he was getting his priorities mixed. He could be more usefully employed elsewhere. He sighed and, turning abruptly, began to head for the fields.
From the point where Conybeare was just making up his mind that a fighter pilot could help more in the air than with rendering first-aid to injured men, women and children who were already surrounded by their families and friends, to the head of the column was just over a mile. Up in front, between a horse that was snorting out its life in bannering bubbles of blood, and an ancient Citroën which seemed to be spouting steam from half a dozen points of the engine, Marie-Josephine Berthelot was on her knees by a dying woman. She had neither morphine nor bandages and the woman’s cries were tearing at her heart. From behind, a man offered a brandy flask but in her terror and misery she hardly noticed.
She was weeping softly and the man who’d offered the flask put his hand on her shoulder.
‘She’s dead,’ he said quietly.
Marie-Josephine lifted her face, her cheeks wet with tears, her eyes questioning. ‘You are English?’
‘No. American.’ And a goddam fool, Scharroo thought. During the night the Germans had unexpectedly pulled back and when morning had come he’d been shocked to find that during the hours of darkness the fighting had shifted direction and he was now on the wrong side of it.
He squinted at the sky, worried. ‘We ought to be moving,’ he said. ‘That lot were dive-bombers but they didn’t drop any bombs. That sounds like they had orders not to damage the road surface, and that means German tanks aren’t far behind.’
He glanced again at Marie-Josephine. She was small and pretty with soft dark hair and large brown eyes that were circled with the purple shadows all Frenchwomen seemed to have. He put her age at about twenty.
‘You alone?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He indicated the suitcase she’d dropped. ‘I can carry that for you,’ he said. ‘Where are you heading?’
Marie-Josephine had recovered her composure now and was looking at Scharroo, stiff-backed, her head up, her small mouth firm, her manner business-like. ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘I have some relations at La Panne. Perhaps I join them.’
Scharroo nodded. He could stay where he was, he supposed, and wait for the Germans but, though it was no part of his commission, he’d begun to feel that he ought instead to get to Paris. He had a feeling that it would be there that the next big act would take place. There was little doubt that, despite their undefeated armies to the south, the French were unlikely to fight to the death and Paris would soon fall. His job was to be present to see the Germans’ triumph. If he could get to La Panne, he thought, he could perhaps get a train from Nieuport to Ypres or along the coast and south via St Omer. It was chancy but better than hanging about in this empty area of canals and dykes.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘That’ll do me.’
When Conybeare had turned away abruptly and headed into the fields, it had not been an easy decision to make and his mind had been a turmoil of horror and pity.
At the other side of the field, he hit another road full of lorries with which he pushed along for a while, aware of the invisible ring of the enemy growing tighter and harder all the time. Then a truck full of French soldiers came past, insisting on trying to overtake all the other vehicles. There were shouts of ‘Wait your turn!’ and ‘Pull in!’ and an officer pulled out his revolver and, jumping on the running board, stuck it in the driver’s face. The Frenchman pulled in, but somehow the incident worried Conybeare and, deciding the road would attract attention from the Germans before long, he turned north yet again, keeping the sun behind him as a compass. Eventually, on his left, he saw houses and a church spire and, hungry by this time, he wondered if he could find anything to eat there.
The village appeared to be deserted but he entered it warily, expecting to find the Germans in possession. The fronts of several houses had been blown away and the silence was frightening. Though a few cats stared at him, there was no sign of human life. In a deserted café he helped himself to a bottle of beer from the cold cupboard and, half-starved, wolfed a stale baguette from under the counter and helped himself to cheese and sausage. He was still standing at the bar, tenderly fingering the bruise over his eye, when he heard footsteps in the roadway outside.
At first he thought the approaching man was a parachutist, because he wore overalls and a small round helmet. He was blond, hard-faced and tough, and much bigger than Conybeare who was completely unarmed.
He looked round for a weapon. There was nothing he could use. Then he saw an old hammer-operated shotgun over the bar. He reached for it and, staring into the dusty barrel, saw it hadn’t been fired for years, perhaps generations. It was of little value in an emergency but he decided he might manage to do something with it.
The German was only twenty or thirty yards away now, heading straight for the café, and Conybeare slipped behind the door that led to the private quarters. The German’s boots clumped on the floor-boards, and Conybeare saw him go behind the counter and take a bottle of beer from the counter. As he took off the cap and reached for a glass, Conybeare stepped out and placed the muzzle of the old shotgun against his neck, feeling like a schoolboy playing a game.
‘Hands up,’ he said.
As he’d lain in the grass on the banks of the dyke, Jocho Horndorff had suddenly become aware of his tiredness. He had been on the go for a fortnight now and the ambush had been set with deadly precision so that his section had been knocked out with laughable ease.
For a moment he couldn’t think what to do. He was alone in front of the army with no means of warning anyone that the British were just ahead. Then he’d spotted houses just to the west and had decided to telephone back to Cambrai or Brussels, which he knew were already in German hands, and get them to pass the message on.
He’d set off walking again, unarmed apart from the pistol at his belt, but the countryside was broken up by dykes and he had to find the little bridges that had been built for cattle to cross, and it was an hour and a half later when he reached the village. There didn’t appear to be a soul left in it, except for one or two cats sitting in doorways sunning themselves and a skinny-looking dog which slunk off as he approached.
He began to search for a telephone and found the exchange in a room at the back of the post office, but he had no idea how to work it and when he picked up the headphones there was no sound, as though the wires were down somewhere. He realised he was going to have to start walking again, but the weather was hot and, seeing a bar just down the road he entered it and helped himself to a bottle of beer. He had just opened it when he felt the shotgun muzzle on his neck.
For a moment, as Horndorff froze, Conybeare thought he was going to try to snatch the gun from him but then his hands lifted slowly, still holding the glass and the beer bottle. Keeping the muzzle of the old gun aga
inst the German’s neck, Conybeare took them from his hands and placed them on a table.
‘You are English?’ Horndorff said.
‘Yes. Do you speak English?’
‘I was educated at Oxford.’
‘That’s a help. What I have at your neck is a shotgun. It’s a twelve-bore and if I pull the trigger it’ll smear your face across the wall there. Take out your revolver – very slowly – and place it on the table to your left.’
‘Who are you?’ Horndorff asked.
‘I’m a British officer,’ Conybeare said, ‘and I’m going to pull this trigger in exactly three seconds.’
Horndorff reached for the 9-mm Luger and, withdrawing it, laid it on the table. Thankfully, aware that his heart had been pounding enough to choke him, Conybeare picked it up, cocked it, and laid the shotgun down.
‘You may turn round,’ he said.
When Horndorff turned, he was shocked to see that the shotgun clearly hadn’t been fired in years and probably never would be again and that it was his own Luger that was now pointing at his chest.
‘Where are your friends?’ Conybeare asked.
‘Where are yours?’ Horndorff asked.
‘I can’t tell you. You know that.’
‘Neither can I. And you know that, too.’
‘Of course. Silly of me to ask.’
Horndorff was recovering from his surprise now. The officer opposite him was very young and, though his uniform was stained and he had an enormous bruise over his eye, he still managed to look like a little boy in his best suit. Horndorff’s eyes travelled down until they rested on a pair of manure-stained farm boots.
Conybeare saw him staring. ‘French officer got them for me,’ he said. ‘Lost mine getting out of my machine.’
Horndorff began to smile and Conybeare knew what he was thinking. He’d spent several holidays in Germany before the war and knew they had a different way of measuring a man.
‘The British are beaten,’ Horndorff said. ‘Why don’t you throw your hand in?’
Conybeare stiffened. ‘They don’t seem beaten to me,’ he pointed out.
Horndorff shrugged, sure of himself. ‘Since we both speak English,’ he said cheerfully, ‘perhaps we ought to introduce ourselves. I am with the panzers.’
‘RAF,’ Conybeare said shortly.
‘You were shot down?’ Horndorff smiled. ‘Our pilots are very good, I think.’
Conybeare’s face didn’t slip. ‘Not good enough,’ he said. ‘Altogether I’ve killed about eighteen.’
Horndorff was startled by the information but he managed to avoid showing it. ‘My dear boy,’ he said, ‘my friends to the east have more weapons and men than your people have ever dreamed about. Die Stärke des deutschen Schwerts. The might of the German sword.’
Conybeare was unmoved.
‘Don’t call me your “dear boy”,’ he said in his prickly humourless way. ‘I’m a British officer.’
Horndorff shrugged and, his hands still in the air, he inclined his head a little. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘A slip. But it’s all rather academic, this capturing, isn’t it? After all, my friends will be here soon.’
He’d hoped to frighten Conybeare into letting him go, but as soon as he’d spoken he realised he’d said the wrong thing.
‘Then we’d better set off walking towards the British lines, hadn’t we?’ Conybeare pointed out.
Horndorff was caught by panic. He had no wish to be made a prisoner, especially by this child who with his bruise looked like an infant prize fighter. His hands dropped. ‘But this is ridiculous,’ he pointed out. ‘Our troops are just behind me.’
‘Then we mustn’t waste time, must we?’ Conybeare said. ‘And keep your hands up. If they’re tired, clasp them on your head. Shall we start walking.’
‘Suppose I refuse?’
‘Then I shall shoot you.’
‘Perhaps you will miss.’
‘I don’t think so. I was in the RAF pistol team at Bisley in 1938.’
By this time, with Operation Dynamo under way, a senior naval officer had arrived in Dunkirk to take charge. He had formerly been chief staff officer to the first sea lord and had recently been given the command of one of the navy’s proudest ships. Early in the afternoon he’d embarked in a destroyer with twelve officers and a hundred and sixty ratings as well as a communications staff. They’d been bombed at half-hourly intervals all the way across.
But not by Alfred Stoos.
Junkers 87 D/6980 was still in the hands of the mechanics and the chances of it being repaired continued to be slim.
‘For the love of God,’ Stoos said furiously. ‘You’re not making much headway!’
Oberfeldwebel Hamcke was standing on a trestle, watching a mechanic draw out a piston. They both had their heads in the engine space and didn’t hear Stoos at first and he had to repeat himself loudly before they turned.
Hamcke watched without a word as the mechanic laid the piston down on the bench and wrapped clean rags round it, then he climbed down, wiping his hands on a ball of waste.
‘It’s the spares, Herr Leutnant,’ he said. ‘We’re having to go all the way to the frontier to find them.’
‘Can’t you use a bit of initiative?’ Stoos said. ‘There must be something you can do.’
Hamcke said nothing and Stoos turned away, furious. He was in a desperate mood. The British were gathering near Dunkirk now, as everyone knew, waiting to be shot at like a lot of driven partridges, and there was nothing for him to fly. The fact that Schmesser and Fink had not returned made him all the more eager. Schlegel, in his bland, indifferent way, had said they’d been knocked down by a fighter, and the news only served to make Stoos more contemptuous of Fink as a pilot and of Schmesser as a commander. They wouldn’t have been shot down, he suspected, if he’d been there.
He was itching to add to the holocaust in Dunkirk.
There was hardly need. The town had already descended into chaos. The streets were full of rubble and burning vehicles, and dazed French soldiers, too far gone in shock to be able to help themselves, were standing in groups watching as the British began to pour in. Some of the British units had also disintegrated, and had thrown away their equipment and their rifles, but there were still groups with long histories, great traditions or simply good officers who appeared complete with kit and arms, their heads up, marching in step through the ruined streets. The chances of getting them to safety already seemed problematical, however, and it was becoming increasingly obvious to the navy that the only way to do it was to embark them from the open beaches.
Unaware still of what he was facing but conscious that his private life had reached a point of no-return, Alban Tremenheere was waiting on board Athelstan. He’d waited all day. Because he was worried about Nell Noone and Number Thirteen, Osborne Road, he’d even slept aboard and now he’d decided it would be a good idea to persuade Athelstan’s owner that her place – Tremenheere’s too, for that matter – was not in the river at Littlehampton but at Dover. A short period of service away from home, as he’d found out as a young man, was always a good answer to a domestic problem.
He was already behind the times, however, and Athelstan’s owner had got the message some time before. Alexander Knevett had inherited money so that, although he was a doctor, he’d never had to work very hard at it. Nothing normally disturbed his wealthy calm, and when Tremenheere arrived at his house that afternoon the sense of urgency he found there puzzled him. There were oilskins, sea-boots, charts, and a kit-bag full of gear standing in the hall, and a maid dressed in black and white holding a yachting cap. Tremenheere, being Tremenheere, pinched her behind. ‘What’s on then?’ he asked.
As he spoke, Knevett himself appeared. ‘Who told you?’ he asked.
‘Who told me what?’
‘We were off.’
‘Are we?’
‘Yes.’ Knevett seemed preoccupied. ‘You’d better make sure we’re in good order.’
T
remenheere’s sly face slipped and he turned from the door and began to hurry back to the water’s edge. At the boatyard he was surprised to see a crowd outside the gate. It was clearly not just an ordinary crowd. There were men in blue jerseys and peaked caps like himself, and men in naval uniform. In the store, more men were collecting boxes of tinned meat and biscuits and signing for petrol.
‘Better sort me out, too,’ Tremenheere said. ‘Biscuits. Corned beef. Sardines.’ He grinned. ‘Beer.’ Although he was the paid hand he was always careful to make sure he catered for his own tastes as well.
Basil Allerton had been on the road for ever now, it seemed, most of the time on his feet because his sergeant had been taken away from him and his corporal had disappeared with four men to collect rations and had never reappeared.
He was surprised to find he wasn’t frightened and he put it down to the behaviour of the ordinary soldiers about him. They were by no means beaten, only bewildered because they’d done nothing but retire without rest, and were ready at any time to turn and fight – anybody, anything, even their friends, they were so angry.
Allerton was still heading for Calais. They’d arrived in France at that port and it seemed sense to head back there because, if nothing else, it was the nearest point to England. Then, however, they ran into three men on bicycles. They wore blue French smocks and looked like peasants, but they were English, old soldiers from the First War employed by the War Graves Commission to care for the vast cemeteries of the 1914–1918 battlefields.
‘It’s no good going that way,’ they said. ‘Dunkirk’s the only place left.’
The news brought to Allerton a deep secret personal horror that someone had let them down, that somewhere above them in government were men who hadn’t cared, and he climbed back into the truck and swung off the road in a more northerly direction. There was a bottleneck at Neuve Eglise and everywhere there were signs of fierce shelling and bombing. Then, round a corner, came a column of German prisoners guarded by a solitary British soldier with a fixed bayonet.