Dunkirk Spirit

by Alan Pearce

  ‘Yes, I wondered about the commotion,’ said Clive. ‘Those sirens show a sadistic streak, if you want my opinion. Anybody hurt?’

  ‘Hurt?’ Barry choked. ‘Well, let’s put it this way: the dive bombers are having a field day.’

  ‘What are we doing?’ asked Clive.

  ‘Circling around her, basically. And dodging the bombs. The captain, apparently, wants to go down with his ship.’

  ‘Which ship? Not ours!’

  ‘No! The white one!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, he won’t leave her. Popeye reckons that the nurses have taken to the lifeboats and the crew are staying on board.’

  ‘Nurses?’ Clive handed Barry the shovel

  Clive gripped the rail firmly with both hands as the Marchioness heeled hard over. Instinctively, his head sank down deep into his shoulders as he braced for the explosion. He wondered if the siren were on the bomb or on the aircraft, or even both. The sound chilled the blood, leaving him feeling horribly exposed. A dull roar filled the air. The entire boat rose up and seemed to tingle; the force communicated through the soles of his feet and hands, and then came a shocking hiss as the water erupted into the sky some distance behind. Clive kept his head tight within the safety of his shoulders as the icy seawater collapsed with force all around him. He spat to clear the salt from his lips and wiped vigorously at his eyes. A heavy vapour filled the air, rich in iodine, dead fish and ozone. It caught in his throat and he began to cough, so forcefully that he felt momentarily in danger of vomiting. It seemed a lifetime before he could focus again on the white ship and the tiny boats scattered about.

  Another Stuka dropped through the sky like a giant screaming cormorant. The bomb continued to wail as the aircraft pulled sharply skyward. Clive gritted his teeth and followed its progress. The Luftwaffe evidently preferred the slow-moving lifeboats to the swifter rescue craft that ploughed erratically through the waves. The bomb, resembling the tiny point of a broken pencil, began to tumble before it hit the water. Clive’s eyes squeezed shut of their own fruition as the surface exploded. He struggled to pull them open, keen to see if the lifeboat had survived.

  Clive took a deep breath. The lifeboat had been swamped by the falling wall of solid water. No oars glistened in the fading red glow of the sun and few heads showed themselves above the gunwales. In a short span of time the tiny boat began to sink below the waves. Now Clive could see a handful of people clamouring to the raised prow. One by one they dropped slowly into the water.

  A third black Stuka came tearing down through the sky. The siren cut deep into his head. Two bursts of bright yellow erupted from its wings and the water around the sinking lifeboat began to fray. He relaxed his knees as the Marchioness climbed a particularly tall wave and came ploughing down the other side. Dark green water washed quickly across the deck, soaking his feet and sending a further shiver down his spine. He looked back out to sea. The lifeboat had gone. He searched for the bobbing heads. The Marchioness now altered course and took him closer.

  There were three heads. For an instant they disappeared below the waves. Clive made out three people huddled tightly together; the one in the centre struggling to support the others. Another siren filled the air. Clive searched the sky high above. And then, out of the corner of his eye, a Stuka came racing along, just feet above the surface. The monster tipped its wings playfully and gave a prolonged burst of yellow fire. Clive turned quickly to the bobbing heads. The sea erupted in a long line of dancing fountains. Again the Marchioness climbed a tall wave and came sliding down the other side. More cold water, more chills down the spine. The Stuka began to pull sharply up and away. He let out his breath. The three people still clung together. ‘There is a God. There is a God.’ The words ran through Clive’s mind at the same speed as the Stuka’s bullets. He watched the three in the water. And then he watched the water erupt again as the rear-gunner let out a parting burst. The Marchioness, closer now, climbed another wave and he lost sight of the swimmers. When they climbed the next wave, Clive saw just one swimmer thrashing through the water towards them, both arms working like paddlewheels.

  Clive fell deeply, instantly and inconveniently in love. The sole survivor of the lifeboat had red hair, was in her early twenties, and spoke with a wonderfully soft Edinburgh accent, as smooth as cream and a perfect compliment to her complexion.

  Clive quickly slipped off his tweed jacket and draped it around her quivering shoulders. Popeye held her by the waist as they lowered her to the wooden deck.

  ‘The rotters!’ she sobbed. ‘The rotten shits!’ Clive struggled not to clasp her tightly in his arms. ‘Those poor wee girls! What had they done?’ She turned her large green eyes full on Clive and looked imploringly into his own. In that instant, his heart stopped. How could anybody take such lovely creatures out of this world? He took her hand, noticing the absence of any ring, and gave it a gentle squeeze before repeatedly stroking his fingers over hers. They were cold and wet and as small as a child’s.

  ‘Cigarette?’ he asked, his voice croaking.

  She nodded and smiled.

  Clive reluctantly let go of the hand and lent forward. ‘Excuse me.’ He tapped at the pockets of his jacket mindful of her curves beneath until he found the tin of Wills Gold Flake. He lit two and placed one between her red lips.

  ‘Damn!’ thought Clive. ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’

  20:30 Sunday 2 June 1940.

  Bray, France

  Commander Hector Babbington held the Webley .38 in his hands. Lesser men, having spent ten hours confronting their greatest fear, might have blown their brains out by now. The Commander was still undecided. Only two bottles of Moët remained: one he was fully prepared to drink in any case; the other he had initially reserved to take home to Babs.

  He snapped the revolver shut and opened his eyes. Up above, the sun was slowly setting and the few beams of light that entered the cellar were fading to grey as they traversed the fallen lintels and shattered masonry. If he was going to do it, he would wait until dark. He picked up the penultimate bottle and peeled away the thin foil.

  There was also the question of how. In films, people wanting to blow their brains out often place the barrel to their temple. This method takes a very steady hand if the intention is to do it first shot. A more practical method is to point the pistol up into the soft fleshy part beneath the chin and allow the bullet to enter the brain that way. He could, of course, place the barrel in his mouth and point up through the pallet. But the more he thought about this last method, the more he could visualise himself; his face in death stretched into a tortuous mask. He did not want to look like Edward Munch’s The Scream. And should he keep his helmet on or take it off?

  The Commander held the cork firmly in his left hand and slowly twisted the bottle, and then he paused. ‘Bugger it!’ he thought. ‘I’m not at home now.’ He gave the bottle a tiny shake and then sent the cork ricocheting around the remains of the room. It came to sudden halt with a dull dong, hitting the side of an upturned enamel bath that had fallen in all probability from the top floor. ‘Dong!’ he thought. ‘Dong!’

  ‘Well, hello little Sago! I thought you’d gone and abandoned me!’ Binky’s heart turned to lead. Little Sago squeezed out of the tunnel. There was the note, still threaded through the collar. ‘Bugger!’

  Binky lowered himself to the floor, hardly minding the rubble that pressed into his flesh. ‘Come here you little scallywag!’

  Sago, having sensed the Commander’s seeming disappointment, suddenly burst into a broad grin. His tongue lapped quickly in and out. In a single bound, the little dog landed on his lap and rubbed raw sewage over his mackintosh.

  ‘You’re a piss poor messenger, I’ll tell you that for nothing,’ he told the dog. ‘What have you been doing all day? Why haven’t you made lots of friends?’

  Little Sago appeared to nod.

  ‘Oh, you have, have you? You’ve made lots of friends?’

  Yes, nodded Sago again.
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  The Commander suddenly tired of the game and dropped the silly voice. ‘Why didn’t you bring them back here then?’ For a terrible instant he found his hand caressing the grip of his Webley. He lifted himself to his knees and crawled back to his open bottle beside the bath.

  ‘Dong! Dong! Dong!’

  The explosion when it came took the Commander so completely by surprise that a small quantity of urine trickled into his underpants. He did not, however, spill a single drop of the champagne. He even had the presence of mind to shield the one unopened bottle with his body the very instant that the flash lit up the cellar. The actual explosion did a considerable amount of damage to the one remaining portion of ceiling and the Commander and Sago were lucky to escape injury by sitting directly beside the bathtub.

  In all, it took a full ten minutes for the sappers to clear a sufficiently large tunnel for the Commander. He poked his head out through the broken boards of the shop’s ground floor and blinked like a mole.

  ‘Up you come, chum!’ A burly Royal Engineer sergeant grasped Binky’s wrist and tugged him out of the hole. ‘We got your note,’ he told him. ‘I assume you got ours!’

  ‘What?’ asked Binky. He looked down at the happy little dog.

  ‘We thought it was our ticket home!’ laughed a lance corporal, busy rolling up fuse cord and tucking it into a satchel. ‘That dog’s bloomin’ priceless! You should hang on to him.’

  The sergeant scanned the Commander for signs of rank and, seeing none, was assured of his seniority. He snapped to attention and delivered a salute as solid as a railway signal.

  ‘I shouldn’t hang about, sir. The Jerries are just over there.’ He nodded down the street.

  ‘You haven’t got a cigarette, have you?’ asked Binky.

  21:10 Sunday 2 June 1940.

  East Mole, Dunkirk, France

  ‘Our duty in this country is plain. We must make good our losses and we must win this war. To do that we must profit by the lessons of this battle. Brave hearts alone cannot stand up against steel. We need more planes, more tanks, more guns. The people of this country must work as never before. We must show the same qualities, the same discipline, and the same self-sacrifice at home as the British Expeditionary Force have shown in the field. Their spirit must be our banner, their sacrifice our spur.’

  That was the Right Honourable Anthony Eden, M.P., Secretary of State for War.

  The ship’s steel decking groaned underfoot as her twin screws surged. Over the side, the black water was suddenly sucked away from the wooden piles, exposing the barnacles, and replaced by a bubbling cauldron. Cragg heard the mechanical clank of the fo’c’sle windlass as it gripped the headropes and drew HMS Cameron towards the Mole.

  Soapy spun his wheel, lifting the sharp barrel of the 20mm over the heads of the men lining the frail wooden structure. There came a groan of steel against timber and concrete. Cragg, Nipper and Soapy stared.

  Although the pier was narrow, and could only accommodate five men abreast, a single line of soldiers, men of the Green Howards, stood at intervals with bayonets fixed.

  ‘What are they for, then?’ asked Soapy.

  Nipper shrugged.

  ‘Keep the Frogs in order, I guess,’ put in Cragg.

  ‘I don’t see any Frogs,’ said Soapy. He scanned the long line of weary and shattered men. ‘And this lot look far too knackered to give trouble.’

  The seamen ran gangways across to the jetty and quickly men began to shuffle aboard. Gunfire, much closer now than ever before, came from the direction of the flaming town and Cragg and his crew stood tense, their nerves stretched as if on tenterhooks. He looked up into the evening sky and flexed his trigger hand, feeling the knuckles crack in sequence.

  ‘Oy! Keep moving,’ he called to the troops that now began to clog the companionway. ‘You can’t swing a bloody cat here! Come on! Give us some bloody elbow room. Move!’

  Soon there was nowhere else to move to and Cragg was obliged to let the troops drop where they stood. The deck was quickly strewn with men out for the count.

  Cragg turned in his harness. ‘And no bloody smoking! Put that light out!’

  A corporal, Cragg’s equivalent in rank, curled his lip. ‘Give it a rest, pal,’ he sneered. ‘The whole town’s on fucking fire and you’re worried about one bloody match!’

  ‘Give us a puff, then.’ Cragg lent backwards in the harness and stretched out a hand. The corporal drew hard on his cigarette and handed it across. Both men smiled.

  ‘I didn’t think you lot were coming back,’ said the corporal. He cradled a well-worn Lewis gun in one arm, its butt on the deck. ‘Talk about skin of the teeth! Not ten minutes ago we was popping off Jerries, so I wouldn’t hang about.’

  ‘Ain’t up to me, mate.’ Cragg passed the hot butt over to Nipper who took a grateful toke, the nicotine instantly making his head swim.

  ‘How far are they, then?’ asked Soapy, the only non-smoker in the gun crew.

  ‘Far?’ asked the corporal. ‘They ain’t far.’ He laughed. ‘They’re bloody here!’

  Cameron’s bells clattered for a full minute. The bosun’s pipe shrilled its unnecessary call of hands to stations and Gordon, the ship’s first officer, peered over the side. The telegraph bells rang on the bridge and their faint answer came up the pipes from the engine room. The tall tower of the town hall flickered in the flames. He looked across at the Skipper who, in turn, nodded. HMS Cameron slipped cautiously away from the Mole.

  ‘Wreck on the port bow!’ called the lookout.

  ‘Starboard five,’ called Gordon into the pipes. The protruding mast of a sunken trawler passed within feet of the ship’s side. ‘Half astern both!’

  Less than a mile north of Dunkirk’s harbour entrance lay another bombed wreck: HMS Mosquito, a former Yangtze river gunboat a long way from China, her upper-works above water.

  ‘Signal from the wreck, sir!’ called a lookout. ‘Gibberish to me, sir!’ The destroyer was making a good twenty knots as she backed away from the congestion.

  ‘Room for a few more, sir?’ asked Gordon.

  ‘Why not.’

  Cameron came to a swift and turbulent halt; she edged her sharp bows alongside the gunboat. Gordon struggled to keep her steady in the falling tide. Three men, artillery officers, clambered their way across the boat’s contorted deck.

  ‘Move lively!’ shouted Gordon.

  The men hesitated and then hopped across.

  ‘Full speed astern,’ called Gordon. ‘Port twenty. Full ahead!’

  Cameron came to a sudden halt, the sea erupting in a bubbling burst of foam astern, the deckplates groaned, and then she surged ahead. A sudden breeze kicked up, sending warm smoke-filled air from the town as it burned in the twilight.

  ‘Home,’ said the Skipper softly. ‘Take us home, Number One. I think now we can finally call it quits.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  22:05 Sunday 2 June 1940.

  Bray Dunes, France

  ‘Hey, you! Soldier!’ called Commander Babbington. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Catching my breath? All right?’

  ‘No, it’s not bloody all right,’ called back the Commander. He stepped briskly up the sand towards the dunes and the small knot of men. ‘On your feet! You’d better pull your damn finger out if you want to get home.’

  ‘We’re not too late then, sir?’ asked another man sprawled across the ground, his arms in crucifixion. He raised his head to watch the Commander.

  ‘On your feet!’ he shouted. ‘Form up, form up. That’s it. Attention! Shoulders back, chest out!’

  The Commander raised an arm and pointed along the strand towards the port. ‘Left turn! By the front, at the double, quick march!’ He watched them trot along the sand. ‘And don’t stop until you get there!’

  Commander Babbington turned and looked back out to sea. A bright searchlight continued to play across the surface, highlighting the flotsam and jetsam of the evacuation. Slowly h
e began the long walk to the water’s edge. The beach lay littered. An odd sensation washed over him. Hector Babbington: the last man at the party, obliged to clear up before heading to bed. He watched the searchlight illuminate the open bridge of the grounded minesweeper. And then he heard the call.

  ‘Is anybody there? Is anybody there?’

  ‘I am,’ thought Binky.

  ‘Is anybody there? Is anybody there?’

  ‘Over here!’ he called. The Commander waved both arms above his head. The light tore away from HMS Devonia and raced across the flickering surface of the sea. Suddenly, he was dazzled.

  ‘Ahoy!’ called a voice.

  The Commander shielded his eyes. ‘Ahoy there!’

  The motor torpedo boat opened her throttle. ‘Any more for the Skylark?’ called the voice.

  Binky wanted to laugh. It was becoming an old and rather tired joke. ‘Got room for a little one?’ he called back.

  ‘We can’t come in any closer. You’ll have to swim out!’

  ‘Bugger!’ said Binky to himself. And then he called aloud: ‘I can’t bloody swim!’

  He heard the voice for a final time. ‘Then goodnight, sweetheart. Happy dreams!’

  The MTB roared, her bows lifted out of the water, and away she went.

  23:45 Sunday 2 June 1940.

  HM Dockyard, Dover, Kent

  ‘Well, thank God for that!’ The Skipper took the steaming mug of cocoa from Francisco’s hand and blew across the surface. He savoured the rich, heady aroma of rum. ‘Do you know,’ he said to Gordon. ‘I counted just fifteen stretchers coming on board but I counted fifty going ashore.’