Tramp in Armour

by Colin Forbes

  'Be glad to - but remember, I'm the most qualified non-practising doctor in the western hemisphere. Where is he?'

  Barnes stayed behind to gather up the collapsed parachute while Colburn walked back to where Reynolds waited on the hull of the tank. It took him several minutes to bundle up the cloth and cords into a package which resembled an overblown eiderdown and then he bid it inside a drainage ditch. There was no point in alerting any German patrol which might arrive later to the fact that there was a British airman in the district. When he returned to the tank Reynolds was out of sight inside the hull but Colburn's head emerged from the turret. He looked down at Barnes, his voice quiet.

  'The guy down there is a close friend of yours?'

  'He's my corporal,' replied Barnes flatly.

  'Sorry, that was badly put. The news isn't good, I'm afraid.'

  'He may not make it?'

  'He didn't make it - he's dead.'

  ***

  It took them well over an hour to dig the grave out of the sunbaked French soil. They worked with the same shovels which had been used to dig them out of the tunnel at Etreux, and they took it in turns when Colburn insisted on helping. During his rest period Barnes watched Colburn closely: on the basis of sheer physical strength there was very little to choose between the Canadian and Reynolds, but the main thing he liked about Colburn was his quick acceptance of an entirely new situation. By now the poor devil might well have expected to be landing at Mansion prior to a trip to the nearest local: instead of which he was marooned in the middle of the battle zone helping to bury the body of a man he had never known alive. As he watched them dig out the final shovelfuls his mind was stunned. Penn had spent three years with him and in that time they had established a working relationship which functioned so smoothly they might have known each other all their lives. Penn, who had never really believed in anything, who found his sergeant's intense preoccupation with his profession rather amusing, Penn was a man who could always be relied upon. And, by God, they'd relied on him during that endless night when he'd stood sentry-go on the bridge while the Panzers rolled past. Penn had found his sanctuary now, although not the sanctuary Barnes had planned for him.

  What had seemed to be the simplest part of their mournful task proved to be the hardest - the lowering of the body. The grave was ready and Colburn stood aside, leaving it to Barnes and Reynolds to lift the body which they had swathed in a blanket and then further protected by folding a groundsheet round it. To enable them to lower their burden slowly they had looped two ropes round the groundsheet - one over the chest and the other over the legs. All went well until the body was halfway down inside the grave, then it stuck, wedged in at the shoulders at a point where the hole narrowed. They raised it and then lowered it a second time, but again it stuck. Barnes looked at Colburn.

  'Would you take over this rope for me?'

  He waited until the Canadian was in position and then he knelt down, placing the flat of his hand on the groundsheet. As he pressed he could feel the thickness of the bandage over Penn's left arm. Colburn had said that it was probably the shock of severe burning on top of his shoulder wound which had finally dictated that he couldn't survive. The heavily-wrapped body still wouldn't go down. He pressed harder, feeling that Penn didn't want to be buried here and was resisting him. What was it he had said? 'You'll see me hugging the old two-pounder again before we reach Calais.' Well, they were a long way from Calais and now Penn would never know whether they made it or not. He pressed harder still, knowing that they hadn't time to embark on fresh digging because out here they were horribly exposed to view. The body gave up the struggle suddenly, sinking down so unexpectedly that Barnes almost over-balanced. When he stood up his face and hands were running with sweat and all he wanted to do was to get away from this place.

  'Shouldn't we say something over him?' mumbled Reynolds.

  'No,' said Barnes abruptly, 'nothing. Didn't you know - he was an agnostic.'

  When they had filled in the grave they erected a crude marker, and they used a shovel because it was the only instrument they could find for their purpose. The shovel was dug deep into the ground and on the handle Barnes had inscribed simple wording which he cut into the wood with his knife. '18972451 Corporal M. Penn. Killed in Action. May 25th, 1940.'

  Before they moved off he asked Colburn to check his shoulder wound. While he had been leaning over into the grave, at the moment when the body had suddenly slipped down into its resting place, he had jerked his shoulder, feeling something give: he had ripped open the wound again. He sat on the warm hull while the Canadian removed the bandage and Colburn's voice spoke volumes of disapproval.

  'I can see this dressing hasn't been changed recently.'

  'You mean it's turned septic?' Barnes inquired quietly.

  'No, you were lucky there. I'm talking about the state of the outside of the dressing. You've reopened it again, all right, but it looks clean and that's the main thing. Now, keep still. This may hurt.'

  Cleaning the freshly-opened wound thoroughly, he applied a new dressing and then helped Barnes on with his shirt and jacket. The shoulder was starting to throb steadily, a nagging ache which absorbed far too much energy. When he was dressed he took out a pencil from the pocket containing Penn's pay-book and diary, spread out his map over the hull and roughly marked the spot where the corporal was buried. One day Penn's parents might wish to make a pilgrimage to this spot, but by then anything could have happened to the shovel. Really, he told himself, it's a waste of time. All he could hope for was that the whole ruddy war wasn't a waste of time. He began discussing the battlefield situation with Colburn but soon found out that the Canadian could tell him little more than he already knew.

  'As far as I can make out,' Barnes went on, 'The BEF is roughly north of this line with the Belgian Army on its left. We're standing in the middle of a huge no-man's-land...'

  'The gap,' said Colburn.

  'You mean they're actually calling it that?'

  'Yes, it's referred to as that on our briefing maps. As you say, you're slap in the middle of it but there's a lot of argument as to how wide it is. My squadron came over to mix it with Hun fighters but as a sideline we were told to shoot up any Panzers we found. They think reinforcements may come through here soon.'

  'They were right - they came through early this morning.'

  'Late again.' He smiled faintly. 'Going back to those Panzers, I raised a query about the risk of shooting up our own guys and you're not going to like the answer they gave. They said that if we found a whole lot of heavy tanks strung out along a road they were bound to be German - the British only have a handful and the French have cleverly scattered theirs in penny packets over the whole front.'

  'You don't seem to know a great deal more than I do, Colburn.'

  'Sergeant, you're over here in the thick of it, and it's my opinion that you're far to close to be able to take in the general picture.'

  'That, Colburn, said Barnes irritably, 'is what I'm trying to extract from you. You get detailed briefings before you take to the air, you fly over the battlefield - if anyone has a general picture it should be you.'

  'Oh, I've got it, all right, but from your questions I get the idea you're looking for some sort of clear pattern I should draw you, some nice neat little map which will show the Germans here, your lot there, and the French some other place. Well, I can't do that, and again it's only my opinion, but I'm pretty sure that when this war is only a memory and the historians get busy with their tidy little analyses they still won't be able to say exactly which unit was where and on what day.-This, for what it's worth, is the biggest muddle of a battle that ever was.'

  'What are you trying to say?'

  'That there isn't any information worth a damn - these boys, the generals, are just making it up as they go along. Just like Wellington in the Peninsular War when he said it was like knotting a rope - you tie one knot, then you tie another and hope for the best. But don't try to kid me that any
of them are working to a tidy little plan in a war room any more.'

  'Not even the Germans?' Barnes asked quietly.

  'Not even those bastards.— not any more. Ask me how I know and I'll tell you it's the well-known Colburn intuition -that and the fact that I'm a minor student of the history of warfare. But there's one thing, Barnes, I'd bet money on - I'd bet that at this moment the German generals are so intoxicated with their success that they don't know what to do with it. Generals are always divided into pushers and pullers - one lot will be saying press on, push 'em into the sea, and the other lot will be yelling blue murder that they've over-reached themselves and had better dig in quick before they get their heads chopped off.'

  'It doesn't help me much,' remarked Barnes.,

  'Well, maybe this will help you. When I flew in today I came down south-east over Calais and I'm pretty sure there's another gap between the coast road and the main battle area to the east. That could just be the way for us to go.'

  'It is the way we're going.'

  'So I get a free ride to Calais, but on one condition - that you don't ever ask me again for the general picture. There isn't one. This is such a bloody mixed-up mess they'll never be able to describe it - not in a hundred years' time. Not unless they call on the aid of Shakespeare who did have a word for a complete one hundred per cent shambles. The general picture, Sergeant Barnes, is hugger-mugger.'

  'Which simply means we could run into Jerry at any time now.'

  EIGHT

  Saturday, May 25th

  The Stuka bomber, one hundred feet up, smoke pouring from its tail, was heading straight for them as though aimed at the mouth of the quarry. Barnes stood perfectly still, his gaze fixed on the approaching projectile as he prayed that it would maintain its height for at least a few hundred yards more. It screamed in closer, its nose dipping like a suicide bomber guided to penetrate the quarry mouth and explode against the rear wall where Bert was parked. Beside him Colburn froze as he automatically assessed the Stuka's line of flight. Then it roared over them, still losing height, and ten seconds later they heard it hit France a mile away as its bomb load blew up.

  'This place reminds me of high-explosives,' said Colburn.

  The tank was parked inside a chalk quarry cut out of the hillside and the giant alcove was filled with shadow. It was half past six in the evening and they had been standing at the narrow entrance while Reynolds mounted guard on the rim of the quarry high above them. The driver shouted down to tell them that the plane had crashed a long distance off and then resumed his all-round observation.

  'I'm none too fond of high-explosive myself at the moment,' Barnes replied drily as he swirled tea in his mug.

  'That's because you've been on the receiving end - I'm talking about quarry-blasting operations. There's something very satisfying about laying the charges just right, going back to the plunger, pressing it, and seeing exactly the right area of rock slice away.'

  'I thought you just supplied the stuff.'

  'Oh, they were always asking me for advice and I ended up by doing the job for them. I have a talent for destruction, Barnes. What's more to the point, I enjoyed my work.'

  They walked away from the tank and through the narrow defile which formed the entrance to the quarry. Stopping in the entrance, they looked out across the fields of France. They had done very well, Barnes was thinking, and he estimated they were now less than thirty miles from Calais. All through the late afternoon and early evening Bert had moved at top speed along the road and only twice had they stopped and prayed. Once when a flight of German planes had flown across the eastern sky, and once when a cloud of dust had warned them of the approach of a German supply column. For over half an hour they had waited concealed inside a nearby wood, only emerging when the last escorting tank had driven out of sight in the opposite direction. And then Bert had ground forward non-stop heading north, always north towards Calais.

  They had finished their meal and once again bully beef hadn't been featured on the menu. When they re-opened the parcel which Mandel had provided they had found several sticks of French bread, an earthenware pot of butter, a whole cold chicken, and four bottles of wine. They had dined well but Barnes had not enjoyed it because at the beginning of the meal he had remembered Penn who had never tasted any of the food. As a crew they were probably in better condition than at any time since they had left Fontaine, except that now the fighting crew comprised only two men - unless Colburn could absorb enough of a rudimentary training to make him useful. Beyond the quarry, several miles across the sunlit plain, Barnes saw a long thin trail of dust moving at an oblique angle to where they stood. It looked as though the column were heading for the coast. He focused hi? glasses.

  'Panzers?' inquired Colburn.

  'Probably. Too far away to see properly and that dust is fogging the view. They're not coming this way, which is something to be thankful for. Now, Colburn, let's see how much you can learn about a tank in no time at all.'

  At the most, Barnes had hoped he might show Colburn how to use the Besa, but the Canadian was no sooner down on the turntable when he wanted to know how to traverse the turret. Within five minutes he was showing that he possessed real mechanical aptitude and an ability to grasp the traverse system which surprised Barnes, a surprise which grew as he experienced the Canadian's endless persistence. Once he found he was able to traverse he asked Barnes to go up to the turret and give him instructions over the intercom. Settling down to indoctrinate his quick-witted pupil Barnes showed him no mercy, correcting his faults with the ruthlessness of a drill-sergeant.

  'Right, Colburn! I said traverse right! You now have the distinction of presenting our bloody rear to the enemy. That's better. Left! Traverse left!'

  It quickly dawned on Barnes that he had a tiger by the tail. Colburn wouldn't give up until he could operate the traverse on instruction without mistake. He simply went on and on-and on, tirelessly as though his life might depend on getting this right. And, Barnes thought, it could just work out that way. In all his experience he had never trained a pupil who learned so quickly, even though it was only the rudiments he was grasping. When he went back into the fighting compartment Colburn demanded to know something about the two-pounder, but here Barnes felt that any attempt to show him how the weapon worked would be a waste of time. He suggested, instead, that Colburn should tackle the Besa.

  'Five minutes will do that,' said Colburn briskly.

  Barnes stared. So the Canadian was a braggart, which meant he would be totally unreliable in an emergency. Colburn read something of the thought in his expression and grinned.

  'You may have forgotten, Barnes, that we do carry a certain armament in the Hurricane. Like the Besa it's called a machine gun.'

  'Sorry.' Barnes closed his mouth tightly. The throb-throb of the shoulder wound had started up again and was pounding his mind to a jelly. 'I'd overlooked that. As you say, five minutes should do the Besa.'

  Two hours later Barnes called a halt to the training exercise. It would be dark in half an hour and he wanted to move farther north to a more open position which still provided some cover: being trapped inside the quarry for the night didn't appeal to him when he remembered their experience under the bridge. By now Colburn had grasped some of the basic lore of how to fight a tank, including the use of the periscope for observation by the gunner. It was quite impossible to cram months of basic training into two hours even for Colburn, but Barnes was amazed at how much the Canadian had picked up. Calling Reynolds down from the top of the quarry he prepared to depart.

  'That was fun,' said Colburn with enthusiasm. Tm not quite the spare wheel I was two hours back.'

  'You'll do - in an emergency.' Barnes smiled drily.

  'At least I can cope with the traverse and the Besa, so try and find me some running Germans within range, but if you're counting on the two-pounder,' he grinned, 'you'll be lucky.'

  It struck Barnes that perhaps he shouldn't be too surprised at the Canadian's achievem
ents; after all, it needed plenty of mechanical ability to handle a plane and the one quality no fighter pilot could do without was quick-wittedness. He was more surprised still when Reynolds spoke, pausing as he climbed down into the hatch.

  'It just goes to show, Sergeant, that training course is far too long like I've always said - strictly for village idiots. A right old load of bullshit.' He disappeared inside his own compartment.

  For the first time it flashed through Barnes' mind that maybe Reynolds had always been so silent because Penn had always been so talkative-. The relationships inside the unit were changing rapidly, and he was pleased to see that Reynolds obviously liked Colburn.

  Three minutes later the tank left the quarry, moved on to the road and headed north. Up in the turret Barnes' expression was grim: he was conscious that they were approaching a crisis and that within the next twenty-four hours at the outside they might well all be dead or taken prisoner. There was, of course, the third alternative - that they might get the chance of striking a great blow against the Germans. If only they could locate a really vital objective. Over seventy two-pounder shells under me, he thought. They could make a mess of something.