“Listen! Listen there, Sarge,” said the Scotch boy. “What’s that noise?”
The procession stopped. Behind them the antiaircraft men fell out and hastily began setting up their guns in an adjacent field, while all around people left their cars, jumping for the side of the road and the shelter of the bordering trees. One minute the peaceful countryside was friendly and smiling in the spring sunshine, the next came that awful shrieking above.
Before they could move from the front seat the antiaircraft guns began to bark, and three hedge-hopping planes with large black crosses upon their wings zoomed down, machine-gun bullets spattering the paved road ahead.
The Sergeant cringed. Half the lorry was loaded with tins of gasoline, and he knew they would go up in flames if a bullet struck them, yet he was incapable of moving. He was chained to his seat. There he stayed, slumped down in a kind of bad dream, shielding his head in his hands. Most of the refugees were racing for the ditches, but death was faster. Men, women, and children tumbled to the pavement, flopping forward in the queer twist of the dying. One or two just stumbled, pitched forward, and fell on the black-topped road.
Directly before them was a peasant with a little girl of four or five strapped to the wicker basket of his bicycle. Caught in a moment of panic, he stood feverishly trying to untie the knots that held her. The rain of lead hurled them both to the ground.
It was there, it was here, it was gone. The zooming and shrieking died away, the machine guns in the fields ceased barking, and the three men sat silently in the front seat.
“I’m going to be sick,” said the Scotch boy, sticking his head out the window.
The Sergeant waited, understanding, and put his hand on the boy’s knee. It was their first time under fire, and he had sat paralyzed with fear like the boy.
The line of refugees ahead was in disorder. Beyond them several automobiles were burning. The dead and dying spattered the road on both sides, showing exactly where the German planes had passed. Along the pavement, horses, dogs, people lay twisting in agony, or lifeless and silent under the tall poplars beside the road.
The Sergeant nodded to Fingers, who pushed the starter. He moved the lorry gently forward, eased around the wrecked bicycle on top of which were heaped the peasant and his little girl. Just ahead a dispatch rider in khaki writhed in pain beside his motorcycle. The machine guns from above had treated child and soldier impartially.
CHAPTER 5
FINALLY THE REGIMENT reached their positions along the river Dyle in Belgium. The next day Sergeant Williams was ordered to send out a patrol to reconnoiter the terrain in front of his battalion. He could have dispatched another non-com, but he wanted to see for himself what the country across the river was like.
He chose a corporal who was alert and intelligent, and Three Fingers Brown, as driver. Brown had been refused enlistment early in the war, because he had only three fingers on his right hand. He had then challenged the recruiting sergeant, and they had gone to a shooting gallery where the non-com was so badly beaten that Fingers’ enlistment was immediately accepted. Short, stocky, cheerful, and dependable, he was a good man to have around.
Armed with pistols and a machine gun, in a scout car, they crossed a small bridge, the mines having been pointed out to them. The road led straight ahead, and before long they were in a wood, winding through lanes for perhaps half an hour with no opposition and no enemy visible. At last they came to a small stream over which was a tiny stone bridge. A Belgian farmer working in the fields rose from his vegetables as they passed. There was a half frown on his face and something of a warning, the Sergeant thought, in his bearing.
“Most likely this bridge is mined,” said the Sergeant. “I’ll ask him.”
During the long winter months when most of the battalion non-coms were spending their evenings over glasses of beer in the cafés and estaminets along the frontier, Sergeant Williams had been studying and taking French lessons from the cure of the nearby village. By this time he was able to speak the language with fluency and a horrible British accent.
He leaped from the scout car and walked over to the farmer. As he did so, a frightful sound came from the rear.
“Hinauf.” Stick ’em up.
He whirled around. From the thicket across the road stepped five German soldiers in coal-scuttle helmets with Schmeisser pistols at their hips. They were the first Germans he had ever seen. They were not to be the last.
In the car, Fingers and the corporal sat foolishly, mouths open, hands high in the air. Slowly the Sergeant swung round and stuck his up too. His face flushed. I just can’t believe it, he thought. In the regular army since I was sixteen, worked up from private to sergeant, and taken prisoner on the third day of battle without ever having fired a shot.
His next thought was of his family in the house on the Folkestone Road in Dover. This means they’ll be more alone than ever, for we’ve copped it. A German prison camp and the end of the war for the lot of us. The Sergeant was cheesed off.
The officers stepped from the woods and searched them. These were the first British guns they had seen, and each one was passed back and forth with interest. Then one officer beckoned, and a small German weapons’ carrier issued from an unnoticed road. He ordered the Englishmen back into their own car, and indicated they were to follow. As the cars lined up, a German soldier sat in the rear of the weapons’ carrier, with a machine gun on a tripod between his knees. It was pointed directly at them.
The corporal started to climb into their car, but Sergeant Williams shoved him aside and got in beside Fingers, the driver. A German officer observed this, said something to the man in the rear of their vehicle, and the machine gun swung to the right and gave forth an eloquent burst of sudden, sharp sound. Then the barrel swung back and lined up on their scout car.
The German patrol piled into their machine, the officer signaled, and they moved across the bridge. For perhaps a couple of miles they bumped across a country road. Then, far ahead, the Sergeant observed a crossroads with several signposts. His mind became active. As the senior non-com he had got them into trouble; now his job was to extricate them.
Coming close, they saw it was a main crossroads. The enemy car winked its lights to show it was turning left, the machine gun swung ostentatiously from side to side. Fingers winked his lights to indicate he understood the signal.
“Go right, Fingers,” said the Sergeant. His mouth never moved as he talked. “Go right and drive like hell.”
The little cockney said nothing. But he heard, understood, responded. Gaining speed, he came closer to the enemy weapons’ carrier, so near they could see those cruel blue eyes behind the machine gun. As they neared the crossroads, Fingers seemed to be obeying orders and following the German car. Then at the last second, he swerved violently right, tossing the two others against the windshield, and raced down the empty road.
Almost immediately machine-gun bullets spattered past, but they were soon out of range. With a good start they had made half a mile before the German car reversed itself, turned back around the corner, and came after them.
Two clouds of dust roared down that country lane. Some school children on bicycles dismounted and ran to the side of the road in fright. A handful of chickens scuttled off as Fingers tore ahead. He managed to keep their distance, but the Sergeant realized he had no idea where they were or where they were headed. Back to the British lines and safety, or straight for the Germans and captivity? Or just moving in a kind of no man’s territory between the two?
Around a curve loomed the red-tiled roofs of a hamlet. “Slow down, Fingers, slow down and be ready to turn.”
As their car slowed down, the German weapons’ carrier drew closer, and bullets spattered the road behind them. Yet the Sergeant knew what he was doing. “Slow down, never mind them, slow down, I tell you. Take the first turn you see. That’s an order.”
Fingers braked as the bullets began to sing off the rear of the car. They swung round a corner and, see
ing a half-hidden drive in a farmyard to the right, Fingers turned the car on two wheels with a tire squeal that brought faces to the windows of the house. The three men leaped from the car before it stopped, raced across a vegetable garden toward a friendly wood. Just then the German carrier, traveling at seventy miles an hour, made the curve and hit the cobblestones of the village street.
There was the inevitable crash, the enemy car striking a brick wall at one side, an enormous cloud of dust, and then silence. Looking over their shoulders, the three British soldiers observed Germans scattered up and down the street. They raced into the wood, running as fast and as far as they could. In an hour they had thrown off any pursuit, and began walking. Thanks to the Sergeant’s compass, they headed west, and in another half hour saw the welcome sight of the Dyle, with British embankments on the far side.
At first the sentries on the opposite bank fired at every movement they made. The Sergeant feared the firing would attract another German patrol, so he edged down behind some bushes near the bridge, stuck up a pole with a white handkerchief on it, and called out. After some conversation he managed to halt the British fire. They crossed gingerly, and were immediately taken before an intelligence major who gave them a severe examination before their identity was established.
“Second Wilts?” he said. “Why, your blokes withdrew an hour ago.”
The Sergeant couldn’t believe it. “What for? Without any fighting?”
“Yes, I believe the Belgians on our left have packed up. Anyhow, we’ve all been ordered to withdraw to prepared positions. By the way, laddie, what’s the matter with your forehead? What’s that lump there?”
The Sergeant put a hand to his forehead. There was an enormous lump which throbbed and pained badly. He had struck his head on the windshield when Fingers turned at the crossroads, but in the excitement of escaping had not felt it until that second.
CHAPTER 6
WAVES OF BOMBERS darkened the sky. Parachutists fell on the cities and towns of the Low Countries. Rubber boats appeared on the rivers of France and Belgium. And everywhere were the men in field gray, men in tanks, in lorries, behind motorized antiaircraft guns and armored command cars. Yet though war was all around them it had not yet touched the Wiltshires. Then war came, all too soon.
They had become part of Frankforce, so-called for General Franklyn, their divisional commander. The Sergeant realized things were getting desperate, for this was a mixed outfit, a few Belgian infantry battalions, some French tanks, plus the Fifth Division of the British Expeditionary Force.
Orders came down to hold the Ypres-Comines Canal.
They were entrenched not far from the ancient town of Ypres, behind the banks of the canal. The land rose slightly, and they had a long sector to defend. On one side of them was a Scottish regiment, on the other a French North African battalion supported by 75 mm. guns. Behind a hill across the canal were camouflaged some heavy French tanks. To the left were seen a few red-roofed dismal villages. The land was flat on the other side of the canal, with a wood in the distance.
“Here they come, boys,” said an officer, peering through field glasses. The Sergeant, looking over the top of the trench, could make out several hundred German infantry with machine guns rush from the edge of the wood, firing, crouching low to the ground, running, tumbling down, and jumping forward again. They came closer and closer to the canal. Enemy mortars from the wood opened up, the shells raising great waterspouts in the stagnant waters before them.
A sharp whistle sounded. The French 75’s barked. Then the battalion Bren guns opened fire. Still the Germans advanced. The fire increased, the enemy line stuttered, hesitated as the men fell, and went to pieces. Only a few seriously wounded lay before the canal.
An hour later the attack began more seriously, this time supported by tanks. The Panzers issued from the wood in several places with infantry behind them. Before they got within range, huge French tanks waddled out to meet them.
“We’ve got a ringside seat, Sarge.”
“Certainly have.” They watched as all along the lines the troops peered over at the battle along the front on which their safety depended.
The Panzers, firing first, swung about to meet the French tanks. The Sergeant saw a shell hit a French machine, rock it, and bounce off. Better armored, if slower, the French simply moved within range and then plastered the Panzers. One was afire, another exploded with a roar as its magazine was hit, a third stopped with a track torn off, and helmeted Germans jumped from the top to run for shelter. Those left soon retreated into the security of the wood. Only one French tank remained smoking on the field.
The British infantry cheered as the French tanks returned behind their hill.
Evidently the resistance had taken the Germans by surprise, because for several hours nothing happened. Twilight descended. The Wilts boiled water, drank tea, ate biscuits, waiting. Then just before dusk the attack began again on their right. It spread to the front and this time the enemy obviously meant business. When the grayish tanks appeared from the wood they were supported by what seemed to be all the planes in the Nazi forces.
The Wilts cowered in their shallow trenches. Bombs fell. From above, dive bombers machine-gunned them. One plane was caught in antiaircraft fire and spiraled to the ground, but most of them kept zooming into the sky and returning to the attack. Soon the British fire slackened, and behind their tanks the German infantry advanced. Once again the French tanks went gallantly forward, but this time they took a pasting from the air. Darkness descended with the fighting still in progress.
Somewhere behind came the sound of firing-rapid, quick bursts that could only be machine guns, enemy or British. Trying to get some wounded back to the casualty clearing station, the Sergeant began to suspect their lines had been broken. It was then, with the blackness still stabbed by the firing guns, that word came down.
Frankforce was retiring to prepared positions.
Hardest of all was leaving the wounded. “The next regiment has transport, they’ll pick you boys up,” he tried to tell them. “They’ve gone off to get transportation.” But he was lying; he knew they saw he was lying by their despairing glances. Many men of the battalion were left that night. One or two superficially wounded were jolted along in wheelbarrows, yet there were over two hundred soldiers in rows on the ground at the casualty clearing station, cared for by several medical officers and a couple of orderlies. Most were not transportable. Anyway, no transport was available.
Now the Sergeant thanked heaven for their training exercises, for those many cold winter nights when they had practiced moving ahead and retreating in the dark. Without panic or haste the lines formed, went off into the blackness, occasional voices now and then trying to locate some regiment.
“Cameronians?”
“Cameronians just behind.”
“Second Wilts here. Fall in, lad, this is what’s left of K Company.”
“Northamptons on the left. On the left, Northamptons.”
Shells fell around them in the low-lying fields, but much of the battalion got away. Although they did not know it, only two roads of escape to the north were open. The Panzers were closing in.
All night they slogged through the blackness, each man trying to keep up with the man ahead, carrying the Lewis and the Bren guns and what ammunition was left. The villages through which they passed were ghost towns, empty of all life save cats, dogs, and farm animals; shops and stores pillaged, doors flapping in the night breeze. Just before morning the Sergeant heard two officers talking, and for the first time understood the meaning of this withdrawal.
“It’s the Belgians,” said one. “We had it on the wireless at headquarters. Their king has surrendered.”
“Surrendered! How on earth could he? He asked us into Belgium; now he surrenders. Doesn’t that leave our left unprotected?”
“Exactly. It does. That’s why we’re moving north.”
CHAPTER 7
“OUT! PUT OUT those lights.”
“Put out those lights. D’you want us all killed?”
Up ahead someone had flashed on the lights of a lorry momentarily, but the yells and shouts along the line forced him to extinguish them. Exhausted under the constant bombing, the continual retreating, fighting, then retreating again in the dark, the men trudged on in long lines, summoning their remnants of courage to make those last few miles to the port of Dunkerque. There, on the coast, so the word came down, ships would take the army to safety and the sea.
“Sergeant Williams! Sergeant Williams!”
“Sergeant! You’re wanted up front.”
He stumbled forward in the blackness, slipping and sliding along the edge of the road, for it was misting and hard to walk, with a fine drizzle from the sky. At a crossroads beyond, several staff officers were standing around a map. He saw what it was by the light of an electric torch that one held, shading it from above with his cap.
“Sergeant? Good! We shall need you to patrol this crossroads here until eight this morning. You’ll take a squad under a corporal, and have a weapons’ carrier. Try to hold up any advance temporarily; if it gets too sticky, move out fast. We’re going northwest, Route 19, the main road to the coast. It leads through Poperinghe, and you’ll find our rear guards there with artillery support.”
“Yes sir. Until eight this morning?”
“About then. Take a squad of trained men and a Bren gun. Mind you get enough ammo, too. Good luck, Sergeant!”
All the time the regiment went slogging past. The Sergeant pulled out a squad, and waited while a regiment of French horse-drawn artillery creaked along. Then came a final British battalion. It was nearly daybreak when the lines vanished in the mist, only a handful of limping and exhausted stragglers going through. The Sergeant concealed his car in a small thicket, covered it with branches, and set up his post nearby, the machine gun on a small rise that commanded the crossroads.
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