by John Harris
As they were heading for shore again, however, the thump of the exhaust stopped once more. It happened during a lull in the bombing, and it was eerie and ominous in the silence to be able to hear the putt-putt of other engines and the distant calls of men on the beach.
Didcot leaned over the stern. ‘It’s a feller,’ he said. Peering with him, Tremenheere could just make out a khaki greatcoat and a white bloodless hand protruding from the sleeve.
‘Want me to go in after him?’ Didcot suggested.
Clark joined them and stared at the water. It was scummy with floating oil. ‘Don’t be daft, lad,’ he said.
While they were wondering what to do, an RAF launch with a naval officer aboard came alongside. ‘Go to La Panne,’ the officer yelled. ‘There are hundreds waiting there.’
‘We’re not going nowhere, me dear,’ Tremenheere yelled back. ‘We’ve got a stiff round the propeller.’
The naval man frowned. ‘How many crew do you have?’ he asked.
‘Four,’ Clark shouted. ‘Two seaman, two stokers.’
‘Right. Let’s have one of each. There’s a big fishing boat over here with nobody in it.’
The launch moved away with Clark and Smith, to shouts of ‘Hope you get your leave, Nobby,’ from Didcot. Tremenheere stared after it with a frown, suddenly aware how Clark’s experience of war had helped.
‘Bloody cheek,’ he said nervously. ‘And with Jerry coming back, too!’
The thud of the explosions could be heard quite plainly at Outreux where Stoos was still existing in a world of seething frustration. They were responsible, in fact, for bringing him to wakefulness.
He lay for a moment in his blankets, staring with wide-open eyes at the lightening sky beyond the canvas roof of his tent. Then he turned quickly and saw the other beds were empty, their blankets rumpled and draped to the floor.
He sat up with a jerk, aware that his companions had been called for flying and had left without disturbing him. Furiously he swung his legs from the bed and, dragging his clothes on, crossed to the mess-tent. He was in such a hurry he scalded his tongue with coffee, then, cramming bread and good French butter into his mouth, he set off across the field in the dawn light.
A Stuka was standing outside the hangar, its nose towards him, the mechanics screwing the panels into place over the engine. Oberfeldwebel Hamcke was just coming round the tail in the half-light and Stoos grinned at him.
‘You did it,’ he said.
Hamcke was almost out on his feet with lack of sleep. ‘This is 8726, Herr Leutnant,’ he said. ‘Hauptmann Dodtzenrodt’s machine.’
Stoos stared at the aeroplane, his face going red, then his eyes narrowed and his head went down. ‘Why hasn’t 6980 been brought out?’ he snarled.
‘Herr Leutnant–’
Stoos’ temper, held tight through several days of frustration, boiled over in a shout. ‘You’re a lout and a slacker!’
Hamcke’s eyebrows went down. Sleeplessness and overwork had driven him to the point of hysteria. ‘And you’re off your rocker,’ he shouted back.
Stoos glared, his eyebrows working, his face flushing darkly with rage, then his arm swung back and, as he lashed out, Hamcke reeled away, spun on his heels and sat down in the dewy grass.
‘Oh, Christ,’ one of the mechanics said. ‘He’s hit the sod!’ As Hamcke climbed slowly to his feet, Stoos stared at him, his heart suddenly cold inside his chest as he realised the enormity of what he’d done.
Hamcke straightened up, holding his jaw, ‘You god-damned fool, Herr Leutnant,’ he said in a low voice.
Then Stoos became aware of Hauptmann Dodtzenrodt behind him, his boots wet with dew. He stiffened and the mechanics working over 8726 quickly bent their heads to the engine. Stoos’ mouth worked. There was nothing he could say. Nothing at all.
Dodtzenrodt stared at him coldly. ‘I saw exactly what happened, Stoos,’ he said. ‘You’d better consider yourself under arrest.’
As Dodtzenrodt turned away, Stoos remained standing stiffly, his hands at his side. For a moment, his jaw moved and his eyes glittered, then he came to life and began to walk back towards his tent, his legs moving stiffly as though he were a puppet.
Hamcke watched him go. ‘The silly stupid bastard,’ he said. ‘If he’d only waited! I was going to tell him his machine was ready.’
Lije Noble was with his girl.
From the way she was eyeing him he could see she was in a hurry to get at him and his tongue moved over his lips at the thought. The fact that she was the wife of a sergeant made it all the more enjoyable.
He’d met her in a pub the night he’d arrived in Shrewsbury and, catching her eyes on him, he’d slipped her a message written on the inside of an empty cigarette packet. At that rime, he hadn’t known her husband had been in the Middle East for eighteen months and that she was dying for a man. She had a neat home and a big bed and throughout his stay in Shrewsbury he’d gone to see her regularly. She was Irish, red-headed and green-eyed to go with her passionate nature; big-breasted, flat-stomached and with the longest, slenderest, most shapely white thighs Lije Noble had ever run his hand along. She was sitting on the edge of the bed now, starkers and looking dead smashing; and she was just yanking off her second shoe, which was the last vestige of clothing on her body, when the picture faded and he realised he’d been dreaming.
‘Bugger,’ he said.
Then he realised that his backside hurt and it was almost daylight and that the clunk of the shoe hitting the linoleum had come, in fact, from the thump of wood against wood.
He sat up with a jerk, horrified that he’d been asleep, and glanced at his watch. It was a special one he’d ‘won’ early in the retreat and, with dials for seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, it looked like the instrument panel of a Wellington bomber. To his relief he saw he hadn’t been asleep more than a few moments and he pulled himself together quickly, looking round sheepishly to see if Gow was watching. In the cold dark of a pre-dawn he was hungry, sleepy, dirty and unenthusiastic.
As he cocked his head, listening, he could hear the slap of water and he looked up quickly. There was no wind and the canal had been silent all night. Then he heard the clunk of wood again and, as his heart pounded with fear, he turned and scrambled down the bank.
‘The bastards are moving, Gow,’ he said.
Gow sat up. ‘Right, mon,’ he murmured. ‘Tell ’em I’m coming.’
He nudged Chouteau and Angelet into wakefulness and began to thrust Bren magazines at them. Then, moving cautiously, he slid forward to where the gun had been erected and listened to the thump of wood that Noble had heard.
‘It’s the boat,’ Noble whispered. ‘They’re ferrying the bastards across.’
Gow sniffed the air and laid the spare magazines handy, his movements unwasteful in a way that indicated experience.
‘You ever done any fighting before, Gow?’ Noble asked.
‘Aye. In Palestine.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Grub was awful. All that Arab stuff.’ Gow fished out his notebook and Noble frowned.
‘What the ’ell do you keep writing in that thing?’ he asked. ‘Your will?’
Gow gave him a disapproving stare. ‘I’m absent from ma regiment,’ he pointed out coldly. ‘I’m keeping a record of where I’ve been.’
They waited silently, Noble wondering if the Germans could hear his heart heating. As the light increased, he realised he could see the opposite bank of the canal and held his breath.
Angelet appeared, moving cautiously. ‘Mon sergent,’ he said. ‘Il y en a déjà une douzaine à ce côté–’
Chouteau grinned. ‘He say many,’ he translated softly. ‘Across. A ce moment. Already.’
‘And a whole batch in the field there,’ Noble whispered, gesturing at the thinning mist. ‘See ’em?’
Gow nodded. ‘We get this lot on this side first,’ he suggested. ‘Then the boat. Then yon lot. Okay?’ He glanced at Chouteau. ‘Got it?’<
br />
‘Mais oui. Bien sûr.’
‘Okay, then, let the bastards have it!’
The harsh sound of the Bren opening up tore the silence to shreds. It fired along the bank at the group of Germans on the northern side of the canal and Noble saw blurred figures spinning away. There was a splash as one of them made an agonised backward arc with his body and fell into the water. Then Angelet stood up and pulled the pin from one of the Mills bombs to lob it gently forward. It dropped in the boat among the men pulling frantically back to their own side of the canal. In their panic, and with the din of the Bren firing they didn’t notice it. The explosion tore the boat apart, and Noble saw a steel helmet whirr twenty feet up into the air.
Angelet’s second bomb finished off a group by the water’s edge. One man had dragged himself to the hank and was struggling up the slope like a crushed beetle, screaming, and as the Bren continued to fire in short careful bursts another man fell on top of him and they both splashed out of sight and didn’t reappear. There was only one left on their own side of the bank and as he tried to run Angelet contemptuously killed him with a spade.
Everything was silent again and their nostrils were full of the smell of cordite. Angelet pushed the body from his feet and, standing motionless on the backward slope of the bank, he seemed at first to be crying. Then they realised he was singing softly and Noble gaped as he grasped what the song was.
‘Allons, enfants de la Patrie–’
The small cracked voice sounded strange in the vast emptiness of flat fields, but then it seemed to gain confidence and Angelet lifted his head and his voice grew stronger. Eventually, he was standing bolt upright and shouting the anthem at the top of his voice. It was quite spontaneous, springing from the emotions surging through his narrow chest.
‘Marchons, marchons–!’
The Marseillaise was always invigorating, triumphant, impelling, and its clarion call made the blood beat faster. Chouteau’s deep voice joined the boy’s pipe. Then Noble and another man joined in, even though they didn’t know the words, while Gow watched in still, respectful silence. There was only one national anthem Gow ever sang.
As Angelet finished, his head turned. It was almost as though he’d been in a trance of patriotism and, as he realised Chouteau and Noble had been singing with him, he blushed and they saw tears in his eyes.
He shuddered. ‘Je veux–’ he began but Noble gave him a little push, more moved than he’d ever have admitted.
‘It’s all right, mon fils,’ he said. ‘We got the message.’
In the distance they could hear the thump of bombs and the thudding of guns and the nearer rattling of machine-gun fire, but in their immediate vicinity there was silence. Gow began to pick up the empty magazines. Chouteau worked the bolt of his rifle and pushed another round into the breech. Noble shifted uncomfortably because his behind was hurting. No one spoke, all of them embarrassed by their own emotions.
Angelet stared at them and, as he turned and blew his nose loudly, Chouteau watched him with eyes that were full of the ancient wisdom of war. He glanced at Gow, ‘C’est un grand guerrier, ça,’ he said quietly.
Gow looked puzzled and Chouteau shrugged. ‘Soldat,’ he said. ‘II a decidé de se faire tuer en brave, en heros.’ He saw that Gow didn’t understand. ‘He wish to die like hero,’ he said. ‘He is much brave, that one.’
Gow nodded.
‘Il travaillait dans un grand magasin à Marseille, vous comprenez. Il vendait les vêtements aux dames. Les soutien-gorge. Les culottes de femme.’ Chouteau gestured in front of his chest and round his loins. ‘He sell to women. This.’ His hand waved. ‘And k-nickers, you understand.’ If Gow had been a laughing type he might have laughed at the Frenchman’s expression. Instead he managed a small stiff smile.
‘Mais après quatre jours en face de l’ennemi, il a pris son courage à deux mains. He wishes to kill Germans.’
Gow glanced at the boy again and Chouteau grinned. ‘Il s’appelle Angelet,’ he went on. ‘Angelet. Petit ange. Litt-el Ayngel. He is called Little Angel. That one! c’est drôle, ça, n’est-ce pas?’
As Gow and his group fought their little battle along the canal, the evacuation was beginning to get into its swing again. The whole thing was a colossal improvisation. Each destroyer had only two rowing boats, each of which could carry a mere twelve men, and it was taking hours to fill them; but now the powered small vessels were beginning to arrive from England – every kind imaginable, from weekend launches off the upper reaches of the Thames to oyster dredgers and ferry boats from the Isle of Wight, Gosport, Poole and beyond. By the grace of God, the weather continued to hold and the Channel, that most notorious of passages, that scourge of small boats where the tides from the east met the tides from the north in a confusion of broken water in the narrow seas between Dover and Calais, remained calm. It was like a millpond with hardly a ripple on the surface to impede the work of rescue, and only inshore where the waves rolled up on the sand was there any lift to complicate the manoeuvring.
Nevertheless, some men, preferring not to wait, were swimming off the beaches clutching pieces of timber, doors, oars, even inflated inner tubes they’d salvaged from abandoned vehicles. Someone had also had the bright idea of building piers. Three-tonners had been driven as far into the sea as possible at low tide, and behind them a long line of ammunition wagons, Bren gun carriers, anything that was available and would still move, had been wedged nose to stern. Immediately, despite the bombing, engineers scouring the beaches, rounded up planks and ropes and wire and joined the vehicles together in a makeshift jetty so that men could scramble along them and small boats come alongside without danger of going aground.
Some soldiers, their places far back in the queues, were sunbathing. Others had disintegrated morally and, like all men whose characters crumble in war, they had done so at terrifying speed. The colonel with the gay forage cap Scharroo had seen was arguing at that moment with a hysterical officer who’d rushed the queue and was insisting on taking his place at its head. As dawn had broken the man in the gay cap had splashed in a canvas bath provided by one of the Bofors batteries, watched by unbelieving soldiers. Now, tall, blond and unconcerned, he quietly drew his revolver, stuck it in the other officer’s stomach and called a military policemen to lead him away. Other men sat among the dunes, unable to accept that the ordered world they’d lived in had collapsed, and were merely waiting in defeat to be captured. For the most past, however, they were prepared only to admit that things were ‘a bit dodgy’ and regarded their defeat with the air of cynical disillusionment and mocking self-deprecation that was the stock-in-trade of British servicemen.
There were all kinds, most of them still clutching their rifles, some with suitcases, artillery theodolytes and favourite golf clubs. There were engineers, cavalrymen, tankmen, gunners, infantrymen, medical men, men who didn’t know the first thing about boats and tried to row stern-first or against an anchor some sailor had thrown out before he’d disappeared in the bombing. There were Belgians and Frenchmen from the interior who’d never seen the sea before and failed to understand that human beings crowding into a boat could set it so firmly on the sand nothing on God’s earth would move it until they climbed out again. Unlike the island British, they found it hard to accept the queues and worked themselves into a rage of impatience so that the sailors had to beat at frantic hands with boathooks and oars.
There were even a few odd Germans like Jocho Horndorff, watching sullenly as Conybeare spoke to the beachmaster. ‘This man is my prisoner,’ he was saying, ‘and I’m taking him with me. He’s a panzer officer and he might be of use to us.’
The beachmaster studied Horndorff. The German’s overalls were grimy now with oil and coal dust and soot, and there were streaks of black on his face. He was hungry and tired and strained by the frustration of having Conybeare constantly alongside him; the confident conqueror of three days before had given place to a haggard prisoner.
The beachmaster star
ed at the small blue-clad figure in the vast ridiculous boots and decided he was a little bomb-happy. ‘That bunch in the dunes there,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to wait.’
As they walked up the beach, the Heinkels appeared over the town again, plastering the buildings, the dunes and the sand. The incessant, incredible, perpetual din that left them all voiceless with trying to shout above it, started again. The aeroplanes came in waves, the fighters roaring along the beaches with arrogant indifference to the opposition, the sand rippling ahead of them as their bullets raked the surface. Conybeare threw a spade at Horndorff.
‘Dig!’ he said.
Horndorff glanced at the sky. Another wave had appeared over the beach now and fighters and dive-bombers were falling out of the heavens one after the other. Their bombs could kill and maim impersonally, indifferent to nationalities or loyalties, and he began to punch at the sand, barely aware of the din and the snake-like rills in the sand as the bullets came. The bursting bombs encouraged him and the hole went quickly into the slope of the dune. Conybeare pointed at a staff car stranded in the sand. Its bonnet had been blown off and lay near them. ‘Shove that over the top and pile sand on it,’ he said.
Horndorff did as he was told and, under Conybeare’s instruction, dragged up a few metal two-pounder shell boxes and arranged them on top and round the entrance to the hole he’d dug.
‘Now get inside,’ Conybeare said.
Nearby, half a dozen other men were building shelters on the edge of the dunes. Some were modest, some pretentious, and as the aeroplanes disappeared, the man next door looked round. He was a tall officer wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, his face mild and humorous.
‘Haven’t seen a deck-chair about, have you?’ he asked.
‘Haven’t even seen an attendant,’ Conybeare said.
‘Sunny for the time of the year.’ The other officer gave his shelter a slap with the piece of planking he was using. ‘Long time since I went in for this sort of thing. Always used to go to Slapton Sands. Where did you favour?’