by Colin Forbes
They were all only too aware that even the slightest error of judgement would take the tank over sideways, and that even if they survived, which was unlikely, Bert would land on the bed of the river flat on his back like a helpless beetle, his tracks churning the air. And to Barnes it was quite clear that it all hinged on a few degrees of tilt; even a few extra pounds of weight on the right-hand side could be sufficient to start the fatal sideways topple. He gave the order. The tank began its forward movement. Foot by foot the tracks advanced, clutching at the earth below the undergrowth, and no one spoke, no one moved, every nerve end geared to the painfully slow revolutions of the steel tracks. They were beginning to creep past the huge boulder below when the crisis came. Barnes saw the left-hand track start to lift gently, increasing the tilt by several degrees. His hand gripped the turret rim as he took his decision. The bodies of Seft and the sentry were sliding over the engine covers to the right - he saw that when he glanced over his shoulder - and those bodies were adding well over twenty stone to their dead weight. Literally, dead weight, he thought grimly.
'Penn, cut those ropes - quickly!'
Reacting instantly, Penn pulled out his sheath knife and nervously leaned down over the back of the turret, being particularly careful not to lean sideways. The ropes were taut with the weight of the slithering bodies and he sawed rapidly, his nerves so keyed up that he observed each strand giving way until the rope, thinned to a few strands, suddenly snapped of its own accord. Seft's body rolled off the sloping hull and fell with a great splash into the channel of water alongside the boulder. Penn was so preoccupied in trying to watch the bridge while he cut through the second rope that he never even saw the first body land, but Barnes had a quick glimpse of the corpse sinking below the surface before he switched his gaze back to the front tracks. They were pressing down the undergrowth slowly, like an animal feeling its way across treacherous ground, and he knew that even the merest extra lift could unhinge Bert's precarious balance.
On his jacked-up seat in the nose of the tank, Trooper Reynolds was drawing on all his experience of the engines as he desperately tried to judge just how slowly he could keep moving without a fatal stalling of the motors, because if that happened he was sure that even the vibrations of re-starting the engines might well tip them into the river, and this was an experience that no training had prepared him for. Only his intimate knowledge of the tank's structure and idiosyncrasies could pull the trick if anything could. For several minutes Barnes had not spoken a word, knowing that words were useless and that he must leave it entirely to Reynolds to perform this diabolical operation. They were three-quarters of the way past the boulder when Barnes saw the upper track move against a clump of brambles, but instead of pressing them down the track began to climb as it mounted some unseen obstacle beneath the undergrowth. Here we go, Barnes told himself. He prepared to shout to Penn to jump, knowing that he had to stay on board himself because Reynolds wouldn't have a dog's chance of scrambling up out of the hatchway in time. The track was still climbing, but Bert still clung limpet-like to the side of the bank, poised at an impossible angle. Then Barnes felt the wobble as the tank began to heel over. At that moment Penn sawed through the final strands of rope and the sentry's body broke free, toppling off the hull into the river. The wobble stopped, the upper track savagely trampled down undergrowth and dropped at least six inches to lower ground. They had recovered their balance. Penn's voice was breathless.
'Thought we were going, then. Two passengers couldn't stand the strain - they got off.'
'I think you were just in time, but we're not out of the wood yet. Any sign of the Panzers?'
'Bridge still like a picture postcard. Can't last like this much longer.'
'No, it can't. Keep watching.'
They weren't out of the wood yet because now Reynolds was faced with a fresh manoeuvre which promised to be at least as tricky as the one.' he had just completed. The upper track was still moving forward over the smooth slope so Barnes decided that they'd better get on with it before that track started to climb again. And they had passed the boulder now. He gave instructions and then waited, watching intently without saying another word to Reynolds. Again, it was strictly the driver's baby.
To move back down to river level Reynolds had to brake the right-hand track, keeping the upper track churning so that it revolved the tank on its own axis to face down the bank at an oblique angle. Here again there was ample opportunity for a fatal mistake: it was not only a topple that Reynolds feared, he was frightened that the revolutions of the upper track might cause a side-slip. He paused to wipe his clammy hands on his trousers and then firmly gripped the steering levers, knowing that Barnes was relying on him to pull it off. The upper track speeded up and they began to turn. Reynolds handled the manoeuvre largely by feel, handled it magnificently, although in his own estimation he lost a few marks when Bert slithered the last yard or two and flopped into the water with a thunderous splash, but he redeemed himself in his own eyes by missing the far bank as he completed the second turn. The tank now faced downstream again. Barnes spoke quickly.
'Well done. Now, drive like hell...'
Reynolds accelerated, the tracks churned up the water into a cauldron as the tank surged forward, pushing the river out of its way, heading non-stop for the bend which was now so close. South Pole or bust, he told himself, and increased speed more still. He could see part of the way round the bend now, could see that it turned gradually so there was no need to slow down. Instead, he speeded up! In the turret two pairs of eyes stared back at the distant bridge which was still deserted, the stone intensely white in the sunlight. Barnes turned to see how close they were to the bend, shouted a warning to Penn, and two heads ducked down inside the turret. They heard the crack of the overhanging branch as it broke against the metal. When Barnes lifted his head Penn was already standing upright as he observed the bridge, his knuckles white with tension as he gripped the turret. They felt the tank veering under them as it entered the bend, saw the bank on their right gradually screening the bridge from view until it vanished together. Ahead, Barnes saw another long stretch of river still hidden under the tunnel of trees. They had made it.
Less than half an hour later, as though their shattered nerves had not already been tested almost beyond endurance, a new crisis burst upon them. German tanks were approaching from downstream.
They had halted Bert a hundred yards or so beyond the bend, had climbed the southern bank to catch their first sight of the advancing column they had so narrowly escaped, arriving at the top in time to see the first motor-cycle patrol reach the bridge. Because of the bend in the river they could see clearly across open fields to the bridge and Penn gulped as he peered through the trees: the cycle had stopped in the very centre of the bridge while a soldier dismounted from the sidecar, and even at that distance Perm felt quite sure that the sentry was staring clear down the stretch of river they had just negotiated.
'God!' Penn gasped. 'That was closer than the shave I didn't get this morning.'
'Which reminds me,' Barnes replied, 'we'll have to clean up as soon as we get the chance.'
He focused his glasses and the bridge came up to him - the sentry walking to the northern side, gazing down over the parapet, making his way down through the brambles to check under the bridge before the column arrived. Yes, it had been damned close. He swivelled the glasses and the twin circles ran along the column - stubby armoured cars, squat self-propelled guns, heavy tanks with their deadly barrels pointed up the road. The lot, in fact. He began counting, recording the count cryptically in his notebook, a form of shorthand which only he could decipher, adding it to the notes he had already made under the bridge when he had recorded the composition of the previous column while he waited to wake up Pierre for his test watch.
Behind them Reynolds had stayed with the tank which was now resting in mid-stream like a strange steel island, the sunlight forming a patchwork of shadow across the hull where it penetrated the ove
rhead foliage, foliage which was still dense enough to mask them from any spying plane which might fly over. The river was shallower at this point so the water flowed past no more than three feet up the sides of the vehicle, but it was also much wider and there was now a good three foot of clearance on either side. For Reynolds, who was seizing the opportunity for a little maintenance, it was more like scrambling about on the deck of a boat. Since he was over twelve feet down below the level of the banks he didn't hear the menacing rumble of the Panzers, a sound like the distant chunter of a concrete-mixer.
Under the trees Barnes made a further note while Penn stood with his arms folded as he asked his question.
'What happened to the bodies when they went in? I was too busy trying to observe the bridge at the time, you may remember.'
'They both sank - they've probably floated miles downstream by now.'
He finished his note and frowned. The throb of powerful engines and the clattery grind of tank tracks drifted across the field as a muddled purr, but his acute hearing had detected a different sound. No, the same sound, but from a different direction. As he turned his head Penn noticed the movement.
'What's up?'
'Quiet.' He looked across the fields to his right. About half a mile away the ground sloped up gently to a low ridge so that the area beyond was hidden from view. Was there another road beyond that ridge? The sound of approaching engines was more distinct now, distinct enough for Penn to hear them.
'Not another lot?' He groaned in mock despair, but his feelings of despair were real enough, and he hadn't yet recovered from his ordeal on the bridge during the night, to say nothing of that mind-breaking experience when Barnes had taken the tank up the bank and past the boulder. It was not yet 6 am and Penn's morale was at its lowest in the early hours, on top of which he was unshaven, unwashed, and unfed. There had been no time even to have a drink of water since they had left the bridge and now he was hungry and thirsty and his stomach was full of wind.
'I'd better take a look,' said Barnes eventually. 'You stay here and keep on counting - start with that tank just coming up to the bridge now.'
'If it's Panzers coming up the river, they're bound to spot us.'
'Just wait here.'
Barnes was away for fifteen minutes, although to Penn it was more like an hour, and since he had loaned his watch to Barnes there was no way of checking the passage of time. Glumly, he went on with his counting, half bis mind on making notes while the other half listened to the distant throb of engines downstream. We're caught in a pincer movement, he was thinking, trapped between two columns of the bastards. It was bound to happen, our luck's run out... He turned as he heard a trampling of undergrowth and Barnes came up the bank behind him.
'It's Panzers, all right. About a hundred yards farther on there's another bend with a bridge just round the corner. It carries a road behind that ridge and there's another column going over the bridge - probably to protect the flank of this lot.'
'We're the meat in the sandwich.'
'Something like that. It's a good job we stopped here instead of pushing on downstream - we'd have run into them, or they'd have seen us after we'd passed the bridge. The river goes through open country just beyond there. And they've posted a sentry, of course. The chap was looking this way when I had a dekko through some trees.'
'So we just sit tight?' Penn made a note in the book Barnes had left him. 'I could do with a drop to drink before you start counting again.'
'I'll get your bottle from the tank.'
Barnes turned to make his way down the bank and froze.
Something had just floated downstream past the tank, a misshapen object which was now picking up speed in the current. Reynolds hadn't seen it because he had an engine cover up and was kneeling on the hull with his back to the near-side channel, but Penn had spotted it and he swore foully.
'That's the sentry's body - that German on the next bridge will see it.'
'You stay here!'
Barnes stumbled and slithered his way down the slope and then started to run along the overgrown bank side as though all the devils in hell were after him. He ran flat-footed, hammering bis feet down and then lifting them straight up again to try and avoid tripping over the brambles which snared his path, and as he ran black despair threatened to smother his mind. Of all the bloody bad luck. It had all seemed so simple up to this moment: all they had to do was to keep their heads down and remain out of sight until the Panzers on both roads had dis-appeared to the north. And now this. It was like a drowning man within an ace of the shore suddenly feeling himself swept up by an ebb-tide. And the tide of the river was carrying their safety away from them in the form of the dead sentry's body. What the hell could have happened? It must have got caught on something and then later the current had freed it again. Barnes could have wept; instead, he kept on running, watching the ground but continually glancing up to see the progress of the corpse which was so clearly that of a German soldier.
The body was face down in the water but the shoulders and back arid legs were well above the surface, exposing the jacket and trousers of, a German infantryman, and it wouldn't take some bright officer too long to wonder why this had appeared now on a stretch of river between two bridges being crossed by the Wehrmacht. He increased speed, took several paces forward, and fell flat on his face. Scrambling up again he hardly noticed the tear and rip of the thorns as they re-opened recent wounds, but he had fallen sideways on his right shoulder with a heavy thump and he did notice the sharp throb of his wound which immediately started up again. Swearing briefly, he ran on desperately. He had to reach that corpse before it swept round the bend and flowed on in full view of the sentry on the bridge, a sentry who had been looking this way. He fell flat again, his foot trapped by ropes of bramble, dragged himself to his feet, began running and then stopped. The floating body was approaching the bend, still drifting in the centre of the river. It was now or never. He threw off his battledress tunic, tore off his boots, and dived in.
The chill of the water took his breath away but he ignored the shock and began swimming rapidly downstream, his arms flashing through the water, his body shooting forward under a momentum which was increased by the flow of the current. While stationed in India as a professional soldier before the war Barnes had been champion swimmer in the division but he broke all records now, swimming as though his life were at stake, which it probably was - and the lives of two others. Under his shirt the wound was throbbing steadily, sucking away his energy when he needed it all for just the next few minutes. He swam with his teeth clenched, knowing that he was beginning to overtake the corpse. Foot by foot the gap closed, and foot by foot the bend came closer. He was only a few yards behind the floating body when his leg hit a rock under the surface, the blow sending an agonizing pain from his kneecap to his thigh. It stopped him for a second, then he was swimming on, his eyes fixed on the bend which was almost on top of him, the corpse still several yards ahead. The hump of German uniform picked up a little speed, bobbing slightly as it swept round the bend in full view of the bridge. He hadn't made it.
He had a quick glimpse - the curved bridge, the low parapet, the sentry on the far side, his back turned. Barnes took a deep breath and dived under, swimming now almost along the bed of the river, thrusting forward with powerful strokes until he saw a grey mass above him, barely one foot above him. He reached up with one arm, grabbed the body round the middle, hauled downwards with all his strength, feeling he was trying to drag down a ton-weight. It came down suddenly, rolling over sluggishly, and now his arms tried to swim two men. The bridge was very close to the bend but the distance seemed endless as he swam forward while the body tried to take on a life of its own, threatening at any moment to slip from his grasp. As he fought to retain control he was keeping a close eye upwards for the first sign of a change in the light which would warn him he was going under the bridge, and at the same time he was fighting his bursting lungs, his teeth a tight trap to hold back the ca
rbon dioxide, to force his lungs to hold out just a few seconds longer as he felt the blood pumping like a steam-hammer. No sign of a light change yet. He began to expel air, saw a shadow on the water surface, heaved upwards, broke surface under the bridge, blew out, took in oxygen as he threshed to the bank and grabbed at it with one hand.
A tank was crossing the bridge, he could hear the steel rumble, so no one would hear him threshing about. He clung on to the bank with his left hand while the right pinioned the sentry. Now for the rough part - getting out. The tank had gone, so he waited. When the next one approached he started to climb out and then he had the devil's own job hauling out the sodden body which seemed suddenly to have increased its weight ten-fold, at one point almost dragging Barnes himself back into the water as he lay face down in brambles while he struggled to heave the leaden burden up over the edge, both his arms wrapped round the waist and his hands locked together to make quite sure that it wouldn't slip back and float into view at the last moment. It was a grisly task and it became even more grisly when he succeeded in hoisting the corpse on to the bank because it rolled and he rolled with it, lying for a moment flat on his back with the sentry almost on top of him, sodden, dripping with water, its face close to his, the hair plastered flatly over the white skull.