by Right
‘Apart from the French army positioned north of Namur,’ Dawson pointed out, ‘if I understood what that colonel said. But we’re not going to get involved in any of this, are we? We’ll be heading west or south-west to hand over the weapon to our people. We’re already well behind the Belgian front line, I mean, so we should be clear of this area quite soon.’
‘Quite right, Dawson, we should be. But I was also wondering about our own troops. Colonel Lefèvre said the Third Infantry Division was heading up towards Leuven, and we actually saw them last night, heading north. What worries me is that, if the Jerries do break through in force between here and Wavre, that division could be cut off and surrounded.’
‘But there’s nothing we can do about that, is there, sir? And if you’ve worked out that there could be a problem, surely the Third’s CO will do the same.’
‘I think that’s Monty – General Montgomery – but he’ll have to follow orders, even if he disagrees with them. The problem with the Allies’ strategy is that it’s static rather than fluid. The idea is to hold a fortified line, then order a controlled retreat to another fortified line and so on. That’s essentially a Great War tactic. The problem is that the Germans have already shown that they’re not prepared to follow the same plan. Using their Blitzkrieg tactics, they don’t have to fight their way through a series of defences. Instead, their plan seems to be to go around or over obstacles like a defensive line, which allows them to isolate the enemy forces into pockets and then destroy them. They even have a name for that tactic. They call it a Kesselschlacht, which means an encirclement battle, but its literal meaning is rather more apt: Kesselschlacht actually translates as a “cauldron slaughter”. And we know that Adolf and his generals have produced some even more radical ideas, like taking out Eben Emael by landing gliders on the roof.’
‘But it’s not our problem, sir,’ Dawson insisted. ‘We’re just tiny cogs in a huge machine – well, you’re a bigger cog than me, obviously, but you know what I mean.’
Sykes nodded. ‘You’re quite right. I was just thinking aloud. We have a different job to do. Right, is that coffee ready yet?’
Dawson handed him a steaming tin mug, then rooted around in the ration packs to find something for them to eat.
Forty-five minutes later they were ready to move out. They’d both washed, using water from the pump in the yard, and had even managed to shave for the first time since leavening Eben-Emael, so they looked and felt better. The rest had done Sykes good, and he was able to walk the few steps to the passenger side of the car without assistance, though Dawson hovered anxiously beside him all the way, just in case his leg gave out.
The corporal started the little Fiat and drove it out of the barn and onto the street that ran through the hamlet. He turned left, to the south, and headed back towards the main road they’d been driving down the previous evening.
‘We go west, I suppose?’ he asked, as they neared the junction.
‘Yes. We’ll see how the main road looks and then make a decision.’
If anything, there were even more refugees on the road than there had been the previous day, and Dawson had to slow to a crawl to try to ease his way around them.
After about twenty minutes, during which Dawson reckoned they’d covered no more than a mile, Sykes shook his head in frustration.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘We’ll never get anywhere at this rate. There’s a side road just ahead, over there on the right. Take that, and we’ll try and use the minor roads. That will take us north of Charleroi when we really need to be south of the town, but it’ll probably still be faster than staying on this road.’
Even the side road was quite busy, but most of the Belgians walking along it, pushing carts or just carrying stuff, seemed to be making for Charleroi, and Dawson found it much easier, and a lot faster, to drive against the flow of pedestrians.
Within half an hour they’d reached a village named Brunehault, which, according to Sykes’s map, was almost due north of the centre of Charleroi. As they drove through the streets, Dawson spotted soldiers wearing French uniforms manning checkpoints, and the little Italian car was stopped by a patrol near the centre of the village.
‘I suppose these guys are from the Twelfth French Infantry Division,’ Dawson said, braking the Topolino to a halt beside a handful of French soldiers.
‘No doubt,’ Sykes replied, then launched into high-speed French as one of the armed soldiers stepped forward to the car to demand identification papers. Obediently, the two men produced their documents.
The soldier inspected them but appeared unimpressed, and pointed at the car and then at Sykes and Dawson.
‘Giving trouble, is he?’ Dawson asked, taking back his pay book.
‘He doesn’t like the fact that we’re two British soldiers driving a civilian vehicle painted in Belgian army colours,’ Sykes replied quietly. ‘He also doesn’t see why we’re trying to head west when all the fighting is over to the east of here. He hasn’t said it in so many words, but I suspect he thinks we’re deserters.’
‘Deserters?’ Dawson muttered, his voice dangerous and low. ‘I’ll give him fucking deserters, after all we’ve been through.’
‘Quiet,’ Sykes ordered, ‘and just keep calm. I’ll sort this out.’
The major produced the passe-partout signed by Colonel Lefèvre and waved it under the French soldier’s nose, pointing at the signature, but the man batted it away angrily, knocking the sheet of paper out of Sykes’s hand.
Dawson climbed out of the driver’s side of the Fiat and walked slowly around the rear of the car, the French soldier watching him suspiciously. He bent down, picked up the authorization and handed it back to Sykes.
‘Here you are, sir,’ he said, then turned to stare at the Frenchman.
‘Careful, Dawson,’ Sykes muttered from behind him.
Before anyone could react – Sykes or any of the other French soldiers manning the checkpoint – Dawson raised a fist like a side of beef and drove it straight into the soldier’s forehead, under the steel brim of his helmet. The man tumbled backwards, instantly knocked unconscious, and before he’d hit the ground Dawson had the Schmeisser in his hand, covering the other French soldiers.
‘That’s just a lesson in manners, you ignorant fucking Frog,’ he said crisply.
Then he opened the passenger door and passed the Schmeisser to Sykes. ‘If you’d like to take this, sir,’ he said.
The major held his door open and trained the weapon on the French troops.
Dawson walked around the back of the Topolino, to keep well out of Sykes’s line of fire, and got back behind the wheel. He engaged first gear and simply drove on, ignoring the hostile looks of the other French soldiers, who had been rendered temporarily impotent by the machine-pistol the major was holding, their rifles still slung over their shoulders.
‘That wasn’t perhaps the most tactful way to settle an argument,’ Sykes said, lowering the Schmeisser and pulling his door closed once they’d driven out of sight of the checkpoint, ‘but it was undeniably effective.’
‘It worked,’ Dawson agreed.
‘Did you ever box? Before you joined the army, I mean?’
‘A bit, sir, yes. Strictly amateur stuff, like, but I wasn’t too bad at it. And that Frog’ll have no ill effects afterwards, apart from a blinding headache that’ll remind him to be a bit more polite next time. If I’d hit his jaw, he’d be spitting blood and teeth for the rest of the day.’
‘I don’t doubt that. You have a killer right arm there, Dawson. Remind me not to argue with you.’
They passed through the next checkpoint without incident, and then drove to the centre of Brunehault. There they stopped at a T-junction with a major road which ran from north to south through the village itself. If there’d been the slightest doubt that a major conflict was imminent, the sheer number of troops they were seeing on that road, all heading north towards Leuven, was proof enough. Most of them were British, and Sykes a
nd Dawson wearing their British uniforms, but sitting in a car with Belgian army registration plates, attracted some curious glances.
It was perfectly obvious that they wouldn’t be able to turn left, against the traffic flow, because the northbound vehicles were using both sides of the road. North was the one direction they definitely didn’t want to go, but they simply didn’t have a choice.
‘Bugger,’ Sykes muttered. ‘You’ll have to turn right, and then look out for a turning to the left to get us off this road. Any road heading west will do. If you see a signpost, I’m trying to get us to a village called Azebois, which should take us in the right direction.’
Dawson waited for a break in the stream of trucks and other vehicles, and then swung the Fiat across the road. As he did so, the drivers of the approaching vehicles began swerving across the road, heading for the houses that lined the sides of the street.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ Dawson muttered.
Sykes swung round in his seat and stuck his head out of the side window. ‘Aircraft!’ he yelled. ‘Enemy aircraft. Get us out of here.’
Chapter 32
12 May 1940
Eastern Belgium
Above the rumbling noise of the big engines in the trucks, Dawson could hear a higher-pitched roar, the sound of a high-performance aircraft engine. And then the lethal hammering of a cannon echoed off the buildings, and shells began tearing up the surface of the road and smashing into the military vehicles, which were sitting targets.
The noise was deafening, the onslaught terrifying. Bullet fragments, shards of steel and slivers of stone from the road surface flew everywhere under the impact of the rapid-fire cannon’s shells. A British truck directly in front of the Fiat took several direct hits and slewed to a stop, steam pouring from the engine compartment. The vehicle behind was also hit, and its cargo – probably fuel – exploded with a roar into a massive fireball. Fortunately for Dawson and Sykes, the stationary truck acted as a barrier in front of them.
Rifle shots and machine-gun fire sounded as the Allied soldiers started to return fire, but small-arms were essentially useless against aircraft, especially low-flying fighters, because the targets were simply moving too fast. It would be a miracle if any of the bullets hit the aircraft, and an even bigger one if rifle fire did any damage to them.
Dawson glanced in his rear-view mirror, but could see nothing – the field of view was too restricted. All he could see was the road behind him, through the Fiat’s small rear window. He looked over his shoulder, through the side window, and then the ominous sight of two enemy fighters, low down and travelling fast, heading directly towards them and following the line of the road, was only too apparent.
He turned the wheel to the right, desperately looking for any cover, anywhere they could get off the street.
There were gaps between the houses, but most of them were far too narrow to accommodate any vehicle, even one as small as the car Dawson was driving. Then he saw a wooden fence maybe ten feet wide. He had no idea what was behind it, and at that moment he didn’t care. He just aimed the car straight towards it and floored the accelerator pedal.
‘Hold on,’ he shouted, as the car quickly gathered speed.
The fence splintered under the onslaught of maybe half a ton of metal moving at about twenty miles an hour, and the little Topolino crashed through it.
Sykes crossed both his arms in front of his face as the vehicle hit.
Dawson still had to steer, so he just pulled off his steel helmet and held that in front of him with one hand. The moment they were through the fence, Dawson hit the brakes as hard as he could, and the car slid sideways a few feet before coming to a stop, its front end just a matter of inches from a low stone wall – an immovable barrier that would have wrecked the vehicle if they’d smashed into it.
‘Thank Christ you stopped before we hit that,’ Sykes said.
Dawson nodded but didn’t reply. He jumped out, grabbed one of the Mauser 98K rifles from the rear compartment of the car and ran back to the main road.
He was greeted with a scene of chaos. Vehicles were stopped on the street, and some were on fire, others moving slowly as their drivers looked for anywhere they could find shelter from the air assault. The bodies of soldiers lay scattered across the cobbles, some moving weakly, others ominously still and many lying in seemingly vast pools of blood. Right beside Dawson one corpse had been blasted apart by rounds from the cannon on the fighters, his head virtually cut from his body and his torso ripped apart, blood and ruptured internal organs splattered everywhere, grey coils of intestine gleaming wetly in the sunshine.
Dawson gave the body a single appalled glance, then looked up into the sky. The two German aircraft had vanished from sight, but if they still had ammunition for their weapons he had no doubt they’d be back for another strafing run any time.
Even as that thought crossed his mind, he heard the aero engines again, from somewhere over to his right – the opposite direction from the way they’d attacked before, presumably hoping to catch the soldiers by surprise and looking the wrong way. Dawson loaded a round into the breech of the Mauser, clicked off the safety catch and waited for a target.
The noise of the engines increased, and then he saw them approaching, again at low level, and fast, their yellow nose-cones glinting in the sun. He steadied the rifle against the wall of the building, giving himself a stable rest, sighted carefully, allowing a little leeway ahead to account for the aircraft’s speed, and pulled the trigger.
The Mauser kicked into his shoulder. He thought he must have hit the aircraft, purely because he’d taken his time and it was flying almost directly towards him, but as far as he could see the enemy fighter was undamaged. He worked the bolt to reload the rifle.
The aircraft was now much closer, and again Dawson thought he’d hit it – the Mauser was a very accurate rifle – but without any obvious result.
Then the pilot opened up, sending a solid stream of bullets lancing down into the mélée of vehicles and men. Shells carved furrows in the wall of the building Dawson had taken shelter behind, and he ducked backwards, moving away from the road. He’d done his best with the Mauser, but what he needed to take on an aircraft was a heavy machine-gun, like the .303 Vickers, and preferably a proper quick-firing anti-aircraft weapon.
Then a more lethal weapon joined the fray. Dawson heard the distinctive rat-tat-tat of a machine-gun firing nearby and peered across the road. A British soldier was standing directly in front of one of the stationary lorries and had rested the bipod of his Bren gun on the bonnet. The weapon, Dawson noted, was fitted with the flat 100-round pancake magazine rather than the smaller but distinctive top-mounted curved box magazine.
The soldier was firing the weapon continuously, tracking the aircraft as it screamed towards him, heedless of the cannon fire erupting all over the street. But as Dawson watched, willing the soldier to bring down the fighter, the shells fired by the attacking aircraft smashed into the lorry in front of the man. Something blew under the bonnet, and the explosion tossed the soldier and his weapon carelessly backwards. The man tumbled to the ground and lay still, unconscious or dead.
Dawson took a quick glance upwards. The aircraft was nearly on them. He lowered the Mauser to the ground and ran across the road. He scooped up the Bren, leant against the side of the damaged lorry, aimed at the dark shadow streaking directly overhead and pulled the trigger.
The German fighter was so low that Dawson could actually see the heads of the rivets holding its panels together. And he could also see the first rounds from the machine-gun chewing their way through the thin aluminium skin as he kept the trigger pulled. But again, despite taking at least a dozen hits from the .303 bullets the weapon fired, the aircraft seemed unaffected.
‘Bugger,’ he muttered, as the aircraft flew out of range and he lowered the Bren. But then the German aircraft seemed to almost shudder in flight. The left wing dipped and moments later it cartwheeled into the ground perhaps a
mile away, exploding in a massive fireball. The second German aircraft, following for its own attacking run, pitched sharply nose-up. It climbed away and was quickly lost to sight.
A couple of British squaddies ran up to Dawson and clapped him on the back, but he shook them off and strode across to the soldier who’d first opened fire with the Bren. He bent down beside him and quickly checked for a pulse, because he seemed to be uninjured. As he did so, the soldier opened his eyes, grimaced and lifted his hand to the side of his head.
‘My fucking bonce,’ he muttered. ‘Feels like I’ve been kicked by a bloody mule.’
Dawson grinned at him, then helped the man to his feet. ‘But we got the bastard,’ he said, pointing ahead at the distant flames still licking around the wreckage of the aircraft, above which a heavy plume of dark smoke was rising into the clear blue sky.
‘Fucking good-oh. Where’s his mate?’
‘He buggered off,’ one of the other men said.
‘Here.’ Dawson handed the soldier the Bren gun he was still holding. ‘I think this belongs to you.’
‘Ta, mate,’ he said, looking for the first time at Dawson’s uniform and insignia. ‘You’re a sapper, aren’t you? So where did you spring from?’
Dawson nodded. ‘I am, and it’s a long story. And right now I’ve got to go. Hope it all goes well for you.’
‘With Monty in charge of this picnic? No fucking chance.’
Dawson grinned again, then ran back over the road, collected the Mauser and walked over to the Fiat Topolino.
‘I heard a hell of a bang,’ Sykes said. ‘Did you get one of them?’
Dawson nodded. ‘It was a joint effort – me and a bloke with a Bren. I don’t know which of us did the most damage, but I know I hit the aircraft because I saw the bullets stitching a pattern down the fuselage. Anyway, it’s time we went, before some other Jerry aviators decide they want to join this party.’