The Black Jackals

by Iain Gale

  Petrie spoke. ‘Extraordinary man. Well, that’s it then. They’ve driven a bloody great wedge between us and the rest of the French and our chaps to the south. What d’you think?’

  ‘It looks that way. They’ve cut the whole force in two. I suppose that now we’ve really got to hold this place, at least until we know all the Arras lot are safe.’ Damn, he thought, seeing his chances of slipping off the following morning ebbing away.

  ‘Yes. Looks like it. Your lot dug in?’

  ‘They’re about it right now. My Sarnt’s seeing to that. I wonder how long they’ll be.’

  ‘Who? The Arras mob?’

  ‘No, the Jerries. I’ll bet they get here first. Nothing to stop them. This is the front line now. Think I’ll get back. My Sarnt’s promised me a mug of some sort of stew he’s put together with our French friend. Beans and tomatoes liberated from someone’s garden.’

  ‘Sounds good. Let me know if you’ve any to spare.’

  ‘Incidentally, why did you call me over?’

  ‘Well, it’s the most extraordinary thing really. Probably nothing. But everything was deathly quiet. Then we heard a dog barking, didn’t we, Sarnt Major? Quite far away. S’pose it must have been that dispatch rider just now upset them.’ As he spoke there was another noise, a bark. ‘Listen. There you are. There it is again. Closer now, wouldn’t you say, Sarnt Major?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Definitely closer, sir.’

  There were more dogs barking now, and by the sound of it they were getting closer. Then Lamb heard the noise change. It was not barking any more but more like a growling, getting alternately louder and softer. He turned to Petrie and looked puzzled, and then it dawned on him. It was the sound of soldiers marching on a tarmac road. He said, ‘Christ. They’re Jerries.’

  Petrie, more from instinct than anything else, fired the Very pistol he was holding into the night sky and a white flare shot up, revealing two lines of German soldiers moving steadily up the long road to their south. ‘God. Run.’

  As one, Petrie, Lamb and the CSM turned and sprinted back across the bridge, expecting at any moment to feel a bullet in their backs. But no shot came. Instead they heard shouts and splashes and as they reached the far end and turned back to look they saw that the Germans had not followed them at all but jumped into the canal, fearful of their own lives.

  The three men continued to run. Lamb saw Bennett. ‘They’re here. The Jerries. Get the Brens set up. And the mortar.’

  Bennett snapped into action. ‘Valentine, Mays, get your men in the dugouts. Perkins, get ready with the mortar. The rest of you, hold your fire till I say so.’

  Lamb saw Petrie standing close to the edge of the canal. He seemed to be doing something to the Very pistol. Lamb realised he was trying to eject the spent cartridge and remembered that the signal for blowing the bridge was a white flare followed by a red. It seemed, though, that the white one had stuck. He could see the Germans now, climbing back up out of the water and the embankment and beginning to regain the far end of the bridge. He shouted at Petrie: ‘Quick man. They’re coming over.’

  Petrie pushed and pulled at the weapon to no avail, and then in desperation he bashed it hard against his thigh. There was a click and the spent cartridge tumbled out of the pistol. Fumbling in his haste, Petrie loaded the red one and raised the gun again towards the sky. The trigger slid back and a red flare shot up above the town. Petrie ran, as did Lamb, and both men threw themselves with the others into the shelter of a sandbagged dugout just as a huge explosion tore open the night.

  The bridge flew up into the air, sending massive concrete boulders bouncing like bales of hay around what had been the road.

  Lamb turned to Petrie. ‘I think that’s what they call “the nick of time”.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘I shouldn’t breathe too soon. They’re bound to try again. They don’t give up, you know.’ Even as he spoke they heard the sound of small-arms fire coming from the far side of the bridge. Lamb turned to Bennett. ‘Sarnt-Major, give them the mortar, but be sparing with the ammo. Just give them a taste of it.’

  Within a few minutes it was clear that the Germans were as determined as Lamb had thought. The small-arms fire grew in intensity, and while most of the platoon and Petrie’s men crouched down in their dugouts, Perkins’s mortar and those from the Fusiliers sent round after round crashing over the canal to explode on the other bank, lighting up the darkness with white flashes. Lamb wished he could run back to the town hall and see how Madeleine was, but he knew that was impossible. His place was here, with his men.

  There was a shout. Petrie’s sergeant-major: ‘They’re coming, sir. They’re trying to cross.’

  Lamb peered over the sandbags and saw that while some of the enemy were trying to use the huge stone blocks as giant stepping stones, others were dragging small rubber dinghies down to the water’s edge. He yelled: ‘Right, everyone. Let them have it.’

  Together Lamb’s men and the Berwicks opened up with their rifles. Lamb himself had found an abandoned Enfield and, having checked its mechanism, was using it rather than his unreliable side arm. By the occasional light of mortar bombs and grenades he managed to zero in on one of the Germans who was trying to get a boat into the water. He took aim at his upper body and fired. The bullet hit the man’s chest and sent him flying backwards to fall against the opposite bank. Lamb paused momentarily, both pleased and surprised by the accuracy of his shot. Then he did the same with another man, and another. The bullets were flying over his head now, hitting the sandbags and ricocheting in all directions. He heard the Bren guns rattle off and the answering chug of the MG34s on the opposite bank. Everywhere, it seemed, grey-clad figures were tumbling to the ground and into the water, but as soon as one fell another would appear to take his place. Christ, he thought, how many of the buggers can there be?

  Petrie came up at a running crouch. ‘I’m sending a runner back to Brigade to request artillery support, if there’s any to be had. Determined buggers, aren’t they.’

  An enemy mortar bomb came screaming in over their heads and crashed into a house close behind, destroying a wall and sending splinters in all directions. A man screamed as one took off his foot.

  Petrie shouted: ‘Stretcher-bearer! It’s getting a little hot, isn’t it? Where’s your girl?’

  ‘In the town hall. I hope she’s all right.’

  ‘She’ll be fine, old man. Bit scared, I should imagine. Just as long as we can keep the Jerries back on their side of the canal.’

  Both men looked out again at the water and saw in the moonlight that some of the rubber boats had now actually made it into the water.

  Lamb shouted back, ‘Parry, can you hit one of those boats?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. Didn’t see them from back here, sir.’

  There was a thump behind them and a mortar shell flew up and hit the water about four yards to the right of the lead dinghy. ‘No. More to your left, about five degrees. Try that.’

  Another bomb went over their heads and this time Parry was on target. It burst directly in the centre of the boat, killing the six Germans bunched together and sending their torn bodies outwards into the canal while the craft itself disintegrated.

  ‘Well done, Parry.’

  The second dinghy steered round the body parts and kept on coming while more were lowered into the water. Lamb shouted to Bennett, ‘Sarnt Bennett, they need to keep their fire going. Where’s the bloody Bren?’

  ‘Jammed again, sir.’

  There was nothing for it. Lamb turned and sprinted across the road through a hail of German bullets to the Bren gun position.

  Private Butterworth was sitting behind the sandbags, his hands at the gun, trying to free the clip. ‘Sorry, sir. Thing just jammed, sir. I’ve tried to adjust the regulator but it doesn’t want to budge.’

  Lamb saw that he had a tear in his battledress and fresh blood on his arm. ‘You’re hit. Get yourself back to the MO. Lieutenant Petrie will show you where. Get t
hat patched up.’

  He took the gun from Butterworth and, being careful not to burn himself on the hot barrel, began to unlock it and slide it forward. Then he began to turn the regulator and heard the hiss as more gas seeped in. He had always liked engineering and felt at home with machines, but he had never thought that his skill might be of use in saving his life under fire. He took out his revolver and gave the mechanism a few sharp taps. There, finally, a use for the thing! He pointed the Bren gun across the river and pressed the trigger; there was a clear click and then a stream of bullets sputtered from the muzzle. Lamb carried on firing, sending fire into a clump of trees on the far bank where the flashes told him there was a high concentration of the enemy.

  He was aware of someone standing behind him. It was Valentine. ‘Shall I take over, sir? You’ll have better things to do, being an officer.’

  Lamb thanked him, but wondered how the man was able to twist even an offer of help into a barbed comment. Even under fire. The Germans were advancing across the ruins of the bridge now.

  ‘Direct your fire to the centre. Stop them coming over those rocks.’ Valentine swung the gun, and as Lamb watched he shot down every man on the stones. ‘Good shooting, Corporal. Perhaps we’ll make you a marksman.’

  Valentine frowned and Lamb left the dugout as he began to fire again; another group of the enemy tried the same tactic and met the same fate.

  Petrie found him: ‘I think they’re tiring. They seem to be pulling back into the trees.’

  ‘Let’s hope that’s not because they’ve called up their bombers.’

  The two men watched through the darkness as the Germans hauled and carried their wounded into the shelter of the woods. Still the rifles cracked.

  Petrie shouted: ‘Cease firing.’

  Silence. The two men listened, dreading the hum that would herald an air attack. But none came.

  Lamb marvelled at the suicidal bravery of the German troops as he surveyed the scene before him. The bodies of over forty German soldiers lay scattered across the terrain in front of him.

  An officer approached him from the left – a captain. The newcomer was a short man with a lean build and a hawk-like nose and when he spoke it was with the faintest hint of an Irish accent.

  ‘You Lamb? Well done. Thank you for helping the Lieutenant here. We made quite a mess of them, didn’t we? Sorry, Captain Campbell. My Company HQ’s a mile away to the left. Had a bit of bother there too, but nothing like this. Have you seen who they are? SS.’

  Lamb looked at the dead lying in the water and saw the familiar death’s head on their collar. Kurtz’s men.

  Campbell went on: ‘I dare say they’ll try it on again, so we’ll have to be ready for anything. Imagine your Territorial chaps haven’t seen anything like this lot before. Don’t worry: my chaps are trained to handle them. I suppose you’ve seen quite a lot that you didn’t expect to. Still, we’ll hold them off. Won’t we, Petrie?’

  He shot a glance at the lieutanant, who was looking a little embarrassed at his captain’s arrogance. Campbell went on. ‘You might like to know that the Jerries have taken the coast from Etaples all the way up to Calais. Seem to be holding them there, though. But it’s bad news for our lot. All down to us now. Just as well the Regulars are in it now, but well done to you for holding it for us.’

  He turned and walked away with Petrie. Lamb was seething with rage at the man’s speech. ‘Holding it for them . . . the Regulars will take over now!’ It was the mess at Tonbridge all over again – the ‘friendly’ banter and ribbing between 1st and 2nd Battalion of his own regiment in which, despite all the tradition and camaraderie that he loved, he was made to feel that he could never be one of them. It was almost as if he had been made up from the ranks. Well now, whether they liked it or not, they were all united against a common enemy. They would see who was the better soldier. He looked down again at the dead SS men and across to the opposite bank. How did you manage it? he asked himself. By what strange throw of the dice did you come to be opposite us again? It occurred to him how fickle fate was in war and how he and his men, all of them, were mere pawns in a lunatic game. With Kurtz out there too he knew that, although all was quiet now, the Germans would try something soon and that when they did he was not sure how long the Berwicks would be able to hold out.

  But he knew too that he and his men had achieved everything he could here. What he had to do went against all his principles, in particular that no soldier should ever abandon a position or one of his comrades, but Lamb had been given a mission to complete: to deliver an order whose knowledge might mean life or death not to a company but to thousands of men, and he was determined to do that, whatever it took. The canal, he knew, would fall eventually, and something told him that that too was now France’s destiny. The British would never stop the Nazis here. That would have to wait for another day, another place. A new dawn. They would leave tomorrow, at daybreak.

  He turned to Bennett, who was nursing a slight wound to his cheek, and spoke as quietly as he could manage. ‘We’re leaving here tomorrow, Sarnt. Pass the word to the lads and tell them to keep it quiet. Petrie doesn’t know, and neither does Captain Campbell. Could be a bit tricky.’

  Lamb thought for a moment but it was not a hard decision to take Bennett into his confidence. The man was as close to him now as any officer; more so than most.

  ‘This order I’ve been given, Bennett. It’s absolutely vital that it gets through to the general.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘To General Fortune, Sarnt. CO of 51st Division, on the Somme. So whatever happens, whatever, just remember that. This order is more important than anything else. Any man and any officer. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I see. What about the girl, sir? Will she be coming along with us?’

  Lamb thought for a moment. ‘No, she’ll have to stay here now.’ He paused for a moment and shook his head. ‘We can’t leave her to fall into enemy hands. She’ll need to move east. According to that captain the Jerries have taken the coast, so when we do break out of here and head west we’ll be behind enemy lines.’

  It hadn’t really occurred to him that Madeleine should not come with them, and it hurt him to think that they would be losing her. But there was no alternative. It would be hard enough for the sixteen of them as trained soldiers.

  He walked over to the town hall and went inside. Part of the building had been used as a dressing station and it reeked of morphine and blood. He found her, not as he had supposed he would, in the back office, but in the makeshift ward. To his astonishment, she was busily binding a bandage around a stomach wound, whispering to the wounded man as she did so. Lamb came up behind her and coughed and she turned to him and smiled, sending his head into confusion. Lamb looked at the wounded man and reckoned that he would not hear much of what he was about to say. Then, mastering his feelings, he spoke as she turned back to her job. ‘Madeleine, I’ve been thinking and I’m afraid that I don’t think you should come with us. The Germans have taken Abbeville and marched up the coast. They’re almost at Calais. And that means that anything west of the canal is behind enemy lines. That’s no place for a girl. Better to make your way to the east, inside our lines. Don’t you know anyone out that way?’

  She stopped bandaging, shook her head and stared at the floor, then cut the bandage with scissors and pinned the ends together. ‘No. I don’t think so. I think I will come with you.’ She began washing her hands in a basin of warm water which, as she did so, turned steadily more red.

  ‘Look, it’s simply not practical. It’s far too dangerous for a girl like you.’

  She looked up at him and he saw the fury in her eyes. ‘A girl like me? A girl who can change dressings on bloody wounds? A girl who’s just shoved half a man’s intestines back into his belly? A girl who can keep up with you men across country on the run? Is that the sort of girl you can’t take with you, Lieutenant?’

  Lamb said nothing, then, ‘Where did you learn to do that?’

&nbs
p; ‘Before the war I was a vet. Well, learning to be a vet. It’s the same thing. Wounded cow, wounded man. You learn. Besides, I live on a farm. Sorry, lived on a farm.’

  ‘It’s still too dangerous. And if you’re caught, God knows . . .’

  ‘Yes, if I’m caught I’ll be killed. Eventually. Well, what does it matter to me? Half my village is dead, and my parents and brother too, I’m sure. What’s my life now? Besides, perhaps I can be of some use to you.’

  She had moved on now and was unwinding the bandage from the head of one of Petrie’s men. He was moaning. Carefully she peeled away the fabric from the congealed blood and revealed a jagged shrapnel wound, through which the brain could be seen. She gasped quietly and began to dab very carefully at the wound, cleaning with calm precision.

  Well, thought Lamb, watching her hands at work, perhaps you really could be useful to us, although he knew full well now what he had suspected for some time. Something inside him was telling him he needed no persuasion to let her stay with them. ‘You know we’re going into enemy-held territory.’

  ‘Of course I know, Peter.’

  It was the first time that she had used his Christian name, and now as her angry eyes met his own he felt another twist in the complex thread that bound them ever closer together. ‘All right. If you’re certain, you can come with us. But if you hold us up, if you can’t manage it, then you must leave.’

  ‘Yes. I understand perfectly.’

  ‘We leave tomorrow in the morning. Nine a.m. In a truck. Can you be there on time?’

  ‘Of course. Now go away and command your men while I try and save these ones.’

  * * *

  Major Kessler had heard the firing from further along the canal. He was standing against the armour-plated hull of his command tank reading the latest issue of Die Wehrmacht when one of his lieutenants, Faller, an Austrian, came up to him looking agitated. ‘Sir, don’t you think we should go and do something? I mean, we might be able to help. We have tanks. That could turn the firefight.’