Tramp in Armour

by Colin Forbes

  'Keller, this is Meyer. General Storch is dead. The British are attacking from the south - yes, the south. Cancel the order for the advance on Dunkirk immediately. Do you understand? You have the waterline at your backs so now you must...'

  Halfway through the conversation the line went dead, but Meyer was satisfied that Keller had grasped his order. From the tank laager there was now a series of explosions of increasing violence and for the first time Meyer had the terrible thought that he might be wrong. He could hear planes now, planes flying low overhead, and the ack-ack guns had opened up. With a curse he left the wrecked office and ran out into the garden. He heard the whistle of the bomb coming down and turned to run, just in time to receive the relics of the farmhouse full in his face as the bomb scored a direct hit.

  At exactly 3.55 am Squadron Leader Paddy Browne was approaching the coast of France, leading his Blenheims on a dawn raid. His instructions gave him unusual latitude, but then the situation was, to say the least of it, unusual. Evacuation of the BEF imminent, the German Panzers lording it over the battlefield, the position changing almost from minute to minute. 'Fluid,' as the war communiques would say. His primary objective was the key rail junction at Arras, but if he saw enemy ground forces and could positively identify them, the choice of target was left to his discretion. 'But for Pete's sake, don't paste our own chaps,' the briefing officer had added.

  Browne wasn't particularly concerned with the Gravelines-Lemont area, but as he led his squadron over the coast his attention was drawn to it by a huge mushroom of smoke rising into the early morning sky, a mushroom which rose higher every second as though the whole of that corner of France were detonating. We'd better have a quick look, thought Browne, so he signalled to the squadron and took his Blenheim down. Two factors quickly convinced him that this lot was the other lot -he met flak at once and his keen eye saw beetles scuttling about on the ground as though they had gone mad. He could hardly believe it for a moment but he believed it the next moment. Hun tanks —a whole laager of them. Browne exercised his discretion: he gave the order to bomb. An avalanche of high-explosive rained down and when the squadron turned away there was no sign of movement anywhere between the breaks in the smoke pall. Browne's only comment on the way back was typical.

  'Good of them to send up a smoke signal.'

  ***

  Lieutenant Jean Durand of the 14th French Chasseurs found it difficult to believe his eyes as he focused his glasses across the flooded zone. His unit was charged with the defence of this forward sector of the Dunkirk perimeter and so far it had been a quiet morning, but then this is what he had expected because how could Panzers advance across water? And, Durand asked himself, how can this idiot advance across water? Speaking into the field telephone, he asked the British liaison officer to come at once. This was a sight which must be shared.

  The lone figure on the bicycle was crouched low over his machine as though he could hardly stay on it, but still he cycled steadily across the sheet of water, never once looking up, as though he knew the way by heart. Barnes had to ride in that fashion because it was the only way he could see the road surface under six inches of water. His pedalling motion had long since become mechanical, a movement which had no relation to thought. In fact, he had now reached the stage where he hadn't looked up for some time and he had no idea he was so close to the Allied lines.

  The British liaison officer, Lieutenant Miller, had now joined his colleague and his eyes narrowed behind the field-glasses as he recognized the uniform. Apart from the fact that the cyclist could cross water, this sudden arrival of another apparition was not a complete surprise to Miller because in the present state of the battlefield men kept stumbling into the perimeter with increasing frequency. A dog's breakfast, that's what it is, Miller told himself. All over the bloody shop.

  The cyclist was within a hundred yards of where they stood when there was almost a disaster. Unknown to either Durand or Miller, because they had been unaware of the road's existence, and unknown to Barnes because he hadn't been this way before, the road suddenly dipped and before he knew what was happening he was cycling up to his chest in water, and then he fell off. They dragged him out spluttering and choking, holding him up between them until they reached dry land where they laid him out on the grass. Barnes was desperately trying to say something and in spite of Miller's attempt to restrain him he burst out with it.

  'Road goes all the way ... all the way to Lemont... Jerry Panzers.'

  'Got it,' said Miller. 'Not to worry. Hospital for you, my lad.'

  Barnes spent two days at the Dunkirk field station for the seriously wounded although he kept trying to tell them that he was only seriously exhausted. In spite of his efforts to leave they refused to listen to him, so he waited his opportunity until the ward was empty of staff and then he crept out behind the hospital still in his pyjamas, his bundle of clothes under his arm. It took him half an hour to dress himself behind the hanging wall of a bombed house, and when he reached the beaches he made a tremendous effort to walk upright as though there were nothing wrong with him. He was still only vaguely aware that a total evacuation was taking place and he was frightened that they might not take him if he didn't look fit.

  Afterwards he could only recall the journey as a blur, like a film run too quickly through the projector. The endless wait on the beaches, the sand coughing up as bombs fell, the crowded boat which threatened to sink under the great weight of men who sat shoulder to shoulder, the incredible calm of the Channel as they crossed to England under bombardment and in a blaze of sunshine. Then Dover. Dover was the same thing all over again. A tremendous muddle, hundreds of men moving off in trains with hardly any supervision so far as he could see.

  He waited alone for long hours, searching the sea of faces so intently that eventually he feared he was incapable of seeing what he was looking for. Twice he had persuaded a military policeman to let him wait a little longer and he was on the point of giving up when his heart jumped. Three soldiers were helping a fourth along the platform to a waiting train and he recognized the stoop of the broad shoulders, the tilt of the head of the limping man who was being helped. Reynolds! He could hardly believe it as he ran forward and when the three men saw his stripes they left the driver in his care and wearily climbed aboard the train. Reynolds managed a faint grin, leaning on his stick.

  'Those three Jocks found me outside Lemont - we helped ourselves to one of the fifteen-hundredweight trucks. I woke up as they drove inside the Dunkirk perimeter.'

  They were boarding the densely packed train when the military policeman questioned Barnes for the third time, inquiring his destination.

  'Colchester,' Barnes replied.

  Colchester was his base depot. Barnes now had one fixed idea in mind. He had to get a new tank.