by S C Worrall
‘I know how confusing this all is for you, and the rest of the men,’ he says to Cripps. ‘It’s confusing to me. Unfortunately, that’s how it is in the Army. Orders come down from above, with no explanation.’ What started as a short reply is now turning into a lecture, but, sensing the men need some inspiration, Martin decides to let the words flow. ‘Remember what Tennyson wrote in “The Charge of the Light Brigade”? “Theirs not to reason why”. All we can do is stick together and not let it sap our morale. Tonight, we are withdrawing again. But we will engage Jerry soon. That I am sure of. And, as your commanding officer, all I can say is that, when that moment comes, we have to be ready. And united.’
As though to underline his words, a German bomber appears in the sky overhead. The men look up into the sky, anxiously. The plane circles three times, then flies off towards the east.
23 MAY 1940
The Road to Hazebrouck
Later that evening, they drive on towards the village of Nomain. As Martin sits in the cab of the Panopticon, he imagines he is a bird flying above the road. Below him is an almost unending column of weary men and vehicles trudging west. After just thirteen days of combat, in which they have marched across Belgium and then back again, the British Expeditionary Force is being withdrawn to the coast. Mixed with his feelings of disappointment and frustration that they have not really engaged the enemy, Martin is excited that he may see Nancy sooner than he imagined.
But there is confusion about where they are actually heading. Some are saying they are headed for Calais. Others, that they are to proceed to Dunkirk. Orders are given, then countermanded, apparently for no reason. The men have long since given up trying to understand, or care. Their only thought is to get home. Back to Blighty.
As they enter Nomain, an old man appears in the rubble. He is wearing a suit and bowler hat, and carries an umbrella. His clothes are covered in dust, his face is stretched tight over his bones. The village behind him has been obliterated.
Martin gets out of the lorry and walks over to him. Martin offers him some water from his canteen. The old man takes the canteen, greedily tips it back, then returns it with a nod of thanks.
‘C’est ma maison.’ The old man points across the street at the charred skeleton of a building. The roof has been blown off and most of the front has caved in. The only sign of habitation is a pair of broken green shutters hanging from a twisted hinge on the first floor. ‘That’s my house.’ The old man wipes his mouth with the dusty sleeve of his jacket. ‘Je suis né ici. I was born here.’ His chin starts to quiver. ‘I begged my wife to leave. But she wouldn’t hear of it.’ His voice cracks. Martin rubs him on the shoulder, fighting back his own tears. ‘Now, I have no one.’
Martin pats him on the shoulder again, then they drive on to their billet in silence: a small, brick house at the back of the main square. Martin stumbles up the stairs and finds a bedroom, drops his pack on the floor, pulls off his greatcoat, and falls onto the bed. It’s the first proper bed he has slept in for nearly two weeks. There is a blue and white coverlet; plump down pillows. A clock ticks on the bedside table. He closes his eyes, and in moments a dream is carrying him back in time, to Cornwall. The hotel where he and Nancy stayed. He is in a different bed, listening to the steady roar of the sea, tossing and turning as he imagines her only yards away in her room. Perhaps he should have gone to her room? Ten paces and he would have been with her.
A hammering at the door rouses him. A runner has fresh orders: the battalion is to be ready to move out again at an hour’s notice. For Chrissake, Martin groans, when are we going to stop marching? Angrily, he gets up and splashes cold water on his face from a basin on the chest of drawers. He stares into the mirror. The man staring back at him is barely recognizable from the fresh-faced Oxford undergraduate who joined the battalion almost a year ago. His hair is unkempt and matted with dirt. His face is haggard and covered in unruly stubble, with dark, purple shadows under his eyes. He has not had a good night’s sleep in ten days.
He splashes more water on his face, then stumbles downstairs. The dixies, as the mobile field kitchens are known, have been set up in the main square to prepare breakfasts for the men. The smell of smoke drifts across the village. The quartermaster has managed to scrounge some sides of bacon and a cache of eggs. Martin takes his mess tin and a mug of tea and sits with his back against a wrought iron fence. The sun has just risen out of a bank of red clouds, warming the air and filling the square with light. Sparrows chirrup in the branches above his head. A cloud of midges hovers in the air. In a few weeks he will be home, with Nancy, sitting in the garden at Whichert House.
After breakfast, he joins the company commanders for orders at the battalion’s temporary HQ, a half-bombed-out inn on what remains of Nomain’s main street. ‘Good morning, gentlemen.’ Heyworth clears his throat. His face is clean shaven, his uniform immaculate, Martin notices, with a tinge of resentment. ‘I trust you had a good night’s sleep.’ Assenting murmurs go round the room. ‘We all needed that.’ He looks round the circle of men. ‘And I have more good news. We are being pulled back, with the rest of the brigade, into reserve.’ He points the tip of his swagger stick at the battlefield map open on the easel in front of him. ‘To Calais.’
An excited wave of pleasure animates the room, like a current of electricity, mixed with a feeling of frustration. After nearly six months training in England and the same amount in France, they have barely seen action. It’s true, their presence at the Escaut Canal was crucial in holding back the Germans. But the Ox and Bucks were in reserve and didn’t actually do any fighting. What have they achieved?
Yet the thought of being home, safe with their loved ones, outweighs these feelings of frustration. Martin touches his engagement ring and smiles inwardly. Others nudge each other playfully in the ribs. Heyworth clears his throat. ‘Our mission will be to help garrison the town.’ He smiles. ‘A restful task, I think you will all agree, after the buffeting of the last ten days.’
When Martin walks out into the sunshine after the meeting, his body feels lighter than it has for weeks, as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders.
‘Good news at last, eh?’ says Saunders, following him out.
Martin takes out a cigarette, lights it, then offers one to his friend. Saunders takes it, lights it, then says: ‘Calais is only twenty-two miles from England.’ He beams. ‘We could swim home!’
‘Home.’ Martin lets the word hang in air. ‘The most beautiful word in the English language.’
24 MAY 1940
The Road to Hazebrouck
Martin’s hopes of returning to England, and the woman he dreams of, are soon dashed. All day he waits for orders to ready his men for departure. But no orders come. Feeling groggy and bad-tempered after being dragged out of bed, he mooches around the battalion’s temporary HQ, drinking coffee and smoking, or trying to distract himself with a crossword from a dog-eared copy of The Times from three months ago.
Each time he thinks they are about to set off, there are last minute delays. Orders are given, then countermanded. His platoon waits, tired but eager to get going again. The news about Calais has infused everyone with new energy. But at 2 a.m., when the order is finally given for the battalion to move off, the destination has changed. Instead of Calais, they are ordered to Cassel, a medieval town two hundred kilometres from the coast.
Martin’s excitement at the prospect of seeing Nancy again is replaced by a wave of despair, aggravated by exhaustion. But despite his own feelings, he has to continue to set an example to his men. The news that they are not going to Calais has been greeted with fury. There are mutterings from Topper and several other members of the platoon about making their own way to the coast. And when the transport arrives and it becomes clear that, once again, it is woefully inadequate – meaning another night march, with no sleep – these mutterings almost become a mutiny.
Left, right. Left, right. The drumming of boots on the cobblestones drifts up to Mart
in where he sits in the cab of the Panopticon, deep in thought. Through the branches of the trees, he can see the moon. It was full only a few days ago and though now waning it is still bright. A bomber’s moon, they call it. Nancy will be asleep now, tucked up in her bed in Blythe Cottage. He imagines the moon shining through the window, her gorgeous hair spread across the pillow, her eyelids moving with the pictures flowing through her sleeping brain. Is she safe? Is she dreaming of him?
A few hours ago, he had felt that in less than twenty-four hours he would be within touching distance of Nancy, in Calais. Twenty-two short miles from her arms. Then, with a bit of luck, they would be lying under the old oak tree in Church Path Woods. Or sitting in the garden of the Royal Standard, drinking a proper, English beer, not this fizzy, French stuff. Now, his dreams have been pushed back and excitement replaced by questions that buzz around in his head, like wasps.
Why Cassel? Isn’t the whole force meant to be evacuated across the Channel? Why are we now heading for a garrison town two hundred kilometres from the coast? What are we going to be doing there? How long before we do go back to England? A few days? A week? A month?
In the last two weeks, Martin has been so busy, moving the men, digging trenches, and dodging bullets, that he has barely had a moment to imagine the future. But with the news that they were going to Calais, a clear path back to Nancy had opened up. Now, their joyful reunion has been put on indefinite hold.
He can tell from the grim silence in the cab that his men are also devastated not to be returning to their families and loved ones. And it is his job to maintain their morale. He can’t be selfish. He has to think of them. So, as they crawl west through the night on the darkened roads, he tries to put all thoughts of Nancy and home out of his mind and concentrate on the present, in preparation for whatever may lie ahead.
Their route takes them north-west towards Lille. The Panopticon is wedged in between other units fleeing towards the coast: Grenadier Guards, Worcesters, West Kent men, all in a pell-mell retreat. Left, right. Left, right. The marching men look weary and dejected. Shortly before 3 a.m., Jenkins has to slam his foot on the brakes to avoid hitting a group of soldiers. The Panopticon lurches forward, Martin has to hold on hard to avoid being thrown through the open windshield. The men in the back of the van bang angrily on the cab’s panels. The soldiers on the road turn and curse. Several are being carried on stretchers. The others stagger along, barely able to walk. Many have blood-soaked bandages wrapped around their heads or legs – the shattered ghosts of war.
‘Warwick’s men.’ Martin rolls down the window. ‘Sorry, lads.’
‘Fucking Territorials.’ A corporal with a shock of black hair sticking out of the sides of a blood-soaked bandage looks up angrily at them. His uniform is filthy, his boots are splitting apart. ‘Why aren’t you at home playing golf?’
Martin ignores the jibe. ‘Where have you come from?’ he asks him.
‘Gort Line.’ The corporal spits. ‘Fuckin’ waste of sodding time.’
Martin resents the man’s insult to the Ox and Bucks. He is tempted to remind him that in the Great War, the Ox and Bucks got more VCs than his own regiment. But the Warwick man is in such a pitiful state that his heart goes out to him. ‘Keep your spirits up, Corporal. You’ll soon be home.’
‘Home?’ The corporal points down at his boots, eyes blazing. ‘Another ten miles, and I’ll be walkin’ fucking barefoot!’
There are French troops mixed in among the British. Mangy horses pull rickety carts full of tents and blankets. Several have women in them: gypsy-looking creatures, with hooped earrings and scarves, who seem to have stepped straight off the set of Carmen. The infantrymen’s packs are hung with copper cooking pots, baguettes, vegetables. The Moroccan tirailleurs have curved knives hanging from their belts. It’s like a scene from the Napoleonic Wars.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ Cripps points at the belt of one of the Moroccans. Hanging from it is a human ear.
‘Jesus H. Christ!’ Martin grimaces. ‘Where’d he get that?’
At Bailleul, the road starts to climbs. The Panopticon’s engine grumbles as the driver double-declutches and rams it into first gear.
‘They’re signalling us to turn off, sir.’ Jenkins points ahead to a fork in the road where a military policeman is frantically directing the traffic.
The column grinds to a halt on the western outskirts of Bailleul. Below them is a flat plain, divided by irrigation ditches. Flanders fields. Back where they began. ‘Looks like the 4th Bucks are being sent on to Cassel.’ Martin scans the waiting column with his binos. ‘But we are being sent somewhere else.’ He shakes his head, angrily. ‘What the hell is going on?’
He has his answer a few moments later, when they are ordered to make for the town of Hazebrouck.
All the emotions of the last twenty-four hours boil up in Martin: the hopes of a speedy withdrawal to the coast, his visions of a reunion with Nancy, now all dashed to the ground.
He slams his hand down on the Panopticon’s dashboard, then sits slumped against the door of the cab as they trundle along a straight, flat road that tapers towards the east. On either side, the Flanders plain stretches away, intersected here and there by rows of poplars, which rise above the surrounding land, like feathers. Fields of knee-high maize ripen in the sun. A brick and timber farmhouse huddles inside a protective circle of trees, silent and deserted.
The strains and confusion of the last fortnight – and the lack of sleep – have finally taken their toll. Now, his chance of seeing Nancy again soon has been snatched away from him. A feeling of despair seeps through his body as the spire of St Eloi Church, in the centre of Hazebrouck, comes into view, like a syringe jabbed into the underbelly of the sky. His stomach churns.
25 MAY 1940
Hazebrouck, northern France
‘Good morning, gentlemen!’ Heyworth stands in front of a large map of Hazebrouck pinned to an easel on the ground floor of the Fondation Warein, an imposing nineteenth-century building that, until yesterday, had housed nuns from the order of Saint-Vincent de Paul and one hundred orphans, who fled at the news of the German advance. ‘I know you’re all tired after the exertions of the last few weeks, so I’ll try and be brief.’ He looks round the room.
All traces of the suave barrister Heyworth was before the war have vanished. His long, chiselled face is shadowed with stubble, his eyes have a fierce, hawk-like expression; the Mancunian accent he suppressed while representing wealthy clients at the Inns of Court is back with a twang. ‘Our orders are simple: to hold the town.’ He pauses for effect. ‘Until the last man standing.’
A murmur goes round the room. ‘The longer we can hold up the enemy here the more chance the rest of our troops will have to reach Calais and Dunkirk. Every hour counts. If the Germans break through, we could lose the entire British Army.’
Hazebrouck, a town about the size of Aylesbury, is a key road and rail junction on the route between Lille and Calais. Unbeknown to Martin and his men, it had also served as GCHQ, General Command Headquarters, the nerve centre of the entire British Army, where Field Marshal ‘Tiger’ Gort had dictated the movements of 300,000 men from a chateau by the cemetery.
As Heyworth talks, Martin replays the scenes of chaos as they drove into the town. Lorries frantically loaded with equipment and supplies; kitchen staff, many still in their chefs’ hats and aprons, trying to save cooking pots and food; piles of documents being thrown into a blazing fire that filled the air with acrid smoke.
Heyworth taps the map with his swagger stick. ‘Now for the disposition of our forces.’ He points at Saunders. ‘Hugh, you will take D Company to this high ground, on the north-western approach to the town, covering the road from St Omer. Your HQ will be this farmhouse.’ Heyworth taps the map again. ‘The open ground, and roads, make it ideal terrain for Panzers, so we expect the first German attack to come here. It is crucial that you hold your ground.’ Saunders looks across at Martin then nods.
Af
ter giving each company commander his orders, Heyworth scans the room, with a sombre expression. ‘Our final defensive position, our keep, will be here at the orphanage, where I will have my HQ.’ He lets the words sink in. ‘Trevor is establishing his first aid post in the cellar.’ Gibbens gives the thumbs-up. ‘Martin?’ Martin looks up, alert. ‘Your Pioneer Platoon will also be here at the orphanage.’ Martin nods. ‘I want you to get started immediately on preparing some effective roadblocks. We have inherited a few rusty French tanks.’ Several officers groan, sarcastically. ‘I don’t think they have been fired since the Great War . . . ’ More groans. ‘So you can use these as obstacles. And anything else you can beg, borrow or steal.’
Heyworth squares his shoulders and faces the men. ‘Gentlemen, we face a formidable foe: 8 Panzer Division, which has recently seen action in Poland, is one of Hitler’s crack units.’ He looks round the room. ‘And in General Kleist they possess a highly effective leader.’ He pauses. ‘It’s not going to be easy. But I am counting on the famous Ox and Bucks fighting spirit!’ Murmurs of approval and ‘hear, hears!’ go round the room. Heyworth raises his voice. ‘That fighting spirit, which our fathers and grandfathers showed so valiantly at Ypres and Passchendaele.’ Several officers bang on the table with their tin mugs. ‘In the deserts of Mesopotamia and the South African veldt.’ The drumming of mugs on the table grows louder. ‘So, let’s show them what the Ox and Bucks are made of!’
After the orders meeting, Martin sets off for the railway yard where his men are already hard at work, cutting rails to use as barricades. It’s a hot day and within a few minutes Martin has stripped to the waist. Around his head he ties a blue bandana. The occasional rumble of artillery fire floats across from the German lines.
‘Ready?’ He grips an iron rail. ‘Heave.’