by Right
He finally saw the German soldier about fifty yards to his left. The man was lying on his back, his grey uniform puddled with dark-red circles of blood, the Mauser rifle held across his body. Dawson thought he was dead, but as he watched, the German slowly and painfully worked the bolt of his rifle, trying to load another round into the chamber.
Dawson jumped to his feet and ran across to him, just as the man completed the operation and started to swing the muzzle of the rifle towards him. He sprinted the last few feet, then dived off to his right as the German soldier’s finger started to tighten on the trigger.
The shot went wild, well above Dawson’s head, and then it was over. He got up, stepped forwards and wrenched the Mauser out of the man’s hands. It looked as if about half a dozen of the rounds from the Schmeisser had hit the German, badly wounding him. But obviously they’d missed one of the vital organs – his heart or lungs – and there was no doubting the man’s courage. Even as his blood pumped out onto the ground around him, he was still trying to fight on.
The German looked up at Dawson with pain-racked eyes, and the big corporal felt a surge of pity. There was nothing he could do for him, no medical treatment he could offer. And the man was his enemy.
Dawson bent forward and pulled out the Mauser bayonet from the scabbard on the wounded soldier’s belt. The man watched him with haunted eyes.
Dawson snapped the bayonet onto the clip at the end of the muzzle and looked down at the German, hefting the rifle in his hands.
Then he shook his head. ‘I’m not going to kill you, Fritz,’ he said softly. ‘I admire somebody who won’t give up. I just hope some of your mates come along and find you before you peg out. But I’ve got problems of my own. And I’ve got to go.’
Dawson turned, walked a few paces clear of the wounded German, reversed his grip on the Mauser carbine and rammed the bayonet deep into the ground. The upright rifle would act as an unmistakable marker for the wounded man’s position if any other German soldiers came along. Then Dawson lifted a hand in silent acknowledgement to the man and strode on.
The lack of any shots from the second German soldier told its own story. When Dawson found him, about seventy yards deeper in the wood, flies were already swarming around the dead man’s torso. Sykes’s bullet – and it had to have been fired by the major, because nothing else made sense – had taken him in the centre of his chest. Death would have come in seconds.
Dawson barely glanced at the dead man, just picked up the German’s Mauser and the ammunition he’d been carrying, then walked on.
About fifty yards later he spotted the motorcycle combination, still parked exactly where he’d left it. And a few yards behind the vehicle, Major Sykes was standing, leaning against a tree, blood streaming down his face. The moment he spotted the officer, Dawson jogged over to him.
‘You OK, sir?’ he asked, his eyes searching Sykes’s face.
Sykes nodded. ‘It looks worse than it is,’ he said, ‘and I was really lucky. A blasted wood splinter ripped a cut in my forehead.’
‘A wood splinter?’ Dawson didn’t understand. ‘How’d you get a wood splinter there?’
But before Sykes could reply, both men heard the heavy rumbling of an engine somewhere behind them. The enemy soldiers in the half-track had taken their time, but now they were getting closer.
Dawson glanced behind him and tensed. ‘It’s that bloody half-track,’ he said.
About fifty or sixty yards away, he could make out the shape of the German vehicle as it moved slowly along the edge of the wood.
‘They’re probably looking for the two foot soldiers,’ Sykes suggested. ‘They must have heard the shots but won’t know where they came from. This time when they search, they’ll find us. We need to get out of here – right now.’
Dawson grunted agreement, ran across to the bushes where he’d hidden the two sections of the demolition charge, picked up one in each hand and staggered back to the combination with them. He loaded them both into the sidecar, then wrapped his arm around the major’s shoulders, hustled him over to the sidecar and settled him inside it. Then he opened the rear pannier and pulled out all three spare magazines for the Mauser MG 34 mounted on the sidecar. He snapped one into place, cocked and checked the weapon, and then tucked the others onto the floor of the sidecar where Sykes would be able to reach them easily.
It looked as if the major was right. The men in the half-track must have heard the shots – there couldn’t be any doubt about that – but they were having to search the whole of the wood to try to locate the source, and find the two soldiers they’d had on foot patrol. That was why the vehicle was moving so slowly.
‘There are four of them in that half-track,’ Dawson said, ‘so we’re outnumbered two to one, but we’re not outgunned, thanks to that Mauser.’
‘The odds are a bit better than that,’ Sykes muttered, grasping the handle of the Mauser machine-gun, ready to fire. ‘One of them is driving, so he won’t be able to shoot at us, or not very quickly, anyway, so that’s three against two. And we have the element of surprise on our side. And if you can drive out of here behind that half-track, that might help unsight the soldier in the front seat as well.’
‘Good plan,’ Dawson muttered, swinging his leg over the saddle of the motorcycle and preparing to start the engine.
Then they heard a yell from the direction of the German vehicle, and a shot rang out, narrowly missing the front of the sidecar.
‘Let’s go,’ Dawson said, starting the engine and putting the motorcycle into gear. ‘Hit the front tyres again,’ he yelled, over the noise of the BMW’s engine. ‘Try and get them both this time. That’ll stop those bastards.’
Sykes didn’t respond, just squeezed the trigger of the Mauser MG 34 as the motorcycle combination leapt forward. He sent a long burst ripping through the undergrowth towards the German vehicle, which now seemed to have stopped about fifty yards away.
Rifle fire rattled out in response, but the Germans were essentially firing blind, shooting into the wood, and trying to hit a rapidly-moving target they could barely see.
Dawson steered the motorcycle combination out of the undergrowth, engine snarling and the back wheel struggling for grip on the loose surface. He swung the vehicle in a wide arc around the half-track, trying to give Sykes the best possible opportunity to engage the enemy soldiers with the machine-gun.
The Germans were shooting back, but the Mauser kept up its deadly assault on the enemy truck, forcing them to keep their heads down.
‘Magazine’s empty,’ Sykes snapped, after a few seconds. He unclipped the empty mag and fumbled around beneath his legs to find one of the two remaining full ones.
Dawson glanced down at the major, and made a decision. They’d now turned away from the half-track. Even if Sykes managed to get another magazine loaded, the Mauser was pointing away from the target. It was time they cut and ran.
Dawson accelerated as hard as he could towards the far corner of the field, where he knew he could drive the combination onto the track he’d found. He weaved the vehicle from side to side, throwing the German soldiers off their aim. He lost count of the number of shots fired at them, and he knew at least two or three had hit the combination somewhere, but he just kept going.
He glanced behind, and saw the half-track had now started moving again, and was turning to follow them across the field. The one thing they couldn’t risk was getting caught on the track with a road-block in front of them and the half-track coming up from behind.
There was only one thing he could do.
Chapter 26
11 May 1940
Eastern Belgium
On the far side of the field, Dawson drove the combination behind the first clump of undergrowth he saw that would completely conceal it, shifted the gear lever into neutral and jumped off the motorcycle.
He grabbed the Mauser 98K carbine he’d taken off the dead German soldier and ran back to the edge of the undergrowth. He slipped off the safety
catch, steadied his breathing and looked across the field.
The half-track was heading straight for him, picking up speed. He could see the four soldiers still in the vehicle – obviously Sykes hadn’t hit any of them or done any damage to the half-track. Well, that was something he could rectify.
The Mauser’s sights rested for a moment on the driver, but Dawson knew that killing or wounding him wouldn’t necessarily stop the vehicle. What he needed to do was stop it mechanically, by blowing another of the front tyres. Obviously the Germans had replaced the one Sykes had shot out in the clearing, but the half-track only carried two spares. If he could shoot out one of them, that would stop the vehicle for a while. If he could destroy them both, the Germans would have to wait until another vehicle could bring them an extra wheel and tyre. And by the time that happened, he and Sykes should be long gone.
He lowered the muzzle of the Mauser and concentrated his aim on the left-hand front wheel, which was pitching and bouncing on the uneven surface. Gently, he squeezed the trigger.
The Mauser kicked against his shoulder, but Dawson knew immediately that he’d missed. The half-track had moved very slightly to one side at the crucial moment, and that had been enough for him to miss his target.
He cursed, worked the bolt to load another round, and again focused all his attention on the sight picture. Again he fired, and again the bullet missed. The third time, he held the aim for longer, although he was very conscious that whatever safety margin he had was rapidly eroding – the half-track was now only about seventy yards away.
This time, the Mauser’s bullet slammed straight into the tyre. Dawson heard the dull bang as it exploded, and the vehicle immediately lurched to one side, the steel wheel digging deep into the soft ground of the field.
The next shot was easy, because the target was no longer moving. Dawson drilled the fourth round neatly through the right-hand front tyre. Whatever the Germans did now, the half-track would be out of commission for at least an hour.
Heedless of the rattle of rifle shots from behind – the enemy soldiers had to be firing blind, towards the direction from which they thought he’d been shooting – he ran over to the combination, slid the Mauser into Sykes’s waiting hands and climbed back onto the motorcycle.
‘Done?’ Sykes asked.
‘It’s done,’ Dawson confirmed. ‘I’ve shot out both front tyres. That truck’s going nowhere fast.’
He accelerated down the track, concentrating on putting distance between them and the German soldiers, just in case they decided to follow them on foot. In about a quarter of a mile, with the track clear behind them, Dawson pulled the combination to a stop in an open area just to one side.
‘Right, sir,’ he said. ‘Let me just take a look at your head.’
He walked around to the sidecar, quickly pulled open one of the pouches on his webbing, extracted his medical kit and started cleaning the wound on Sykes’s forehead. The cut wasn’t deep, just long and ragged.
‘So what happened to you?’ Dawson asked.
‘I heard those two German soldiers walking through the wood back there,’ the major said. ‘How they missed the motorcycle I don’t know. One was right at the edge of the wood and the other quite a long way inside, so maybe neither of them looked in the right direction. I don’t know. Anyway, then I heard those two shots, one after the other. I guessed they’d spotted you. So I crawled along until I could see one of the soldiers, and I took a shot at him.’
‘A good one too, sir,’ Dawson interrupted. ‘You drilled him right through the chest.’
‘I was in an awkward position with the rifle, just because of the ground I was lying on. I had to lift up the muzzle of the Lee-Enfield, raise it up in the air, to reload it. Then the second German shot at me. The bullet smashed into the fore-end of the rifle and blew it apart, then ricocheted off the metal and ended up somewhere behind me. That’s when the splinter of wood speared into my forehead. But if I hadn’t had the rifle at that odd angle, the bullet would probably have gone right through my head. The Lee-Enfield’s a write-off. I left it there.’
‘Fuck the rifle, sir. The important thing is that you’re OK.’
Dawson finished cleaning the cut, pulled out a wound dressing and held it firmly over the injury on Sykes’s forehead while he tied the attached bandage around the major’s head to hold the dressing in place.
‘Don’t forget you signed for that Lee-Enfield, Dawson,’ Sykes said, with a faint smile.
‘And you signed for that staff car, sir, and that went up in flames in Liège, so I think losing a rifle is probably the least of our worries.’
Sykes smiled slightly. ‘So did you find a way out of here?’
‘Sort of,’ Dawson said, nodding. ‘We’re on it. This track seems to head almost straight for the Belgian lines.’
‘Sounds to me like there might be a “but” at the end of that sentence,’ Sykes observed.
‘Yes.’ Dawson grinned shortly. ‘This track runs right past a whole bunch of German troops and armour, but they’re all the other side of a stand of trees. There’s a road-block a bit further down it. I think we’ll probably have to shoot our way past it.’
‘Right.’ Sykes put a wealth of meaning into that single syllable. ‘A big road-block?’ he asked.
‘No. Just a couple of Jerry soldiers and a kind of wooden trestle thing. It only blocks about half of the width of the track. If we can take out the sentries we might even be able to drive around it.’ Dawson stepped back and looked down at his handiwork. ‘Is that OK, sir?’ he asked. ‘The bandage isn’t too tight?’
‘No. That’s fine. Let’s get going.’
Dawson snapped another full magazine into place on the Mauser MG 34 machine-gun and cocked the weapon ready for Sykes. Then he started the BMW’s engine again and eased the combination back onto the track, heading west towards the Belgian lines.
They’d covered only a couple of hundred yards when Dawson saw a sudden flicker of movement in the motorcycle’s rear-view mirror. He slowed down very slightly and straightened up the combination while he stared in the mirror, trying to make out what had attracted his attention. But the mirror, which was mounted on a length of steel, was vibrating so much he couldn’t be sure of what he’d seen – or even if he’d seen anything at all.
‘What is it?’ Sykes asked, noticing Dawson had slowed down the vehicle slightly.
‘I don’t know. Thought I saw something behind us. I’m not sure now.’
‘Keep going,’ Sykes instructed. ‘I’ll watch behind.’
As Dawson speeded up again, the major swung round in the seat in the sidecar as much as he could and stared back down the track.
They’d driven through a series of gentle bends on the track, and large sections of it were invisible behind the foliage that lined the hardened surface. But occasionally the curves lined up and Sykes was able to see some distance back.
‘Will this thing go any faster?’ he asked.
‘Maybe, sir. Why?’
‘Because you’re right. There is something back there. Two motorcycle combinations, just like this one, as far as I can tell. I think they’re gaining on us.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Dawson muttered.
‘Beautifully put. Now get us out of here.’
Chapter 27
11 May 1940
Eastern Belgium
Seconds later, they heard the first crackle of machine-gun fire from behind them, and a short burst of fire crashed through the undergrowth over to the right of the track.
Dawson cranked the throttle open as wide as he could, because no matter what happened, they had to keep ahead of the pursuing vehicles. He knew the advantage lay with the soldiers behind them. All Dawson could do was try to keep in front of them, out of range of their weapons.
They rounded the next bend and there, right in front of them, was the road-block.
With imminent death approaching from behind, it was no time for finesse. Sykes aimed the Mauser at the road
-block and pulled the trigger, sending a short burst of fire slamming into the centre of the wooden trestle. The two soldiers standing guard stared at the approaching motorcycle combination, froze for an instant and dived sideways, in opposite directions.
Sykes fired again, two very short bursts either side of the trestle, to persuade the two German soldiers to keep out of the way.
‘Can you get through that gap?’ he demanded, looking at the narrow space between the edge of the track and the left-hand side of the trestle. The opening on the right-hand side was even more constricted – they obviously had to go to the left of the obstruction.
‘I bloody hope so,’ Dawson replied. ‘We’ll find out in a few seconds.’
Another burst of machine-gun fire crashed out from behind them. Again the bullets went wide. Dawson glanced in his mirror again. The leading German motorcycle combination was noticeably closer to them now, but he ignored it. There was nothing else he could do.
He started weaving from side to side as he concentrated on the gap ahead. As Sykes said, it was very narrow. The combination was going to be a tight fit, but there was nowhere else they could go.
Another volley of shots echoed from behind them, this time raking the wood and undergrowth to the left of the track. Even over the noise of the motorcycle’s engine, both Sykes and Dawson heard a scream. One of the German soldiers at the road-block suddenly reappeared on the track, staggering backwards, his hands clutching his chest. He fell down in an untidy heap.
‘Now they’re killing their own men,’ Sykes observed drily.
‘Just hang on.’ Dawson instructed.
He stopped weaving and concentrated on the gap. He braked hard and swung left, aiming the combination squarely at the space.
Then the other German soldier stepped back into view, on the right-hand side of the track, his weapon slung over his shoulder.
‘Watch him!’ Dawson yelled, pointing to his right. ‘Maybe he’s got a grenade.’
But the German didn’t raise his arm to throw anything at them. Instead, he lurched towards the trestle. It was quite obvious what he intended to do. If he pushed the trestle even a couple of feet to the left, he would block their escape. In fact, he’d probably kill them, because they were travelling far too fast to stop in the remaining distance.