‘This order,’ Michaels said, ‘concerns another oil reserve that can’t be allowed to fall into the hands of the Nazis, but this one is a bit different. It’s not an oil refinery or a tank farm. It’s just a fuel dump, and it’s a few miles north-east of here at a place called Blain, which is a town, but it’s also a forest.’
‘Presumably it’s the property of the French military,’ Rochester said. ‘So I suppose we’ll have to argue with another bunch of high-ranking Frogs to try to get permission to destroy it.’
‘Oddly enough, no. It actually belongs to us, to the British. To the British Expeditionary Force, to be specific.’ Michaels’ expression and voice both changed slightly as he pointed to one paragraph in the typed order. ‘We’ve had no access to newspapers or even camp gossip for quite some time, but I’m sure you must both have wondered what happened to the BEF, just because of the speed of the Nazi advance. Well, because of this, now we know, and it’s not good news.
‘The BEF and the Allied armies were driven back across France and Belgium by the Germans, and what’s left of this huge force is now contained and surrounded by the Nazis near Dunkirk. There’s another word the Germans use to describe a military tactic, and that’s Kesselschlacht. That translates as ‘cauldron battle’ or ‘cauldron slaughter’, and it’s a technique whereby their forces engage the enemy in a frontal battle, but at the same time other troops encircle them by attacking on both flanks. I have no idea, and nor has anybody else, at least on our side, whether that was the result of a deliberate plan by the Nazis or whether it was something that just happened as the battle progressed. But it doesn’t matter because the result was the same. Tens of thousands of soldiers of the BEF and our allies are standing with their backs to the waters of the English Channel and facing the wrath of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. They have nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.’
‘Dear God,’ Rochester muttered. ‘This is a disaster. An unmitigated disaster.’
‘Can’t they send boats for them or something?’ Dawson asked, his face reflecting the shock he was feeling at what Michaels had just said.
‘There is a rescue attempt underway, according to this,’ Michaels tapped the order in front of him. ‘But I doubt if they can do more than just scratch the surface. We must be talking about a couple of hundred thousand British soldiers, and probably about the same number of soldiers from other Allied nations, like France and Belgium, so nearly half a million men in all. If we send over a destroyer that might be able to take almost a thousand of them at one time. But we haven’t got five hundred destroyers, and don’t forget the round trip from Dunkirk to Dover and back to Dunkirk will take a whole day when you include the loading and unloading times, and then they have to follow set routes to avoid the minefields in the channel. Even if the Royal Navy throws everything it’s got at the problem, I think we’ll be lucky if we save one in ten of them. And I might be being optimistic there.’
That bald statement silenced the other two men for several seconds. Then Rochester shook his head.
‘If we lose the BEF,’ he said, ‘that means we could lose the war.’
‘We could,’ Michaels agreed. ‘It all depends on what that Austrian bastard does next. If he pushes on across the Channel, the Royal Navy would probably be able to hold him, and I think the RAF will probably just about match the Luftwaffe. But the way you conquer a country is with troops on the ground, and if the BEF has gone, that’s the bulk of our ground forces.’
‘And there’s nothing we can do about it,’ Dawson said.
‘Nothing directly,’ Michaels agreed. ‘But at least we can stop the bloody Germans getting their hands on this fuel dump. We know that the BEF won’t be needing any of it. Sorry, that was in very poor taste.’
‘I hate to bring this up,’ Rochester said, ‘but we don’t have any explosives left. We used the whole lot on those tank farms on the Seine.’
‘I know. That’s why I’m glad we’ve still got Dawson here with us. He’s good at improvisation.’
‘He’s going to have to be. As far as I know, all we have apart from our rifles and revolvers is a Verey pistol and half a dozen cartridges. No gun cotton, and obviously no dynamite or anything like that. And I doubt if they’ll have anything we can use in the headquarters at Nantes.’
‘We’ll manage,’ Dawson said confidently, though at that moment he wasn’t entirely sure how. ‘Does it say what kind of fuel it is? In the dump, I mean.’
‘Petrol,’ Michaels replied, ‘at least in the main. The rest of it is mainly aviation spirit, so not much heavy fuel oil at all. Maybe none.’
‘That helps. In fact, that helps a lot.’
‘And what about the timescale?’ Rochester asked. ‘How long do we have to complete the demolition?’
Michaels turned to the second page of the order.
‘Not long at all. And that’s the good news, in a way. We’re supposed to be taking passage back to England on the liner Duchess of York which leaves Saint-Nazaire at seven thirty this evening.’
‘Shit.’
‘Well said, Dawson. Let’s go.’
* * *
The lorries carrying the KFRE sappers had all arrived at Savenay at different times during the first night, directed there by the staff at the British HQ in Nantes. At eleven o’clock that morning, Michaels assembled them in an open area near the centre of the rest camp and explained the new tasking they had just been given.
‘So it’s an Allied fuel dump,’ he concluded, having avoided all references to the BEF, ‘which means we own it so we don’t need to get anyone’s permission to destroy it. And because it’s all in one place, we won’t need very many people to do the job, so all I want are about twenty volunteers.’
Dawson, standing over to one side, was not particularly surprised when every single soldier immediately raised his right hand. He had already seen how close-knit the KFRE group was.
Michaels selected twenty volunteers, plus drivers for four of the Morris lorries, and dismissed the rest of the men after confirming that they would be shipping out from Saint-Nazaire early that evening. Then he explained the obvious problem that they would face in completing the job.
‘We don’t have any explosives,’ he began, ‘so we’re going to have to improvise. As you’ve probably already noticed, Corporal Dawson is quite good at that kind of thing, and he’s come up with a kind of shopping list of bits and pieces we’ll need to take with us. None of it should be too difficult to find around here. The most important things are axes, ideally felling axes as well as hand axes, and heavy hammers – club hammers or something of that sort. Then some lengths of rope, the longer and stronger the better, and material like cotton sheets and wool blankets. I’m sure the officer in charge here will be able to supply those from his bedding store. What might be more difficult to find is a trolley of some sort. A sack barrow is what Dawson would like, but anything with wheels would do. That, by the way, is the least important thing we need, so if you can’t find one don’t worry about it.’
Michaels glanced at his watch.
‘Right, it’s eleven twenty now, and they start serving lunch at twelve o’clock, so you’ve got forty minutes to scavenge what we need. Make sure you get some food down your throats, because there’ll probably be nothing available for us on board the ship this evening as it will be full of refugees. Sandwiches and water are about all we can expect, and maybe not even that. We’ll assemble here again promptly at twelve thirty, which will give us seven hours to get to the fuel dump, destroy it, then return here to collect the rest of the men and get to the harbour in time for boarding. Dismissed.’
None of them managed to find a trolley, but the rest of the basic equipment Dawson had asked for didn’t prove difficult to locate, and a few minutes before one that afternoon the four Morris lorries and the half-track, now with a full tank of fuel, stopped near the edge of a clearing in the forest at Blain, at one side of which was a stack of four-gallon fuel cans.
‘It�
�s not as big as I thought it would be,’ Rochester said as he climbed out of the German vehicle.
‘I think you’ll find this will only be one part of it, sir,’ Dawson said. ‘What you don’t do is store all your fuel in one place in case there’s an accident. You keep the fuel of one type together in one heap, and then have a big space between that pile and the next one.’
While Rochester organized the men into groups, Michaels and Dawson walked past the pile of fuel cans and deeper into the forest. Under the green canopy formed by the interlocking branches of the trees above their heads, it was almost like stepping into a kind of natural cathedral. Whoever had prepared the location had done a good job, cutting away much of the undergrowth and removing some of the smaller trees to provide a long and broadly straight avenue in the very heart of the forest.
And along that avenue, the fuel dump dominated everything. It wasn’t just four-gallon cans that could be carried in a vehicle. Most of it was bulk storage in forty-gallon drums, and it looked as if there were hundreds of them, arranged in neatly stacked heaps with biggish spaces between each pile.
‘This is pretty much what I expected to see,’ Dawson said. ‘The trouble is, if you fire one of these, the fire breaks will stop the flames spreading to the next pile, and it would be so hot that you’d have to wait until it had burned out before you could come back to light up another one.’
‘So what do we do, then?’
‘We have to make sure that it goes up as a single demolition, sir. And that means we have to link each pile of drums and cans to the next one. That was why I wanted the trolley, so that we could more easily move the drums. But because we’ve got those much smaller four gallon cans, we can link them using those. They’re light enough for one man to carry two at a time.’
As they walked back to the clearing, they could hear the rhythmic thumping sound of a felling axe being used somewhere nearby.
‘I’ve got a couple of the men chopping down half a dozen small trees,’ Rochester reported, ‘and another two with the hand axes waiting to trim the trunks when they’ve finished. So what do we do next?’ The question was ostensibly directed at Michaels, but this was Dawson’s field of expertise.
‘We’ve got about eight piles of cans and drums to destroy,’ Dawson said. ‘What we need to do is link them so that the whole lot goes up as one. That means laying a kind of chain of the small cans between each of the piles of drums. But before the lads position those cans, they’ll need to spread out the sheets and blankets on the ground first, so that when we open or puncture the cans they’ll soak up the petrol.’
‘You mean that’ll act like a fuse?’ Michaels asked.
‘Exactly like a fuse, sir.’
‘I’ll get them started right now,’ Rochester said, and turned away to issue the necessary orders.
With twenty men working, preparing the links Dawson wanted didn’t take very long at all, and when he and Michaels had walked the length of the fuel dump a couple of times, making sure that there were no large gaps between the small cans, it was time for the final act before starting the fire.
‘The men have bayonets and we’ve got the axes as well,’ Rochester said,. ‘So they can puncture the drums with those.’
‘That’s not why we needed the axes,’ Dawson replied. ‘Petrol only needs the tiniest spark to make it ignite, and ramming a bayonet or something into the side of a petrol can easily make it go up. Believe me, sir, because I’ve seen it happen. Once those small tree trunks have been trimmed, I want the men to sharpen the ends of them into points. Those are what we’ll use to puncture the cans. Wooden stakes driven through the metal using those club hammers they found. It won’t be as quick, but it will be a whole lot safer.’
By three o’clock, everything was ready. The blankets and sheets had been laid on the ground, held in place by cans of petrol, and the sharpened stakes had all been prepared. There was only one more check to make, and that was the easiest of the lot.
‘The wind is blowing from that direction,’ Dawson said, pointing to the west. ‘So that means we start puncturing the drums at the other end of the dump and work our way back to where we are now. That should keep the fumes out of our lungs.’
Under his direction, the KFRE sappers, working in pairs, began driving the wooden stakes through the sides of the fuel drums, one man holding the stake while the other swung the hammer. They didn’t need to hole every one, because the fire would complete the destruction for them. While they were doing that, another two men began opening the four-gallon drums and splashing the fuel onto the sheets and blankets on the ground, making sure that the trail of petrol was continuous.
By the time they’d finished, the air was heavy with the raw smell of petrol and the sharper odour of aviation spirit, but everything was ready. The drivers started the lorries and drove them out of the clearing, stopping them a safe distance away, still in the forest. Dawson followed in the half-track, before climbing out and retracing his steps back to the clearing, where Michaels and Rochester, and most of the sappers, were waiting.
‘This is the upwind end, sir,’ Dawson said. ‘So this is where we should light the fuse.’
Michaels opened the Verey pistol he was holding and inserted a cartridge. Then he turned and handed the pistol to Dawson.
‘This is your shout,’ he said, ‘so you do it.’
Dawson nodded, looked round to check that everyone was at a safe distance from the upwind end of the fuel dump, cocked the Verey pistol, aimed it carefully and pulled the trigger.
The crack of the cartridge firing was followed instantly by a whump as the highly volatile mix of petrol and aviation spirit ignited, the entire pile of cans and drums catching fire virtually simultaneously, probably because of the highly flammable vapours that surrounded it. And just moments later, some of the cans began to explode, sending streams of flaming liquid in all directions.
They all stepped backwards to avoid the inferno, but two of the KFRE sappers didn’t move quite quickly enough and were hit by gouts of burning petrol, charring their skin and causing intense and immediate pain. The men standing nearest immediately rolled them on the ground to extinguish the flames, and fortunately neither man was badly hurt.
The makeshift links that Dawson had improvised worked well: the flames streaking across the open spaces between the piles of drums were faster than a man could run, and in a matter of just a few minutes the entire fuel dump was ablaze.
The intense heat quickly drove them out of the forest, where some of the trees had also started burning. There was nothing they – or anyone else, for that matter – could do about that, regrettable though it was, and the destruction of the fuel dump was far more important than a bit of local deforestation.
With a last look behind them, they drove away from the forest and headed back towards Savenay and the rest camp. When they arrived, all the remaining sappers piled into the backs of the convoy of Morris lorries, and the party headed west to cover the few miles to Saint-Nazaire.
* * *
The liner Duchess of York was anchored outside the harbour, and a small fleet of ferry craft was doing a brisk trade in taking passengers – both civilian and military – out to the waiting vessel.
Michaels’ prediction had been right: one of the ship’s officers told them when they embarked that there would be around 5,000 passengers on board the ship for the trip to England. It wasn’t quite standing room only, but not far off.
Dawson was standing on the open deck at the stern of the ship, looking at Saint-Nazaire and staring into an uncertain future when Michaels and Rochester walked over to him.
‘This is probably goodbye from us, Dawson,’ Michaels said. ‘The ship will be making passage to Liverpool, and we’ll have to take a troop train from there down to London, and then another one on to Gravesend. Where exactly you’re expected to go next I have no idea, so I suggest you make yourself known to the military authorities in Liverpool, and give the problem to them.’
; Michaels extended his hand and Dawson shook it, and then Rochester’s as well.
‘It’s not exactly been fun, sirs,’ Dawson said, ‘but it has been entertaining.’
At that moment they heard the air raid warning sirens start screeching in Saint-Nazaire, and saw a couple of German bombers approaching from the landward side. It looked as if the war, the real war, had finally reached that corner of France.
About half a dozen ack-ack guns stationed around the harbour opened up at the attacking aircraft, filling the sky with what looked like puffs of black smoke. Moments later, the two anti-aircraft batteries temporarily mounted on the liner also started firing.
‘I think they’re trying to bomb this ship,’ Michaels said, looking up at the two approaching Dorniers.
‘You’re probably right, sir,’ Dawson agreed, but none of the three men moved from their position, just continued watching the aircraft start their bombing run. Around them, civilians and even some military personnel began running hither and thither in panic, but on the ship there was no place to hide.
‘It would be a real shame to die now,’ Rochester said, ‘after all we’ve been through over the last few weeks. I was rather looking forward to enjoying some days’ leave.’
Above them, a stick of bombs began falling, exploding in a ragged line across the water towards the liner.
‘I think the bomb-aimer was about five degrees out,’ Dawson said. ‘They’re going to miss us by about a hundred yards. And the other one is unloading his ordnance over the harbour, so that’s no threat either.’
As the last bomb fell, missing the ship by about the margin Dawson had suggested, they shook hands again.
‘One last bit of excitement to mark the end of our stay here in France,’ Michaels said. ‘I’ve no doubt we’ll attract some more unwelcome attention on the way back to Blighty. Anyway, good to know you, Dawson, and thanks for everything you did.’
‘Maybe we’ll meet again before this fiasco is finally over,’ Dawson suggested.
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