by John Harris
‘You a religious mon?’
‘No. I don’t think it took. Why? What are you gettin’ at?’
‘I was wondering why you didnae bunk while you had the chance.’
Noble frowned. He wasn’t sure himself. It had seemed to start from the moment he’d first seen Gow, blinded but still clutching the Bren. As a Londoner, Noble knew the traditions of the Household Brigade, their calm demeanour, the fact that they had registered, exclusive, privately built faces which came with training, no matter what sort of features a man joined up with. He’d seen battle pictures of them, wearing red coats and stalking from the fray with long slow strides, every man two yards high, shaved, correctly dressed – even the bloodstained bandages they wore neat – a remnant of a company moving unhurriedly past relieving troops in majestic silence, not a single eye moving from some spot up ahead, as though only they knew how to fight battles. Though in the past he’d considered any man who joined them a bloody fool, he’d also occasionally found himself suffering from a secret envy that he wasn’t one of them.
It wasn’t just that, though, he knew. There was something about Gow that appealed to him. He was the sort who’d salute an officer on the telephone and he could hardly be called dynamic. Those icy eyes of his sometimes looked like a murderer’s and his conversation wouldn’t have taxed the resources of a trained parrot, while in behaviour he was about as unlike the unprincipled wide boys with whom Noble had surrounded himself in Civvy Street as a racehorse was from a costermonger’s moke. He decided it must be his sheer moral guts.
‘I dunno, mon fils,’ he said slowly. ‘Thought you’d need someone to look after you. Quartermaster, sort of. I’m no fighting man, old mate. I’m lines of supply troops. So, okay, I’ll supply. You’ll not go ’ungry while Lije Noble’s around.’
‘Right.’ Gow gestured. ‘Well, now get your heid doon before you get hurt.’
Noble gave him a twisted smile and turned round. The back of his trouser legs and his battledress blouse was torn by tiny holes each of which was stained by a pinprick of blood.
‘I got hurt,’ he said. ‘I bin wounded. I’m the most wounded man in the bleedin’ British army, I reckon. Seventy or eighty times I got ’it. Up me nostrils, in me ear’ole, up me backside. You’d better start pickin’ ’em out before I get blood poison.’
By this time Vital was just completing her third trip, and Hatton was on the point of collapse with tiredness.
The sky was empty as he ran down the mole driving a group of soldiers ahead of him but no one expected it to be empty for long and Hough was watching it anxiously, his face grey with fatigue.
‘Good show, Hatton,’ he shouted. ‘How many does that make?’ Hatton consulted the petty officers. ‘Nine hundred and sixty-three, sir. Give or take a few.’
‘Good God!’ Hough sounded startled. ‘The bloody ship’ll go to the bottom under the sheer weight. Right. Avast boarding.’
As the gangplanks were hauled aboard and Vital began to go astern, Hatton found he was unbelievably thankful to be away. Fear was growing in him with his increasing tiredness and he was itching to be back in the safety of England.
Above him on the bridge, the telegraphs clanged and the ship’s propellers stopped as Vital swung. A paddle-steamer was slipping inside her to take her place and Hough’s head was lifted, his eyes on the sky, as they waited for the steamer to clear their stern. Then, while Vital still paused between the narrow sandbanks, the man on the point fives, who seemed to have eyes like a hawk’s, shouted. ‘Stukas, sir! Port quarter!’
The clouds were clearing now, and as Hatton’s eyes lifted he could see patches of blue with small moving specks in them. The guns began to go in a crashing chorus that deafened him, and the aeroplanes began to fall out of the sky, one after the other. Vast eruptions of dirty brown water rose round Vital. Then, as she picked up speed, the men on her decks crouching with their heads down against the splinters and bullets, Hatton heard the scream of a shell and saw a fountain of water rise from the sea on the ship’s starboard side.
‘Six-inch,’ Hough said calmly. ‘Must be that battery near Gravelines. Let’s have smoke, Pilot.’
The navigating officer pressed the plunger and, below deck, Lieutenant MacGillicuddy, standing on his iron grating, still worried sick about the troublesome bearing which was beginning to show signs of growing worse, watched the petty officer in charge adjusting the valves that admitted just too much oil to the furnaces and shut off just too much air to allow complete combustion. The glazed peephole which normally showed a white-hot flame was a gloomy blackness as the oil broke down into greasy hydrocarbons that were snatched up by the draught and poured up through the after funnel. MacGillicuddy studied it dispassionately, not even thinking of the possibility that a shell might rip through the side of the ship and send steam as harsh as red-hot iron blowing through the compartment.
The ship was swinging first one way and then the other, heeling crazily under the weight of the men on her deck. A Stuka dropped down behind her and swept overhead, its guns clattering, then every rifle on board went off with the ship’s pom-poms. The bomb seemed to lilt the old ship from the sea and Hatton’s breath came out in an explosive gasp of fear, but as the column of water the bomb had thrown up collapsed across the deck he felt Vital shake herself like a terrier emerging from a pond and continue to pick up speed.
‘I wish I’d never come,’ some humorist wailed. ‘I’m always seasick going to Margate.’
As the bomber pulled up, a patrolling Spitfire from England, at the very range of its petrol, caught it and the ship was pandemonium.
‘He’s got him! He’s on fire!’
A long stream of dark smoke was pouring out of the Stuka now to mingle with the black coil from Vital’s funnel, and the aeroplane was racing up the port side of the ship, settling lower and lower all the time. It was only a few hundred yards away, flying below the smoke as though sheltering beneath it, and Hatton could see the pilot struggling with the hood. Then it hit the sea in an enormous splash and as the spray cleared, they saw its tail sticking up, then slowly, as they cheered, it sank out of sight.
‘We’ll not dally to look for survivors,’ Hough said. ‘And you can go easy on the wheel now, Quartermaster. We’re wearing out the sea.’
His nostrils full of the stink of the belching black smoke, Hatton was still pushing men away in odd corners when MacGillicuddy passed him, thrusting his way through the soldiers.
‘That bloody bearing’s gone,’ he snarled.
The sound of the shell seemed to start miles away over a group of woods to the east. It came from nowhere, starting as a whisper and increasing until it filled the whole air.
‘Down,’ Scharroo said as he pulled Marie-Josephine towards the ditch.
They were passing what appeared to be the British army headquarters, situated in a château just behind La Panne. A transit camp had been set up in the surrounding woods and there were soldiers everywhere, melting away as the shell approached. Lorries and pennanted staff cars were parked down the gravelled drive and round the ornamental pond that fronted the building, but they were empty now, their doors still swinging as the drivers bolted for cover. A French horse artillery regiment heading north began to scatter in confusion, charging away in a disorderly line, shouting and yelling, the drivers lashing at the horses, the gunners frantically clinging to the limbers, ammunition trailers, mess carts and wagons. As they tried to swing off the road, one of the horses went down with a crash and they saw it sliding along the ground, its eyes bulging with terror as it was dragged along by the violent forward motion of its companions and the weight of the gun. Then the whole lot piled up in a ghastly, floundering, screaming heap of men, animals, spinning wheels and rolling, bouncing mess kits, just as the shell arrived.
Scharroo had just lifted his head when it exploded in the ornamental pond with a crash that seemed to strip the flesh from his body. Blocks of stonework flew into the air with a huge spray of water that drift
ed away on the breeze as the clods of earth and the dead carp whacked down on the lawns and the gravel drive.
Immediately the whole area began to boil again like an ants’ nest stirred by a stick. Soldiers appeared from holes in the ground and from behind walls and trees. Abandoned vehicles were reoccupied and began to get under way once more. Limping French artillerymen were trying to drag their horses to their feet and a man hurried past on the road, leading a string of saddled chargers. A military policeman shouted hopelessly at him in English to turn them loose but the Frenchman ignored him and joined the vast trek towards the coast.
The whole countryside had come alive again where a moment before it had seemed empty, and the flow of moving figures restarted, heading like lemmings towards the sea, tramping unspeakingly past the pink and white of the apple blossom and the green of new corn, dragging the last lurching stragglers with them. Some of them were wheeling their wounded in barrows, pride in their unit not allowing them to abandon them, the sergeants chivvying them like sheepdogs. ‘Keep the step, lads! It’ll help! Keep the step!’ Despatch riders so tired they looked like zombies drove up and down the columns and, alongside the road, a group of Frenchmen taking up positions for a final stand were digging slit trenches and covering them with branches from a nearby garden to bide them from the sky.
A group of British cavalrymen appeared from a car park where they’d been dumping soft-skinned vehicles. They formed up in the road and began to march towards La Panne, swinging their arms, in perfect step, their heads up, their kit in excellent condition. They looked tired but they were well-disciplined, and a straggler, brushed aside as they tramped past, looked up. ‘The ‘Dirty Dozen,’ he jeered. ‘Cavalry: The Manure Collectors.’
A sergeant turned on him at once. ‘We’re the Supple Twelfth, my lad,’ he rapped. ‘Quicksilver, and don’t you forget it!’
Military police were examining documents but Scharroo’s newspaper pass got him through and he was able to vouch that Marie-Josephine had relations in La Panne.
‘She says they live in the Rue Isabey and she’s trying to reach them,’ he said.
‘She’ll be bloody lucky, mate,’ the military policeman muttered.
La Panne had been a favourite haunt of painters for years, a pretty place of parks and gardens, but it had been heavily raided. Houses were burning and there were charred wrecks of cars about the streets, scorching the trees and bushes. A few civilians were in their doorways, jeering at the soldiers, but there were not many and it seemed to Scharroo that he and the girl stood out like sore thumbs.
Dishevelled, exhausted men were resting on the sidewalks among the abandoned vehicles, and they eyed Marie-Josephine curiously, a few even managing a whistle. The sky was full of smoke and the sound of aeroplanes, but they all seemed to be over Dunkirk, and La Panne for the moment was quiet.
Using his press pass, Scharroo got himself inside one of the beach headquarters where a colonel in a gaily coloured forage cap was on the telephone to Dover on a line which was still amazingly uncut.
‘Where are our ships?’ he was demanding angrily.
‘You’ve got them.’ Scharroo could hear the answer quite plainly.
‘Have we?’ The colonel snorted. ‘You’d better come and look for yourself. I haven’t seen ’em.’
The shelling began to increase and they had to run for shelter. Then Marie-Josephine remembered that the Rue Isabey was on the western outskirts of the town and, rather than go back through the crowded streets, they took a road running behind the sand dunes where there were small hotels and boarding houses, many of them still closed from the winter, their shutters fastened and barred. On the sand in front, thousands of men waited. A few of the more energetic were scratching holes where they could shelter. Thousands more stood in the water cooling their aching feet, their boots in their hands. Two men, preferring not to wait for the navy, had collected barrels and were lashing planks to them to make a raft, absorbed in their task and indifferent to the danger. Nearby an officer, quite drunk, sat in a foxhole, holding an empty wine bottle. Down the beach another, dressed only in shirt and pants, was trying to drag a rubber dinghy ashore for a wounded sergeant whom four of his men were carrying in a blanket.
Indifferent to the noise, soldiers were wrapped in overcoats and even looted eiderdowns, snatching the first real sleep they’d had for three weeks, but queues had also formed near the water’s edge in long snake-like columns, and in the shallows tows of whalers and lifeboats were gathering. In front of them, by a Bofors gun, a subaltern was scanning the sky with a pair of glasses and the colonel in the gaily coloured fore-and-aft cap was now arguing with a Territorial officer who was climbing out of a car that he’d driven on to the sand.
‘Who’s the beachmaster here?’ he was demanding.
‘You’re lucky,’ the colonel said. ‘I am.’
The Territorial jerked a hand at the car. There were tennis rackets, golf clubs and two trunks in the back seat. ‘How do I get that aboard?’ he asked.
The colonel gave a bark of laughter. ‘You don’t. Except over my dead body.’
Where the man in the gay cap worked, the beach was impeccably controlled, and there was even a military policeman directing traffic, but in other parts the crowd seemed to mill about as it pleased.
A stray shell whined over and dropped fifty yards away. The lines dropped flat but the colonel remained upright and didn’t even stop directing the columns of men. Then the air seemed to fill with sound again and the lines round the beachmaster began to melt away. He glanced up at the sky and began to walk quickly towards the dunes, not attempting to duck or hurry. Men ran past him, but others simply dropped to the sand and lay on their backs, popping away with their rifles, while others plunged neck-deep in the sea for shelter and stood with only their heads and their helmets above the surface, looking murderously round for something to shoot at.
The howl of engines increased as Scharroo flung Marie-Josephine down and fell on top of her. A bomb landed nearby and he caught the sulphurous smell of the explosive and heard the clatter of tiles landing on the promenade. The air was full of sand and grit and, as he watched, a big ship – the biggest he’d seen so far – was hit amidships and an enormous cloud of smoke burst upwards.
Then three black-painted aeroplanes began to scream along the beach, their guns going, the bullets throwing up the sand in a rippling wave. Their bombs exploded with shattering force but there were few casualties and Scharroo realised that the sand was cushioning the effects of the explosions. Only here and there groups of men ran towards a silent figure caught by the machine guns.
As the din stopped, he became aware of Marie-Josephine moving beneath him. She was face-down, her hair among the marram grass, her head beneath his shoulder, and as she turned over he was aware of the feel of her all the way down his body. Her foot was hard against his ankle, one shin against the muscle of his calf, one knee like a small wedge in the side of his leg. The inside of her thigh was against his and she was staring up at him with unblinking black eyes.
He pulled himself to his feet quickly. ‘I guess we should go look for your relations,’ he said.
They moved back from the beach into the streets. Food was in everybody’s mind and men were wandering among the abandoned vehicles and into gardens and ruined houses in search of something to eat or somewhere to sleep.
They found the Rue Isabey at last and the house they were seeking, a small neat place with a garden and trees. It seemed to be full of men in khaki. Scharroo called to a soldier sitting on the lawn shaving in the sunshine, apparently impervious to the destruction about him. ‘Where are the owners?’ he asked.
‘Owners?’ The soldier’s head turned. ‘I’ve not seen any owners.’
The bombing Scharroo and Marie-Josephine had watched was the first German reaction to the clearing of the sky and the change of wind.
Field telephones shrilled on the aerodromes the Luftwaffe occupied. Messerschmitt 109s went up to provide top c
over against the RAF’s spoiling attacks while 110s and Junkers 87s and 88s were bombed up frantically in the afternoon sunshine and went roaring across the fields, their propeller washes flattening the grass, their crews still adjusting their harness as they lifted into the air.
But not Stoos.
He had reached a point of apoplexy by this time. ‘You said this afternoon,’ he was screaming at Oberfeldwebel Hamcke.
‘Herr Leutnant–’ Hamcke was nearly out of his mind with weariness ‘–it’s not possible!’
‘It must be possible! It must be done!’
‘Sir, if I had another dozen men I couldn’t do it before tomorrow now. Hauptmann Dodtzenrodt came back with his petrol tanks punctured and took the men off the job. He wants to be in the air, too, Herr Leutnant!’
Stoos saw the possibility of the decoration he’d set his heart on fading rapidly. The war couldn’t last much longer. The French were on their knees and the British were being cut to shreds. ‘I’ll see the captain,’ he snarled and, spinning on his heel, stalked off towards the tent that did duty as squadron office.
Hamcke stared after him. ‘That man’s mad,’ he said. ‘Stark staring mad! He seems to think they can’t win the war without him.’
It was beginning to seem at Dover that they might, however, and the Admiralty had decided that the senior naval officer at Dunkirk was in need of someone offshore to help him.
‘The wind’s changed, sir,’ the staff officer, operations, reported. ‘The smoke’s blowing the other way and the Germans are giving it all they’ve got. Clan MacAlister’s been hit and she’s on fire. They think they’ll have to abandon.’
The admiral chewed at his spectacles, then he moved to the fragile iron balcony that jutted from the old casemate in the cliff. The lowering sun was filling the day with golden light, and below him he could see the ships arriving and departing, and the movement of vehicles towards the harbour. It was possible to hear the crash of bombs from across the Channel coming as dull thuds that pressed on the ear.