by Will Belford
‘Sprechen sie Deutsche eh?’ said the man with a sneer, ‘Well then, now we have got the formalities out of the way, perhaps you will tell me your company, battalion, regiment, brigade, the names of your commanders and your orders?’
‘I’m not allowed to do that, as you know.’
‘Ach, well, it was a worth a try, eh Hans?’ said the man, turning to his colleague. The other man grunted non-committally; he didn’t seem the type to have a large vocabulary.
‘We don’t really care anyway Englander, whatever unit you were in has been destroyed and its remnants are running to the coast with their tails between their legs, just waiting for a panzer to put a bullet in their backs. Your precious British regiment will no longer exist within two days. You have been utterly defeated.’
‘Spare me the bloody speech Adolf, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.’
The man’s face reddened suddenly.
‘My name is not Adolf, Arschloch, it is Hauptsturmfuhrer Richter. You and your men will be transported to a stalag tomorrow. Goodbye Englander, for you the war is over.’
The cell door slammed, leaving Joe to the solitary agony of his thoughts.
Chapter Twenty-five
France, 27 May 1940
Dawn saw the squad lined up in the square, facing east, blinded by the rising sun. None had slept well, or at all, and they looked the worse for wear: unshaven, unwashed, uniforms muddy and stained, bloody bandages covering heads and limbs. They looked like what they were: defeated soldiers.
On the other side of the square, a line of townspeople appeared, herded by a few armed guards. Joe saw with a shock that Yvette was in the group. They lined up only twenty yards away. Yvette kept her eyes to the ground. Beside her stood a young mother Joe knew by sight, with her two daughters, all of three and five years old.
‘What the hell’s going on Smithy?’ Joe asked his sergeant.
‘Beats me sir, what’s special about this lot?’
As the townspeople approached the centre of the square, the two men who’d visited Joe in the cell sauntered down the steps of the town hall, the short one carrying a clipboard. There was a third man with them, dressed in a bloodied British army uniform.
‘Bloody ‘ell sir, it’s Summerville!’ said Smythe.
‘Somehow, I don’t think that’s his real name mate,’ said Joe, amazed at his own sense of calm, ‘he’s played us good and proper. Bastard’s as cunning as a shithouse rat.’
He had a sensation of watching a ship being blown onto a reef; there was nothing he could do but watch.
The short fat German held up his clipboard and began to call out names. As each name was read out and the person signalled their presence he marked the sheet. Joe heard him read out ‘Yvette Bendine’ and thought he had never heard the beautiful name so mangled as this German had done. Yvette said ‘Oui’ quietly and another tick was placed on the sheet. At this, Summerville said something to the tall German, who nodded. When the fat man had gone through the list to his satisfaction he launched into a stream of rapid German, then pulled a bag from the pocket of his coat. He walked down the line and handed out something to each person. Joe craned his neck to see what it was: some sort of yellow cloth patch.
The man gestured to his shoulder and chest then stepped back. The tall one stepped forward. He spoke in French, but although Joe could not catch all the words, his tone was clearly one of hatred and disgust and as he talked he became increasingly agitated. He walked down the line, occasionally stopping to yell at an individual. When he reached Yvette he made some comment in German to Summerville, then reached out and squeezed one of her breasts. A red mist filled Joe’s head and he leapt from his spot like a panther, covered the gap in seconds and threw himself on the officer, punching, kicking, screaming. The guards were taken completely by surprise and Joe landed a few solid blows to the officer’s face before they succeeded in prising him off and hauling him away with some heavy blows from their rifle butts.
The German rose in a rage, blood streaming from his lip.
‘Schweinhunden Englander! What is she? Your sweetheart? That was a big mistake mein freund,’ and with that he launched a series of fierce punches to Joe’s midriff, followed by an uppercut to the chin that left him sagging in the arms of the guards. They then dropped him to the cobbles and put in a few vicious kicks of their own for good measure.
‘Count yourself lucky I don’t just shoot you right now, Jew-lover,’ screamed the Nazi through bloodied teeth. ‘In Germany you would be hung for less. It’s as well that we of the pure race don’t sully ourselves with Jewish filth, or I’d hand that bitch over to my men for some fun right here and now. Feldwebel, find out where the truck we organised for these prisoners has got to and get them out of here. The rest of you, get these Jewish scum onto the train and be quick about it.’
‘Hauptsturmfuhrer Richter, we were instructed to feed the civilians first, the journey to Dachau is long,’ said the Feldwebel.
‘Feed them? Waste good German food on Jews?’ The man’s voice rose to a shriek, ‘Get them on the train now or you can join them Feldwebel. With that beak of yours, you look a bit Jewish yourself. And leave that one here,’ he said, pointing at Yvette.
The sergeant blanched and issued a curt order to his men. The guards prodded the townspeople with their rifles and yelled out ‘Raus! Raus! Schnell!’
As the group moved off toward the train, a truck drove into the square and pulled up nearby. The guards jumped down and lowered the tailplate, then gestured at the British squad to get on. Hauled from the cobbles by two soldiers, Joe caught one last terrified glance from Yvette as he was hauled up into the truck by his men. The man they‘d known as Summerville had grabbed her arm and was pulling her away. Then the truck turned the corner and she was gone.
Minutes later they were rattling across the makeshift bridge. Joe saw the burnt-out shell of the flamethrower tank sitting on the slope they had defended. That battle seemed like years ago. And what had it gained them? He’d failed to defend the town, failed to get his men out in time and failed to protect Yvette. And now she was in the hands of that foul, raping spy. Her uncle was probably dead and God knew what would happen to the rest of the Jews in the town. The Germans had been persecuting their own Jews for years, and now they were visiting it upon the conquered people too.
Joe held his head in his hands and despaired.
~ ~ ~
Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay read the final part of the message from the Admiralty in disbelief.
‘It is imperative that Operation “Dynamo” be implemented with the greatest vigour with a view to lifting 45,000 of the BEF from Dunkirk within two days, after which it is probable that evacuation will be terminated by enemy action. Operation to start at 1857.’
Ramsay had expected to receive the order, but not so soon. They were not ready, and now they never would be. The chances of getting 45,000 men off a long shelving beach under enemy artillery and aerial bombardment, without losing a host of irreplaceable ships in the process, were not good.
He picked up the telephone on his desk and called a number.
‘It’s on,’ he said.
‘Very good sir,’ came the reply.
The Vice-Admiral hung up and stared at the map on the wall. It showed the three routes the ships could take from Dover to avoid the minefields. Route Y, the longest at 87 sea miles, curved northwards past Nieuport then curled back in along the French coast; Route X, at 55 sea miles cut through the middle but was only open to ships with a shallow draught; Route Z, the most direct, was just 39 sea miles, but it would probably be under German artillery fire for much of the journey near the French coast. Ramsay shrugged. Artillery? The ships would be under attack from the air from the moment they left port. By all accounts the RAF had acquitted itself well over France, at least until the Prime Minister had recalled them to defend England. Surely Winston would allow them over the Channel to defend the Navy? As a former Sea Lord, if anyone underst
ood the importance of defending the Royal Navy, it was Churchill.
The admiral stood and walked down to the Operations Room. Better to occupy the mind with action of some sort. In the Channel ports, klaxons were sounding and sailors were running to their stations; he didn’t want to think about how many of them would never return.
~ ~ ~
The truck bumped on, the sun beaming down, happy to illuminate the tragedy unfolding below. The roads that only yesterday had been jammed with refugees, were now crowded with German vehicles of every shape and description: supply trucks, petrol and water tankers, staff cars, tank recovery vehicles and of course, horses and carts by the thousand bringing food and ammunition forward. This was an organised and mechanised army on the advance.
At intersections, military policemen with crescent-shaped badges around their necks directed traffic with typical German efficiency, and the truck rarely stopped for more than few minutes. Sitting near the tailgate, Joe nursed his bruises and stared miserably at the sea of field-grey uniforms around the truck; there was no chance of escape through that lot.
‘Where do you think they’ll take us Lieutenant?’ asked Lance-Corporal Clark, whose left hand was a bloodied bandage covering multiple shrapnel wounds from a stick grenade.
‘Some camp in Germany I expect,’ Joe replied. ‘We’ve got to avoid getting taken that far east though, once we’re in Germany it’ll be a lot harder to get out. Keep alert if we leave the main road.’
The truck decelerated, then halted and there was a loud exchange in German from the direction of the cabin. One voice was shouting, the other sounded as if it were losing the argument. A few moments later the truck started up and turned on to a dirt road leading north. After a few minutes it turned right and sped up.
‘We’re heading east again,’ thought Joe, ‘where to now?’
Ten minutes later they pulled up and the driver came around, dropped the tailgate and gestured at the two guards with them.
‘Raus! Raus!’ yelled the guards, gesturing with their rifles.
They jumped out of the truck to find themselves in a field adjoining a large stone farmhouse. German soldiers armed with Schmeisser submachine guns stood around at various points, and an MG34 on a tripod had been set up facing the wall. Its barrel covered them menacingly as they gazed around.
Joe noticed that these soldiers were in the same sort of mottled camouflage uniform he’d seen on the officer in Roubaix, rather than the usual field-grey of the Wehrmacht troops they’d been fighting. Were they some sort of elite unit? Guard unit? Who knew?
When the last man was out of the truck, the driver jumped in, gunned the engine and drove off at high speed.
As the guards in the camouflage uniforms pushed and prodded them over to the wall with their gun butts, the sound of marching boots came from the entrance to the walled farmyard. Joe turned to see almost a whole company of British solders marching in from the road. They were disarmed and in a sorry state, clearly having been fighting for days, but their commander, marching at the front, set a good example and they were all in step. Joe recognised him as Major Ryder, the commander of the Royal Norfolks’ 2nd battalion, an officer he’d met once at a regimental signals meeting. For a moment Joe was proud to be associated with such a fine body of men.
With a flurry of commands, accompanied by kicks and smacks with rifle butts, the company was lined up with Joe’s men against the farmyard wall. Several men had recently bloodied faces and two of them nursed broken arms. A German lieutenant came down the line counting out the men, and made a note of the total in a black notebook.
‘I don’t much like the look of that sir,’ said Sergeant Smythe, nodding across the field to where the Germans were setting up another machine gun on a tripod. ‘Surely they can’t mean to shoot us all sir?’
‘Hell Smithy, even the Nazis wouldn’t shoot unarmed prisoners of war, it’s against the Geneva Convention.’
‘Beggin’ your pardon sir, I doubt this lot’ve ever ’eard of the Geneva Convention.’
A Kubelwagen turned into the courtyard and an officer jumped out. When he saw his face, Joe turned aside and stepped behind the man next to him.
‘Don’t look now Smithy, but that’s the bastard from Roubaix that I hit. Richter.’
The officer stood in front of the British soldiers, his legs apart, hands on hips. With his polished black boots and peaked cap he could have looked either ridiculous or menacing; the muzzles of the machine guns behind him made him menacing.
Death had arrived in this field and the smell of fear began to rise from the men in khaki.
‘Soldiers of Britain,’ announced the German officer, ‘you have fought well, but you have lost. You will now be taken to POW camps for the rest of the war. We are gathering you here in preparation for the march back to Germany. We need to conduct some identity checks so we can confirm to your government and your families that you are still alive. This will not take long. Please stand to attention.’
With that, he stepped behind the two machine guns, clicked his heels and threw out a Hitler salute.
‘Heil Hitler!’
At the sound of the name of their Fuhrer, the soldiers behind the two guns pulled their triggers. At 20 yards range, 800 high-velocity rounds-per-minute crashed into the row of British soldiers, blasting holes in flesh, pulverising intestines, tearing bone and splashing the brick wall behind with gouts of bright blood. Men screamed and fell, their legs cut from beneath them by the metal storm, their chests and stomachs abruptly flayed.
Anticipating what was coming, Joe threw himself down at the sound of the first shot, his face landing painfully in a patch of nettles. The man beside him received four shots in the abdomen and collapsed over him, his entrails spewing all over Joe in a ghastly cascade. Within seconds the guns fell silent, leaving only the screams and groans of dying boys. An order rang out, followed by the metallic scrape of bayonets being drawn from scabbards and clicked onto rifles.
Joe cowered beneath his neighbour’s carcass. Purplish-blue intestines lay across his face and runnels of hot blood poured over him. With the taste of blood and shit in his mouth, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Footsteps came towards him. A shot crashed out nearby. Joe took a second deep breath through his nose and tried to relax and make himself utterly still. The pounding of his heart was so loud, surely someone other than him must hear it.
A second shot exploded right beside him and he screamed silently at himself not to flinch. Rampant terror turned his bowels to hot liquid and he clenched tightly. To soil himself now would mean certain death. A fly crawled over his left eyelid. He could feel all six of its tiny feet, sticking momentarily in the congealing blood.
A shadow blocked the sun and the fly buzzed away in irritation. The shadow paused, then moved on. There was a scream of terror followed by the squelching thud of a bayonet being slammed into flesh. Another shot. A scream. A groan of agony. Another shot. Three more rapid shots.
Silence.
Then a whistle blew, a voice yelled a series of harsh commands and Joe could hear the familiar sounds of gun tripods being dismantled and equipment being thrown into trucks.
Time was a snail. He concentrated on keeping his breathing as shallow as possible, and on ignoring the flies that were now clustering on his face and hands, gorging on the freshly spilled blood. Engines revved and gears engaged. Within a few minutes the farmyard was silent but for the frenzied buzzing of flies. Joe waited. When he could stand it no longer he forced himself to wait a few more minutes, as he had when he was back home fishing with his German friends in Australia, numb with boredom, sitting by a stream hoping for a bite from a trout.
The sun beat down. A bird tweeted. After what seemed like hours, he opened one eye.
In his immediate vision lay Private Jackson’s contorted body, smothered beneath another man, his eyes closed, face unmarked, a hole in his neck draining blood. Joe risked turning his head slightly for a further look: the courtyard was empty of Ger
mans. He listened intently for a minute, then rolled over and knelt amidst the pile of corpses. He forced himself to think.
‘Lieutenant?’ came a croaking voice. Joe started and looked around. Sergeant Smythe waved feebly at him from under a body.
‘Smithy, for the love of God, you’re alive.’
‘You ‘it sir?’
‘No, by some bloody miracle. You?’
‘I copped one in the ‘ead somewhere sir, do you think you could take a look?’
Joe crawled through the disgusting mess of bodies to Smythe. There was a mass of blood covering the left side of his head and his entire shirt was drenched in it. He wiped it away with his sleeve to reveal the sergeant’s left ear, torn in two and shredded by the bullet’s impact.
‘Christ mate, you nearly bought it there. Only half an inch in it.’
‘Let’s get out of ‘ere, eh Lieutenant?’
‘Too bloody right Smithy. Can you stand?’
While the sergeant got to his feet, Joe peered around. There didn’t seem to be any Germans about. He noticed the bodies of Private Wellesley and Private Part, sprawled in the dirt, their limbs tangled together in an obscene embrace. Clark, Jackson, Kelly and Jaroslek lay nearby.
‘All of them, by Christ. Let’s get out of this hellhole. We’ve got to get back so we can at least report this. What was that bastard’s name again?’
‘Somethingfuhrer Rik-ta, I think you said sir,’ said Smythe, clutching at his shredded ear.
‘Remember that name Smithy, you never know, we might catch the bastard one day.’
And with that, Joe turned and vomited copiously against the wall.
~ ~ ~
Dusk, and the two fugitives had put almost five miles between themselves and the horrid farmhouse. They had stopped to rest in a wood after a few hours that had pushed them to their limit, hours running bent double across open fields and crawling through ditches. There was no possibility of getting anywhere near a road, so they put the sun at their backs and went straight across country, avoiding whatever buildings they saw. It had started raining and they were both stupid with fatigue and suffering from shock.