Right and Glory

by Right

  In a few seconds, he jammed on the brakes and stopped the Fiat just inside the wood. He waited a moment for his eyes to adapt to the gloom under the canopy of leaves, then weaved the tiny car around the trees, driving deep into the wood, the trunks of the trees creating a natural barrier between the fragile car and the German tank.

  Just seconds later, a cannon shell smashed into a tree close to where they had entered the wood, but they were protected from the German weapon because they were no longer visible. The trees would stop any shells fired at random towards them.

  ‘I’ll go and see what the Jerries are up to,’ Dawson said, once they were deep enough in the wood to be effectively invisible and invulnerable, except to the ground troops who he was sure were coming. ‘Then we can work out what the hell to do next.’

  He took one of the Mausers and some spare ammunition, and made his way to the edge of the wood, to a position well away from the point where they’d left the open field. The first thing he looked for was the Panzer, which was clearly visible, and now a lot closer. In fact, it seemed to be almost at the anti-tank ditch.

  As Dawson watched, a hatch opened in the top of the turret, and the black-uniformed tank commander appeared, wearing earphones and with a chest mike, and bringing up a pair of binoculars to his face, obviously looking through them to try to spot the tank’s quarry.

  That was too good a target to miss. Dawson cranked a round into the Mauser’s breech, rested the fore-end of the carbine on a thick horizontal branch right in front of him, and took careful aim. The Panzer was now within about 250 yards of Dawson’s position, and heading almost straight for him. It wasn’t a difficult shot.

  Dawson settled the sights on the upper part of the German soldier’s chest, controlled his breathing and gently squeezed the trigger. The Mauser kicked against his shoulder, but he barely even noticed. He was too busy checking the result of his shot.

  The German jerked as if he’d been punched, slamming limply backwards into the metal of the turret, then slumped sideways, before sliding slowly out of sight, back down into the Panzer.

  ‘Got you,’ Dawson murmured, and immediately reloaded the Mauser, though there were no other visible targets anywhere in sight.

  But still the Panzer came on, heading directly towards the anti-tank ditch, now only a matter of a few yards in front of it. And suddenly Dawson knew why it hadn’t stopped. The officer he’d shot hadn’t yet given the order to the driver to do so. Through the thin armoured slit in front of the driver, which was all he had to see through, the anti-tank ditch would be far from visible. Dawson guessed the collapse of the tank commander would have shocked the five-man crew, and nobody had given the driver any other orders.

  The tank drew closer and closer to the ditch, then suddenly slowed. Someone had belatedly realized the danger. The tank reached the edge of the ditch. The leading part of the tracks began extending out into the open space. The engine roared like a wounded animal as the driver frantically tried to reverse the massive twenty-five-ton vehicle, but it was too late.

  Slowly, incredibly slowly given the weight involved, the Panzer toppled forward into the anti-tank ditch, the barrel of the cannon striking the ground on the far side as it did so. Dawson clearly saw the barrel bend upwards as the front of the vehicle vanished from sight, to crash down into the ditch with an echoing thump and a sudden flurry of earth. The heavy tank settled with its rear high in the air, the front buried deep in the ditch. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the driver ran the tracks in reverse for maybe ten seconds, the engine roaring, which had no effect upon the tank’s position whatsoever. Then he must have realized it was a pointless exercise, and switched off the engine. There was no way that Panzer was going to move again without very heavy lifting equipment. And even when it was out of the ditch, the Germans would still have to change the barrel on the turret before it would be battle-ready.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Dawson muttered. ‘Scratch one Panzer. Not a bad result from one easy rifle shot.’

  He took a final look round, then shouldered the Mauser and backed into the wood. A few seconds later he rejoined Sykes, who was leaning against the side of the Topolino, holding the Schmeisser machine-pistol ready.

  ‘OK?’ he asked Dawson, as the corporal approached. ‘Where’s the Panzer? Stuck on the other side of that anti-tank ditch, I suppose?’

  Dawson grinned at him. ‘More stuck in it, actually.’ He quickly explained what had happened when he’d taken out the commander of the Panzer.

  ‘I heard your shot,’ Sykes said. ‘I wondered what you were up to. Bloody well done, Dawson.’

  ‘I was just lucky, really.’

  ‘Men like you make their own luck, Dawson. If you hadn’t been with me on this little jaunt, I’d be dead. We both know it.’

  Dawson nodded, then turned to more important matters. ‘So you reckon we’ve crossed the border, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know for certain, but most probably, yes. I can’t think of any good reason why the Belgians would have constructed an anti-tank defence on their side of the French border. It only makes sense that it’s a French-built ditch designed to stop a German invasion coming through Belgian territory, just the same as they did in the Great War. So I think we left Belgium somewhere in the field back there, on the other side of that ditch. Now we’re in France. And we should probably get moving. I know you stopped that Panzer, but the Jerry infantry won’t have any trouble crossing that anti-tank ditch. They’re bound to start heading this way as soon as they do.’

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ Dawson said, and walked around to the driver’s door of the now very battered and bloodied Fiat. Before he got into the car, he tapped it gently on the roof with the flat of his hand and looked across at Sykes.

  ‘I know I wasn’t very impressed when that Belgie colonel gave us this car,’ he said, musingly, ‘but it’s done a blinding job of getting us out of trouble. If we’d had a big heavy staff car like I was expecting, it’d be stuck at the bottom of that ditch by now. We’d either be dead or prisoners.’ He ran his hand around the hole that the shell from the Panzer had blown through both sides of the back of the Fiat. ‘And if this had been made of proper steel instead of this Italian cigarette paper, that shell would have exploded when it hit and blown us to pieces.’

  Sykes nodded. ‘You’re right. They call it a “little mouse”, but actually it’s a hell of a car.’

  They climbed back into the Topolino, and Dawson started to thread the little car around the trees and bushes, making slow but steady progress through the forest towards the south, heading deeper – they hoped – into French territory. As before, Dawson had to keep the Fiat heading more or less downhill, but that was no problem. They’d reached virtually the highest point in the area, so the only way they could go from there was down.

  Within quite a short distance the trees started to thin out, and the forest was replaced by open ground and cultivated but apparently abandoned agricultural land. In a few minutes Dawson was able to leave the rough ground in favour of another track, which offered a slightly better driving surface. It was a mixture of gravel and hard-packed earth. No doubt in the winter it would turn to mud – the deep hoof marks of cows or oxen at the edge of the track showed that clearly enough.

  The track meandered down the hill and, just as they’d found in the border area on the Belgian side of the frontier, the countryside was deserted. The sense of emptiness persisted until just after the track met what could best be described as a lane, which was wider and had a rather better and much smoother surface. A couple of minutes after Dawson turned the Fiat onto it, and had driven around the first bend, he and Sykes found themselves confronted by a road-block about a hundred yards in front.

  There was no possibility of driving around this one.

  Chapter 38

  12 May 1940

  Franco-Belgian border region

  A heavy wooden trestle blocked the entire width of the road. Mounted on one side of it, and poi
nting directly at the approaching Fiat, was a machine-gun on a bipod, with two soldiers manning it. Grouped behind the central section of the trestle were another half dozen troops, long-barrelled rifles aimed up the track.

  ‘French troops,’ Sykes muttered. ‘Time for a white flag,’ he added, and pulled a large and rather grubby handkerchief out of his pocket. There was no glass left in the Fiat’s windows, so he simply stuck his arm out of the opening where the side window had once been, and waved his sign of surrender.

  ‘Are you sure these are Frogs?’ Dawson asked quietly, slowing the Topolino to little more than walking pace as they got closer to the road-block. ‘That machine-gun looks a bit like a Bren to me, with that vertical magazine.’

  ‘I’m quite sure they’re French,’ Sykes replied. ‘It’s not a Bren, though you’re right – it does look a lot like one. It’s actually a MAC FM 1924/M29, a bloody good weapon. And those rifles are Berthier M1916 models. They’re a hangover from the Great War. We’re not facing front-echelon troops.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The new standard weapon for the French forces is the MAS 36, but production has been so slow only the most elite sections of the army have been issued with them. So these men are probably members of one of the twenty-six divisions of the French Second Army, which I think is under the command of a general named Prételat. Right now, “Second Army” also translates as “second rate”, because they’re mainly reservists. The French have stuck them here because they think the Ardennes Forest is enough of a natural barrier to stop the German armour.’

  ‘Which isn’t true,’ Dawson said. ‘There’s a bogged-down Panzer up on the top of that hill to prove it.’

  ‘Exactly. So all we have to do is convince these soldiers that what we’re saying is true and persuade them to let us drive past. Then get the hell out of here before half the German army sweeps over that hill behind us.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Dawson muttered, and braked the Fiat to a stop about twenty feet short of the trestle blocking the road.

  ‘So what now?’ he asked.

  ‘You stay here and keep both your hands on the steering wheel, where those soldiers can see them. I’ll get out and talk to their officer. I can manage those few steps.’

  Sykes pushed open his door, lowered his feet to the ground and stood up, still waving his white handkerchief, and made his way, walking stiff-legged and obviously in pain, towards the barrier. As he reached it, a French officer, immaculately dressed, walked around the end of the trestle to meet him.

  Dawson watched with interest as the two military officers greeted each other, as military officers always do, with salutes – Sykes’s version somewhat weary and casual, the French officer’s response sharp and snappy. The two men moved out of earshot of the soldiers manning the barricade and stood close together, talking quietly, Sykes punctuating his explanation with frequent and eloquent hand gestures towards the hill that extended up to the north, behind the Fiat Topolino.

  It looked to Dawson as if Sykes was having a tough time convincing the French officer of the truth of what he was saying, because the man kept shaking his head in apparent denial. But the major was persistent and forceful, and finally turned and gestured to Dawson to drive the car over to where he and the French officer were standing.

  Dawson eased the car down the lane and stopped next to the two men.

  ‘Stay in the car,’ Sykes instructed through the blown-out window, then stepped to the rear of the car and pointed to the shell hole driven through both sides of the car. He launched into rapid French, the only words of which Dawson understood were ‘Panzer Trois’, and the French officer finally nodded.

  He turned towards the heavy trestle barricade and issued an order, and the soldiers behind it lowered their weapons and began to slide the barrier to one side.

  As soon as there was a big enough gap, Sykes nodded to Dawson and motioned him forward. The corporal slipped the Fiat back into gear, drove it past the barricade and then stopped, waiting for the major to join him.

  And a few moments later Sykes appeared beside the passenger door, still talking to the French officer. Then he shook hands with the Frenchman and got back into the Fiat.

  ‘OK, Dawson,’ the major said. ‘Get us out of here.’

  ‘Did he believe you?’ Dawson asked.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. He seemed to think the worst-case scenario was that the Germans might manage to get a handful of infantry troops through the Ardennes Forest. He certainly didn’t believe there could be Panzers within a couple of miles of where he and his men have been stationed. That’s why I showed him the shell hole that’s providing us with some fresh-air ventilation in the back of this car.’

  Dawson lifted his foot off the clutch and the Topolino moved away, gathering speed slowly down the lane.

  ‘So where to now, sir?’

  ‘Keep heading south,’ Sykes said. ‘According to that officer, we’re due north of a town called Rocroi, which is marked on my map, oddly enough. So just keep going downhill, and there should be a main road heading west somewhere in front of us.’

  Dawson changed up a gear, and at that moment the hillside behind them erupted with machine-gun fire, interspersed with the deeper bangs from heavier weapons, maybe artillery pieces, and the cracks of exploding mortar bombs and grenades. One mortar bomb landed in the lane a few yards ahead of them, and another behind, but not close enough to injure them or damage the car. Dawson twitched the wheel, starting to weave from one side of the lane to the other, making use of all the width to try to avoid becoming an easy target.

  ‘Is that the bloody Frogs firing at us?’ he demanded, as Sykes swivelled round in his seat to look back up the lane.

  ‘No. They’re firing up the hill. I think those two mortars were just strays, badly aimed. Those are the German troops mounting their attack on the French positions.’ Sykes turned back to face the front of the car again. ‘Fast as you can, Dawson. Just put as much distance as possible between us and the French line, because the Jerries are going to break through very quickly, in my opinion. We can’t get caught by them now, not after all we’ve been through.’

  Dawson accelerated obediently, the little Fiat bouncing from side to side as its speed increased.

  They rounded a corner, and almost ran into a group of fully armed French troops, heading up the lane towards them.

  ‘Stop!’ Sykes shouted, as Dawson hit the brakes.

  As the Fiat stopped, Sykes opened his door and leant out, shouting out something in French to the officer who seemed to be in charge of the soldiers.

  Dawson stared through the windscreen at the French troops who were passing the car. The thing that struck him most forcibly was their age. They all seemed old – very old – to be soldiers. They were men in their fifties, maybe even their sixties, making a stark contrast to the average age of the personnel in the British army. Reservists they undoubtedly were – Sykes had already told him that – but to Dawson the word ‘retirees’ might have been more appropriate. Against the German front-line troops who were no doubt already streaming down the hill towards them, they would probably prove no more than an irrelevance, and certainly not a viable defence against the invasion.

  Another mortar shell screamed out of the sky and exploded with a flat crack just to one side of the lane, behind a part of the hedgerow and near the far end of the column of troops. The shrubbery helped reduce the effect of the weapon, but even so shards of shrapnel speared into the rear ranks of men, causing painful and debilitating flesh wounds. The injured soldiers yelled in pain, dropping their weapons, while their companions dived for cover.

  ‘Sir,’ Dawson shouted urgently, ‘we need to move, get out of range.’

  Sykes dropped back into his seat. Dawson quickly weaved the car around the disorganized and scattered groups of soldiers, and accelerated again once he was clear of them, driving the car as fast as possible down the lane.

  ‘That wasn’t a stray round,’ he said.
‘The Jerries are targeting the reinforcement troops, as well as the men manning the barricades.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Sykes agreed.

  ‘I don’t feel good, running away from a fight,’ Dawson said. ‘Leaving that bunch of pensioners to try and stop those Jerries.’

  ‘Nor do I, Dawson, but the reality is that there’s nothing we can do. We’ve got two Mausers and a Schmeisser. If we were driving a tank, it would be a different matter. The best thing we can do to help the French – and us, obviously – is to get ourselves to safety and get this demolition charge properly examined by experts, and that means somebody in Britain. This is one of those cases where we serve the greatest good of the greatest number by not getting ourselves involved in the battle, but by running away from it. I don’t like it, but that’s the truth of this situation.’

  Dawson nodded and concentrated on keeping the Fiat moving as fast as possible. The noise of the escalating battle behind them was getting louder as more and more weapons – French as well as German – began firing. The yammering of machine-guns and the rattle of rifle fire were almost constant. Dawson thought he could detect the throaty roar of big petrol engines, and that meant Panzers.

  ‘It won’t take the Jerries long to break through, will it?’ Dawson asked after a couple of minutes.

  ‘No. The Germans have the advantage of surprise, they’re almost certainly better armed, trained and equipped, and they’re facing reserve troops. I’d be amazed if by tonight they hadn’t broken through the French lines and then completely destroyed the fighting capability of the French troops here. It’ll be a short and bitter fight, but as far as I can see there’ll only be one possible outcome.’

  ‘The Germans will fuck the French,’ Dawson said shortly.

  ‘In a nutshell, yes,’ Sykes replied. ‘And what’s going to happen here, in this place, will probably happen all over France. Just as they did in the Great War, the Germans will crush the French. Only this time around, it won’t take them anything like as long.’