by Ken Follett
Lloyd was not much reassured. "So we're committing half our forces to Plan D?"
"We need to make sure it works."
"It better."
They were interrupted by the proprietress, who brought Lloyd a telegram.
It had to be from the army. He had given Colonel Ellis-Jones this address before going on leave. He was surprised he had not heard sooner. He ripped open the envelope. The cable said:
DO NOT RETURN ABEROWEN STOP REPORT SOUTHAMPTON
DOCKS IMMEDIATELY STOP A BIENTOT
SIGNED ELLISJONES
He was not going back to Ty Gwyn. Southampton was one of Britain's largest ports, a common embarkation point for the Continent, and it was located just a few miles along the coast from Bournemouth, an hour perhaps by train or bus.
Lloyd would not be seeing Daisy tomorrow, he realized with an ache in his heart. Perhaps he might never learn what she had wanted to tell him.
Colonel Ellis-Jones's "A BIENTOT" confirmed the obvious inference.
Lloyd was going to France.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1940 ( II )
Erik von Ulrich spent the first three days of the Battle of France in a traffic jam.
Erik and his friend Hermann Braun were part of a medical unit attached to the Second Panzer Division. They saw no action as they passed through southern Belgium, just mile after mile of hills and trees. They were in the Ardennes forest, they reckoned. They traveled on narrow roads, many not even paved, and a broken-down tank could cause a fifty-mile tailback in no time. They were stationary, stuck in queues, more than they were moving.
Hermann's freckled face was set in a grimace of anxiety, and he muttered to Erik in an undertone no one else could hear: "This is stupid!"
"You should know better than to say that--you were in the Hitler Youth," said Erik quietly. "Have faith in the Fuhrer." But he was not angry enough to denounce his friend.
When they did move it was painfully uncomfortable. They sat on the hard wooden floor of an army truck as it bounced over tree roots and swerved around potholes. Erik longed for battle just so that he could get out of the damn truck.
Hermann said more loudly: "What are we doing here?"
Their boss, Dr. Rainer Weiss, was sitting on a real seat beside the driver. "We are following the orders of the Fuhrer, which are of course always correct." He said it straight-faced, but Erik felt sure he was being sarcastic. Major Weiss, a thin man with black hair and spectacles, often spoke cynically about the government and the military, but always in this enigmatic way, so that nothing could be proved against him. Anyway, the army could not afford to get rid of a good doctor at this point.
There were two other medical orderlies in the truck, both older than Erik and Hermann. One of them, Christof, had a better answer to Hermann's question. "Perhaps the French aren't expecting us to attack here, because the terrain is so difficult."
His friend Manfred said: "We will have the advantage of surprise, and will encounter light defenses."
Weiss said sarcastically: "Thanks for that lesson in tactics, you two--most enlightening." But he did not say they were wrong.
Despite all that had happened there were still people who lacked faith in the Fuhrer, to Erik's amazement. His own family continued to close their eyes to the triumphs of the Nazis. His father, once a man of status and power, was now a pathetic figure. Instead of rejoicing in the conquest of barbarian Poland, he just moaned about ill treatment of the Poles--which he must have heard about by listening illegally to a foreign radio station. Such behavior could get them all into trouble--including Erik, who was guilty of not reporting it to the local Nazi block supervisor.
Erik's mother was just as bad. Every now and again she disappeared with small packages of smoked fish or eggs. She said nothing in explanation, but Erik felt sure she was taking them to Frau Rothmann, whose Jewish husband was no longer allowed to practise as a doctor.
Despite that, Erik sent home a large slice of his army pay, knowing his parents would be cold and hungry if he did not. He hated their politics, but he loved them. They undoubtedly felt the same about his politics and him.
Erik's sister, Carla, had wanted to be a doctor, like Erik, and had been furious when it was made clear to her that in today's Germany this was a man's job. She was now training as a nurse, a much more appropriate role for a German girl. And she, too, was supporting their parents with her meager pay.
Erik and Hermann had wanted to join infantry units. Their idea of battle was to run at the enemy firing a rifle, and kill or be killed for the fatherland. But they were not going to be killing anyone. Both had had one year of medical school, and such training was not to be wasted; so they were made medical orderlies.
The fourth day in Belgium, Monday, May 13, was like the first three until the afternoon. Above the roar and snarl of hundreds of tank and truck engines, they began to hear another, louder sound. Aircraft were flying low over their heads and, not too far away, dropping bombs on someone. Erik's nose twitched with the smell of high explosives.
They stopped for their midafternoon break on high ground overlooking a meandering river valley. Major Weiss said the river was the Meuse, and they were west of the city of Sedan. So they had entered France. The planes of the Luftwaffe roared past them, one after another, diving toward the river a couple of miles away, bombing and strafing the scattered villages on the banks, where, presumably, there were French defensive positions. Smoke rose from countless fires among the ruined cottages and farm buildings. The barrage was relentless, and Erik almost felt pity for anyone trapped in that inferno.
This was the first action he had seen. Before long he would be in it, and perhaps some young French soldier would look from a safe vantage point and feel sorry for the Germans being maimed and killed. The thought made Erik's heart thud with excitement like a big drum in his chest.
Looking to the east, where the details of the landscape were obscured by distance, he could nevertheless see aircraft like specks, and columns of smoke rising through the air, and he realized that the battle had been joined along several miles of this river.
As he watched, the air bombardment came to an end, the planes turning and heading north, waggling their wings to say "Good luck" as they passed overhead on their way home.
Nearer to where Erik stood, on the flat plain leading to the river, the German tanks were going into action.
They were two miles from the enemy, but already the French artillery was shelling them from the town. Erik was surprised that so many gunners had survived the air bombardment. But fire flashed in the ruins, the boom of cannon was heard across the fields, and fountains of French soil spurted where the shells landed. Erik saw a tank explode with a direct hit, smoke and metal and body parts spewing out of the volcano's mouth, and he felt sick.
But the French shelling did not stop the advance. The tanks crawled on relentlessly toward the stretch of river to the east of the town, which Weiss said was called Donchery. Behind them followed the infantry, in trucks and on foot.
Hermann said: "The air attack wasn't enough. Where's our artillery? We need them to take out the big guns in the town, and give our tanks and infantry a chance to cross the river and establish a bridgehead."
Erik wanted to punch him to shut his whining mouth. They were about to go into action--they had to be positive now!
But Weiss said: "You're right, Braun--but our artillery ammunition is gridlocked in the Ardennes forest. We've only got forty-eight shells."
A red-faced major came running past, yelling: "Move out! Move out!"
Major Weiss pointed and said: "We'll set up our field dressing station over to the east, where you see that farmhouse." Erik made out a low gray roof about eight hundred yards from the river. "All right, get moving!"
They jumped into the truck and roared down the hill. When they reached level ground they swerved left along a farm track. Erik wondered what they would do with the family that presumably lived in the building that was about t
o become an army hospital. Throw them out of their home, he guessed, and shoot them if they made trouble. But where would they go? They were in the middle of a battlefield.
He need not have worried: they had already left.
The building was half a mile from the worst of the fighting, Erik observed. He guessed there was no point setting up a dressing station within range of enemy guns.
"Stretcher bearers, get going," Weiss shouted. "By the time you get back here we'll be ready."
Erik and Hermann took a rolled-up stretcher and first-aid kit from the medical supply truck and headed toward the battle. Christof and Manfred were just ahead of them, and a dozen of their comrades followed. This is it, Erik thought exultantly; this is our chance to be heroes. Who will keep his nerve under fire, and who will lose control and crawl into a hole and hide?
They ran across the fields to the river. It was a long jog, and it was going to seem longer coming back, carrying a wounded man.
They passed burned-out tanks but there were no survivors, and Erik averted his eyes from the scorched human remains smeared across the twisted metal. Shells fell around them, though not many: the river was lightly defended, and many of the guns had been taken out by the air attack. All the same, it was the first time in his life Erik had been shot at, and he felt the absurd, childish impulse to cover his eyes with his hands, but he kept running forward.
Then a shell landed right in front of them.
There was a terrific thud, and the earth shook as if a giant had stamped his foot. Christof and Manfred were hit directly, and Erik saw their bodies fly up into the air as if weightless. The blast threw Erik off his feet. As he lay on the ground, faceup, he was showered with dirt from the explosion, but he was not injured. He struggled to his feet. Right in front of him were the mangled bodies of Christof and Manfred. Christof lay like a broken doll, as if all his limbs were disjointed. Manfred's head had somehow been severed from his body and lay next to his booted feet.
Erik was paralyzed with horror. In medical school he had not had to deal with maimed and bleeding bodies. He was used to corpses in anatomy class--they had had one between two students, and he and Hermann had shared the cadaver of a shriveled old woman--and he had watched living people being cut open on the operating table. But none of that had prepared him for this.
He wanted nothing but to run away.
He turned around. His mind was blank of every thought but fear. He started to walk back the way they had come, toward the forest, away from the battle, taking long, determined strides.
Hermann saved him. He stood in front of Erik and said: "Where are you going? Don't be a fool!" Erik kept moving, and tried to walk past him. Hermann punched him in the stomach, really hard, and Erik folded over and fell to his knees.
"Don't run away!" Hermann said urgently. "You'll be shot for desertion! Pull yourself together!"
While Erik was trying to catch his breath he came to his senses. He could not run away, he must not desert, he had to stay here, he realized. Slowly his willpower overcame his terror. Eventually he got to his feet.
Hermann looked at him warily.
"Sorry," said Erik. "I panicked. I'm all right now."
"Then pick up the stretcher and keep going."
Erik picked up the rolled stretcher, balanced it on his shoulder, turned around, and ran on.
Closer to the river, Erik and Hermann found themselves among infantry. Some were manhandling inflated rubber dinghies out of the backs of trucks and carrying them to the water's edge, while the tanks tried to cover them by firing at the French defenses. But Erik, rapidly recovering his mental powers, soon saw that it was a losing battle: the French were behind walls and inside buildings, while the German infantry were exposed on the bank of the river. As soon as they got a dinghy into the water, it came under intense machine-gun fire.
Upstream, the river turned a right-angled bend, so the infantry could not move out of range of the French without retreating a long distance.
There were already many dead and wounded men on the ground.
"Let's pick this one up," Hermann said decisively, and Erik bent to the task. They unrolled their stretcher on the ground next to a groaning infantryman. Erik gave him water from a flask, as he had learned in training. The man seemed to have numerous superficial wounds on his face and one limp arm. Erik guessed he had been hit by machine-gun fire that had luckily missed his vital areas. He saw no gush of blood, so they did not attempt to staunch his wounds. They lifted the man onto the stretcher, picked it up, and began to jog back to the dressing station.
The wounded man cried out in agony as they moved; then, when they stopped, he shouted: "Keep going, keep going!" and gritted his teeth.
Carrying a man on a stretcher was not as easy as it might seem. Erik thought his arms would fall off when they were only halfway. But he could see that the patient was in greater pain by far, and he just kept running.
Shells no longer fell around them, he noticed gratefully. The French were concentrating all their fire on the riverbank, trying to prevent the Germans crossing.
At last Erik and Hermann reached the farmhouse with their burden. Weiss had the place organized, the rooms cleared of superfluous furniture, places marked on the floor for patients, the kitchen table set up for operations. He showed Erik and Hermann where to put the wounded man. Then he sent them back for another.
The run back to the river was easier. They were unburdened and going slightly downhill. As they approached the bank Erik wondered fearfully whether he would panic again.
He saw with trepidation that the battle was going badly. There were several deflated vessels in midstream and many more bodies on the bank--and still no Germans on the far side.
Hermann said: "This is a catastrophe. We should have waited for our artillery!" His voice was shrill.
Erik said: "Then we would have lost the advantage of surprise, and the French would have had time to bring up reinforcements. There would have been no point in that long trek through the Ardennes."
"Well, this isn't working," said Hermann.
Deep in his heart Erik was beginning to wonder whether the Fuhrer's plans really were infallible. The thought undermined his resolution and threatened to throw him completely off balance. Fortunately there was no more time for reflection. They stopped beside a man with most of one leg blown off. He was about their age, twenty, with pale, freckled skin and copper red hair. His right leg ended at midthigh in a ragged stump. Amazingly, he was conscious, and he stared at them as if they were angels of mercy.
Erik found the pressure point in his groin and stopped the bleeding while Hermann got out a tourniquet and applied it. Then they put him on the stretcher and began the run back.
Hermann was a loyal German, but he sometimes allowed negative feelings to get the better of him. If Erik ever had such feelings he was careful not to voice them. That way he did not lower anyone else's morale--and he stayed out of trouble.
But he could not help thinking. It seemed the approach through the Ardennes had not given the Germans the expected walkover victory. The Meuse defenses were light but the French were fighting back fiercely. Surely, he thought, his first experience of battle was not going to destroy his faith in his Fuhrer? The idea made him feel panicky.
He wondered whether the German forces farther east were faring any better. The First Panzer and the Tenth Panzer had been alongside Erik's division, the Second, as they approached the border, and it must be they who were attacking upstream.
His arm muscles were now in constant agony.
They arrived back at the dressing station for the second time. The place was now frantically busy, the floor crowded with men groaning and crying, bloody bandages everywhere, Weiss and his assistants moving quickly from one maimed body to the next. Erik had never imagined there could be so much suffering in one small place. Somehow, when the Fuhrer spoke of war, Erik never thought of this kind of thing.
Then he noticed that his own patient's eyes were clo
sed.
Major Weiss felt for a pulse, then said harshly: "Put him in the barn--and for fuck's sake don't waste time bringing me corpses!"
Erik could have cried with frustration, and with the pain in his arms, which was beginning to afflict his legs, too.
They put the body in the barn, and saw that there were already a dozen dead young men there.
This was worse than anything he had envisaged. When he had thought about battle he had foreseen courage in the face of danger, stoicism in suffering, heroism in adversity. What he saw now was agony, screaming, blind terror, broken bodies, and a complete lack of faith in the wisdom of the mission.
They went back again to the river.
The sun was low in the sky now, and something had changed on the battlefield. The French defenders in Donchery were being shelled from the far side of the river. Erik guessed that farther upstream the First Panzers had had better luck, and had secured a bridgehead on the south bank, and now they were coming to the aid of the comrades on their flanks. Clearly they had not lost their ammunition in the forest.
Heartened, Erik and Hermann rescued another wounded man. When they got back to the dressing station this time they were given tin bowls of a tasty soup. Resting for ten minutes while he drank the soup made Erik want to lie down and go to sleep for the night. It took a mighty effort to stand up and pick up his end of the stretcher and jog back to the battlefield.
Now they saw a different scene. Tanks were crossing the river on rafts. The Germans on the far side were coming under heavy fire, but they were shooting back, with the help of reinforcements from the First Panzers.
Erik saw that his side had a chance of winning their objective after all. He was heartened, and he began to feel ashamed that he had doubted the Fuhrer.
He and Hermann kept on retrieving the wounded, hour after hour, until they forgot what it was like to be free from pain in their arms and legs. Some of their charges were unconscious; some thanked them, some cursed them; many just screamed; some lived and some died.
By eight o'clock that evening there was a German bridgehead on the far side of the river, and by ten it was secure.
The fighting came to an end at nightfall. Erik and Hermann continued to sweep the battlefield for wounded men. They brought back the last one at midnight. Then they lay down under a tree and fell into a sleep of utter exhaustion.