‘I can’t see how the lieutenant can use that map,’ said Drummond after one of Farrish’s brief halts. ‘It’s too dark and, anyway, I had a peek at it once before. It’s the whole of northern France. The scale’s way too large.’
‘I just hope we’re going in the right direction,’ said Fletcher.
‘We are,’ said Spears behind them.
‘How do you know, Sarge?’ asked Drummond.
‘Because Dunkirk is north-north-east of Cassel and that’s the way we’ve been headed.’ He pointed out the North Star up in the sky. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything in training, Charlie?’
‘Not that, Sarge.’
‘What do we do when there’s cloud, Sarge,’ asked Hebden, ‘and we can’t see the stars?’
‘We use my compass.’
The men laughed.
They walked on, one step after another. Drummond’s blister was getting worse, but he was no longer the only one suffering from sore feet – many of the others were too. Hawke’s feet were not rubbing, but his legs were beginning to ache once more and his whole body itched. And his shoulder hurt, the straps of his webbing rubbing painfully where he had fallen from the tank. He was hungry too. Thoughts of food kept running through his mind. He tried to dismiss them but an image of his family sitting down together and eating the Sunday roast kept creeping back into his mind no matter how hard he tried to banish it: the smell of hot chicken, his mother’s rich gravy and then a pudding of baked apples smothered in raisins and melted syrup. His stomach groaned painfully, but they had all finished their rations – Hawke had just two hard tack biscuits left.
He was still struggling to banish such thoughts as they crossed a road near a farmhouse. His vigilance of earlier had gone. The world seemed so quiet, so peaceful. On the other side of the road was an open field of young corn, and away to the left another small wood. They marched on, in silence, but with the sound of their boots crunching against the thick shoots of green corn. A dog barked from the direction of the farm and then, faintly, but quite distinctly, Hawke heard voices. He froze immediately.
‘What is it?’ hissed Spears.
‘Voices, Sarge – I thought I heard voices.’
‘Get down!’ said Spears, now running along their line towards Farrish.
Hawke dropped to the ground as a machine gun suddenly opened fire from somewhere near the farm. Several men near the front cried out as the scythe of lethal fire cut into them. Hawke thought he saw Spears fall and, his heart racing, he began crawling along through the corn. Another burst of fire, bullets whipping over their heads. One man was groaning, and another breathing heavily, each breath a rasping gurgle.
‘Sarge! Sarge!’ whispered Hawke. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. Just start moving towards the wood. Tell the rest of the men – get moving towards the wood. Now, and as quietly as possible.’
‘Yes, Sarge,’ said Hawke. He crawled back down the line of prostrate men. ‘Sarge says we’re to make for the wood,’ he whispered. ‘Make for the wood.’
‘Who’s been hit?’ whispered Hebden.
‘Not sure,’ Hawke told him. ‘Not the sarge, though.’
‘Mr Farrish was up front,’ said Hebden. ‘Hope he’s all right.’
But Lieutenant Farrish was far from all right, as Spears was keenly aware. Three men had been killed: two of the stretcher bearers and Grimshaw. But the lieutenant would not be alive much longer. Spears also had another problem on his hands. He had told Hawke that he was all right. He had lied. A bullet had caught him in his left arm. At the moment, he felt no pain, only a lot of blood, and he had no idea how bad it was, but the job of reaching Dunkirk was formidable enough without carrying a wound. He cursed and crawled towards Farrish.
‘Sir,’ he whispered. ‘Sir.’
‘Spears,’ Farrish rasped, his voice thick with blood.
‘We’ll get you out, sir,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right.’
‘No,’ gurgled Farrish. ‘I’m done for.’ He tried to reach something. ‘My map,’ he spluttered. ‘Take my map.’
Spears took it from the large pocket on the front of his trousers.
‘I’m sorry,’ rasped Farrish. ‘I’ve not been much good. Been far too dependent on you, Spears.’
‘No, sir, you’re a grand platoon commander. One of the best I’ve known.’
‘Really? Do you mean that?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Spears.
Farrish’s breathing grew heavier, more laboured. ‘What a place to die,’ he said. ‘I had such hopes.’ He sighed, then spluttered.
‘All right, sir,’ said Spears. ‘You take it easy.’ In the faint starlight he could see the whites of Farrish’s eyes. The lieutenant looked at him, gasped again, then his head fell back.
‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ mouthed Spears to himself. He felt for Farrish’s dog-tags and tugged hard at the string so that it snapped, then took the lieutenant’s Webley revolver and spare rounds and put them in his pack. A pistol would be all he could manage from now on. From the farm, he could hear voices, then there was another burst of machine gun, followed by the hiss of a flare.
Spears scrambled to his feet and ran, then as the flare burst, crackling as it began its slow descent, he dived, just yards from the edge of the wood, more machine-gun fire following him. Bullets fizzed into the trees and branches beyond.
‘Sarge!’ he heard Hawke whisper loudly a few yards to his left. ‘Sarge! We’re over here!’ For the first time since Hawke had first joined the company, Spears was glad to hear his voice.
27
TALKING WITH THE ENEMY
It was only at first light, and having pushed on further north without further incident, that Hawke realized Spears had been wounded. The sergeant looked pale, even in the early morning light, and from the state of his battle dress it looked as though he had lost a fair amount of blood.
‘Blimey, Sarge,’ said McLaren as they emerged from a wood and began walking down a sunken track. ‘What the hell happened to your arm?’
‘Got caught by one of those Jerry bullets,’ muttered Spears. He had tied a field dressing around it, but the thin gauze was now dark with dried and fresher blood. ‘We needed to press on,’ he added. ‘Get away from that place.’
‘That needs seeing to,’ said Matherson.
‘We need to find a place to lie up for the day first,’ said Spears. He looked at his wristwatch. ‘We’ve got another twenty minutes before sunrise.’
‘What about trying to find a barn?’ said McLaren. ‘There’s a farm up ahead. It might be deserted.’
‘We’d be better off in a wood,’ said Spears.
‘Let’s have a look,’ said McLaren. ‘If there’s any sign of life, we’ll move on to the next wood we see.’
But there were signs of life: a barking dog, chickens pecking in the yard, cattle that seemed in no way distressed, and an open window on the first floor.
‘Food, Sarge,’ whispered McLaren, pointing towards the chickens.
‘No, Sid,’ said Spears. ‘Too risky.’
So they kept walking, halting not in a wood, but among the long grass beneath a plantation of poplars that ran alongside a narrow dyke. There was no track leading to it, while the nearest road was some way away to their right.
‘What about picquets?’ McLaren asked Spears as the sergeant collapsed on the soft ground, his head against the base of a tall, straight poplar.
Spears sighed. ‘Not much point really. If anyone catches us here, there’s nowhere to escape to, is there?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Might as well try to get some sleep.’
‘Not before I’ve looked at your arm,’ said Matherson.
Hawke watched as Spears carefully took off his battle blouse, and then his shirt, then let Matherson carefully undo the sodden bandage. Spears grimaced with pain.
‘What a mess
,’ muttered Matherson, who took out another field dressing from his pack and sluicing it in water, began to try and clean the wound.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ gasped Spears.
‘I may not be a doctor,’ retorted Matherson, ‘but I am a medical orderly. We are given plenty of training, you know.’
The bullet, it seemed, had missed the bone in his upper arm, but had passed right through the muscle, taking with it a chunk of flesh and leaving a bloody mess. Stitches were needed.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t have any morphine left,’ said Matherson, ‘but it needs doing, otherwise it won’t be able to heal and you’ll be at further risk of infection.’
Spears took his hip flask from his pocket and drank the rest of the brandy.
‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
Wrapping a tight tourniquet round the top of Spears’s arm, Matherson began the surgery, Spears clenching his teeth tightly with the pain. When it was done, and the newly closed wound smothered in antiseptic gentian-violet cream, Matherson bandaged the arm with fresh dressings, then made a sling and, after cutting holes in both Spears’s shirt and battle blouse, allowed him to dress once more.
‘Thank you, Matherson,’ gasped Spears when it was done.
‘Let’s hope that will last until you get some proper help,’ Matherson replied. ‘But you’d do well to get as much rest as you can today. We’re relying on you, Sarge. Now that the lieutenant’s dead we’re going to need you to lead us.’
The day passed without incident but slowly – too slowly as far as Hawke was concerned. He’d slept a little in the morning but then had woken, consumed once more with hunger. Apart from his biscuits, he’d not eaten a thing for the best part of thirty-six hours. Nor was he alone in struggling to contain his hunger. All the men were feeling the pain in their stomachs.
Along the road, away to their right, they saw traffic moving, but who and what it was they could not tell with the naked eye. The only man with field glasses was Spears, but he had been asleep. No one wanted to risk disturbing him. Overhead, enemy planes had passed regularly and away to the north they heard the dull boom of guns and of bombs and shells exploding. That was something at least. The battle was not over yet.
In the late afternoon, he returned once more to his unfinished letter home. We are now in open country, he wrote, which is nice, but completely flat. You can see for miles on a clear day – it’s very different from Yorkshire. I am doing fine and so is Tom, although he has hurt his arm. He seems to be all right, though. He paused, struck by the ridiculousness of what he had written. He chuckled to himself.
‘What are you laughing about?’ Hebden asked him.
‘If only my family really knew,’ he said. ‘All I’ve done is told them that I am fine and then written about the countryside. It reads more like I’m on a walking tour rather than in the middle of a war.’
‘We are in a way,’ said Hebden. ‘A walking tour of Flanders.’ He smiled to himself then said out loud, ‘Dear Mother and Father, Flanders is a perfectly pleasant part of the world to look at, although the accommodation is not as comfortable as one might have expected. Our party is suffering from an infestation of lice, which is making us scratch like the devil, and I fear our footwear is perhaps not ideal for the long miles we have already walked.’
‘You can say that again,’ muttered Drummond, who had taken off his boots and whose ruddy feet looked swollen and livid with blisters.
‘Nor have we always had the best reception at the places we have visited,’ Hebden continued, ‘while the general supply of food has also been disappointing. I shall certainly be complaining to Messrs Thomas Cook and Son on my return.’
‘Damn you, Bert,’ groaned McLaren. ‘I’d just managed to stop thinking about food and now you start up again.’
‘Sorry, Sid, but I must finish my letter home. However, we are certainly enjoying seeing this wonderful part of northern France by night and getting to know some of its many woods and plantations well by day. Best love, Bert.’
‘My letter is pretty much like that,’ said Hawke. He thought for a moment, then remembered what Hebden had suggested a few days before. Folding the letter and putting it at the back of the pad, he turned to a clean sheet and began to write.
I can’t believe Lieutenant Farrish has been killed. I never really knew him that well, but he seemed like a good sort and was always fair and led by example. Nor was he too proud – everyone knew he leaned heavily on Tom who has by far the most experience in the platoon. We just had to leave him in the field where we were caught – him and three others. I hope Jerry gives them a proper burial. No one talks any more about whether we will or won’t reach Dunkirk. We’re all hoping we will, but it’s not a good idea to think ahead too much. I’m just taking each minute and each hour as it comes. Hoping for the best. Thank God Tom is all right. It’s a nasty wound, but I think he will be fine. It was a stroke of luck picking up Matherson like that.
He paused a moment, thinking. Above in the trees, a bird was singing: a strange, almost haunting whistle, followed by a small flourish of song, then that eerie whistle again.
‘What kind of bird is that?’ he asked.
Lying beside him, his hands behind his head, Hebden smiled. ‘That’s a nightingale, that is. Lovely sound, isn’t it.’
‘Yes, but sad, somehow.’
‘Some folk think they’re singing a lament,’ he said.
‘Maybe that’s true,’ said McLaren. ‘Maybe he’s singing it for Mr Farrish and all the other lads we’ve lost.’
‘Maybe,’ said Hebden, ‘but the nightingale’s always been lucky for me. First time I heard it, I got picked for the village team the next day. Another time I heard him, I kissed Elsie Addison that very night.’
They all laughed. Hebden sighed. ‘She were lovely. A rose. An absolute rose, she was.’
‘What happened to her?’ asked Drummond.
‘Well, there’s a tragedy.’
‘What?’
‘She decided she preferred Stan Wilkinson instead. Near broke my heart.’
‘Poor Bert,’ said McLaren with mock sincerity.
‘Ah, well. That little chap singing above us has cheered me up.’ He grinned.
Hawke listened again.
There’s a bird singing above us, he scribbled. Bert says it’s a nightingale and he should know, living on a farm all his life. He says it’s lucky. I hope he’s right. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling he might be. We’ve made it this far. Another night, maybe two, and Tom reckons we might make Dunkirk. In Cassel it sometimes seemed impossible to think we would ever get away. But we did and we can make Dunkirk too. I know we can.
That night they waited until it was dark. The countryside around was now so flat that there were fewer folds in the land. The sunken tracks and the softly undulating ground around Cassel had gone, replaced by endless level fields, a few villages and farmsteads, and long, straight dykes and streams.
They continued north, at first struggling to adjust to the darkness. With plenty of cloud, and no stars to guide them, the only light came from the moon, which was also frequently hidden by cloud. However, slowly they adjusted. As Spears pointed out, it was never pitch dark at night, not in the countryside.
They were not the only men moving that night. A little way from the road they paused to watch a column of horse-drawn artillery that was moving forward, the occasional braying of the horses and the gentle squeak and rumble of wheels quite distinct on the still night air. They saw the guns too, barrels pointing behind them.
‘I think they might be French, Sarge,’ said McLaren.
‘Really?’ said Spears.
‘Jerry doesn’t have horse-drawn artillery, I’m sure he doesn’t. They’ve got all the M/T they could wish for.’
‘Certainly the lads we saw at Cassel seemed to,’ agreed Spears. ‘All right – let
’s take a closer look, then. Anyone speak French?’
No one did. ‘I’ll go,’ said Spears, getting to his feet. ‘You lot wait here.’
‘Sarge,’ said Hawke, ‘what if they’re not French?’
‘It’s a risk worth taking. If they are, it means we’ve probably crossed back over Allied lines. And that means we can use the roads and get to Dunkirk quicker.’
Spears got to his feet. His arm still hurt like hell and he had a splitting headache, but he knew his wound might easily have been much worse. Really, he’d been lucky. And maybe that nightingale had been a good omen. He preferred not to read into things too much – what would be, would be – but his yearning to get back home, to see Maddie once more, was so strong, he was prepared to take any sign of hope and grab it greedily with both hands.
Leaving his helmet behind, he moved up calmly to the road and then stepped in alongside some troops marching on foot beside the wagons. His intention had been to walk with them and listen, then act accordingly, but no one spoke at all, and Spears was conscious that every step was taking him further from the rest of the men.
Eventually he coughed loudly and the man next to him said something, not in French, but German, and as he spoke the moon slipped out from behind a cloud and Spears saw the familiar shape of the German helmet and even the faint contours of the man’s face. Spears felt his body tense, but no matter how much he wanted to turn and run he knew that would be the worst thing he could do.
Instead he murmured, ‘Ja, ja,’ softly, and carried on walking a few yards beside the man. It must have been a reasonable response, because the German said no more, but just kept walking onwards. Lessening his pace, Spears allowed himself to fall behind and then, when the moon disappeared again behind the cloud, he quickly sidestepped into the field and ran back to the others.
‘They’re not French,’ he said. ‘They’re German. I’ve just been talking with the enemy. Fortunately, they must be even more dog-tired than we are because they didn’t bat an eye.’
‘Told you that nightingale was lucky,’ said Hebden.
Dunkirk Page 24