“Come back, Boxer! Come on back, you bloody fool!”
But Boxer was in no hurry. Men were now doubling back towards the woods on each side of him and as they passed Bernard they shouted and pointed towards the trees but Boxer remained upright against the tatters of the wire, deliberately firing into the smoke wreaths in front of him.
Bernard shouted again and again, forcing the warnings through fumes of cordite that had him by the throat. Behind him and beyond the village he could hear the roar of battle rising from White, Red and Blue beaches, and the scream of aircraft overhead, high-pitched above the sough of naval shells that came rushing over five miles of water to crash on to the Dieppe defences, told Bernard that the planned withdrawal of the mortar troop had been timed to seconds.
Still Boxer remained, twenty yards nearer the compound, obscured every now and again by wreaths of drifting, yellow smoke.
This then was what Pippa must have meant, this was the stark reality of his double burden. “You can’t do this any longer Bernard, nobody could…!” It was as though she was calling to him across the quivering belt of woodland and urging him, at long last, to look out for himself, to leave Boxer to take his chance.
The film of cordite broke in his throat but cold and impotent rage took its place and he cursed, turning his back on the battery and stumbling off through the low brush in the wake of the anti-tank gunners.
Then the mortar shell burst about midway between himself and Boxer and it was as though a violent gust of wind had struck edgeways at his calves, crumpling him into a compact ball and hurling him forwards and upwards towards the trees.
He felt no pain, no real pain, just a heavy, numbing thump above the elbow of his left arm, but when he tried to scramble up his feet made no contact with the ground and he fell forward on his face again, just as a naval shell struck a clump of pines on the broken skyline and he saw, as in a film, the slim trunks lift and soar away in a wide arc.
Then the world about him dissolved under the continuous impact of high-explosive.
Boxer found him lying on his side, with his knees drawn up to his chin and the shattered remains of his rifle still hanging by its sling from his left shoulder.
He saw the gaping wound in his leg first, a wound as big as an orange, with shredded khaki at its edges and blood pumping steadily on to the grass beside him.
Then he saw the obscene angle of his twin’s left arm, with bones projecting through tatters of bluish flesh and this was pumping too and staining the grass.
He fell on his knees, calling: “Berni! Berni-boy!” but Berni, when he turned him over, was unconscious, the waxen pallor of his face high-lighting the streaks of green camouflage paint, his eyes closed, his lips and nostrils twitching.
Boxer knew what immediate action he must take. His training had seen to that. He tore out his field-dressing and used it partly as a bandage and partly as a tourniquet on the calf-wound. Then he made a second tourniquet, this time with his lanyard, and checked the flow of blood from the wreck of Bernard’s elbow but after that he was bewildered. He could obey orders, both official orders and Bernard’s orders, but he had never developed the habit of independent thought, not even under tranquil conditions; now all hell was loose around him, from the town and beaches to the east and north, from the south, where B. and F. troops were assaulting the strong-point, and from above, where dog-fights between Spitfires and enemy fighters were filling the air with the drone of power-dives and the harsh rattle of machine-gun fire.
He could see what had to be done but there seemed to be no way of doing it. Bernard would have to be carried, either to the beach below Vasterival where they had landed an hour ago, or to a casualty clearing-station, if such a thing existed.
Theoretically it was possible to get to the village, where a detachment had been left to keep open the track to the beach but it was one thing to get there alone, taking advantage of every bush and every fold in the ground but quite another to walk there, carrying a wounded man who weighed over twelve stone.
There must, Boxer reasoned, have been some orders issued to cover such a contingency. Someone, at sometime during briefing, must have explained exactly what to do with casualties but if such orders had indeed been issued he was incapable of remembering them and it was clear that nobody else would return to help him carry Berni.
Berni would have known what to do had it been he, Boxer, who was lying there, with two patched-up wounds. Berni would have cocked his head, screwed his eyes into narrow slits, and then snapped out a few words that would have accomplished the miracle. Berni would have employed his twin’s giant strength in some way and Berni would have known just how to cross a mile of ground under the concentration of fire that made entire woods bounce and dance like the scenery in a Disney film.
In the end, Boxer did what first came into his mind. He gathered Berni into his arms and strode off across the quivering landscape in a general northerly direction.
He didn’t get very far, however, for even Boxer realised that it was now impossible to penetrate the curtain of fire that the German mortars were laying across the scrub. In addition, enemy aircraft were now swooping low over the clearings and raking the ground with short-range cannon fire. Boxer was accustomed to taking chances but this was no chance at all, just certain death for both of them. Realising this he hesitated on the fringe of woodland, staring about him on all sides in search of temporary shelter, just a place where he could rest, think and work out some kind of plan, the kind of plan that Berni would have bit upon in a second.
Over to his left was a white scar in the heath, a half-completed tank trap, with a lip of concrete overhanging a shallow trench. Boxer ran to it and jumped into the excavation, scrambling forward on his knees until he could lay Berni on a kind of shelf made of unevenly-placed stones.
He was safe here from anything but a direct hit, or point-blank cannon fire and he wiped the sweat and paint from his face with huge, mud-caked hands and peeped over the top of the ditch just in time to see a column of Stosstruppe double out from behind a farmhouse building and deploy along the path through the wood.
He knew what they would do the moment they found sufficient cover. They would fan out, advance on Vasterival and the beach and then snipe at the evacuating commandos until a heavier force arrived to launch a counter-attack.
Their presence meant that retreat to the beach was now impossible, notwithstanding the slackening off of the enemy mortar fire. Then if not north what about south, to join up with B. and F. troops behind the battery? He considered this for a moment and then rejected it as an equally impossible course. Assuming that B. and F. troops had now stormed and demolished the strong-point, which seemed likely enough in view of the presence of the Stosstruppe, they would certainly have retreated by the route they had advanced, round the western approach beside the river and then down to the beach at Quiberville for re-embarkation. It was too late to go this way. Even if there were no living Germans between himself and the southern limits of the battery, he could never overtake B. and F. troops whilst carrying a dead weight.
Then there were Berni’s wounds to consider. The tourniquets had slowed the bleeding but they did not seem to have checked it altogether. From where he crouched in the ditch Boxer could see blood welling through the leg bandage, slowly but steadily, like the drip of a washerless tap.
The sight galvanised him into action and he bent and picked up Bernard, scrambling out of the tank-trap and heading due west along the fringe of the wood. It was as good a direction as any and it was just possible that he could cross the line of march of the last of the stragglers from B. or F. troops, on their way back to Quiverville beach.
The roar behind him now increased to monstrous proportions. The ground rocked and quivered under the impact of shells and bombs, whole salvos merging into one another, so that a wall of sound rushed down upon him, making thought impossible. He plodded on and as he strode over grass tussocks and low brush he began to plead with Bernard to regain
consciousness and restore to him the power of thought.
“Berni! Berni-boy! What about Lovat’s mob? What about them, Berni? How about packing it in, Berni? How about getting a Jerry surgeon. Whadysay Berni, whadysay?”
Berni said nothing. His injured arm and leg swung free, his body nestled close against Boxer’s bloodied battledress and his mop of fair hair, freed from the confines of the steel helmet that had been left behind in the tank-trap, stirred slightly in the blast of successive explosions.
Boxer never recalled how or where he encountered the Frenchmen. One moment he seemed to be stumbling across a wilderness of gorse and sparse copse, and the next he was standing in a kind of cellar, lit by two candles and a single lantern that shone down from a nail in the wall.
Three men, all civilians but wearing revolvers and Sten guns, were bending over Berni at a table made of packing cases and another man, with blue-black whiskers, and a beret that was too small for him, was giving Boxer a drink from a bottle.
Perhaps he had been there for hours or perhaps only a few minutes. He did not know because he was dazed with the detonations, with the heat and the maddening indecisions of the last hours or moments. Then men at the table were jabbering French and Boxer remembered but a word or two of the French that he had picked up at Lille in the first winter of the war.
He half-emptied the bottle that the whiskered man was holding and then his brain began to clear a little. He was about to ask where he was when the tallest man among the table group approached him and said, in clipped, precise English:
“The leg and arm will have to go but we cannot amputate here, we have no facilities.”
Boxer stared at him. Only the word ‘amputate’ registered but that was enough.
“You mean, take his leg off? Take Berni’s leg off?”
“And the arm! The arm is worse! It is his only chance, my friend.”
Boxer reeled and the whiskered man obligingly pushed a backless chair under him, so that he sat down sharply, striking the rim of his helmet against the wall.
“You can’t do that to Berni…! Berni’s my brother! We’re twins, me and Berni! You can’t take his bloody leg off, you clot!”
The tall man shrugged and turned away. For a moment he remained quite still, slowly rubbing his chin as though turning over a problem in his mind. Finally he said:
“Is this your Invasion? You must tell me. It is important that we should know.”
“Invasion?” thought Boxer. What was the silly sod talking about? Invasion? What the hell had invasion to do with Berni having his leg and arm chopped off?
Boxer then noticed that all four Frenchmen were looking at him and it struck him that some kind of reply to the question was obligatory.
“They told us it was a reccy,” he said, “a reccy in force…” and then, behind all his distress and bewilderment, his confused memory produced a fleeting glimpse of the briefing hall and he heard the briefing officer saying: ‘Tell them not to join in! Tell them the real show is later!’
He said, slowly: “No, this is just a big raid! They told us to tell all the civvies it wasn’t the Second Front,” then, almost savagely, “What you say about Berni? You sure you got to amputate? You quite sure?”
The four Frenchmen exchanged serious looks. Then the tall one, the doctor apparently, said something that Boxer could not understand and the two men at the table unslung their Sten guns and the small man, the one with the bluish whiskers, crossed over to the corner of the cellar and dropped on hands and knees.
Boxer began to sweat with anxiety and impatience. What were they up to now? Why didn’t they buckle to and dress old Berni’s wounds? Why were they treating old Berni as a kind of side-show?
Suddenly the doctor seemed to sense his irritation and turned to him, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“We were about to join you, my friend,” he said, “but what you have told us is important, not only to us, but to you and to your brother here! You will understand—there is no point in us attacking the Boche, not if you are returning across the Channel! We should be killed, all of us but when you come in force we shall be ready! Perhaps you will tell your officers what I have said?”
Boxer looked from one to the other. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the whiskered man gathering up the firearms and placing them lovingly into a cavity beneath an up-ended flagstone. He looked across at Bernard, still prone on the packing cases.
“You can do something for him, can’t you?” he pleaded. “You can patch him up, just so as I can carry him back?”
“You would have to wait until tonight,” the doctor said. “You would be certainly killed or captured if you showed yourself on the beach in daylight now!”
He paused a moment, adding, “By now they would shoot you down on any beach within miles of Dieppe!”
For a moment but a moment only Boxer forgot Bernard and gave a thought to his own situation.
“What you reckon I’d better do?” he asked.
“That depends upon yourself, my friend,” replied the doctor. “If you remain near here we may find some place to conceal you until you can be passed inland to a collecting point. We have an organisation for this but it is something that must not be done in a hurry. You may have to remain hidden for many weeks and after today there will be strict searches throughout this area.”
“What about him?” demanded Boxer, “could you look after him too?”
“That is quite impossible, my friend,” said the man shaking his head. “Your comrade is seriously wounded, very seriously wounded and we could not hope to conceal a man in that condition!”
Boxer’s face flamed and he lost his temper. “Listen you clot, he’s my brother, he’s my twin brother,” he shouted.
The doctor remained impassive but the other men, sensing Boxer’s tension, looked up from their task of replacing a flagstone over the arms cache.
“If you wish to stay free you must leave him behind,” said the doctor, firmly. “There is no other course and even so your chances are not good.”
“Leave him? Leave him here?”
“He will get attention. Someone will notify the Germans that he is here. That can be arranged. Henri will say that he found him here in the barn and they would come for him.”
“Ar, but when, when?” insisted Boxer, “how long would he have to stay here, lying like that?”
The doctor shrugged and the familiar Gallic gesture irritated Boxer so much that he could have struck the man in the face.
“Until tonight perhaps…they would send an ambulance if they are not too busy with their own wounded.”
“Jesus!” Boxer exploded, “you want me to go underground and leave Berni here on the off chance of being picked up by Jerry?”
“You asked for my advice, my friend,” said the Frenchman, “we are risking our lives talking to you, do you realise that?”
Boxer had not realised it and the gentle rebuff sobered him. He was slow-witted but he was not an unreasonable man and he remembered now something else they had told him at the briefing, something about civvies who helped the British being shot within minutes of their capture by Germans.
The hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed him. His head felt numb, as though he had just been awakened from a heavy sleep after a terrific bender at the local. He shook himself like a mastiff and sat down on the backless chair from which he had jumped up when he began arguing with the doctor.
“I’m not going to leave him,” he faltered, at length, “I…I just couldn’t, not like that! We been together so long you see…we’ve always been together…! I got to get him seen to by someone. What do you reckon I should do for the best? Where could I get him seen to?”
The man with whiskers said something in rapid French, and the doctor heard him out before nodding.
“If you wish to save his life and sacrifice your own chances of escape there is only one course open to you, my friend. You must take him yourself to the Boche first-aid post beyond the c
rossroads but you must go there alone. It would be death for us to accompany you.”
“You mean, dressed like this?”
“I would advise you to wear some other clothing until you have delivered him. The Boche is very busy and it is probable that they will not stop a civilian carrying a wounded man. If you walk out on to the road as you are they will shoot both of you and investigate afterwards!”
One of the men in the corner began to forage among some racks and eventually produced some filthy overalls. Then the man with whiskers took off his beret and proffered it, grinning.
The doctor said: “It is not much but it may probably get you as far as the post. Wait…I have a better idea…” and he rummaged in a crate and produced a small white flag, printed with a red cross.
“Display this as well,” he said. “They will be too busy to challenge you before you reach the road block.”
Bernard stirred and Boxer approached the table. It crossed his mind that even now Bernard might be able to speak and devise some alternative plan whereby they could be spirited out of this fantastic situation and back to their unit. But Bernard’s eyes remained closed and although his lips moved it was only to utter gibberish, not to give Boxer advice or counsel.
Boxer wondered, as he struggled into the overalls, whether to surrender in this fashion was a military crime but the reflection did not make him waver any more than did the thought that he might be shot as a spy if captured on enemy territory in civilian attire. The important thing now was to get Bernard’s wounds dressed and to counter that shocking threat of double amputation expressed by this cold fish of a Frenchman. It did not matter very much what happened after that.
As he put aside his rifle and webbing equipment he began to feel more confident. These Frogs seemed to know what they were doing and he had always heard that Jerry behaved well towards British wounded. It might, he reflected, be worse. Bernard was not yet dead, not by any means, and the Frenchmen might be quite wrong about the seriousness of his wounds. Now that he had specific orders again his confusion of mind began to disappear and his natural optimism began to reassert itself. He looked down at himself and a ghost of his habitual grin creased his mouth.
The Avenue Goes to War Page 29