The Very White of Love

by S C Worrall

  Three days ago, they entered Belgium with slide-rule precision: each unit 170 yards apart to minimize the effects of aerial bombardment; military police at every junction; motorcycle outriders racing ahead to clear the roads. Route maps. Spit and polish. Discipline. Now, they resemble a retreating medieval army.

  As well as the procession of refugees, carts, donkeys, horses, and soldiers on foot, the road is chock-a-block with transports trying to ferry British soldiers in different directions. In some places, lorries stretch four abreast across the road, with no room to turn or manoeuvre: a heaving scrum of metal, diesel fumes and men. Neat divisions between different regiments has broken down. Worcesters are muddled up with Scots Guards. Bucks men find themselves marching in the darkness next to Brummies from the Warwicks or Moroccan tirailleurs limping back from the front. They have hardly fired a shot, and already they look like a defeated army.

  Martin concentrates on the chug of the Vixen’s diesel and the tramp of boots on the pavé, trying to blot out the mounting sense of helplessness he feels. Having vacated the line at Waterloo, they are now being pursued by the Germans, who are rapidly closing on them. But there are so many troops and refugees on the road that the fastest they can drive is 10 miles per hour. Even then, Jenkins, the driver, has to weave the Panopticon in and out of the crowd, to avoid running them over. Stray dogs and even cows further slow the vehicles. After covering less than five miles the column grinds to a complete halt. Hundreds of farm carts, piled with refugees, block the road.

  Martin watches in horror as a horse pulling one of the carts breaks free of its traces and bolts, crashing into three other carts, then knocking over a man pushing his child along the road in a wheelbarrow. An old woman is knocked down and lies in the road screaming. A pair of bullocks get loose and plough through the crowd, causing more pandemonium.

  Martin wants to jump down and help, but he knows there is nothing he can do – and, anyway, it would only slow them down still further. For the first time, he feels lost and dejected. The campaign feels as though it is falling apart. A lame-duck commanding officer. Contradictory orders. Confusion. And, somewhere out there in the night, less than a dozen miles away, German Panzers are bearing down on them, like wolves. But he can’t give in to these negative feelings. He has to remain positive and decisive in his leadership. His men’s lives depend on it.

  19 MAY 1940

  A Road Near Gaurain-Ramecroix

  The first blush of pink illuminates the sky as they approach the village of Gaurain-Ramecroix. They have been ordered to withdraw behind the Escaut Canal, a natural defence where the British forces will make a stand against the advancing Germans. The French border is only a few miles away, but the chaotic withdrawal has cost them valuable time. Every second they lose now is a gift to the Panzers biting at their heels.

  Martin glances out nervously from under the roof of the Panopticon. In the last few days, as they trundled across these battle-torn roads, with shells exploding around them, his nickname for the lorry had started to seem a bit less of a joke. The way the Panopticon’s cab is recessed under the roof, which projects out over the front of the removals van, means that they are nearly always in shadow, making it feel like that fictional prison.

  To stop the gears of his mind from churning, he looks into the rear-view mirror. At the base of the sky is a band of purple, the colour of a bruise then a thin line of flamingo pink. Like a painting by Turner, he thinks. Dropping downhill, they enter the flat, open plain of the River Escaut. Outside a tumbledown brick farmhouse, a farmer in a crumpled, brown jacket and leather cap is handing two children up onto a wagon loaded with baggage and household possessions: bedding, cooking pots, a canary in a wicker cage. A small, wire-haired dog tugs at a rope tied to the axle of the cart, barking.

  An image of Scamp, sitting with his paws on the dashboard of the Bomb, superimposes itself on the scene. They are racing through the flower-filled tunnel of lanes on the way to the Royal Standard. That magical summer. Her hair flying in the wind. Image follows image, like a film being replayed. Her waist in his hands as they danced to Fats Waller. Nancy in a white tennis dress. Or sitting across from him in that little bistro in Soho.

  It almost hurts to remember.

  He glances nervously at his watch. Next to him, in the cab, Cripps snores loudly. Jenkins, the driver, slurps down sugary black tea from a tin mug he holds in one hand, while gripping the van’s steering wheel in the other.

  ‘You all right, Jenkins?’ Martin asks him.

  ‘Never felt better, sir.’ The driver pulls a grin. ‘How long till we get there?’

  ‘Depends how fast the column moves. Or, rather, how slowly. As the crow flies, the Escaut Canal is less than ten miles away.’

  The road they are travelling on is known as Le Pavé d’Ath. It’s also the name of a local cheese, made with cow’s milk. But it is best known as one of the key routes the Germans have always used to invade France. In 1914, General von Kluck’s army swept the last British Expeditionary Force west towards Mons and the hell of the trenches. Thirty-six years later, the cobblestones are echoing again with the sound of retreating British boots and the rumble of lorries.

  The men have now been marching almost non-stop for forty-eight hours. They have stopped and started, dug in then pulled back, snatching sleep where they could. They move now, without speaking, as though in a trance, heads bent forward, eyes fixed on the road, their feet moving mechanically to the rhythm of the march. Left, right, left, right.

  Bells are tolling as they reach Gaurain-Ramecroix. It’s Pentecost Sunday. The day the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples in a mighty wind. This time last year he was at Oxford, driving to Beaconsfield at the weekends to see Nancy; going for long walks in the spring sunshine; playing tennis or going to parties. Now he sits in a mile-long column of soldiers and vehicles. The tramline on the south side of the road has been destroyed, creating a bottleneck. Clouds of exhaust fumes rise into the air as the vehicles wait, hubcap to hubcap, surrounded by a sea of refugees and exhausted soldiers.

  Martin puts his binos to his eyes, scanning the terrain for the best place to take cover, if they have to. A few hundred metres to the north is a cement works and a quarry. But the quarry will be hard to reach. The church and the rest of the village are behind some trees. Lining the road are some brick houses and shops. A café tabac. A boarded-up garage. Then comes scrubland: coarse grass, thistles, tall, spikey mallow plants. Beyond the scrub, the land rises slightly to a tree-covered embankment. He counts the number of seconds it would take the men to reach it. Eight, ten? If they sprint.

  As though on cue, there’s a sudden banshee scream, then a whistling sound, like a giant tea kettle being boiled, as a Stuka drops out of the sky. People have been talking about this new German plane for months but it’s the first one Martin has seen close-up. Sturzkampfflugzeug. Literally, divefightplane. One of those compound nouns the Germans love. Stuka, for short. The breathy exhalation of the ‘u’ sound cut short by the axe blow of the ‘k’. A synonym for terror.

  ‘Take cover!’ Martin rips open the door and dives into the ditch running along the side of the road. Cripps and Jenkins dive after him. Clods of earth vomit up into the sky. A tree trunk is snapped off like a matchstick. Martin presses himself into the ditch. The acrid smell of smoke fills his nostrils.

  Martin watches in fascinated terror as another plane peels from the line, flips a wing and begins its screaming descent. The scream isn’t accidental. It’s designed for maximum terror. When the plane dives, the in-rushing air passes through a specially designed siren. The Stuka wants you to know it’s coming. As the German Panzer divisions smashed their way through the Ardennes, the French cowered in their trenches, paralysed with fear, as the Stukas dive-bombed them.

  The second bomb explodes closer to the road. Shrapnel whines and zings in all directions. Soldiers and refugees race for cover, trampling and shoving each other out of the way. A horse rears up in its traces then bolts across th
e field, overturning the cart it is pulling. A terrified woman runs towards a house with a screaming infant in her arms.

  There’s another high-pitched scream. Martin holds his breath. Boom. The bomb rips through the house behind them. Roof beams crash to the ground. Bricks fly in all directions. Martin can feel bits of masonry clang against his helmet.

  The next plane drops out of the sky. The siren screams. Then comes the boiling tea kettle sound that lifts the hair on the back of Martin’s neck, followed by a bone-jarring crump at the front of the column, followed by a blinding flash. A huge fireball turns the sky orange.

  Martin is more than one hundred yards away but the blast is so powerful he can feel it rippling across his skin as the air is sucked towards the explosion. A volley of secondary explosions erupts, like a box of fireworks igniting. Streamers of flame shoot into the sky, like Guy Fawkes rockets.

  ‘Bastards have hit the ammunition truck,’ mutters Cripps.

  Martin raises his binoculars. Dozens of lorries are on fire. A man leaps out of the burning wreckage, his clothes in flames, and runs for cover towards the woods, his arms flapping up and down, like an ostrich caught in a bush fire. Another bomb whistles through the air. Martin presses his face into the earth. It’s the first time he has felt truly afraid. Up till now, he has felt invincible; Nancy’s love protecting him like an amulet. But now his heart is beating in his chest like the clappers. He mustn’t die, he tells himself. He must get home to her. And, for the first time, he starts to pray.

  The sound of the planes’ engines grows fainter as they climb away to the west. Martin counts to ten then signals his men to move forward to the front of the column. ‘We’ll need spades. And wheelbarrows.’

  They run to the back of the Panopticon and unload the equipment. Other soldiers emerge, dazed and terrified, from the ditches. A fire engine, its bell frantically ringing, tries to force its way through the scrum of burning vehicles and refugees. A small boy, the clothes almost burned off his back, his face blackened with soot, screams for his mother.

  Martin signals to his men to follow him, then sees the Stukas swinging round in a circle.

  ‘They’re coming back!’ he yells. ‘Take cover!’

  This time, they fly barely higher than the tops of the trees. Machine gun fire spits from the wings of the first plane. They hurl themselves back into the ditch as a wave of bullets smacks into the column. Bricks explode in clouds of red dust. The wheels of a cart disintegrate in a flurry of wood chips. Sparks flash on the cobblestones.

  Martin is roused by the sound of Gibbens’ voice. ‘Martin! Is that you?’ The doctor hugs him. His leather satchel full of dressings hangs from his shoulder. Around the sleeve of his shirt is a red cross. ‘I am so glad to see you alive!’

  ‘Me, too.’ Martin hugs the doctor. ‘Need any help?’

  Gibbens looks at the clouds of smoke pouring from the front of the column. ‘I hope you’ve got a strong stomach.’

  Nothing in Martin’s experience has prepared him for the scene he walks into. The walls of the houses are plastered with gobbets of flesh, like lumps of kebab meat. The cobblestones are slippery with blood and gore. Many of the dead soldiers are half naked, their uniforms scorched from their bodies by the blast. Others crawl about on their hands and knees, moaning. But what Martin will remember most in the coming days is the sickly, sweet smell of burning flesh.

  ‘Fuck!’ Martin turns away and throws up. ‘Fucking Jesus Christ!’

  His mind revolts against the evidence of his senses. His eyes tell him that the lump of blackened meat lying next to a lorry, like a burned Sunday roast, is a human torso. But his mind refuses to believe it, as though it has been cleaved down the middle.

  ‘Shall we bury . . . it, sir?’ Topper steps forward, with a shovel.

  ‘I . . . er . . . ’ Martin stares at the blackened lump. ‘We haven’t time.’ He wavers. ‘Just move it to the side of the road for the moment.’ He looks away. ‘The local authorities . . . and the Red Cross . . . will know what to do.’

  ‘Right-oh, sir.’ Topper slides his shovel under the chunk of blackened flesh. There’s a scraping sound. He drops the shovel, gags. Then he lifts it into the air and deposits it on the side of the road.

  Martin’s knuckles have turned white. His breathing comes in short, sharp gasps. A feeling he has never had before is flooding through his body, like a chemical. A desire for revenge. To hurt and kill the people who did this. He turns to the bandsman. ‘Come on, Topper, let’s go and sort this mess out.’

  A few yards down the road, they find a soldier lying in a pool of blood, with one leg blown off, the other jammed back under his body in a way that makes no anatomical sense. He’s younger than Martin. A boy with brown hair and pimples. He was probably at school a few months ago, playing rugby with his friends or sucking sherbet lemons. Now, his glassy eyes stare blankly up at the sky. Tears sting Martin’s eyes, as he kneels and folds his arms across his chest, and closes the boy’s eyes.

  Topper and a second stretcher-bearer start to drag the body onto the canvas.

  ‘Make sure you check his tag,’ calls Gibbens.

  Martin kneels down and reaches inside the dead soldier’s shirt, pulls out a tag.

  ‘Joseph Jones, Sergeant . . . ’

  They work their way along the road. The closer they get to the front of the column, the less it is possible to make identifications. When the ammunition truck exploded, dozens of men were simply vaporized. All that remains of others are a few shattered bones and some blackened bits of metal: dog tags, buttons, medals, a half-melted Ronson lighter.

  Martin walks over to a burned-out lorry. Inside are the half-burned remains of the driver, slumped forward against the steering wheel. Most of his uniform has been burned from his body, but the remains of a Royal Warwicks patch is still visible on his arm. They tilt the body to get it out of the cab. The side of his head has been blown away and, as they move the body, his brain slithers out of his skull and lands with a splat on the ground, like the yolk of an egg.

  Martin walks on, in a daze. Dozens of vehicles are still on fire. The blackened ribs of others are outlined against the sky. A fire engine hoses down the burned-out remains of the ammunition truck. The water tanker has also been destroyed. Acrid black smoke fills his lungs.

  His foot catches on a piece of debris. He looks down. Painted in brightly coloured letters on a broken signboard are the words ‘Cirque Duchamps, Lille’. A circus? Here? Martin wanders on in disbelief. A few yards further on, a box of costumes is strewn across the road. Two tigers lie dead on the ground, their fur soaked in blood, like spoiled carpet samples. In the ditch is an empty cage, the bars twisted and shattered. Propped against a nearby tree, as though it has sat down to have a rest, is the bloodied stump of a chimpanzee.

  Martin’s mind tries to process what he is seeing, but it is as though a crack in the earth has opened up and he has descended into hell. He stumbles on. A thick cloud of smoke from a burning farmhouse drifts across the road. Martin closes his eyes as the acrid smoke burns his lungs. When he opens them, he finds himself staring at an elephant. Sticking out of its forehead is a long, needle-shaped shard of shrapnel. More shrapnel is embedded in its neck and trunk. Blood spurts from a gash in its side.

  It must be a hallucination, he thinks, a phantom triggered by exhaustion. Perhaps he is having a nervous breakdown. But, as Martin’s eyes dilate in shock, the elephant lifts its head and trumpets: a pitiful, wounded sound that sends shivers down Martin’s spine.

  The elephant advances a few yards and stops, swaying drunkenly in the middle of the road. Martin holds out an upturned hand, to signal that he is friendly. The elephant lowers its head, like a bull about to charge. Then it lets out another ear-shattering trumpet and starts to lollop across the fields towards the woods. Martin runs after it, waving to his men to follow. ‘Bring a rope!’

  The elephant lumbers on, trampling over bodies, crushing a wooden cart. Cripps and the other Pioneers run after it
across the field.

  ‘Careful!’ Martin shouts. ‘He’s badly wounded.’

  ‘Holy Mother of God!’ Cripps grips the rope and walks towards the elephant, which has stopped in front of a dense thicket of bushes. ‘I’ve seen everything now.’

  ‘Gently does it,’ says Martin. ‘Joe, you stand by with the rope. The rest of us, form a circle around him.’

  The elephant lifts its head and trumpets again, then sinks to its knees. The circle of soldiers takes a step forward. Cripps throws the rope around the animal’s neck before it falls to its side. Its grey flank rises and falls, like a giant bellows. Its limpid, brown eye stares helplessly back at them.

  ‘Laissez passer, s’il vous plait.’ A barrel-chested man pushes his way past Martin. It’s the circus owner. He is dressed in black and white striped trousers and a bright red, silk shirt. Round his neck is a black bandana. In one hand, he carries a high-powered rifle. ‘Let me pass, please.’

  He kneels next to the elephant. ‘Ma pauvre Mimi.’ He strokes the stricken animal’s head, shakes his fist at the sky. ‘Ce sont des monstres! They are monsters.’

  ‘Her name is Mimi?’ Tears burn Martin’s eyes.

  ‘Yes. My wife called her this.’ He rubs the elephant’s neck. ‘After Mimi was shipped from India.’ He swallows hard. ‘She was with us fifteen years.’ He strokes the animal’s head. ‘She was, how you say it? Une bonne travailleuse.’

  ‘A good worker,’ Martin repeats. ‘She was a good worker.’

  ‘The best!’ The circus owner keeps stroking the elephant’s head then stands up. The animal momentarily lifts its head then lets it fall back on the grass. ‘N’est-ce pas, Mimi? Isn’t that right?’