by Colin Forbes
'Maybe we'll be off the old bully beef tonight. I wonder what's on the menu at the Restaurant de la Gare.'
'We're behind the German lines,' Barnes reminded him.
'Even so, providing their lordships aren't in residence we may get a slap-up supper. Now, let me see, I wonder what I fancy.'
'A bottle of water,to start with.'
'Boeuf a la Bourguignonne with haricots verts would be acceptable. Yes, that's it. Washed down with several bottles of vin ordinaire, of course. We can't really afford vintage wines on Army pay, can we?'
'Don't count your chickens.'
'Chickens? Well, poulet roti might do at a pinch. It's rather plebeian, of course.'
They chattered on for several minutes and Penn's lively banter, plus the sight of the approaching town, revived Barnes, but soon he sent Perm down into the tank again as a precaution. It would be just their luck to meet another lorryload of German infantry leaving the town. He repeated his routine, scanning the hot blue empty sky, searching the surrounding countryside for signs of danger, and all the time the tank rumbled forward, taking them even closer to the unknown town, which he now had difficulty in seeing because the road was turning and the sun shone straight into his eyes.
As the town came closer he found himself shading his eyes more frequently, straining to catch the detail of the silhouette which looked oddly still in the blazing sunlight. Once again he checked his all-round observation and then quickly looked ahead, his hand forming a peak over his eyes, his sense of unease growing. This town had been badly bombed. What he had taken for buildings from a distance on closer inspection revealed themselves as stone fa9ades of irregular shape, and now he was sure that at least half the town was in ruins. But in a place of this size there must be someone left, someone who could tell him the name. And they must find more diesel. A tank running low on fuel was a sitting duck, its second weapon - movement - immobilized. He'd better break the news to them. He spoke quietly.
'This place looks a bit of a wreck - I think Jerry has been here before us and he dropped a few carefully placed bombs.'
They were less than a quarter of a mile from the town now, a small town of possibly about thirty thousand inhabitants he estimated. He held his hand up again, screwing up his eyes, his mouth tight. It reminded him of pictures he had seen of Ypres taken during the First World War, although the one thing he did know was that they were many miles away from that ill-fated Belgian town. Grimly, he watched the advancing silhouette.
The outskirts had been gutted, no other word for it. The walls which were still standing were windowless, the upper frames like sightless eyes enclosing clear sky beyond. Halfway down the walls the scree slopes began, slopes of rubble and debris. These were relics of buildings and there was no sign of life anywhere - no women working in the fields nearby, no men clearing the mess out of the streets. Just nothing, nothing at all. And over the devastation there hung a curious atmosphere, a horrible silence which seemed even more unnatural in the bright sunny afternoon. Water, fuel, ammunition, food...
They crawled through the outskirts at minimum speed, hearing the tank tracks grinding their way over pieces of masonry, feeling the hull drop slightly as the stone was crushed to powder. Barnes ordered Reynolds to drive down the very centre of the rubble-littered highway as he anxiously watched the spectral walls of the bombed buildings they were passing, wondering whether they should turn back at once. It was by no means certain that the vibrations of the tank movement might not bring down one of those hanging walls. Some of them seemed to stay upright by a miracle of balance. Cautiously they edged their way round a corner and drove deeper into the town.
The devastation was getting worse, no doubt about that. Whereas before many buildings had at least one wall standing they were now entering an area of almost total annihilation. Any relationship between what Barnes saw and a town could only be visualized by stretching the imagination to its limits. He calculated that an area close to a quarter square mile was a sea of rubble. The rubble was arranged in cone shapes which rose up between huge craters, a scene more like a moon landscape than a town in northern France, and the going was getting worse.
'Driver, halt. Keep the engines running.'
He gave Penn permission to come up and climbed down to the street, resting one hand on the hull and then snatching it off as the heat seared his flesh. Changing his mind, he told Reynolds to switch off so that he could listen carefully to hear whether he could detect any sign of life; he still found it hard to believe that a town of this size had been abandoned.
'There's always someone who stays behind,' he told Penn, 'someone who tries to make the best of it.'
'The Panzers may have been through as well,' objected Penn.
'But they're not here now, are they? If they have been this way they'll just have passed through without occupying the place - that's the sort of thing that's happening from what you told me about the news bulletins.'
'But no one would stay here - just look at the place.'
'I know, but it may not be so bad on the far side. We'll take a look.'
'I'd be quite happy to clear out altogether, thank you.'
Penn was voicing the feeling of all three men. There was something horribly oppressive about the deserted town, as though it had been sacked by barbarians who had taken all the inhabitants away into slavery. On the far side of the rubble sea a wall swayed gently, leaned and toppled out of sight. They heard a dull thud and saw a huge cloud of dust floating upwards. Barnes was still listening when suddenly he was galvanized into action, ordering Penn down inside the tank, warning Reynolds to close his hood, leaping up into the turret himself and ramming on his headset as he issued instructions.
The tank headed into the heart of the rubble sea, threading its way between the cones, slipping down the slope of a crater, crossing the floor and mounting the other side. They were near the centre of the area before the first planes appeared, a squadron of Stuka bombers flying low. Barnes issued the order to halt in the middle of a wide crater, went down inside the tank, slammed the lid closed and waited. The first stick of bombs fell some distance away, growing fainter as they fell farther off. Perm's voice was bewildered.
'Surely they couldn't have spotted us?'
'No, I think they were coming here anyway. I wanted us well clear of those walls.'
'But they've already smashed the place to bits ...'
He stopped and they listened, staring at each other. The scream was starting again, the scream of a Stuka falling into a high-speed dive before it released its deadly load. Another stick was coming, but this one was different. The first explosion was a long way off, the next one closer, the third closer still, a frightful nerve-shattering crump. Penn began conducting an unspoken conversation with himself. It will be the next one that gets us, the next one... The bomb exploded in their ears and the shock wave was like a hammer-blow. The hull of the tank shook, wobbled, settled again. Then a fifth crump farther off. A sixth, fainter still.
'They must be stark raving bonkers.' Penn sounded indignant, a highly strung form of indignation. 'They did the job last time - are they running out of space to store their perishing bombs?"
'There's an encouraging side to this,' said Barnes, going on quickly as he saw Perm's expression. 'They must have come back to make the place absolutely impassable - which looks as though they're frightened Allied reinforcements will be moving up here soon.'
'Glad to hear it. I feel so much better, Sergeant, now you've told me that.'
The scream of another plane starting its dive commenced, a plane which sounded to be directly overhead, the scream rising to a crescendo as it came down as though the machine were out of control, a scream which sent cold water down Barnes' spine. Then the explosions came, heart-shaking crumps landing all round them, pinpointing Bert's position. Between explosions he heard another distant sound, a heavy thump. One of the remaining walls had gone. At least he had taken them clear of those insidious hanging walls. Barnes was
well aware that the majority of casualties during an air raid on a built-up area are caused by the inhabitants being buried under collapsing masonry. He glanced at Penn to see how the corporal was standing up to the bombardment and Penn looked back, deliberately quivering the ends of his moustache in mock terror.
Mock terror? Penn's nerves were shuddering like plucked violin strings. Another bomb exploded almost on top of them and the tank rattled like a toy under the impact, fitments coming loose and falling on to the turntable. Bombing is a grim experience wherever the recipients may be hiding, but it is particularly grim for those inside a tank. Penn had an awful sensation of being exposed: the brick wall of a building may give as little protection as the 40-mm steel which protects the lower sides of a tank, but inside a building there feels to be more protection, and locked inside the Matilda the assault on the eardrums was tremendous. As Penn sat tensely the sound of the explosions seemed to slice clean through the metal skin, but once inside the hull the cannonade reverberated from wall to wall as though a ten-ton hammer were beating on the plates, setting up vibrations which shook him to the guts. While the raid proceeded he struggled to put his mind into cold storage^ as he had on the bridge when the Panzers were moving past, but now the method didn't work. He had decided to count up to a hundred explosions, telling himself that long before he reached that figure the raid would be over, but already he had lost count and he gave it up, living now from one explosion to the next.
In the nose of the tank, locked away from the other two men, Reynolds sat huddled forward, his hands still gripping the steering levers, his brain dazed with fear. It wasn't so much the thought of a direct hit which frightened him, because if that happened there would be nothing to worry about. Instead, Reynolds was desperately trying to forget a technical factor in the construction of Bert - the four six-volt batteries which were housed in the nose of the tank. And above all else Reynolds had a gibbering horror of being blinded. He was well aware that even a near-miss could deal the hull such a shattering blow that those batteries might burst - spilling sulphuric acid all over his face and hands. He sat there silently, waiting for the next one, cursing the man who had designed the Matilda for exposing him to this terrible hazard. Miss us or kill us, he prayed, gripping his hands even tighter as they slipped wetly on the levers. Here it comes, right in front of me. Oh God, no! The explosion battered the nose and he heard debris spatter the armoured glass beyond the slit window, then he realized he was all right this time. He still sat with his head down, facing his lap, his eyes tightly closed.
'So far, so good,' said Barnes, repeating Penn's joke.
'Yes.'
Penn spat out the word, wondering how much longer it was going to last, his imagination working at a feverish pitch as he saw so clearly what was coming - the bomb which was a direct hit. The hull would rip open, letting inside the monstrous gases which are the product of high-explosion, tearing their flesh apart, disintegrating the three men and scattering their pulped relics across the rubble. No one would ever know what had happened to them: they would simply disappear. 'Reported missing in action...' My God, he thought, my poor people. I was just going to write to them the day we moved across the frontier. That was how many days ago? He couldn't work it out and he didn't even try to any longer as the next stick came down, straddling the tank so that for a few agonizing seconds three men were convinced that they were on the verge of death.
The raid lasted fifteen minutes and during that time they were bombed almost non-stop. After a short pause they endured a series of near-misses which terrorized poor Reynolds very close to breaking-point: it was probably only the unseen presence of Barnes just beyond the plate behind him that saved the driver from opening the hatch and climbing out to escape those dreaded batteries. He had reached the stage where he was quite prepared to take bis chance out in the open. Then the second pause came, a pause which went on and on while they waited for the bombardment to start again. It was Barnes who recovered first, climbing up into the turret and cautiously raising the lid, starting to cough as soon as he had poked his head up into the dust-laden air, feeling the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. The turret rim was hot to the touch.
Many of the hanging walls were no longer there and over the whole area was suspended a pall of dust, a pall so dense that the sun was a blurred disc. He looked down and saw that the hull was coated with a film of dust as though Bert had been camouflaged to operate across a grey desert, and when he stepped down on the hull his foot slipped and he almost banged his knee again. He told both of them to get out of the tank and join him where they could breathe in the dust for themselves, but at least they were out in the open, outside the claustrophobic confines of what had so nearly become a metal coffin.
The tank stood inside an old square in the western, less-ruined sector of the town while its crew waited for the unknown intruder to make his appearance, the first sound of life they had met since entering the devastated town. The square was enclosed by hanging walls and the weird tomb-like atmosphere seemed to grow as they waited, Reynolds still in his driver's seat, Penn standing in the turret grasping a machine-pistol, while Barnes stood next to a corner of the square with his back to a wall. Instinctively, he did not lean against it and be held the revolver across his chest so that the muzzle was aimed at the corner.
Little more than ten minutes after they had stopped inside the square for Reynolds to check the tank, Barnes' acute hearing had detected the sounds, odd rustling sounds as though the approaching feet were scuffling furtively through rubble. The footsteps were very close now, moving more quickly. Barnes elevated his gun and at the same moment Penn aimed his machine-pistol. A man came round the corner and stopped abruptly.
Over his shoulder he carried a limp sack and for an instant his bony face expressed extreme fear, but he recovered quickly, removing a cap from his head and smiling unctuously. Small and lean, he was dressed strangely, his suit old and shabby, but round his neck he wore an expensive silk tie and Barnes caught a glimpse of a gold wristwatch before he wriggled his sleeve. His feet were encased in a pair of brand new crocodile shoes. Barnes spoke quietly.
'Sorry we frightened you, but can you tell us the name of this place?'
'British soldiers, yes?'
He was still smiling in a forced way and he had begun to step away from Barnes, shooting a quick glance at the tank as though he expected it to advance on him at any moment. Barnes tried again.
'We're British soldiers. There's nothing to worry about - we won't hurt you. But I would like to know the name of this place.'
He began jabbering away in French, speaking at a tremendous rate, so quickly that neither Barnes nor Penn could understand what he was saying, and as he went on talking he retreated step by step. He was close to the next corner when he lifted a hand and gestured furiously in the direction the tank had come from, waving his cap and then replacing it on his head. Barnes was walking slowly towards the tank when the man with the sack scuttled round the corner out of sight. Penn looked puzzled and sounded irritable when Barnes reached the tank.
'Why didn't you grab him? He could have told us...'
'Quick, Penn - give me that machine-pistol.'
'What
'Hurry it up, man.'
'Here ... what's the big idea?'
'Both of you wait. If you hear me using this thing get a move on - but come with Bert.'
He ran to the corner, peering round just in tune to see the man leave the road as he scrambled over a heap of rubble in the distance. He followed him, running lightly on the balls of his feet and holding the machine-pistol across his chest. The man had vanished behind the wall of a building and when he reached the point where he had scrambled over the rubble he was vanishing again behind the stunted relic of a house, still without a backward glance. Barnes slowed down as he approached the house, and now he held the machine-pistol under his arm ready for instant use as he peered round the end wall, quite unprepared for what he saw.
Beyon
d the house was a road comparatively free of debris and standing in the road was a single-decker bus, its sides covered with dust. Four people stood outside the bus and they appeared to be arguing. The bus was empty of passengers but its interior was crammed with a motley collection of goods, and beyond the open door he saw a seat piled high with miscellaneous articles. Bottles of wine, their necks protruding from a wicker basket, some red material which might be curtains or a bedspread, an up-ended silver tray, the upper half of a small chair with a brocaded back, and an old hunting rifle with a silver-plated stock. The quartet which stood arguing were almost as strange a collection as the contents of their bus.
The bony-faced man stood on one side, putting in a word every now and again, while the other three men formed a circle, facing each other as they talked. The leader of the group appeared to be a short squat man with a swarthy complexion and a large black moustache. He wore a crumpled business suit, a dark slouch hat pushed well back over his head, and round his neck was tied a coloured handkerchief. Barnes was reminded of a Corsican he had once met in a bar at Port Said when his troopship stopped there on the way home from India. The other two men were very thin and tall and they seemed to defer to the swarthy individual when the argument became too heated; they were dressed in blue denim jackets and trousers and wore black berets pulled tightly over their heads. Barnes walked out from behind the wall, his machine-pistol aimed at the group, his voice harsh.