Then after a little time the fear too passes. In its place comes a strange detachment. He watches the aircraft circling high above, like starlings turning to follow their leader. He sees the sun climb into the sky. He thinks how meaningless it all is, the explosions and the killing, the winning and losing. He thinks of his father, and how there’s something he needs to tell him, but he can’t remember what it is. He thinks of Kitty, and her sweet smile, and how he’d like to tell her how much he loves her. But it’s too late now, because he’s going to die. He finds he’s not afraid of dying after all, it turns out just to be another thing that happens. You think you’re in control of your life but really all you can do is accept what happens with a good grace.
I’m not fighting any more.
Not meaning fighting as a soldier, fighting in a war, God knows he’s done little enough of that. He’s no longer fighting for life. Whatever that instinct or passion is that chooses life at all costs has slipped away, overwhelmed by fatigue and fear. So the fear hasn’t left him after all, it’s merely taken this new form, of loss of will. Like a dog that accepts its master’s blows in silence, hoping by lack of opposition to win reprieve.
I’ve surrendered, Larry thinks. Take me prisoner. Take me home. Let me sleep.
There comes a roar overhead and the shadow of low-flying bombers, and then the smoke rolls down the beach. Larry gazes at the veil of whiteness that curtains him in his refuge and pretends to himself that now he’s safe after all.
*
General Roberts on the command ship HMS Calpe receives a steady stream of messages from the assault forces, many of which contradict each other. Some of the Calgary regiment’s tanks are reported to have broken into the town itself. A platoon of the RHLI has fought its way up to the six-inch gun before the Casino. 4 Commando are back on their mother ship after successfully destroying the coastal battery behind Varengeville. The Royals have suffered heavy losses on Blue Beach, which remains exposed to the Berneval guns, but the RAF still have air supremacy, and the Essex Scottish, following the RHLI, are ashore in the centre. Reports are coming in that the beaches have been cleared. With all the information the commander has at his disposal it makes sense to commit his reserve forces. The objective remains the outright capture of the port. Fresh troops, sweeping past the units who have done so much to break the enemy’s resistance, will tip the balance of the day.
‘Send in the reserves now.’
The order is transmitted to the landing craft standing offshore, holding seven hundred men of the Fusiliers Mont-Royal, and three hundred and seventy men of 40 Commando. The smokescreen hangs heavy over the sea and shore as the barges line up and make their approach.
On Ed Avenell’s boat the order is received with a cheer.
‘About fucking time!’
For three hours now they’ve sat helpless as shells from shore batteries have passed overhead, or into the water nearby, while from the distant beach has come the ceaseless chatter of gunfire. Now at last they can go about their business.
The four boats of the commando advance in line with each other, forming the last wave after the Fusiliers. They pass through the smokescreen and out into sunlight, and so get their first clear sight of the beach, barely a hundred yards ahead. They see the Fusiliers landing, scrambling onto the beach, falling, hit by the relentless crossfire. They see mortars plop down and blow men away like dolls. They see the shells of the big howitzers rip up the beach. And most of all they see the countless corpses that lie all the way from the water to the promenade.
Ed Avenell, rising to his feet, preparing to jump, sees all this and knows that he is participating in a cruel and bloody joke.
‘This is fucking insane!’
Colonel Phillips understands that a terrible mistake has been made. He pulls on a pair of white gloves so that his signalling hands can be seen by the other boats, and standing tall in the bow he shouts and gestures the command to go back.
‘Turn about! Turn about!’
As he signals his order a bullet strikes him in the forehead, killing him instantly. Number 2 Boat, running a little ahead, does not see the signal. The others turn back.
Titch Houghton, eyes on the beach, shouts to the men in Number 2 Boat, ‘Stand by! This is it!’
The barge shudders to a stop and the commandos spring out, guns in firing position. Moving at speed they lope up the beach, spreading out as they go. Whatever plan there was has been overtaken by events. They’re hunting enemy to kill.
Now there are silver Focke-Wulf 109s up in the sky as well as the Spitfires of the RAF. As the Spitfires run short on fuel and turn for home the Focke-Wulfs fly low, strafing the men on the beach. Ed Avenell, fuelled by a toxic mixture of frustration and rage, storms the promenade wall, firing from a Bren gun as he goes. The enemy are nowhere to be seen, but their shells and bullets are everywhere. Racing down an empty street, shooting as he goes, he shouts, ‘Come on out, you bastards!’ A sniper fires at him from a house, and catching a glimpse of him at an upper window, he swings back, spraying bullets.
The Fusiliers punch their way into the marketplace just as the RHLI finally capture the Casino. But the mortars keep on coming, and the big guns on the clifftop emplacements keep on booming. An empty building on the promenade has been taken over as an assembly point for the wounded and the dead. A large contingent of Camerons has formed a defensive line against enemy forces massing in the woods on the west side of the town. There is no objective any more, no overall strategy. Men run with great urgency in opposite directions, each following some imperative of his own. In the midst of this random violence the inhabitants of the town go about their business seemingly indifferent to the danger. One man leads four cows into the shelter of a barn, and then goes back out again to fetch in hay. Another, in hat and jacket but no shirt, bicycles down the street with a baguette in his basket. Small boys stare with big eyes at the soldiers running past. Some buildings are burning, but not fiercely, issuing thin trails of smoke into the clear sky.
The tide is far out now. Between the pebble beach with its litter of corpses and the sea where the armada waits, shrouded in smoke, there lies a wide strip of shining sand. The hour is past ten. On HMS Calpe General Roberts knows the assault has failed. He gives the order to retreat.
*
Ed Avenell’s rage has only grown as he has taken in the scale of the disaster. He rages at the enemy who won’t come out to fight. But most of all he rages at the sheer folly of it all. Why would any sane military planner send men to storm a heavily defended beach in broad daylight? But there are no sane military planners. The world is run by fools and the outcome is and always will be chaos. So together with his rage goes a fierce gladness that his deepest instincts should be proved so visibly right. This battle, that has no structure and no objective, that takes place merely to cause men to die to no purpose, is for Ed a perfect model of existence stripped bare. His anger flows from him in a righteous stream, but he’s laughing at himself even as he deals out his vengeance, because he knows his only true justification for killing is that he too is prepared to die.
By the time he gets the order to retreat he has entered an almost ecstatic state. He should have been hit countless times, but somehow the bullets have not found him, and the shell splinters have passed him by. Now he believes his luck is impregnable, and he takes no precautions at all. He has become invulnerable.
*
Larry remains crouched behind the abandoned tank as the retreat unfolds. He sees men running back down the beach towards the returning landing craft. He smells seaweed, and salt water, and blood. He has no desire to get up himself and go to the boats. The space between himself and the water is a killing zone, men fall repeatedly as they run, hit by the guns in the cliffs, or the strafing of planes, or the unending boom of the mortars. But Larry does not stay where he is because he’s afraid of the danger on the open beach. He remains motionless because he has lost the will to act. He has become utterly resigned, even to his own d
estruction.
His dulled gaze is caught by a man who is striding down the beach with another man in his arms. Larry sees him deliver his burden to the group clustered round the landing craft. Then he returns, striding back up the beach, oblivious to the bullets flying all round him.
It’s Ed Avenell. Larry watches him with a smile. He even attempts to greet him, ‘Eddy!’, as if he’s passing in a London street, but he makes no sound. Larry is pleased to have found a friend in this strange place. His eyes follow him.
He sees him pick up another wounded man and carry him down to the water’s edge. Slowly it enters Larry’s fuddled mind that the assault force is now withdrawing. He sees Ed return up the beach, still unharmed, and gather up a third wounded man.
It’s the way he walks that strikes Larry. He walks with his head held high, in a straight line, briskly but with no sense of hurry. And he never stops. While others stream for the boats, and load them to the point of sinking in their desperation to escape that deadly beach, Ed simply delivers his load and walks back up again.
Well, then, thinks Larry. That’s how it’s done.
He stumbles to his feet, and looks down towards the water-line. Every hundred yards or so boats lie with their noses grounded in the sand. Beyond them dozens of boats are coming in or going out, some circling to pick up survivors in the water. The batteries on the cliffs maintain their relentless barrage, now directed at the landing craft, their shells sending up great showers of water as they land between the boats.
Better get going, thinks Larry.
He sets off down the beach, just as he has seen Ed do. A rattle of gunfire, the wind of passing bullets, and suddenly he’s running. His boots feel heavy, he stumbles on the pebbles, wrenching one ankle. Careless of the pain, possessed by terror, he runs onto the strip of wet sand. Now he feels as if his boots don’t even touch the ground, he’s flying. He hears a man shout, it’s a stretcher bearer standing there with a stretcher at his feet. His other stretcher bearer lies dead on the beach.
‘Give me a hand here!’
Larry runs on, powerless to arrest his flight. He sees a landing craft ahead, its ramp raised for sailing. He runs into the water, feeling its sudden chill. He reaches the craft, clings to its side, pressing himself to the steel plates, sobbing. The craft moves, rocked by a wave, settles back onto the sand bar, and then rocks again. Larry crouches low in the water by its side, as if the bullets won’t find him if they can’t see him. He has hold of a rope dangling over the craft’s side in a long loop. A young boy comes lurching through the water and grabs another loop of rope, but as he does so the boat swings away out to sea and the rope is jerked from his hand. He lowers his arms and stands still, waist deep in water, watching the craft move away.
Larry, clinging tight, is carried out into deep water. His hands are now numb with cold. He loops the rope round his arm so he won’t be cast adrift. Others clinging to ropes like him now climb up the flat steel side and onto the deck. Larry tries to climb, but all he has is the rope, and he lacks the strength for the pull to the top. Then he feels his reaching hand clasped from above, and he begins to rise. At the same time a hand below locks onto one of his legs, and drags him down again. He kicks violently, and the hand lets him go. Up he rises again, and so at last is pulled floundering onto the deck.
He lies gasping, exhausted, his cheek pressed to the cold steel plates. He feels the juddering of the engine as the boat pulls away from the shore, away from the nightmare of the beach. His gaze takes in the hold below, which is packed tight with wounded men. They seem to be standing knee-deep in water. As he watches, the water rises, up to their waists. The water is red. And still the water rises.
Now he becomes aware of commotion all round him.
‘Jump, lads! Jump in the water! Swim for it!’
The craft is sinking. The bow end of the boat is dipping lower and lower. The wounded men are scrambling out of the bloody water now filling the hold.
Larry jumps with the rest. Bobbing in the water, kept afloat by his Mae West, he looks towards the beach. It’s barely yards away. He’s still in the danger zone. A plop in the water nearby is followed by a gushing explosion that buries him in seawater, and leaves him choking. The men who had been bobbing on that spot are gone. Here and there tin hats float on the water.
Another landing craft is now circling towards the throng of men in the water. Larry paddles to its sides and takes his place in the crowd attempting to board. One by one they’re hauled up onto the deck. When Larry’s turn comes he hears a series of sharp pinging sounds and feels a sudden sting in his buttock. At the same time strong hands are hauling him up and over the side. Helpless to control his exhausted body he topples over the edge and slithers down into the hold seven feet below. He lands on men already packed there, and almost at once becomes himself a cushion for the next man to fall. The sharp pinging sounds continue above.
Voices are shouting. ‘Lighten ship! We’re too low in the water! Lighten ship!’
Men throw up their tin hats, out of the hold. They pull off boots, tunics, trousers. They throw out water bottles and webbing. The craft is under way now, its deck almost flush with the water.
Larry is in his underclothes, surrounded by men in their underclothes. Someone passes him a cigarette, but his fingers are numb, and he hasn’t enough breath left to smoke it.
‘You take it.’ He passes it on. ‘I’ll have one later.’
Half a mile out from shore the landing craft is made fast to a big ship and the wounded are taken aboard. Larry is limping as he follows the others across the main deck. A tap on his shoulder and a voice says, ‘Wardroom’s down the companionway, Lieutenant.’ His legs buckle as he descends the ladder, and he feels himself helped to a chair. A blanket is wrapped round him, and a glass of brandy thrust into his hands.
‘Rough out there,’ says the steward.
Larry nods, and sips his brandy.
‘The MO’ll take a look at you when he can.’
‘Nothing serious,’ says Larry. ‘What ship am I on?’
‘You’re on the Calpe,’ says the steward. ‘You’re on the command ship.’
Another wounded man calls out, ‘Say, could you send down a jug or something?’
‘Right away,’ says the steward.
The wardroom is packed with wounded officers, some on the couches, some on the floor, some seated at the mess table, their heads resting on their arms. No one speaks. A sickbay attendant appears with a white enamel jug. The wounded man pees into it, making a bell-like ringing sound. After that the jug makes the rounds.
A naval officer comes down to tell them the MO will be with them as soon as he can, but there are so many emergency cases in the sickbay.
‘How long before we’re home?’ one man asks.
‘Once we get under way,’ says the officer, ‘we’ll be back in two hours. But I don’t think we’ll be leaving until every man’s off the beach.’
‘So where are we now?’
‘Dieppe,’ comes the reply.
Here below decks the battle feels far away, but for the ceaseless sound of the big guns. They know the ship’s under attack from the air because they hear the heavy-calibre ack-acks followed by the clatter of the Oerlikons and then the roar of the bombers passing overhead. Then the guns reverse order, the light rattle chasing the retreating planes, and the heavy pompom-pom of the 4.7 guns taking the long shots.
The steward brings food: ship’s biscuits and tins of sardines. The medical officer comes at last, blinking with exhaustion. His head sways from side to side as he speaks.
‘Hey, doc, you need a drink.’
‘Yes, I expect I do.’
But he doesn’t drink, he makes his round of the wounded officers. When he gets to Larry, Larry says, ‘Don’t bother with me. It’s nothing.’ But he looks anyway.
‘You’ve got a bullet in the bum,’ he says. ‘Can you cope for now?’
‘Sure.’
‘Go and get it sorted when you
’re home.’
Now that he’s been told the wound is real, Larry becomes aware that it hurts. He tries to shift his position to ease the pain but only succeeds in making it worse. He accepts another glass of brandy in the hope that he might sleep.
HMS Calpe finally begins its journey home at three in the afternoon, the last ship to leave the scene. The return is slow, because there are heavily laden landing craft to escort. It’s past midnight when the last of the fleet reaches Newhaven.
Larry files off the destroyer in his underwear, wrapped in a blanket. On the quayside there are hundreds of figures moving about with hurricane lamps, lighting up the ambulances, troop trucks and mobile canteens lined up along the dock. A soldier hands him a pack of cigarettes as he steps off the gangway. A nurse takes his arm and ask him questions.
‘Can you walk? Do you need immediate assistance?’
‘I’m okay for now. I could do with a cup of tea.’
She takes him directly to the canteen, and gets him a cup of tea.
‘See to the others, Nurse,’ Larry says. ‘I’ll be all right.’
He stands on the dark quay among the quiet bustle and drinks his tea. Now that he’s out of danger the numb sensations of the last many hours are beginning to lift. Exhaustion and pain sweep through him in waves. And then at first in fragments, then in whole sequences like scenes from a film, he starts to recall his day under fire. He feels the pebbles slip under his boots. He sees the corpse-strewn beach. He tastes the memory of his fear. He sees the tall lean figure of his friend striding up and down the beach, saving the lives of others. And he sees himself, crouched under cover, thinking only of his own survival.
Where is Ed now?
As Larry sips the hot strong tea and feels strength return to his body, the shame in him grows and grows. He bows his head and starts to sob. He weeps for the horror and the weariness and the waste, but most of all for his own moral failure. He wants to ask forgiveness but doesn’t know who to ask. He wants to be comforted but believes he doesn’t deserve comfort.
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