Right and Glory

by Right

  ‘Right,’ Sykes said, when the stretcher came to rest on the ground. ‘Two things. First, we’re well clear of Eben Emael now, so I think this is as far as we need to go with this stretcher. Second, Dawson, it’s time the mountain came to Mohammed, rather than the other way around.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The car, Dawson, the car. Instead of us walking to the car, why don’t you walk to the car and bring it here? You’ve still got the rotor arm, I hope? And you do remember where we left it?’

  Dawson grinned. ‘That’s why you’re an officer, sir, and I’m not,’ he said. ‘You’ll be OK here for a few minutes?’

  Sykes nodded. ‘I have my very battered Webley revolver to keep the German hordes at bay.’

  ‘And you won’t let the big Belgie slope off, just in case the car’s been stolen or the Jerries have dropped a bomb on it or something, and we have to leg it?’

  ‘Of course not. Take your Lee-Enfield, just in case you run into any trouble. Don’t hang around, Dawson. We really do need to get out of here.’

  Dawson removed the Red Cross vest – carrying a rifle while wearing that didn’t seem to be a good idea – took the weapon and slung it on his shoulder. He paused for a few seconds, getting his bearings and trying to identify the hill from which they’d watched the German attack on the fort, what seemed like days, rather than just hours, ago. Then he set off confidently enough.

  The hill was a fairly distinctive landmark in the generally level terrain, and was only about three hundred yards away. He covered the ground in a few minutes, and walked around the side of the hill to where Sykes had told him to park the staff car.

  The good news was that the small car – it was a Hillman, painted in two shades of camouflage green – was exactly where they’d left it. The not so good news was that it was surrounded by about half a dozen Belgian soldiers. One of them was actually in the driver’s seat, while another was poking about under the bonnet. They were trying to steal it, which Dawson didn’t blame them for. But they weren’t going to be successful. He would see to that.

  He unslung the Lee-Enfield from his shoulder, checked it was loaded with the safety catch on, and walked towards the group of soldiers. None of them spotted him until he was about twenty yards away.

  He stopped where he was, the rifle in his hands pointing slightly over to the left, not at any member of the group – the Belgians were, after all, supposed to be on the same side as the British – but close enough that he would be able to swing the muzzle around in an instant.

  ‘My car,’ Dawson said loudly, pointing at the staff car with his right hand and then making a kind of shooing gesture before gripping the stock of the rifle again. ‘You go away, now.’

  He had no idea whether any of the men in front of him spoke English, so he did what the British have always done when they’ve found themselves in foreign fields – he spoke simple sentences in a near-shout, as if the volume alone would somehow penetrate their non-English brains and allow them to grasp the meaning of his words.

  The Belgian troops turned to face him, moving away from the car, but the man in the driver’s seat stayed where he was. There were five soldiers, Dawson now realized, and two of them had Mauser rifles on their shoulders. The other three appeared to be unarmed.

  ‘Go away. Hop it,’ Dawson shouted, watching the two armed soldiers very carefully, but neither showed any inclination to unsling his rifle.

  He very deliberately clicked the safety catch of his Lee-Enfield into the ‘off’ position, readying the weapon to fire, making sure the Belgians saw what he was doing.

  That seemed almost to act as a catalyst, and the four soldiers standing outside the car began to walk slowly away.

  Dawson watched them as they moved off, making sure the two Mausers stayed in view and on the shoulders of the soldiers carrying them, then walked forwards to the car when he was certain they were no threat.

  The fifth soldier was still sitting in the driver’s seat, one hand holding the steering wheel, watching Dawson as he approached.

  ‘You. Out,’ Dawson snapped, keeping his commands simple. He stopped beside the car door.

  The Belgian grinned at him. ‘This your car,’ he said, in workable English, ‘but now I think my car.’ He produced a black semi-automatic pistol from his lap and pointed it straight at Dawson.

  Dawson glanced to his right to see that the other four soldiers had stopped about fifty or sixty yards away and were watching expectantly.

  In his past, Dawson had been involved in various brawls – he had worked in a tough industry as a quarry and mining engineer, and fights were not uncommon – and the one thing he’d learnt was that if you were going to fight, you didn’t talk about it, you just got on with it.

  ‘Right,’ he said and, with a casual grace that belied his size, he changed his grip on the Lee-Enfield and swung it, butt-first, towards the Belgian soldier sitting in the car.

  The man saw what was happening, but he couldn’t duck because of the seat. He tried to twist away, but it did him no good. The steel plate on the butt of the rifle caught him on the side of the head and he flopped forwards onto the steering wheel, unconscious, the pistol tumbling from his grasp.

  Dawson leant the rifle against the side of the car, opened the door and dragged out the unconscious man, dropping him on the ground a few feet away. He glanced over towards the other Belgian soldiers, but they had already drifted away.

  He checked nothing had been tampered with in the engine compartment, and pulled the rotor arm out of one of his pouches. Military vehicles of the time didn’t usually have keys, the ignition being turned on with a simple switch on the dashboard, and Dawson had removed the rotor arm from the distributor to prevent the vehicle being driven away. He’d also changed the order of the plug leads as a further precaution. He replaced the rotor arm, connected the leads correctly, then closed the bonnet and started the vehicle.

  He drove away, his Lee-Enfield, the safety catch now back on, resting on the passenger seat beside him. The Belgian’s pistol – according to the markings on the side it was a FN1910 – was tucked away inside his battledress. Having an extra weapon wasn’t a bad idea, bearing in mind where they were and what was happening around then.

  Chapter 15

  10 May 1940

  Eastern Belgium

  ‘You took your time,’ Sykes complained, when Dawson finally drew the staff car to a stop beside the stretcher, switched off the engine and climbed out.

  ‘It was a bit further away than I thought, and I had to explain the facts of life to a bunch of Belgians trying to nick it.’

  ‘You didn’t kill them, I hope.’

  Dawson shook his head. ‘No. One of them is probably still asleep. He’ll have a blinder of a headache when he wakes up, but that’s all.’

  Assisted by the Belgian soldier, he helped Sykes stand up. Between them, they half-carried him to the passenger side of the staff car and settled him into the seat. The major would be sitting on his injured thigh, but there wasn’t anything they could do about that. The staff car had seats for four people but only two doors, and getting onto the bench seat at the back was awkward for somebody fully mobile. Manoeuvring Sykes onto it would have been difficult, and getting him out worse, because of his injury, and the front seat seemed to both of them to be a far better option.

  The major settled back in the seat with a sigh – it was a lot more comfortable in the car than the stretcher had been – and Dawson draped the sheet over his legs and closed the door. Sykes’s trousers had been cut off him by the medical staff at Fort Eben Emael, and he was wearing a pair of Belgian officer’s trousers that were a very poor fit, being much too big. Both of them had clothes in their kitbags locked in the boot of the staff car, but changing was a very low priority.

  Sykes motioned for the Belgian soldier to approach him, and spoke to the man for a minute or so in French. The soldier shook his hand, and then Dawson’s, removed the jacket with the red cross on it and walked awa
y.

  Meanwhile, Dawson had swiftly sliced through the knots in the ropes holding his makeshift shelf in place under the wood and canvas stretcher. He lifted up the stretcher, folded it and slid it onto the rear seat of the staff car, because there was a possibility they would need it again. He cut off the cords that had secured the demolition charge to the plank of wood and put both sections of the weapon in the boot of the car, along with the fuse assembly.

  They were ready to go.

  ‘Where to, sir?’ Dawson asked.

  ‘Anywhere away from here,’ Sykes muttered. His face was white with strain and beads of sweat had appeared on his forehead. ‘Just get moving. Head west, or south-west, obviously.’

  Dawson guessed that the effects of the morphine were starting to wear off, and that Sykes was beginning to feel the pain from his leg. But there was nothing he could do about that, so he started the engine, slipped the car into gear and drove away, trying to pick the smoothest path he could find along the rutted and potholed track, putting some distance between themselves and Fort Eben Emael.

  ‘One thing puzzles me about that fort,’ Dawson said. ‘The Jerry plan is clever, very clever, the way they attacked from an unexpected direction and these new demolition charges to take out the defences. But there is still a garrison of – well, I don’t know exactly – but maybe six or seven hundred men inside Eben Emael, and there are only about sixty or seventy Germans in the attacking force. They’re probably outnumbered about ten to one, and in a straight fight the Belgians should beat them. Adolf must know that, so where are their reinforcements?’

  ‘Good point,’ Dawson,’ Sykes said, with a weak smile. ‘While we were wandering about on the roof I heard a few heavy explosions from both the north and south of the fort, and at least one of the Belgian heavy weapons kept on firing at some distant targets, not at the German attackers.’

  ‘You think they have blown up some of the bridges, then?’

  ‘Probably, yes. Even if the Jerries use the same technique – landing the attacking force by glider near their targets – there’s a good chance the Belgians destroyed the bridges over the Albert Canal, either by triggering explosives wired to the bridges or with the barrage from the Eben Emeal guns. And if they have, that will have stopped – or at least severely delayed – the German land forces from getting here. Don’t forget, Eben Emael isn’t the only defensive fort in this area. It’s the biggest and best-armed, but it’s just one of a whole series, all designed to repel an invading army and to destroy various strategic objectives, like the bridges. I doubt if the Jerries have taken out all of the forts as easily as this one.’

  ‘So you think the German reinforcements are quite close, just on the other side of the canal or the river?’

  ‘Yes. And they probably expected some or all of the bridges to have been destroyed, so they’ll have engineers and equipment with them to build pontoon bridges. They’ll be all over this area some time today, Dawson, you mark my words.’

  Sykes lapsed into silence, then produced a map of Belgium and began studying it, probably as much to take his mind off the pain in his thigh as for any other reason. Where they would be able to drive depended on which roads were open. And that, in turn, depended almost entirely on how fast the German land forces were able to advance across Belgium, once they’d managed to pass the barriers of the Meuse River and the Albert Canal.

  ‘We need to link up with our own people as quickly as possible,’ Sykes said, ‘so the best direction to head is probably west, towards Brussels, and then turn south-west for the French border. Chances are the Germans have opened up a broad front, so everywhere from Liège to Maastricht is probably under attack by now. If we can get close to Brussels fairly quickly, we might be able to keep ahead of the Jerry advance. Once we’re behind our own lines, we can cross into France and head for the Channel ports to find a boat to take this weapon back to England.’

  The track turned into a narrow metalled road, a road now choked by Belgian soldiers marching determinedly towards Fort Eben Emael. Dawson had to slow right down as he threaded his way through them. Sykes kept Dawson’s Lee-Enfield clearly visible beside him, as a silent but potent threat against interference or delay. But the troops obviously recognized the staff car as an official army vehicle – not their army, but army nevertheless – carrying a senior officer and his driver, and parted easily enough to let them through. In fact, the uniform of a Belgian officer wasn’t that dissimilar to the British version, so some of the soldiers probably didn’t even realize that Sykes wasn’t a Belgian officer.

  A couple of times they had to stop and Sykes produced the passe-partout to show to Belgian officers, and in each case they were quickly waved through.

  The troops they were seeing appeared to be of a very different calibre to the men they’d seen at and around the fort – they knew that many of the Belgian static defences were manned by second- or third-rate troops – but Sykes appeared unimpressed.

  ‘They look tough enough to me, sir,’ Dawson said.

  ‘They probably are, but being tough isn’t enough, because they just don’t have the equipment to take on the Germans. Most of the Belgian air force is still flying around in obsolete biplanes, useless against the modern Messerschmitts and Stukas the Jerries have. And their armour is just pathetic. Last I heard, they only had ten tanks altogether – the Germans probably have almost a thousand, so they’re outnumbered about a hundred to one.’

  ‘They’ve only got ten tanks?’ Dawson was incredulous.

  ‘Something like that, yes. A political decision. Apparently the Belgian government believes a tank is an offensive weapon, and as Belgium is always neutral, they decided having tanks would send the wrong message to their neighbours. A typically idiotic decision made by some politician who has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Anyway, in a straight fight, the Jerries will walk all over them. The only chance is if the Belgians can hold the Germans at a strong defensive line. If the Eben Emael fiasco is anything to go by, that’s a pretty vain hope.’

  ‘Do they have another line, then?’

  Sykes nodded. ‘Yes. Their primary defensive line was the one we’ve just left, along the Albert Canal and Meuse River, but that was never intended to actually stop a German advance, only slow it down for long enough for British and French forces to advance as far as a line running between Antwerp and Namur, and then on down to Givet in France. That’s why we’re trying to head west, so hopefully we can meet up with the advancing British troops.

  ‘The idea is that the Belgians should hold that eastern line for at least three days, to allow allied troops to get into position. Then the Belgians will withdraw ahead of the Germans and stop their advance. It’s called the Dyle Plan, but it doesn’t look to me as if there’s much chance of it working now. Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with the Belgians as fighting men. They’re tough and brave fighters, but they just don’t have anything like the level of equipment they need to tackle Adolf’s hordes. I’m not even sure we have, either.’

  ‘You don’t think either the British or French forces will be in position by the time we get to Brussels, if we make it that far?’

  ‘Hopefully we’ll be a bit further south than that, much closer to Namur. But you’re right, Dawson. I don’t think any of our troops will have reached that area by the time we get there.’

  It took them almost twenty minutes to reach the village of Eben Emael itself, just because of the numbers of soldiers on the road. Dawson swung the car left at the T-junction in the centre, turning south, and pulled the car to a stop beside the road. To continue heading west, they would have had to leave the better road they were now on and take to an unmade track again, and after consulting the map for a few moments Sykes vetoed that idea.

  ‘I know it’s really going the wrong way,’ he said, ‘but I think we should stay on this road and go south, to Wonck. The road swings over to the south-west before it reaches the village, and then heads west for quite some
way. When we reach Boirs we can reassess the situation. There’s a main road there, and a crossroads, so we can either head south on the main road or continue to the west if that looks like it’s still the safer option.’

  Dawson obediently pulled the car back onto the road and continued through the village, towards Wonck.

  There were fewer soldiers on the road. Most of the people they passed were civilians, who were heading in the same direction as the staff car – away from the fighting. They all carried bags: some pushed bicycles so festooned with bags and boxes that riding them was clearly impossible, others pulled wooden hand-carts piled high with their possessions. These were the people who really suffer in any armed conflict – the innocent civilians who lose everything, including their lives, as armies battle for supremacy around them.

  ‘Obviously news of what’s happened at Eben Emael has spread,’ Sykes commented, as they drove past one long line of civilian refugees, their faces reflecting both fear and resignation. ‘The trouble is, once the German troops get across the river and the canal, they’ll probably launch another of their Blitzkrieg attacks, and leap-frog their way across Belgium, and these poor sods will find themselves behind enemy lines. They’ll have nowhere to run or hide.’

  It was early afternoon as Dawson drove through the village of Wonck. He swung the staff car right at the T-junction, retracing the route he himself had followed when he’d first arrived in the area. The road turned almost due north, but in a few yards bent sharply to the left, to the west. About a mile and a half in front of them was the village of Boirs, where they’d have to make a decision about the next part of their route.

  And there was something else they needed to do, as well.

  ‘We’re pretty low on petrol, sir,’ Dawson said, tapping the fuel gauge on the dashboard in front of him. ‘We’re down to under half a tank, and the two cans in the boot are empty.’