by Will Belford
Joe opened up on them with the last magazine in one long burst, then pulled the pins on the grenades and tossed them in the general direction of the charge. Without waiting to see the effect, he bolted down the trench to the rear. He glanced at his watch: the Germans had defeated them in just three minutes. He could only hope the rest of the company could do better than his platoon.
~ ~ ~
Watching the attack from the rear, General Heinz Guderian nodded in satisfaction as his panzer grenadiers cleared the trench and waved their half-tracks forward.
‘Drei minuten Hans,’ he commented to the officer beside him, ‘Not a bad effort eh? These Tommies are easier than we thought. We will cross the river on schedule.’
‘Ja, Herr General, although that was only one platoon with no anti-tank weapons and they still managed to immobilise one tank. I suspect they would give a tougher fight in better defensive positions.’
‘No doubt you are correct Colonel von Luck, we must try to avoid those fights, ja? Now, what do your armoured cars and the Luftwaffe tell us about what is in front of us?’
‘Since your breakthrough at Sedan the Belgians have retreated en masse and the British and French armies that advanced into Belgium are now cut off from their lines of communication. The British are retreating, but we can expect to encounter forces in strength, including armoured units. The British 1st Division has a regiment of heavy tanks that are advancing north-east towards Arras as we speak. The French tanks are distributed among their infantry divisions and we have seen no indication of them massing so far.’
‘Your opinion, Luck?’
‘I believe we should continue the advance Herr General. Nearly every unit we have encountered has broken eventually in the face of the panzers and the dive-bombers. If the French and British continue to advance into Belgium, General Rommel will divide them in the centre while we cut them off from the south. Of course, this will leave us with no flank protection from any other French units in the south that do not advance and any Belgian units in the north that might counter-attack. It is a risk, but I believe it is one we can take.’
‘Very good Colonel, my thoughts exactly, this is no time to be half-hearted. Especially as von Runstedt has told me that if we fail to advance quickly enough we will be ordered to stop until the footsloggers can catch up. Nein, we must advance as if chased by a thousand devils. Adjutant, how far behind are our fuel tankers? Thirty miles? Not good enough, get on the radio and gee them up, we cannot afford to stop now.’
‘I will look forward to your report tomorrow, Colonel.’ Guderian threw a salute and climbed into his Kubelwagen.
‘Drive on,’ he commanded. The driver engaged the gears and steered past the wreckage of the British trench. Crows were already descending to the feast.
~ ~ ~
‘Can you believe it Hermann?’ asked Hitler incredulously, ‘to think that we could repeat what we did in Poland against the combined armies of France, Britain, Belgium and Holland? Four with one blow. The Dutch have surrendered, the Belgians are barely hanging on, most of the French army is cut off in Belgium and in total disarray, and now the British are cornered with their backs to the Channel.’
Leaning against the fireplace, Goering surveyed the glorious paintings that covered the walls of the room, and sipped from his brandy balloon.
‘Ja Adolf, it will go down in history as the greatest military victory of all time. Students will read of it with awe and ask “How did they do it?” and this is something we need to discuss – whose victory is it?’
‘Whose victory?’ objected Hitler, ‘Clearly it is my victory, the victory of Adolf Hitler.’
‘Ja, naturlich, but I have been hearing from various circles that the Wehrmacht high command are claiming the laurels for themselves, that this victory was solely due to their strategic genius, that this was a victory for the generals. They even seem to be downplaying the role of the mighty Luftwaffe, and why? Why else than because my glorious air force is not part of their army, but the creation of the Nazi Party.’
‘Claiming the laurels for themselves?’ said Hitler with raised eyebrows, ‘But I had to force this campaign upon them, Halder and Brauchitsch didn’t believe it could be done.’
‘Mein Fuhrer, the British should not be allowed to escape, but if you let the Wehrmacht take Dunkirk, then I believe that this idea will be hard to stop. After all, it will have been the army that dealt the final blow. Halder and Brauchitsch will be the heroes of all Germany, they may even be able to threaten your position.’
There was a moment’s silence as the Fuhrer digested this idea and its possible consequences.
‘What do you propose then Hermann?’ queried the Fuhrer.
‘Let the final victory go to the only truly Nationalist Socialist force we have—the Luftwaffe. My pilots can destroy the British on their beach and in their boats, then the victory will be indisputably yours.’
‘Hmm, a worthy idea Hermann,’ said Hitler, ‘I will think on it. Thank you for letting me know, I am going to visit the high command at Charleville tomorrow. Now show me the designs of your latest planes.’
As they bent over the table, Goering smiled to himself. The chiefs of the Wehrmacht had needed putting in their place for some time. They were in for an unpleasant surprise.
Chapter Twenty-two
France, 23 May 1940
The sun was high overhead, bathing the field of lucerne, well advanced in its growth, ready for the cows to eat, but the cows on this farm were all dead: obscene inflated corpses, whose legs pointed stiffly in the air.
The bodies of men sprawled across the field in random postures: arms and legs flung carelessly; surrounded by a detritus of helmets, packs, rifles, and assorted military rubbish. It looked like any other field in Flanders on that day, or on a similar day little over twenty years before, the main difference was that these soldiers were not dead, they were sleeping. Sleeping in a deep heat that soaked into their bones; sleeping in a silence made all the more quiet by the twitterings of tiny birds and the songs of the insects they sought; sleeping the sleep of true exhaustion, the exhaustion shared by new mothers and old soldiers; the exhaustion that, on awakening, feels as if you have slept but a few minutes; sleeping, in the case of this platoon, for the first time in days.
Waking with the sun blazing into his eyelids, Joe lit a cigarette and shielded his eyes against the glare. It had been a tough few days for everyone, and there would be tough years ahead for the mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters of the men who had not survived them; on both sides. His head was overflowing with images of his men dying: screaming as the tank tracks crushed them into paste; clutching uselessly at the blood rushing from holes torn in their bodies by bullets and shrapnel; open-mouthed and weeping soundlessly as their skin, crisped black by flames, sloughed off in sheets; and those who had simply vanished like Lieutenant Fisher-Pollard, vaporised in one explosion or another.
There were only eleven of them left now, and Joe walked through the names in his mind: Sergeant Smythe, Lance-Corporal Clark, and privates Jaroslek, Jensen, Harnock, Summerville, Henley, Jackson, Part, Wellesley and Kelly.
They had become separated from the rest of the battalion in the chaos of the retreat from the attack on the Escaut. Twenty of his men had been killed or so badly wounded that they had either been abandoned to the Germans or evacuated ‘to the rear’, whatever that meant. By his estimation, the rear meant the English Channel, which was now only, what, 50 miles behind them? Not a lot of solace to be found there. He’d been thinking about that too, about how he and his men were going to escape, whether they could stay alive long enough to find the battalion. And if not? Well in that case he said to himself, ‘You’re going to have to find yourself a way out by yourself, because the front is falling to pieces around you, and not a man in this army cares a damn about getting you out alive, they don’t even know you exist.’
His reverie was interrupted by the cigarette burning his fingertips. He flicked it away, reali
sing that he’d turned it to ash in only three drags. Fumbling in the packet he pulled out the second last stick and held it up to the sunlight.
‘What small comfort you bring,’ he said aloud, ‘but better than none.’ He struck a match and sucked hard on the cigarette, feeling the smoke sear the back of his throat and roil around his lungs. What was that quote his father had always repeated about tobacco? “It has no discernible effect until you are deprived of it.” He was right about that. The prospect of no tobacco was bleak; and inevitable, it seemed to be the only thing the retreating soldiers had taken with them.
Not for the first time, Joe wondered what he was doing here. The throb of the sun beating into his upturned face made him suddenly sick for home: for the endless plains, vast horizons and cloudless skies of South Australia. His moment of nostalgia was dashed, as always, by the realities of the present, and he sucked harder on the cigarette and ground the butt beneath his boot. He pulled out the picture of him and Yvette, now crumpled and battered. It seemed like it had been taken in another world, a world that no longer existed. He kissed her face and tucked the picture into his breast pocket, next to his heart. He knew he was being sentimental, but what else was he to do?
The watch on his wrist showed five minutes to twelve. Time to get moving. He roused the men; the Germans wouldn’t be sleeping, he knew that much, and they couldn’t be far behind now, in fact the panzers were probably way in front of them already, but that couldn’t be helped. There was nothing much you could do against them with a rifle, they just drove through you or over you or around you and, without an anti-tank gun, there was no stopping them. It seemed almost beyond belief that no one in the high command had thought fit to issue any decent kind of anti-tank weapon to the infantry. The Boys anti-tank rifle was pathetic, it couldn’t penetrate anything from the front except a truck. They were supposed to have tanks to defend them against enemy tanks, but Joe had only seen British tanks once a few days earlier: a company of Matildas parked beside the road, waiting to go forward as the infantry had marched past.
The tankers had looked confident. The men had joked about how it was probably a good feeling having a few inches of steel between you and the bullets, but then, a few miles down the road they had passed the blackened shell of a French tank that had been hit by a German bomber. The men in that tank had had no chance. One second everything was normal, the next they found themselves in a maelstrom of burning petrol and exploding ammunition. They’d died trying to crawl out of the tiny escape hatches and the skin of their eyeless faces was tight across their bones, their hands clutched in grim claws. The smell of charred flesh was reminiscent of a pork dinner, and several of his platoon had thrown up their meagre breakfast in the ditch beside the road. Clearly the British tankers had seen it too, but still, they looked confident.
‘Braver men than me,’ thought Joe, and put a throbbing foot in front of the other throbbing foot, leaving a small impression in the fine dirt of Flanders. Behind the straggling platoon, the breeze whipped up dust devils that danced around the wrecked tank, covering the bodies of the French teenagers inside with the only shroud they were likely to receive.
Joe knew that they were in no-man’s land now, they hadn’t seen any British troops for days. He’d lost count of the number of defensive positions he’d passed where French and British soldiers responsible for keeping the corridor to Dunkirk open had died defending their positions. It was only by staying well away from the roads and moving at night that they’d avoided the Germans. It was a nerve-racking journey, punctuated by close calls and nervous moments hiding in woods and barns, hoping to remain undetected. Finally he’d allowed the men to sleep in the waist-high lucerne, reasonably confident the Germans wouldn’t see them.
It seemed that the demon of defeat had settled into the souls of the army commanders. All around them on both sides of the road was the wrack of Retreat: abandoned trucks; discarded jerry cans; empty bully beef tins; ammo cases; the occasional disabled artillery piece, its barrel blown into the shape of a half-peeled banana; piles of officers’ baggage thrown aside; disabled tanks and of course, bodies. Bodies everywhere. Bodies of civilians, and French and Belgian infantry, rotting and bloating in the sun. Bodies stinking foully, oozing liquids and being devoured by ants, crows and the occasional dog. They’d even seen a pig rooting around in the carcass of a French soldier and Joe had shot it out of sheer revulsion. There was no shortage of ammunition, it was lying around everywhere. There was a shortage of soldiers to fire any of it though. Joe guessed that most of the army was ahead of them, heading for the coast. He wasn’t certain why they were retreating instead of trying to help the French. The only explanation that made any sense was that the Germans had been pushed back and the British weren’t needed anymore, and you only had to look around to see that that certainly wasn’t the case. Perhaps the British were merely regrouping to launch a counter-attack?
‘Where are we going Lieutenant?’ called out Private Wellesley, now the platoon’s Bren gunner. He claimed to be a direct descendant of the Duke who had led the British to victory over Napoleon at Waterloo.
‘A lovely seaside resort Duke, the sort of place you’ve been dreaming of ever since you got here: you’ll be able to get full as a tick on red wine while you perve on the birds in swimming costumes. Who knows, you might even score one between the posts.’
This brought a laugh from the rest of the platoon, at Duke’s expense of course. Joe was pleased to hear the laughter, it meant his men hadn’t yet reached the point of despair at which everything loses its humour. He noticed that Summerville wasn’t laughing, but then he realised that he’d never seen the man laugh. At least he still had his radio with him. Whether there would be any artillery support to call on was questionable; artillery needed time to set up and register co-ordinates, a difficult thing to do when you’re retreating.
‘What’s this wonderful place called then Lieutenant?’ asked Private Part, Duke’s dedicated ammo carrier, who was called Cock because of his unfortunate name and was desperate to become a Lance-Corporal.
‘It’s called the English Channel, Private, the Ditch to you, ever been there?’
‘Not me sir, I’d never been out of Staffordshire before this.’
‘Well I reckon it’ll be a bloody memorable visit. Maybe you’ll have a chance to send your mum a postcard. Has anyone got any tinned goldfish left?’
The soldiers marched on.
At the next crossroads, Joe saw British uniforms up ahead and told his men to wait in the field. He pushed his way into the crowd of refugees that clogged the roads in all directions. All around him the civilians of Belgium were dragging their meagre possessions on their backs in desperate flight from the Germans. It was as if the whole population had emptied itself onto the roads.
There were women with strollers and crying babies, children of all ages, old men pushing overburdened carts and in the midst of it all, soldiers and vehicles of four armies trying to get to their allotted positions or simply trying to get to the coast; the crossroads was a Babel of French, English and Dutch.
Joe pushed his way through to a British MP standing to one side observing the chaos.
‘Morning corporal, nice to see a British face again. This is a bloody balls-up isn’t it? Which way to the coast?’ asked Joe.
‘Down that road there sir,’ said the MP, pointing across the milling throng of displaced civilians, ‘you’re heading for a town called Dunkirk. The next town along the road is Roubaix .’
‘Roubaix?’ asked Joe incredulously. ‘Are we really only that far from the coast?’
‘Yes sir, our mob and the Frogs have set up a defensive perimeter along the canals. The Staffordshire Rifles are manning the line at Roubaix at present, I’m sure they’ll be ‘appy to see you sir, now if you’ll excuse me … Oi, you Monsewer. Yes you with the cart. Get that bloody thing off my road you idiot, I’ve got a convoy coming through here in five minutes. Move it.’
The MP surged into th
e crowd to where a horse and cart was trapped by the surging people and grabbed the horse’s rein. The civilian driver started beating at him with the whip and swearing in colourful French. The MP pulled out his whistle and blew a shrill blast that brought his fellow redcaps running to his aid.
As Joe returned to his unit he heard the buzz of aero engines and instinctively fell flat in the field. Two Messerschmitt 109s appeared as if from nowhere and dove on the jammed crossroads, their machines guns and cannon firing. Thousands of bullets and cannon shells flayed the packed mass of refugees with terrifying violence, the projectiles hammering into the defenceless civilians as they struggled to escape the death-dealing machines. The screaming engines and machine guns lasted only two or three seconds, but as the two planes pulled up and flew off for more victims, they left behind a sea of blood, agony and bewilderment. People who, only days before, had been leading peaceful lives on the farms and in the many small towns of Belgium, lay torn and shredded, limbs blown off, ragged holes blasted in their soft flesh, innards spilling into the dirt. Amidst the screams of the wounded, mothers clutched dead babies to their breasts, while children wandered in a daze and parents searched the bodies hoping, not to find their children.
‘Oh God, why? Why you Nazi bastards?’ Joe screamed at the planes, now mere dots in the sky.
He turned his back on the pitiful scene. It was just one of hundreds they’d witnessed in the past few days, making their way across Belgium only to find themselves back where they’d started from: Roubaix. Was Yvette still there he wondered? Probably. She was not the type to pack up and leave just because the Germans were coming.