by John Harris
When he reached the hangar, D/6980 was waiting with the engine ticking over. Stoos walked round it, checking everything carefully.
‘I’ll want her bombed up,’ he said.
Hamcke seemed to guess what was in his mind. He glanced at the corporal alongside him who also seemed to have caught on. Then he shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t his affair. Sending a man to the armourers’ tent, he climbed into the cockpit to switch off the engine. Stoos waited as the bright circle of the propeller slowed down and finally stopped. He could feel the heat from the engine and hear the creaks from the cooling metal. Wunsche was looking distinctly nervous now. He also seemed to realise what was in Stoos’ mind and he glanced at Hamcke who sketched another small shrug.
In silence they all watched the bomb trailer approach across the grass and the men work it underneath the machine. ‘That’s it, Herr Leutnant,’ the corporal armourer said, scrambling out. ‘It’s not fused.’
‘Then fuse it.’
Wunsche climbed aboard without speaking and, settling himself behind his guns, moved his hands automatically to check the ammunition. Stoos climbed in after him and fastened his harness. ‘Start her up,’ he said.
Hamcke waved the ground crew forward. They all looked a little uncertain but they didn’t protest.
The Jumo engine burst into an iron-throated howl and they stood back while Stoos worked the throttle. Reaching the holding area, he turned into wind and carefully checked the revolutions and instruments. Then he swung the machine round in a circle and checked the flaps and instruments. As he released the brakes, he saw a group of dots behind him, dropping down towards the aerodrome. It was Dodtzenrodt and the rest of the squadron returning to refuel. It seemed best to go before he could be stopped, and he thrust the throttle open and roared across the ground.
As the machine rose, the headphones crackled and for a moment before he deliberately switched them off he heard Dodtzenrodt’s voice calling his name. Then, as Outreux passed beneath him, he turned towards Dunkirk and the ships he intended to make his target.
Hatton was watching the coastline near Mardyck. He knew where Hinze’s shells had come from because he’d watched the guns firing the previous day, and he suspected they were out of range only by a matter of yards. His heart was pounding but, as he turned he saw a big tug, Gamecock, bearing down on Eager and could see the men on her stern already preparing the tow-line.
The air raid siren had gone but Hatton saw the men on the beaches dispersing for the hundredth time towards the dunes. The raid was shaping up for one of the heaviest he’d seen so far. A large force of Junkers 87s supported by 88s, Heinkels, Dorniers and Messerschmitt fighters, had arrived over the harbour, and the ship’s guns began to fire.
After the first waves the attacks began to move from the harbour to the ships, and every ship in the area, every gun that had been dragged down for the defence of the beaches, every man with a rifle or a machine gun, began to retaliate. Just ahead of Eager a destroyer was turning at full speed in the narrow waters, and Hatton saw nine bombs fall in a row along her starboard side. At first he thought she was hit but she continued at speed, heeling over from the shock of the explosions. As she lifted again her pom-poms were banging away over the top of a sloop, and as the aeroplanes swung round in a big arc to head inland, he heard their machine guns going
Gamecock was close by Eager’s bows now, moving slowly towards her, the men in the stern waiting to pass the tow-line, concerned only with their job and apparently unaware of the drama alongside. The swiftly moving destroyer had slowed down now and Hatton saw her straddled by a stick of bombs. She was moving in slow circles, her rudder jammed, and as she did so, another wave of aircraft came over her and Hatton saw the bombs fall away.
‘She’s got it this time,’ a man near him shouted.
The bombs hit the destroyer as she turned and she slowed down at once and began to settle. As tugs approached to take her in tow, she was hit a third time below the bridge and this time heeled over and disappeared almost at once. But the sky was already emptying again and Hatton realised Eager had escaped. By some miracle, the bombers had not noticed her and he could now see that the heaving line from Gamecock was aboard and the men on the bow were beginning to pull at the heavy tow-rope.
The air raids were just starting again as Hinze’s guns began firing once more, and the one he’d had dragged up the dune was now flinging its shells the extra five hundred yards he’d been seeking. There had been a lot of guesswork in the operation, but the roadstead was perfectly visible to everyone and they could watch the fall of their shots.
The destroyer they’d hit was still motionless but there was a tug ahead of her now. Through his glasses he could see they’d got the tow attached, but he knew that to turn her they’d have to pull her in a wide circle before they could get out of range.
As the destroyer began to move the first shot dropped thirty yards from her stern and Hinze called out the new elevation.
Horndorff heard the shell that bit Eager whistle over his head. It passed above the pram with a swooshing sound, and as it exploded a vast circle of smoke belched out of the destroyer’s after funnel, followed by clouds of steam.
‘Damn,’ Conybeare said.
‘I think we shall have to head in another direction,’ Horndorff said, not without a grim satisfaction. There was another destroyer not far away, lying stopped, and several tugs were racing towards her. Small boats were going full throttle to get out of the way, among them a fishing vessel with a wheelhouse like a box, and a solitary mast forward where a boy stood holding a rope. Horndorff stared about him, feeling he’d been granted yet another stay of execution.
‘I think you are running out of ships, Officer Conybeare,’ he pointed out.
Eager had just been moving forward under tow, the water inside her making the work slow, when Hinze’s second shell had hit her. A great cloud of soot had shot up from the funnel and dropped across the decks to cover everybody with hot greasy flecks, and she immediately started to list to port. There was a frantic and desperate yelling where the splinters had sliced through the crowded men, and Hatton stared about him desperately. The Stukas were coming down one after another now, peeling off at ten thousand feet and dropping with a terrifying snarl of their engines to within a few hundred feet of the water. Another destroyer was hit and he saw the cloud of smoke leap up from her funnel and drift away like a smoke ring blown by a huge cigarette. A tug hurried to her rescue but her inside had fallen out and anchored her to the bottom, and as the tug cast off the tow and prepared to take off the survivors she too was hit. She seemed to disintegrate into small fragments and when the water and the smoke had vanished there was nothing left, not even a few bobbing heads.
In the havoc and thunder of the bombs, Hatton was flinching every time an aircraft came near them. All round Eager there were patches of oil where ships had sunk, together with a mat of drifting wreckage, smashed boats, Carley floats, fragments of timber and floating rope. Steam was still coming from the funnel and through the engine room hatches in a vast cloud that he knew would advertise the fact that the ship was damaged to every aircraft within miles.
Stoos’ gunner, Wunsche, pointed downwards, and as Stoos saw the slender shape of a destroyer far below him just to the west of the mole he realised at once by the absence of wake that the ship was almost stationary and even appeared to be under tow. She made a perfect target and he could see from the colour of her decks that she was crammed with troops.
He licked his lips, certain he couldn’t miss. His eyes didn’t waver as he stared through the silvery circle of the propeller. He was only twenty-two years old and quite certain of his destiny.
He could hear voices in his ears as other pilots called out warnings to each other, but he ignored them, his eyes now on only one thing. At the rear of the cockpit, Wunsche crouched over his guns, slight, pale-faced and nervous. He was not a good gunner and Stoos decided he’d have to get rid of him when everything els
e was sorted out.
He shifted in his seat and glanced behind him. There was another Stuka not far away on roughly the same course, its fixed undercarriage reaching down like the claws of a hovering eagle. He glanced at the bomb release. The big bomb slung beneath him would soon send the fragile destroyer to the bottom. He was quite unafraid and, settling himself in his harness, pushed the nose down. Immediately the air blossomed with brown shell-bursts. At least they were awake down below, but it wouldn’t be long before they were swimming for their lives.
More shells exploded around him but the Stuka flashed through them unharmed, and the engine swelled into a high whine. Behind his goggles Stoos’ eyes narrowed with concentration. The destroyer was growing rapidly in size now until it filled the whole of the windscreen, and he could see the brown mass of men crowding the decks suddenly changing to white as faces lifted to watch him. The tracers started, red lines spinning towards him, but he didn’t take his eyes off his sighting mark, holding his breath to concentrate more. The machine was rocking but so far nothing had touched him. And then he realised why. There was another Stuka beyond the bows of the destroyer and the fire was being directed at that one instead. As he watched, he saw it lift away and knew that in a moment they would be seeing him.
The sky was full of exploding shells now and black with smoke. More tracers curved up and Stoos had to grit his teeth to force himself to keep his eyes on his target. A Stuka coming from the opposite direction burst into fragments that dropped twisting and turning out of the sky, but still the slim line of the destroyer below him grew larger, and filled the whole of his sight as he pulled the release and heaved the Stuka out of its dive.
As the Stuka began to pull away, Kenny saw the bomb fall and Gilbert Williams’ voice came in a cracked harsh cry. ‘It’s going right down the bloody funnel!’
The destroyer leapt out of the water as the explosion tore at her inside, the crash drowning the clatter of the Stuka’s machine gun as the aeroplane seemed to hover above them.
‘Now,’ Gilbert screamed. ‘Now, Ernie!’
But Ernie was hanging over the gun, clutching it with whitened knuckles and, as the wild-eyed Kenny watched, he slowly spun away on limp legs, staring bewildered at the drops of blood falling from his open mouth to the deck.
Kenny looked round for Brundrett, but Brundrett was still below in the engine room crouching under the engine and, as the yellow-bellied machine with its crooked wings and fixed undercarriage began to curve up into the sky, Kenny came to life and grabbed for the gun. He had no idea how to aim so he simply pointed it and pulled the trigger.
The crash of the bomb exploding in the bowels of the destroyer seemed to lift the pram clean out of the sea and Horndorff missed his stroke and fell flat on his back with his feet in the air. For a moment he lay there dazed as water and fragments of wood and steel showered down. Then the waves set up by the explosion caught them, rocking the boat so violently that he felt sure it was about to capsize.
When he lifted his head, the destroyer was wallowing, and he knew she would sink. The tug which had been assisting her had dropped her tow and was rushing in a wild circle to pick up survivors, while the fishing boat they’d seen was heading quickly across their stern.
Conybeare was now lifting his head too, and the purple bruise over his eye seemed to glow with rage. Horndorff began to wonder if he might take advantage of the confusion and plunge over the side and, as the memory of that last awful swim deterred him, he saw that Conybeare was looking like an angry schoolboy. In any other circumstances he might even have found it within himself to laugh.
‘We’re adrift,’ Conybeare was yelling. ‘You damned idiot! Fancy letting the oars go!’
Horndorff dragged himself upright, for the first time in days feeling he’d got the better of his captor.
‘Was sagen Sie nun? he said. ‘Perhaps you have something to fit this case, Officer Conybeare. I think everybody is too busy to pay much attention to us.’
He was quite right, and on Daisy Kenny Pepper was staring towards the Stuka he’d shot at, realising with amazement that it was faltering in the sky and that its gun had stopped firing.
At first he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he saw a puff of black smoke break out behind it, and then another which finally became a steady stream.
‘I hit him,’ he screamed. ‘I hit the bugger, Gilbert!’
He stared upwards, waving and dancing wildly. The Stuka was turning towards the land now but it was clearly in trouble and the smoke was still pouring from it. He glanced round and saw that the tug, Gamecock, had let go its tow and was turning in a tight circle to come up behind them at full speed. Then he saw Gilbert Williams was staring not at the sky but at the deck, and he remembered Ernie. Kenny had never known his father, and since leaving school had found the security he’d needed aboard Daisy. The two Williamses had been kind in their rough way and had become like parents to him. As he turned slowly, the only thing he was aware of in his moment of triumph was the sight of the man who’d given him forbidden fags and bottles of beer, who’d taken his side against Brundrett’s bullying, now crouched on the deck in a kneeling position, half-leaning against the engine room ventilator, his mouth working slowly, the blood coming out in a thin stream mixed with saliva to form a pool on the deck where his face was pressed.
As the Stuka sagged in the sky with Wunsche dead in his seat Stoos felt a sick feeling of frustration. There’d be no medals for him now.
Even as he thought of it, however, he choked on the smoke pouring into the cockpit and realised his only chance of life was to take to his parachute. The bomber was barely moving forward by this time and he knew that in a moment it would fall off in a stall and then it would be too late.
The Stuka passed him towards the sea in a screaming dive as he fell clear. Then he pulled the ring and felt the jerk of the harness as the parachute opened. A moment later he was swinging safely beneath it.
He watched the aeroplane vanish in a vast spout of foam. It didn’t occur to him to feel sorry for Wunsche. Wunsche had only been part of the aeroplane, not a human being, and he’d not been very efficient even at that. Almost without thinking about him, Stoos looked round again for his victim.
At first he thought he’d missed, but then he saw the destroyer surrounded by clouds of steam and smoke and he grinned, delighted, feeling that things would come right after all. He realised he was drifting over the land and felt still better. He wouldn’t even get his feet wet. He was only a few hundred feet above the beach now and edging towards the dunes. He saw the men below move together in bunches and start looking up, and as he heard the whiplash of bullets it dawned on him they were trying to kill him.
‘No!’ he screamed. ‘No!’
But by this time he’d dropped another two hundred feet and the next fusillade tore his inside to shreds. He screamed like a tortured animal and his arms and legs fell helplessly, a red blur of pain dimming his view. With glazed eyes he saw the rifles raised again and, even as he choked in his own blood, a bullet took out his right eye and another, entering his head beneath the chin, lifted the top of his skull into the torn remains of his helmet.
The men on the beach watched the parachute drift over the town, and a sailor – a survivor from an earlier sinking – looked round at them as they worked the bolts of their rifles.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Two hundred of you to kill one sodden Jerry! No wonder we’ve lost the war!’
As Eager sank lower, the men aboard her were scrambling for the ships that had appeared alongside. As they filled up and moved away, a trawler came up on the opposite beam and everyone began to move to the other side of the deck. Standing on the bow where he’d been sent to help lift the stern out of the water, Sievewright waited for someone to tell him what to do. Alongside, men who’d been blown overboard were swimming and shouting and as the ship’s bows sank lower and lower he wondered if he should now move to the stern to give more weight there to lift the bows. Because he�
�d boarded during the night, he’d seen little of Dunkirk in the darkness. Because he’d been amidships when Hinze’s first shell had struck, he’d seen nothing of the shambles aft. Because he’d moved to the bows, he’d seen nothing of the horror from the second shell or the uproar when Stoos’ bomb had hit. He was still neatly dressed, and was just wondering if it were still in the tradition to go down with the ship, when he became aware of an officer on the bridge shouting at him above the din.
‘You there! You on the bow! Get into a boat!’
As the head disappeared, he looked round. Someone had lowered a boat further aft, but, even as he watched, the sailors cast off and it began to pull away. Then he realised that Eager’s bows were now within a foot of the water. Alongside them a small abandoned dinghy was bumping against the steel. It had no oars and was quite empty but it seemed a great deal safer than the ship and, as Eager settled lower and lower, he stepped off into it. He hadn’t even got his feet wet.
‘That’s it,’ Noble shouted above the crash of the bombs. ‘She’s gone!’
He and Lance-Corporal Gow were standing on the beach staring at the awful butchery of ships. The sun was high now and Lije Noble’s mind was beginning to fill with doubts. Gow’s back was as stiff as ever, but under his helmet his eyes were narrow in their circles of weariness.
‘Mebbe we’ll have to swim,’ he said.
Noble’s head jerked round. During the night he’d found a lieutenant-colonel’s greatcoat which he’d put on for warmth but, for all he’d been saluted several times, it hadn’t given him a lot of confidence. Gow, on the other hand, behaved as though he were in the Guards Depot at Caterham. As soon as daylight had come, he’d shaved, using the rusty water from the radiator of a wrecked lorry. Then he’d cleaned his belt and polished his boots and given the Bren a run-over before finally adding to the hieroglyphics in his notebook with a calm absorption that terrified Noble with its acceptance of all the horrors around them.