by John Harris
The sun was lifting above the horizon now, laying a golden pathway of sparkles towards them, and Gow squinted into it, frowning heavily, his face tense with concentration.
‘There’s a big launch yonder,’ he said slowly, gesturing with a bony white hand. ‘She’s drifting and she looks empty, and she has what look like cans o’ petrol on her deck. Mebbe we could get her to go.’
Noble lifted his head from where he was trying to attach the fuel lead. ‘How do we get to her?’ he asked. ‘We ain’t got no engine.’
Angelet spoke to Marie Josephine who turned to Gow. ‘The soldier Angelet say he can swim,’ she said. ‘He say he will swim to discover if the other boat has the motor which will march.’
Angelet had already stripped off his tunic and trousers and stood stark naked in front of them, slim as a willow wand and just as white. Gow looked at him disapprovingly but Marie-Josephine, being French, didn’t seem to find it at all odd.
As he’d said, Angelet was a good swimmer and they watched him pull himself with strong strokes through the water to the big cabin cruiser whose sides were riddled with bullet- and splinter-holes. Hauling himself on board, he disappeared from sight. Eventually he reappeared and began collecting heaving lines and mooring ropes which he tied together. Then, carefully paying them out into the sea, he dived overboard and began to swim back, holding the end. As they dragged him on board, he gasped out his story.
‘He say there are two men,’ Marie-Josephine translated. ‘One is dead and one is broken–’ she touched her shoulder ‘–here.’
Angelet had started pulling energetically at the rope and the distance between the two boats was already diminishing. Gow looked at him, frowning.
‘F’r God’s sake,’ he said severely,’ ‘tell him tae put his troos on.’
As they bumped alongside Athelstan, Tremenheere was still lying on the well deck. His face was grey and drawn and he was clutching his arm to his chest. It had taken half the night to get it there.
‘Is yon petrol?’ Gow asked, indicating the cans on the deck that they had taken from the drifting cutter – years ago now, it seemed.
Tremenheere nodded. ‘I tried to tell your mate but he didn’t seem to catch on.’
‘He’s French,’ Gow said.
‘Oh!’ Tremenheere blinked at Angelet’s nakedness. ‘It didn’t show.’
With Gow tearing sheets from the cabin into strips, Marie-Josephine gently secured Tremenheere’s arm into position against his body. His face was wet with sweat when she’d finished but he lifted his good arm and rearranged the medals hanging from his lapel so that they were not obscured by the sling. ‘Thanks,’ he whispered.
Noble, who was staring into the engine room, turned his head. ‘This bugger’s not going to get us home,’ he said quietly. ‘I think she’s sinking.’
‘Too right she is, me dear,’ Tremenheere said weakly. ‘She’ll go any time.’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Noble scrambled to his feet in alarm and they hurriedly helped Tremenheere to the Queen of France and hefted the petrol cans across. By the time they’d finished, Athelstan was down by the bows and seemed to be going faster all the time.
‘Better let go,’ Tremenheere whispered, ‘or she’ll take us with her.’
Noble jumped forward. But the knot he’d tied was no sailor’s invention and it wouldn’t give.
‘There’s a knife in my pocket,’ Tremenheere said.
It was Gow who snatched it and sliced through the ropes. As they parted with a twang, Athelstan rolled over as though she were tired. The stern came up so that they could see the propeller. A length of grass line was twisted round it, jammed by the turning blades until it was as hard as steel.
‘I thought there was something,’ Tremenheere murmured.
It was as they got going again and swung in a wide sweep towards the east to avoid a mat of wreckage that they saw the figure clinging to the buoy. It was Gow who saw it first.
‘Yon feller’s alive,’ he observed. ‘We’d best pick him up.’
‘I’m not so bloody sure we can,’ Noble said, struggling with the tiller.
‘Mon, you just point the nose towards him.’ Gow’s experience of boat handling was confined to rowing on the Serpentine but to him everything was simple, whether it was driving a car or steering a boat or killing Germans. You just did it.
They tried without success, swinging round the weakly waving figure, frustrated in their efforts to draw near.
‘Go up-tide, me dear,’ Tremenheere suggested gently.
This time they were more successful but the boat’s bow hit the buoy so hard the figure fell off into the water, and it was Marie-Josephine who snatched up the boathook and held it out. The man just managed to grab it as he drifted past.
‘Hatton,’ he whispered as they hauled him aboard. ‘Sub-lieutenant. Vital.’
‘You hurt anywhere, mate?’ Noble asked.
Hatton raised his eyes to the four faces staring down at him.
They were blurred by his own exhaustion. ‘A bit,’ he said. ‘But not so’s you’d notice.’
Gow frowned. ‘Ye’ll be a wee bit tired, mebbe?’ he said and Hatton almost laughed. It seemed to be the understatement of the year.
The Queen of France was chugging steadily through the wreckage now, picking her way through the bodies and the floating debris, and they thought they were safe when the aeroplanes came over again.
Gow immediately sprang to the Bren and hoisted it up against the angle of the built-in foredeck, but he got in no more than two or three bursts before the planes swept past towards the shore. As he dropped the gun and peered after them, one of them began to send out puffs of smoke from its starboard engine and curved away in a flat bank, losing height all the time. They saw it crash into the sea about a mile away.
Gow’s white face cracked in a bleak smile. ‘I got one,’ he said.
Since the destroyers and minesweepers had also been banging away and were a lot nearer than Gow, it didn’t seem to Lije Noble for a minute that it was Gow who had brought the plane down, but, as he carried the Bren over his shoulder all the way from the frontier, Noble felt he deserved some reward.
‘Yes, mon fils,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Good shot!’
Gow was turning to Marie-Josephine, as though expecting her to add her mead of praise, when she pointed excitedly. Just ahead of them was a small boat with two men in it. They seemed to have no oar and one of the figures started waving. Noble shut off the engine, waiting to see which way the tide was carrying them, then he swung the heavy rudder and manoeuvred the boat round.
‘I’m getting the hang of this thing now,’ he said proudly. ‘I reckon I’ll transfer to the navy when we get ’ome.’
Glad to see the back of the tiny pram, Horndorff scrambled gratefully to the Queen of France. There was a man asleep in the bottom of the boat whom he at first thought dead, and he moved stiffly past him to the bow and sat down. Conybeare followed him, the Luger still tucked into his trouser top.
Noble watched them. The bruise over Conybeare’s eye was every colour of the rainbow now and his eye was almost closed. He looked exactly like the illustrations for Just William.
‘You any good with one of these things, sir?’ Noble asked.
‘Not really.’ Conybeare said.
Horndorff turned, his eyebrows raised. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘I have found something you cannot do.’
He turned his back and gazed stiffly out to sea and Noble stared at him. ‘He all right?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Conybeare said. ‘He’s all right.’
‘He looks as though he’s got the hump.’
‘Yes, he has a bit.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Friend of mine. Tanks.’
‘Not hurt?’
‘No,’ Conybeare said. ‘Bit cross, that’s all.’
Horndorff turned and faced the others. ‘I am a German officer,’ he said slowly, deliberately. ‘I am a prisoner of war.
’
Noble’s jaw dropped. ‘I didn’t know we’d captured any.’
‘You have captured at least one,’ Horndorff snapped. ‘Officer Conybeare is taking me to England.’
Noble grinned. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’re a bit short of grub, so if we have to eat each other, we know who to start on first.’ He turned back to the business of the boat. ‘Hold tight, folks. We’d best be on our way.’
As he spoke, the engine started faltering and he leapt to it at once.
‘Now what’s up with the bugger?’ he screeched.
‘Is it running hot?’ Tremenheere asked faintly.
‘No.’
‘Petrol switched on?’
‘Yes.’
As Noble spoke, the engine gave a final cough and died.
‘Oh, Christ Jesus,’ Noble moaned.
Tremenheere lifted himself in the bottom of the boat with difficulty. ‘Bring us that can of petrol,’ he said.
Gow passed it over, and he unscrewed it one-handed and sniffed. ‘Smell’s like petrol,’ he said. ‘Pour a bit out.’
Gow splashed a little of the liquid on to his hand and he stared at it.
‘Water, me dear,’ he said. ‘It’s got water in it.’
Horndorff started to smile, and Noble glared at him.
‘What’s he grinning at?’ he demanded.
Horndorff looked at Conybeare. ‘All to no avail, Officer Conybeare,’ he said. ‘You will not get me to England after all. We shall remain here until it is all over and then, when all your ships have gone, the German Navy will come and you will be taken back where we have come from to join the others who have been caught. Es wird ein deutscher Sieg. It will be a German victory.’
Tremenheere’s soft Cornish drawl interrupted him. He’d been staring about him with interest and now his words came, full of sly pleasure.
‘Hard luck, me dear,’ he said. ‘Not this time. This is a Mevagissey lugger we’re in. Or she was once. She’s built for large harbours with plenty of sea room and she’s rigged for a dipping lug. They take herring, mackerel and pilchards, according to what comes in, and they’re good sea-boats. And I come from Truro way and, if I’m not mistaken, this bloody uncomfortable pole I’m lying on’s the mast.’
Conybeare turned to Horndorff and gave a little smile ‘Der Sieg wird bis auf Weiteres verschoben,’ he said. ‘Victory will be a little late this year.’
Horndorff’s head jerked round. ‘You speak German?’
‘Had a German governess.’
The German’s face darkened. ‘Then why did we speak always in English?’
Conybeare shrugged. ‘Because you’re my prisoner and I’m taking you to England,’ he said. ‘That’s why.’
The big lift was coming to an end. By this time, the destroyer force had been bled to death and the weary admiral had only nine warships left out of the forty he’d handled and only ten out of thirty personnel ships.
The major portion of the BEF had survived, however, all of them wise with the experience of war and possessing the skill to build a new army. With them had come Belgians and French, a few nurses, a few civilians eager to enlist, and God alone knew how many dogs.
The admiral glanced at the signal in his hand. It had come in some hours before. ‘To VA, Dover,’ it said. ‘From SNO, Dunkirk. BEF evacuated.’
He stood by the desk, holding it on top of a folder. He looked a little older than he had a week ago and he suddenly realised just how weary he was. He laid the folder down.
‘Signal all ships to move away,’ he said, ‘and instruct the blockships to enter. We must have picked up everybody who’s in a position to leave.’
Not quite everybody.
There was still Sievewright.
Eager had been well out in the fairway when she’d sunk, and the dinghy he’d stepped into had been washed away by the surge of water as she’d gone down. The tug that had come roaring down to pick up the survivors had passed him to port and her wake had lifted him further away. As the dinghy had spun round, he’d realised it was drifting.
At first he’d moved further towards the shore but then, as the tide had turned, he’d noticed he was moving out to sea and began to wonder what he should do. As a good Scout, he knew you could live without food, but he also knew that without water his chances were not very good. Sea water brought on madness, and all the rules for survival seemed to include having compasses, hard biscuits, beef extracts, a knife, a rocket, fishing lines for landing fish, something for catching rainwater, and always a sail or a pair of oars. As he stared round the dinghy he saw there was neither sail nor oar – not even a rowlock – and that all it contained besides himself was a little sea water and some scraps of what looked like bait, which looked so repulsive he couldn’t ever imagine being driven to the extremity of wishing to eat them.
He sat down again in the stern and stared back at the land. For once there didn’t appear to be anything in his Scout training that covered an emergency of this sort.
The sun was lowering as the French admiral in command of the port moved with his men towards the sea; but as the last retreat began, from the cellars, the ruined houses and the shelters of Malo and Dunkirk, a monstrous army of unarmed men began to converge on the mole, an immense river of refugees and of craven soldiers who’d hidden from the fighting. They snatched the places of the desperate men of the rearguard who, when the final dawn came, had to stand on the beaches and watch the last of the ships leave without them. A British destroyer, one of the oldest and least beautiful of them all, lifted the final load as German machine guns started firing on her at short range. Behind her, she left only the sacrificed French regiments, their discipline still strong, their bearing still proud, the broken men, the deserters and the wounded.
On one of the last lonely craft moving along the beaches towards the open Channel, its decks crammed with haggard men, Nobby Clark, Royal Navy, late of Athelstan, later still of the fishing boat, Bonny, and still wondering from time to time about the survivors’ leave he hadn’t had, stared towards the devastation along the whole ten miles of beach from Dunkirk to La Panne. For the most part during the past week, what with the activity and the noise, he hadn’t had much time to stop and think, but now the penny seemed to drop and he became aware of the incredible silence, of the bodies along the tide line and floating in little groups in the calm water, and of the rows of wrecked and abandoned vehicles and guns beyond, like a vast ugly, soundless graveyard in the sunshine. Groups of French soldiers who had fought bravely every inch of the way back stared out to sea along with British gunners of the rear-guard who had blown up their guns and could now only wait despairingly for ships that would never come. Who’s going to bring them out? he thought. What about the ones left behind? And in the sudden stillness that had come over the battlefield he asked himself, What’s it all for? Who’s responsible? Since the previous September he had seen some terrible things, but none that had moved him so much as this, and in his exhaustion and the terrible hurt he felt, he seemed broken inside and wanted to sit down on the crowded deck and weep.
On 4 June the sun rose harsh and gaudy, catching the black smoke that still curled up from the blazing oil tanks and drifted along the coast past Gravelines towards Calais.
Along the shore there were still a few small boats looking for men, hut nothing else, and the beaches were lonely apart from the wreckage, the immobile dead and the quick mounds of new-filled graves. Above the smoke, the Stukas searched for victims but there were no longer any there. The sea was empty.
When the last ship arrived at Dover, 338,226 men had been brought to England, and they knew it was all over at last. The results were stupendous. Yet there were some who hadn’t made it, as they well knew.
Allerton was among them, and as Dunkirk surrendered a padre near him was giving instructions to those who were left. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he was telling them. ‘Just say “Nicht schiessen – Rotes Kreuz.” That should do the trick.’
Orders had arr
ived that one officer and ten men were to be left for every hundred casualties, and that the remainder of the medical staff could leave. As they had prepared to move to the mole, Allerton had noticed a medical orderly standing apart, his head erect, his face stiff.
‘You staying?’ Allerton asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I. I’ve got a nipper I’ve never seen. I got the telegram the day it all started.’
Allerton said nothing for a moment; then he lifted his head. ‘Can’t you get someone to take your place?’
The medical orderly turned away, his expression bleak. ‘Who’ll take my place?’ he said. ‘Here.’
‘I will.’
The soldier had just been about to bend over a wounded man and he straightened up again. His face was still expressionless but the dead look in his eyes had gone.
‘Better go and fix it,’ Allerton said.
There were tears in the orderly’s eyes. ‘You’re a toff, sir,’ he said. Allerton shrugged. ‘Fais ce que dois, adveigne que pourra. C’est commandé au chevalier.’ Allerton was proud of his erudition but to the medical orderly the words were meaningless.
‘What’s that mean, sir?’ he asked.
Allerton managed a gap-toothed grin. ‘It means “Press on regardless,”’ he said. ‘“It’s a command from the chap on the horse.”’
Some time during the morning, they heard lorries outside and then the first German entered. He was a corporal and he was wearing a helmet and jackboots.
‘Raus!’ he shouted. ‘Alles raus! Schnell! Hände hoch! Der Krieg ist vorbei!’
As they straightened up from the stretchers and lifted their hands, he gestured with his pistol. ‘For you the war is over. England and France are defeated. Heil Hitler!’
As his arm shot out in a salute, he was pushed aside. The officer who entered was a tall man, incredibly thin and wearing spectacles. His voice was much quieter and there was no arrogance.