The Black Jackals

by Iain Gale

  They ran low and closed in on the barn. Lamb wasn’t taking any chances. They had to be sure it was not occupied. He looked at Bennett and made a signal, pointing at himself and then at Smart and Tapley who were tucked in close behind, indicating that the three of them would edge to the door and open it. Bennett and the others stopped and knelt low in the wheat while Lamb and the two men moved forward. The door was shut but not locked, a bolt hanging open, and it was quite possible that someone was inside. Lamb moved to the door and with the other men on either side quickly pushed it open and pointed his pistol into the dark. Nothing. The two privates closed in, and together they entered. It was dark inside save for the light from three or four slits in the roof where the tiles and rafters had fallen in.

  Lamb turned to Tapley. ‘There’s no one here. Get the others.’ And then, ‘No, wait.’ He could hear something. A human or animal sound. Sobbing.

  He paused in the silence and identified the direction from which it was coming. In the far corner, on a pile of hay, was a dark shape. At first he thought it might be a wounded soldier, of either side, and kept his pistol ready. But then the shape sat up and in the shafts of light breaking through the rafters of the barn Lamb saw at once that it was a girl. She was in her early twenties, he guessed, and her face, which would have been beautiful at any other time, was a white mask of terror. Lamb moved closer and for a moment he wondered whether she might lash out at him. She pulled back further into the shadows and began to whimper more loudly.

  He stopped and looked at her in the semi-darkness. She had a gash on her head and her green floral dress had been torn at the front. She edged away from him again and began to mutter in French.

  Lamb held up his hands in mock surrender and spoke softly. ‘Don’t worry. We’re British. Anglais. Amis.’

  The girl’s gaze changed slowly from horror to a smile and she began to cry, almost hysterically, wiping at her face and pushing back her hair. Lamb reached forward and knelt down beside her in the straw. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hands, smudging her make-up, smiled up at him and then, realising that her dress was wide open, pulled it together as best she could.

  Lamb realised that, apart from gazing into her eyes, he had also without realising it been staring at her exposed skin, seduced by its pale softness, and felt suddenly embarrassed that he should be having such thoughts when she was clearly in great distress. He covered his shame with another smile. ‘Please, go on. Tell me what happened. The Germans?’

  She nodded. ‘I . . . I ran out of the back door when they came.’ Her English was good, he thought, better certainly than his French. ‘The Germans came to take us. They took my father and my brother. But when I got out I just ran into another German.’ She was stifling the sobs now. ‘He grabbed me. He grabbed my arm and held it tight. It hurt. Then he tore at my clothes and . . . touched me.’ She stopped, sobbing again. Lamb turned away but she went on: ‘I scratched his face. Right in his eye. There was blood and he shouted and let go. So I ran. I ran and ran. They fired after me. One of the bullets hit my leg. It knocked me over but it only hit the skin. And then they gave up and I came here. I thought you were Germans.’

  Lamb shook his head. ‘No, mademoiselle. Anglais. But the Germans are still in your town. There’s been some shooting.’ He did not think this was the time to tell her about the executions, but something in her face told him that she had probably guessed.

  ‘I heard it. Where can I go?’

  ‘You’d best come with us. We’re heading north.’ He had decided now that they would head up to Bethune and then directly west to Etaples. Then they would have to use the coast to try to get down to Fortune’s division on the Somme. He just prayed that the Germans would not beat them to it. ‘You’d better come with us. For a while at least. Do you have anyone you can stay with?’

  ‘I have a cousin in Montreuil. It’s near Etaples. I could stay there. My mother’s neice.’ She paused, looking alarmed. ‘Oh God, my mother, my father, my brother. What will they do? The Germans . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry about them now, miss. You stay with us. Here, have some of this.’

  He reached into his tunic and brought out a hip flask. It was something he kept only for the direst of emergencies. He unscrewed the cap and held it out to her. She sniffed at it.

  ‘It’s brandy. Cognac.’

  The girl took a swig and coughed. ‘It’s quite good. Much better than I thought you would have.’ She flashed a smile at him and again Lamb felt conscious of the moment.

  ‘I’d get some rest now, miss, if I were you. You’re safe now.’

  She smiled again. ‘Please call me Madeleine. Madeleine Dujolle.’

  Lamb smiled back at her. ‘Thank you. I’m Peter Lamb. Lieutenant. North Kents. These are what’s left of my men. Corporal Valentine here will lend you his blanket roll.’ He turned to Bennett. ‘We’ll stay here till nightfall, Sarnt. Post a man on each side of the barn, inside if you can. I want to know the slightest movement out there. See if you can rustle up some food. Whatever you’ve got. But no fires. We don’t want to burn the place down. The rest of you get some kip, and that means you too, Sarnt. Better make the most of it. I reckon we’re all going to need it over the next few days.’

  * * *

  Some twenty miles to the south, Panzer Major Manfred Kessler tapped a cigarette on his case three times. He flicked at his lighter and lit it and then looked again at the map which his second-in-command Hauptman Fender had spread out on one of the track-guards of his command tank. He poked a finger at the map, at a place marked ‘Cuinchy’.

  ‘If we are here, Fender, then the enemy must be over there. And we’ve got them on the run.’

  ‘Yes, sir. It would seem so.’

  ‘And you say we’ve received an order to halt?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The radio operator just picked it up. In code. From High Command: ‘You are to deny the canal line to the enemy but on no account to cross it.’

  ‘What the hell do they think we’re going to do then? Sit here and drink wine? We’re winning, aren’t we? Why don’t we attack?’

  Fender shook his head. ‘I don’t know, sir. It seems crazy to me too.’

  ‘You see, Fender, our strategic orders are to strike out into France, not back up here.’ He dragged his finger across the map. ‘Here. The master plan. I think we should obey those orders, don’t you.’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir. But perhaps we shouldn’t leave the rest of the division, the battalion.’

  Kessler shrugged. ‘All right, my friend, I’ll wait two days here. We’ll refit and rearm. Maybe we’ll even kill a few Englishmen. But if we haven’t got orders to move west by then I will not be answerable for my actions. I’ll tell you something, Fender. I intend to be the first officer in this battle group to reach the Seine or the coast, whichever comes first, and no one, not even Herr General Rommel himself, is going to beat me. Besides I’ve got a bet on it with Major Freidrich. Five hundred Reichsmarks that I get there first. If we win I’ll buy every officer in the company a bottle of champagne. The finest in Paris.’

  Kessler laughed. ‘I’m having a good war, Fender. First Poland, now France. The Führer has fulfilled his promise.’ They had worked hard to achieve it, and Rommel had accomplished miracles. The Wehrmacht had never been stronger – an army risen from the ashes of disaster and economic ruin in 1918. He was a proud soldier, from a military family. Fighting was in his blood, and with it the ancient code of honour by which the Prussian army had lived for two hundred years and more. He admired Hitler for not having tried to interfere with that. Oh, he had his own private army, his SS, but Kessler knew that it was the regular army, the Wehrmacht-Heer, that was the backbone of Germany’s fight.

  His own company had done particularly well. Of the fifteen tanks at the start of the campaign, in Number 2 Company, 2nd Battalion, 25th Panzer Regiment in Hoth’s 7th Division under Rommel, there were twelve still serviceable, although only six had not been hit at all.

&nb
sp; ‘Look here. D’you see how we’re strangling them? If we carry on like this we could be by the sea in a day. They’re finished.’ He made a circle with his hands. ‘Then we just tighten the noose and the whole British and French armies are ours. There has never been a more brilliant campaign. Not even Frederick the Great himself could have done it. What a time! What an hour to be German! The world is ours, Fender. God is with us, the Führer is with us and no one can stop us.’

  Chapter 10

  All day they had been moving across the fields, and for a day before that. They had left the barn at nightfall on the 23rd, as he had planned, and moved steadily back towards the road, picking it up slightly further north. The girl was surprisingly fit and hardly held them back, and they had started out at a good pace. Their journey had not been without trouble. Twice they had encountered, moving in the opposite direction, small columns of straggling British and French troops, with and without officers, who seemed without purpose. Lamb had moved on quickly past them, remembering from his officer training lectures how easily loss of morale in one unit could infect another. On two other occasions the whine of engines in the skies above them had prompted a scramble for the roadside ditch and they had watched from cover as dive bombers zeroed in on some unlucky target to right or left. Now, though, the difficulty was moving through the pitch black while remaining on constant alert, and it had taken its toll. He could see that they were flagging.

  It had been Lamb’s original plan only to move at night. But it had occurred to him that time was of the absolute essence if they were to beat the Panzers to the Somme, and so as day broke he had spoken to Bennett, and they had carried on. Actually they were hardly marching now, more walking or loping along. It was close to four in the afternoon and he could feel the men’s tiredness as they reached a sign reading Béthune. Going through the outskirts, they decided to skirt the town to the east. Finally, Lamb called a halt. They were on a long straight road, lined with trees, barns and small houses, most of them boarded up. A column of French tanks, with a few infantry stragglers, was moving slowly but steadily ahead of them in the same direction, which Lamb guessed was north east.

  ‘We’ll halt here for ten minutes, Sarnt. Where are we?’

  ‘The sign says Essars, sir. Wherever that is.’

  Lamb took out his map and looked at the area around Béthune. Essars was on the north-east side. ‘There should be a canal and a bridge. We’ve gone too far east. We need to get back on the road.’

  But before they could retrace their steps Lamb saw two figures approaching them – an officer and a sergeant, both of them wearing British battledress.

  Lamb said, ‘Let me talk to them, Sarnt. They look right enough but you can never be too careful. Jerries get up to all sort of tricks.’

  Lamb walked towards them, hand close to his holster, and saw that both of theirs were still buttoned. The sergeant was a thin man with a moustache, the officer short and wearing a peaked service cap.

  As he got closer the officer stepped forward with an extraordinary nonchalance. ‘Hello. Lieutenant Petrie, Royal Berwicks. We hold the crossing back there. Old bridge. Got it mined for detonation. Who are you?’

  ‘Lamb. North Kents.’

  ‘Pleased to have you.’ He looked at Lamb’s men: ‘Bit of a hotchpotch, aren’t you?’ Then he noticed the girl: ‘I say, you’ve got a civvie in tow. A woman.’

  How observant of you, thought Lamb, but said nothing except: ‘Yes. Her village was attacked by the SS. I think they shot her family. She’s pretty shaken up.’

  Petrie grimaced. ‘Yes. We’ve been getting all sorts of reports in about them. Rumours flying everywhere. Apparently they’re shooting our men in cold blood if they surrender. Do the same if I catch them.’

  Would you? Lamb wondered. And would he, now? Probably, after the scene he had witnessed at Aubigny. Lamb knew the Berwicks by reputation – a hard-bitten, old-fashioned regular regiment without the luxury of a Territorial battalion. Petrie, by the look of him, was typical of their officers: a dedicated lifetime soldier, most probably with a poor opinion of the ‘part-time’ additions to the army’s officer class. So far, though, he seemed happy enough to accept Lamb.

  Petrie went on, ‘As I said, you’re more than welcome, old chap. We need all the hands we can get. Expecting Jerry to turn up any day. Can’t really understand why he hasn’t yet, but we’re ready for him when he does. We’ve dug in well and burnt every barge we could find. Go over the bridge and past the sentries. My command post’s in the old village hall in the centre ville. Can’t miss it. Got a tricolour outside. That should be a good enough place for your young lady to get some rest. You really do all look quite done in.’

  Lamb smiled and thanked him, and together they made their way up the road and crossed the bridge into the little town. Part of Lamb’s mind told him that they should continue to make their way to Etaples and then towards General Fortune, but Petrie’s words had cut into him. They did all look done in, and he owed it to the men to rest them, even if it meant the possibility of getting caught up in another battle, defending another bridge. That was what this campaign seemed to be all about to him: holding bridges before blowing them sky-high. They were the tactics of despair, and they all knew it.

  They found the Hôtel de Ville with little trouble, and after Bennett’s brief negotiation with an Irish orderly sergeant Lamb managed to get them a small back office to themselves. The men collapsed to the floor with exhaustion. Lamb took care to offer the only seat in the place to Madeleine, and then he too lay down. He stared at the ceiling for a moment before turning his head to the left and by chance finding her face. She was remarkably beautiful, he thought, and even as he did so he felt instantly ashamed. She was smiling at him now, and he smiled back before turning his face away and staring into space – wondering about his feelings and desperately hoping that he wasn’t falling in love with this French girl. They would have to lose her soon. It could not be far to her cousin’s house near Etaples. If they could get away from here tomorrow they might even make it by nightfall. He wanted rid of her. She had no part in their war anyway and was a hindrance, despite her physical fitness. No one wanted a woman with them in a fight. Did they? One more day with her – that was all they would have. That, he thought, was all he could take to stop himself feeling anything more. And he so desperately wanted not to feel anything for her.

  Evening came and Lamb’s men began to stir. He felt rested and saw that Madeleine had fallen asleep in the chair. A battledress top was hanging apparently unwanted on a hook, and Lamb got up and draped it around her shoulders. Then he roused the slumbering Bennett and left the room as the men began to rise with the usual chorus of farts and snorts. Outside the air was cool and they could hear the water of the canal as it splashed against the concrete sides of the embankment.

  Madeleine came out through the door and had joined him before he realised it. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Lamb felt inside and took out the case, opening it for her. She shivered. ‘Would you be kind and light it for me? I’m a little cold. I really don’t want to take my hands out of these pockets.’

  He picked the cigarette from the case and placed it between his lips, then took out his lighter and flicked the spark until the end was glowing. Then, very carefully and trying very hard not to make anything out of a situation already charged with latent sexuality, he placed it between her lips, and knew at once that he had failed. The sooner they got her to her cousin’s house, he thought, the better.

  She took a hand from her pocket and removed the cigarette before speaking. ‘Thank you for helping me. I don’t know what I would have done.’

  He smiled. ‘Lucky for you we came along. But we’d better get you to your cousin soon. You shouldn’t be here, in the front line.’

  ‘I like it here. It feels right – to be with the men who are fighting to save my country. Give me a gun and I’ll kill some of the Boche bastards too. I could, yo
u know.’

  Lamb laughed. Yes, he thought, I do believe you could.

  A man came running up the road from the direction of the canal. ‘Mister Lamb, sir. Mister Petrie says can you please come and see him on the other side of the canal, sir.’

  Madeleine took the cigarette from her lips and dropped it to the ground before standing on it. ‘You must go to your friend. You are needed.’ She turned and walked back into the town hall.

  Lamb watched her go. Watched the moonlight on the backs of her legs and the way that her thin dress clung to the contours of her body. His head was buzzing with his sudden desire for her, and all sorts of unanswered questions. The Somme seemed a very long way off, but the Germans were not going to come this night. And so they would leave tomorrow. He would square it with Petrie: explain about the colonel and the message for General Fortune. The lieutenant seemed reasonable. But for tonight he would face the task in hand as best he could. He turned to the runner. ‘Thank you. Tell the lieutenant I’ll be with him presently.’

  Lamb stared out over the canal and shouted to Bennett, who was standing with a group of NCOs from Petrie’s men:

  ‘Sarnt Bennett, have one last look, will you. Get our lot into shape and get them to dig in along the canal as best they can. I want everything used as barricades. Everything. Anything you can find.’

  He walked away from the town hall towards the canal and reached the bridge. Looking south, he saw that Petrie and his company sergeant-major were on the far side, discussing arcs of fire. He walked onto the bridge and had just reached Petrie when a dispatch rider came roaring up the road from the south. He stopped his bike by the three men and, dismounting, to Lamb’s astonishment ignored Petrie, lifted his goggles and handed Lamb a note: ‘You in command here, sir?’

  ‘Not exactly, no.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, sir. My mistake. Anyway. Message from Brigade. General Gort’s given the word for the rest of us to fall back to the canal from Arras. Seems the Jerries are coming up from the south. Right behind us. That’s it, sir.’ And then the man was gone.