Ashes

by Christopher de Vinck

  ‘No,’ I said after a few minutes of scanning the fields. ‘No, they’re not German soldiers. Look at their helmets. They’re British and French helmets. My father has a collection of helmets like those in his study at home, and he’d never own a German helmet. They’re French and British soldiers.’

  We passed roads lined with hundreds of army trucks carrying men and pulling heavy artillery. As our train curved to the left, we saw the sea, the shoreline, and thousands of soldiers. Hitler was pushing from the east. The British and French troops were trapped.

  ‘Mademoiselle?’

  I turned from the window.

  ‘Ici. For you and for your friend.’

  The conductor handed me a small bag. ‘It’s all I have. You’ll find food in Dunkirk but this will help you for now.’

  I opened the bag, and before I could look up and say ‘thank you’, the conductor had disappeared into the next carriage.

  Inside the bag was a thick piece of bread and a pork sausage. I broke the bread and gave half to Hava.

  ‘No, you eat it all, Simone. I’m stronger than you are.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ I said. ‘I’m just as much a Belgian as you are. We’re like sisters, and sisters split everything down the middle.’

  Hava and I ate our bread in silence as we continued to stare out of the train window. Soldiers stood near the tracks, and as we slowly made our way some waved. We waved back. One man blew us a kiss. Hava returned the kiss and waved. I thought about Sergeant De Waden.

  When I offered Hava the sausage, she whispered, ‘It’s forbidden. You eat. Be my strong gentile, Simone.’ I felt so guilty because I could have given Hava all the bread and I could have eaten just the sausage. After that day, I never ate pork again.

  Suddenly, the train squealed to a stop. The passengers were silent. The sunlight danced on the floor in little squares. The train’s engine idled in a slow rhythm. ‘Why have we stopped?’

  Hava stood up, pulled down the window, and stuck her head outside. ‘Why have we stopped?’ she asked a group of soldiers walking along the side of the tracks.

  ‘To marry me!’ a redheaded soldier called out in a British accent.

  ‘Why has the train stopped?’ Hava insisted.

  The redheaded soldier pointed towards the front of the train. ‘No more track. It’s been blown away; it’s twisted and bent. But my marriage proposal is still on the table!’

  ‘Maybe at the next war,’ Hava said as she sat back down beside me.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ I said.

  ‘Everybody off. End of the line,’ the conductor announced confidently as if announcing the train had just arrived in Paris. ‘End of the line.’

  ‘Let the others off first,’ Hava suggested. ‘We may as well sit for as long as we can.’

  We remained in our seat and watched children being led down the aisles holding the hands of their parents. An old woman steadied herself with the backs of each seat as she made her way to the exit. Two women in elegant furs and stockings stood up with startled expressions on their faces. One of the women turned to the other two. ‘How can we walk in these shoes?’

  When the carriage was empty, the conductor stepped in. ‘Mademoiselles, you have to leave. The train has stopped, and we can go no further. Dunkirk is just four more miles. You’ll have to walk, I’m sorry. There is nothing we can do.’

  As Hava and I headed towards the exit, I asked the conductor ‘And you?’

  ‘Ah, mademoiselle, I will stay with my train. It’s my duty. Duty still counts.’

  ‘But the Germans are coming.’

  ‘If not the Germans, then old age will catch up with me.’ The conductor shrugged.

  Just before we stepped off the train, I turned to the conductor. ‘Vive la Belgique.’

  He looked at me, and smiled. ‘Vive l’amour.’

  When the train had been moving it seemed that all else was still. When the train stopped, and Hava and I stepped onto the ground, everything else moved: horses, trucks, columns of soldiers, refugees moving forward in massive turbulence and disorder. Even the spring blossoms seemed to move forward, leaning away from the advancing wind.

  In a distant field, soldiers were shooting a herd of cows, their guns a terrifying companion to the cow’s horrible lowing.

  ‘Simone, why are they shooting the cows?’

  A man behind us said, ‘Because they’re in pain. They haven’t been milked. No one can milk them. They’re suffering.’ It was the redheaded soldier.

  ‘But I can milk them,’ Hava said. ‘I know how.’

  ‘Sure. You can milk all the cows in France, but there’s no time. The Germans are hot on our tail. We must keep moving, ladies. Keep moving.’

  And then, as if a curtain had been drawn back, Hava and I looked ahead. Cannons, trucks, tanks had been abandoned. A dying horse kicked its legs in a ditch. A sea of humanity walked towards a tall plume of black smoke. The landscape was charred, farm houses were in flames. Their skeletal frames trembled, collapsing into piles of ashes.

  ‘That’s Dunkirk,’ the redheaded soldier said as he pointed forward. ‘The Germans have dropped a few calling cards there already. At least we know where we’re going now. The smoke is a good marker.’ He seemed almost nonchalant, like he couldn’t smell the terrifying stench of rot and decay.

  ‘What should we do?’ I asked the soldier.

  ‘Do? Why, my little lady, it’s every man for himself. This is a retreat. The Panzer divisions have already crashed through Brussels. We were supposed to retreat to the west. The word is out that Dunkirk is our last stand. There’s nowhere else to go. The sea is to the west and the Nazis are to the east.’

  Hava and I walked with the redheaded soldier between us. ‘We tried to stop them,’ he continued, pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. ‘Want one?’

  We both declined.

  ‘We were even told to blow up your bridges to slow them down.’ The soldier lit a cigarette, inhaled with vigour, and blew smoke out of his mouth. ‘Didn’t help. They’re organized: first the planes, then the tanks, then foot soldiers and trucks swept right through. We lost thousands of troops. We’ve already lost the war. Start learning German, girls.’ He inhaled on his cigarette once again, coughed, and repeated, ‘Start learning German.’

  I hadn’t expected a plane. I hadn’t expected the sudden panic and shouting. From over the tops of the thick trees to our left a German Stuka appeared, banking right, flying low over the stream of people staggering along the narrow country road. Then the machine guns began, one under each wing. Helpless, desperate people dropped to the ground, hands covering their heads hoping to hide from the onslaught. The bullets spat from the plane with a quick, cracking sound.

  More people began to drop as the plane flew closer. Our redheaded companion yelled, ‘Get down!’ and pushed Hava and me as if we were two rag dolls on either side of him. I fell hard to the ground and rolled into the ditch. Hava and the soldier disappeared into the sea of people. The plane droned relentlessly overhead with speed and horror. I could not hear much over the noise, but I could hear screaming.

  Lying there on the cold ground, hugging my arms and trying to pretend that I was anywhere else, I heard the plane finally return to wherever it had come from. The ear-splitting whirring of the engines became a distant hum, giving me enough courage to sit up. Crying, shaking, terrified, I look around and tried to work out how long it had been. Seconds? Minutes? Hours? I looked down and saw blood on my dress. I stood up on my wobbly legs and climbed out of the ditch back onto the road. A few others stood up around me. The road was covered with blood and bodies, some moving an arm or a leg, but most not moving at all. Children wailed, and the black smoke of Dunkirk continued to plume into the horizon.

  ‘Hava!’ I croaked, my voice hoarse with desperation, ‘Hava!’ And there she was in the middle of the road like Michelangelo’s Pietà, cradling the dead redheaded soldier in her lap, looking into his face. She didn’t look sad. She didn�
�t look shocked. She held him as his blood trickled onto her arms and legs. And then she looked up at me and said as she stroked his hair, ‘I would have married him if we had met in Tahiti.’

  Another plane appeared over the trees.

  ‘Hava!’

  Gently she laid the British soldier onto the ground and kissed his cheek. I reached out for her hand. The plane flew lower. I pulled her to her feet and we both ran for the ditch just as more bullets began cutting once again into the people who were running and diving for cover.

  The pilot pulled up the nose of the plane, rose quickly into the clouds, and disappeared.

  CHAPTER 39

  The Dutch defenders fell back westward, and by noon on 12 May, German tanks were on the outskirts of Rotterdam. Queen Wilhelmina and her government fled the country for England on 13 May, and the next day the Dutch army surrendered to the Germans. France was next.

  We arrived in Dunkirk that night hungry, our clothes stained with blood. We stopped beside a broken lamp-post. I whispered to Hava, ‘Would you like to seduce the lamp-post?’ She looked at me with a weak smile.

  Soldiers walked around us as if we were ghosts, intangible and invisible. Across the square men stood beside a fire, their silhouettes moving like shadow puppets: arms thrust outward, heads bobbing to the inflections of their voices that carried words of distress and sorrow. I heard soldiers talking.

  ‘The planes are coming again.’

  ‘We’re trapped.’

  ‘I saw a train on fire.’

  ‘I haven’t heard from my son in three weeks. He’s missing.’

  Hava covered her ears with her two hands. ‘I can’t listen anymore. There’s no explanation!’ Then she grabbed my shoulders and began to shake me. ‘There’s no explanation! Where’s my family?’

  ‘Hava!’

  ‘My father!’ Hava let go of my shoulders. ‘My mother! Benjamin! Have you seen Benjamin, Simone? He was right here!’

  Hava stood before me, her hands on her hips.

  Every café was filled with people. There were no street vendors. I told Hava that we must get something to eat, but she insisted that we had to stay beside the streetlamp. ‘Benjamin will come back and recognize the light, Simone. Look how beautiful the light is. It’s like a star, a yellow star. Look how pretty the star looks at the top of the pole.’

  It was no use telling Hava that there was no light, that the streetlight was broken.

  ‘I want that star, Simone. Reach up for it and pin it on my chest.’ Hava leaned back and stretched out her arms upward as if trying to detach the star in her imagination from the top of the streetlamp. ‘Benjamin will see the star and he will recognize me.’

  ‘Hava, we must find a place to eat. We need food.’

  Hava lowered her arms. ‘I need my star. It’s my shield, Simone. My father will recognize me. Benjamin will find me. He’ll be impressed that I look like an angel with my shield.’ Then she knelt on the cobblestones and wept.

  I bent down beside her and as I looked into the eyes of my friend, I saw terror. Her pupils were black and wide. Her hair fell on either side of her face like a veil. She dropped her thin arms and whispered, ‘I’m so hungry, Simone.’

  It seemed as if no one could distinguish us from the quilt of humanity stitched together in grey grief and fear. We may as well be stones or dirt on the street, I thought, so I was startled when a young man leaned over me and asked, ‘May I help you?’ He was a soldier, another British soldier in a brown army uniform, wearing a helmet that looked like a turtle shell, and carrying a rifle.

  Hava looked up. ‘Have you found Benjamin?’

  ‘Benjamin?’

  ‘It’s her brother. He’s missing.’

  ‘Here?’ the soldier asked.

  ‘No, at home.’

  ‘Where’s home?’

  ‘Brussels.’

  ‘You two girls are far from home.’ The soldier leaned his gun against the lamp-post and offered me his hand. I took it as he helped me stand up.

  ‘Can you help me with my friend?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Simone Lyon.’

  ‘Hello, Simone Lyon. I’m Bill Lacey, Private Lacey, from Portsmouth.’

  ‘England?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re far from home too.’

  ‘Just over the water there.’

  The soldier waved his arm in the direction of the English Channel. I turned to look where he pointed, but all I saw was smoke, rubble in the street, and a burned-out post office.

  ‘Oh, it’s there, miss, believe me.’ As he helped me pull Hava up onto her feet, he said that the Nazis were only a day away, and we couldn’t stay in Dunkirk. ‘You’ll have to leave tomorrow. Hitler is on the way. We have nowhere to go. The Germans have pushed us with their tanks right across Belgium and France to this little place. I hear there are over 400,000 troops, French too, and your folks and your soldiers, in and around the city, all waiting to be evacuated. We don’t know what to do. We’re trapped here at Dunkirk. We’re still fighting. The guys left behind are probably giving us a day or so extra to escape. My regiment was pulled back and here I am. You girls had better get out of here fast.’

  ‘I’m fine. I can stand now,’ Hava said. ‘I’m sorry, Simone. I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Hava, you need something to eat.’ I looked at the soldier.

  Private Lacey of the British army looked at me. ‘Right. Food.’ He picked up his rifle. ‘Stay here.’ He stepped to his left and disappeared into the crowd.

  ‘I really thought there was a star at the top of the lamp-post, Simone.’

  ‘Maybe the star fell down and turned into a British soldier.’

  CHAPTER 40

  We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: it is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime.

  Winston Churchill’s first speech as Prime Minister of Britain to the House of Commons, 13 May 1940

  It began to rain. People rushed past us. I tried to pretend that everyone was in a hurry so as not to get wet, instead of running from tanks and bombs and the end of something. Hava and I stood like statues, the rain wetting our hair. French rain. May rain. Rain from the clouds in the sky – clouds that were free to float away. I wanted to float away with Hava across the English Channel, across England; to keep floating across the Atlantic Ocean, to Hollywood. To find Clark Gable and tell him that Hava and I were hungry, ask if he had warm clothes. Then I thought about my father and I wanted to go home.

  We remained there with nowhere to go. No food. In the rain.

  ‘Right, what’s this!’

  I looked up and there was Bill Lacey, Private Bill Lacey of the Royal British army. He didn’t have his rifle. Instead he had two blankets. He draped one first over Hava, and then the other over me. The blankets were warm and dry.

  ‘Come with me, my Belgian girls.’

  He walked ahead of us, holding out his arms, making a path for us between the soldiers and refugees. For some reason people stopped and let us through. We followed the soldier to the front of a little café. The door was wide and made of dark wood. On both sides of the door were generous windows, giving the appearance that the whole front of the café was made of glass.

  The café was crowded. Glasses clinked. Talk was a loud, mixed murmur. Chairs scraped the floor. When we stepped inside, it was as though someone had given a signal and everything paused: the talking, the movement of the forks and knives. Silence extended to the waitress who was opening one of the windows, but stopped midway. And in the right-hand corner of the room were a small, empty table and two chairs.

  Private Lacey turned to me. ‘Right, there you go, ladies. All set.’

  ‘But there are hundreds of pe
ople here and so many waiting outside. How did you arrange this?’

  Private Lacey leaned over and whispered, ‘I told the owner that you’re the daughter of General Joseph Lyon.’

  Hava leaned over and whispered in my other ear. ‘Your father has spies everywhere.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said to the soldier, ‘but how did you know?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t until right this second when you just confirmed my suspicion. Back in England, in boot camp, we had to read up on France and Belgium. We were told that we had to have a feeling for the place, care about the places we’d be trying to protect. We read all about the history of Belgium and the First World War; how your father was a part of the White Lady and how he grabbed that shovel and began to dig a trench under fire. I laughed at first when I read that – a general as a white lady. But I didn’t laugh when I read how he inspired the other soldiers to dig that trench. The book said he became a general, lived in Brussels, and had a daughter named Simone. It all got stuck in my head: a general with a shovel who was a white lady, who had a daughter named Simone. And here you are and here I am, just a bloke from Portsmouth delivering mail.’

  ‘But there must be hundreds of girls named Simone Lyon.’

  ‘What difference does it make? I convinced the owner of the café that you were the general’s daughter and everyone knows of General Lyon. Even if he hadn’t been your father, it got you a table and a free meal. We Brits are resourceful, you know.’

  ‘But there are only two chairs.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t stay. I’ve got a boat to catch. Strict orders. Dockside at 08.30. I’ve got a war to go to.’

  A man in an apron and red shirt walked up to our little group. He looked at Hava and said ‘Mademoiselle Lyon?’

  Hava smiled and pointed to me.

  ‘Oh, excuse me. Are you sisters? You look like sisters.’

  Hava and I looked at each other. Our blankets were wrapped around our shoulders, our hair was wet and clinging to both sides of our faces.

  ‘This is Marie Armel, my cousin.’

  I looked at Private Lacey and said, ‘Belgian girls are resourceful too.’