Dunkirk Crescendo (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  ***

  The glorious heroes of France stared down from their portraits at the last gathering of the students of the Ecole de Cavalerie. Even though Paul had not mentioned his purpose in calling the meeting, it was widely known that the subject would be the evacuation of the school.

  The hall was occupied by the remaining five hundred cadets ages sixteen and seventeen. Each was dressed in his finest dress uniform, as though going to a contest for the pride of the institution.

  “Cadet officers,” Paul began, “I congratulate you. You have acquitted yourselves with honor as befits the inheritors of the finest traditions of the school and la belle Français. You have done all that was asked of you and more. The defense of Lys is in hand, ready to be turned over to your successors. The trucks for the evac—”

  Paul had not expected to be interrupted, and the figure of Sepp, rising politely to stand at attention, caught him by surprise.

  Sepp took advantage of the silence to ask a question. “Your pardon, Captain, but how many troops are coming to occupy the position?”

  “I have been informed that elements of the First and Third Cavalry, as well as a contingent of British—”

  “Excuse me again, Captain, but will the number reach the fifteen thousand that you yourself indicated are required for adequately meeting the German advance?”

  Paul knew that he had been set up. The cadets had planned to use his own words against him, and now they had sprung the trap. “If you are ordered to leave, you must obey,” he said.

  Raymond rose to stand beside his friend. “If so ordered, we will obey. But if thereafter we choose to return and fight beside the others for the preservation of the school, the wounded, and our dignity, is that not our right as free Frenchmen?”

  Gaston stood to speak. Less sure of himself than the others in front of a large crowd, he nevertheless had practiced his speech beforehand and delivered it boldly. “May I remind the captain of the example of the cadets of St. Cyr in the Great War. When one of them said to his commander, ‘You are sending me out to die,’ the reply was, ‘I do you that honor, sir.’ Captain, how have we offended you that you would deny us that honor?”

  A tear started in the corner of Paul’s eye, and his throat constricted. “It must be understood that no one is compelled to stay, and no shame attaches to leaving.”

  The cadets all stood as one and faced him.

  Paul’s voice choked off and he could say no more.

  “Captain,” Sepp concluded for him, “what can be better for a soldier of France than to live honorably, die gloriously, and to be remembered as faithful to the end?”

  Paul could do no more than nod. Twin rows of tears stained his cheeks. But that motion of acquiescence was enough to set off thunderous applause and shouts of triumph.

  Gaston turned toward his friends, straightening his collar and tugging at his spotlessly white gloves. “Mon dieu. What a handsome corpse I will make, mes amis.”

  ***

  “It has always been understood that British forces would be evacuated by British ships and French troops by French ships,” Lord Gort pointed out at his early morning meeting with Andre. The general was snipping the ribbons and medals from his spare uniform.

  “That may have been the understanding, sir,” Andre replied, “but it is not working. Most of the French navy is in the Mediterranean. The trawlers available are wholly inadequate to the task. How else do you account for the fact that close to fifty thousand British soldiers have been evacuated so far and only five hundred French?”

  “Six hundred fifty,” replied Gort peevishly. “Why bother me with this anyway, Chardon? You should take the matter up with Captain Tennant in Naval Operations, or with my replacement, General Alexander.” Gort continued removing any marks of distinction to keep some German soldier from claiming them as souvenirs.

  “Sir,” Andre said slowly, trying to keep his rising anger from coming through in his voice, “to them I am no more than another French soldier and none of their concern. If you, however, could raise the issue with your Admiralty . . .”

  “All right, yes.” Gort waved his hand in dismissal. “But my primary remaining task is to see to the defense of the perimeter. If the rear guard is not effective, none of us will be getting off.” It was clear from Gort’s tone that the discussion was at an end.

  “In that case, sir, I request that I be allowed to pursue the matter as your personal representative, beginning with my study of the activities at the harbor.”

  Gort nodded curtly, anxious to put the matter behind him. “But, Chardon, whatever you do, you must be ready to leave by midnight the day after tomorrow if you expect to evacuate with my staff.”

  “General,” Andre replied quietly, “if my countrymen are not provided for by then, I will not be going with you.”

  ***

  “What day is it, Tinman?” Badger Cross walked with his head thrown back, like a child trying to see through a blindfold in a game of blindman’s bluff. He grasped David’s good arm with one hand. His other hand extended in front of him.

  “It’s May twenty-ninth, I think,” David replied, attempting to reconstruct the events of the last twenty-four hours. By now what was left of his squadron would be back in England. His mind leaped to Annie Galway. He wanted to see her again.

  Badger muttered, “If it’s the twenty-ninth . . . it’s almost my birthday. I would have been twenty-one, if it was my birthday.”

  “You’ll still be twenty-one, Badger.”

  “Where are we now, Tinman?”

  “Same place we were last time you asked. On the road to Dunkirk with about a million other guys,” David replied. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You know, every year on my birthday . . . at home I mean . . . since I was a kid, my mother always fixed me strawberries and cream with tea. Sort of a tradition. Lovely, it was.”

  “You never seemed the strawberries-and-cream type of guy, Badger,” David retorted.

  But with every mile Badger had become more and more strawberries and cream. Nostalgia for the simple luxuries of everyday life occupied his conversation in unending monotony. The long column of retreating men had already been strafed twice in four hours. Badger talked as though everything in his life was past tense, already over. It seemed like such melancholy drivel for somebody as tough and mean as Badger Cross, David thought.

  At the sound of an airplane, Cross craned his bandaged head back. “What’s that?” he demanded. “Ours or theirs?”

  This question was important. David searched the sky for the source of the noise. When he spotted the lone black dot high overhead, the answer was clear. “Dive-bomber!” he yelled. “Clear the road!”

  Even though the open ditches that lined both sides of the highway offered no real protection, a thousand men forced their way into the shallow depressions. Those who arrived first were either shoved out of the way or buried under a pile of bodies seeking to fill the same tiny space. Latecomers burrowed inside the heap or were roughly pushed away to become tangled in the thorny hedges that bordered the road.

  With both hands clamped on David’s good arm, Cross stumbled toward the grassy verge. The Stuka was already beginning its run.

  “Make room!” David shouted. “Blind man! Make way!” His wounded arm was painfully jostled. He made no progress trying to protect it and force a path while Badger clung to his other arm.

  As if sensing the difficulty, Badger lunged past David. Elbows swinging wildly, Cross collided with two soldiers of the Royal West Kent Regiment, splitting them like an unstoppable rugby player en route to a goal. “Here, Tinman,” he bellowed. “This is our space!”

  At the Stuka’s scream, terrified men buried faces in the dirt and clamped steel helmets down over their ears. A few raised .303 rifles and fired at the swooping form, as much in defiance as with any real hope of damaging it. At two thousand feet, five objects detached from its undercarriage and the warplane pulled out of its dive.

  Bombs—a t
hin, high-pitched replacement for the Stuka’s siren—whistled downward. In rapid succession, explosions shook the roadway, blowing large craters in the pavement and spinning out lethal shrapnel fragments. Those nearest the blasts were tossed around like leaves in a windstorm. Hastily abandoned gear flew skyward; packs and canteens sailed into the air. A soldier next to David was struck by a mess kit. He screamed, “I’m hit! I’m hit!”

  The plane retreated. Ten men lay dead. A dozen were maimed from two bombs that had landed on the road. Two of the dead stood frozen in upright poses in the thornbushes. Six of the wounded bled from jagged wounds. Two had lost limbs. These were as good as dead, David knew.

  For the rest, most of the injuries were slight. The soldier hit by the tin pan was heartily insulted for his mistake. There was an outpouring of abuse borne out of helpless terror. It was as though by making that one man the target of scorn and ridicule, the others could somehow remove the stink of fear from themselves.

  Gradually, in jerky movements, as if the column were a single animal stretching and testing itself for injury, the soldiers got up from the ditch. David stood, helped Badger to his feet, and pointed him back toward the highway.

  An infantryman pointed to the RAF insignia with disdain. “Air Force?” he sneered. “What good are you, lousy flyboys? Why do you let that happen?” He pointed to a chaplain administering last rites to a man whose life was pumping out of a ragged hole in his neck.

  “Nothing but Nazi planes for days,” another chimed in. “Get on, be off with you, worthless—”

  Badger swung a clumsy right in the direction of the speaker. His gauzed fist connected only with air, and he sprawled awkwardly.

  “Leave it,” David said to Cross. “Come on, we can get moving again.”

  “Stinkin’ RAF,” the call came after them. “A blind man and a busted wing. Good riddance!”

  ***

  The knife blade of Intrepid’s bow sliced through the waves toward Dunkirk in Northern France. She was on her third crossing of the Channel on the twenty-ninth of May. Each load of weary soldiers picked off the eastern mole in France filled her to capacity with eight hundred members of the BEF spared from the crushing embrace of the Wehrmacht. Intrepid was so good at her job that she could unload in Dover, England, in half an hour.

  The morning had been cloudy and the sky sheltering from Luftwaffe attacks. But now, after noon, the overcast was burning off and bright blue peeped through.

  Trevor Galway was on the bridge beside Captain Vian. Officially second in command, Trevor was actually functioning as an extra lookout. His binoculars scanned the sea for submarines and mines and, increasingly now, had to inspect the sky for planes as well.

  Picking out a black dot dancing on the waves, Trevor inspected it, then pointed it out to Vian. “Small boat about a mile distant, sir,” he reported. “It appears that it is being rowed.”

  Intrepid altered course slightly to intercept the route of the sighted craft. Trevor went down to the rail to oversee the loading. Once alongside, twelve soldiers of the Devon Heavy Regiment, paddling a lifeboat with the butts of their rifles, were plucked from the water.

  Their sergeant, a portly man named Clifford, protested when he was informed that the rescue vessel was headed to Dunkirk to embark another load before returning to England. “Why didn’t you just pick us up goin’ the other way?” he asked. “We don’t want to go back; it’s ’orrible there!”

  “Orders,” Trevor explained. “When we are loaded, we don’t halt to take anybody else, in case we get attacked while we’re stopped.”

  “In that case,” Sergeant Clifford blustered, “put us off again! We’ll just keep rowing ourselves. We was makin’ it all right!”

  “I don’t think you want us to do that,” Trevor said.

  “And why not?”

  “Because you were rowing toward Calais when we found you, and it’s already in German hands.”

  27

  Waiting Ships

  The port of Dunkirk was a mass of ruins: sunken ships, burning warehouses, and the eerie remnants of cargo cranes. The twisted frames of the lifting scaffolds leaned over the waterways like ancient, tired gallows. In short, the inner harbor was unusable for the evacuation. Ships entering were likely to run afoul of submerged wreckage, if they were not themselves trapped in its winding leads and bombed.

  As early as the twenty-seventh of May, Senior Naval Officer William Tennant had concluded that the inner port was not serviceable. He also knew that the operation from the beaches east of Dunkirk was too slow. The good news was what he discovered about the two breakwaters that formed the entrance to Dunkirk Harbor: Two ranks of concrete pilings jutted over a thousand yards out into the Channel and were virtually untouched. Commander J.C. Clouston, pier master of Dunkirk Harbor, was assigned to make the most of the opportunity provided by the jetties.

  When Andre joined Clouston at the eastern mole on the morning of May 30, the evacuation was proceeding better than anyone had hoped. As Andre watched, soldiers marched four abreast along the wooden walkway that topped the breakwater. With the tide in, climbing onto the destroyer Sabre that was moored to wooden posts alongside the jetty was a speedy proposition. The heavy overcast of the day provided relief from Luftwaffe attacks, and the Tommies embarked as cheerfully as if they were taking a holiday ferry to the Isle of Wight.

  In less than an hour’s time, Sabre loaded five hundred men and pulled smartly away from the mole, bound for Dover. A minesweeper slipped in to take its place, and the smooth operation continued.

  But the problem continued to gnaw at Andre: Few of the departing troops were French. “Why aren’t more French queued up to leave?” he demanded.

  “A lot of reasons,” Clouston replied. “Language problem, mostly. The poilus don’t understand when told to leave their kit behind, and they don’t like it when we break up their units.”

  It sounded to Andre like an excuse. “Don’t you have anyone to interpret for you?”

  “Lieutenant Solomon speaks excellent French, but he can’t be everywhere at once.”

  It was another excuse, but this one could be dealt with.

  “Will you let me help?” Andre asked.

  “Certainly.”

  Most of the English officers handling the embarkation had only a limited knowledge of French. Shouting “Allez, allez!” at the poilus produced only contemptuous sneers. But while Andre was able to assist a few of his fellow soldiers, his sense of frustration grew even greater. The real reason no French were being embarked was that there were none in line. The queue that stretched down the length of the breakwater and back into the smoke-filled streets was packed with English soldiers. If French troops joined the end of the line, they were roughly pushed aside or told to leave the harbor and go to the beaches. Clearly there was nothing Andre could do as one lone voice in the face of this “English ships for Englishmen” attitude.

  From where the unending line of British soldiers tramped down the plank walkway and onto the waiting boats, Andre could look across the mouth of the harbor entrance. There, no more than a quarter mile away, was the similar but unoccupied western mole.

  Andre studied the ships tied up at the breakwater. There were three destroyers, two ferryboats, and a dozen smaller craft all loading at once. But for all the activity, another six boats waited off the jetty for their turn.

  Andre approached Clouston with his idea. “Why can’t we use the western mole as well and send the French troops over there?”

  “No reason at all, except that all the waiting ships think they are to come here.”

  “Can I use your authority to make them change destinations?”

  Clouston laughed. “My authority? You can try. Here, take my pistol . . . it may carry more weight. But Chardon,” he added in a more serious tone, “don’t tell anyone I said that, all right?”

  Andre located a colonel of the French First Army and told him about the new plan. The officer agreed to round up as many poilus as he co
uld and direct them to the western mole.

  Now to find a boat. Andre caught a ride with a motor launch out to the Bristol Belle, a hundred-foot-long steamer lying offshore. The ship was practically an antique—a twenty-year-old side-wheeler with a shallow draft and a single stack amidships. She was a jumble of odd angles and curious projections: a jutting prow whose sleek line disintegrated where the great round bulges of the paddle-wheel guards stuck out. A canvas-covered flybridge was suspended above her foredeck.

  Andre jumped from the motor launch to a narrow walk that encircled the girth of the starboard wheel. There was no ladder, but by putting one foot on a window ledge he boosted himself up to the rail on the open top deck and clambered over. The Belle idled slowly, waiting her turn at the mole. The twin lines that swept up to a single mast on her foredeck were still hung with pennants and signal flags from her last duty before Dunkirk: pleasure excursions on the Thames.

  Andre found the captain, an anxious-looking man named Pert, nervously pacing the flybridge.

  “Absolutely not!” Pert insisted when Andre explained what he needed. “It’s bad enough waiting here. We could be bombed any second. The Belle was never made for work like this. Besides, the western approach is in range of those German guns between Dunkirk and Gravelines. I won’t chance it, no matter who you say authorized it.”

  Andre considered taking a launch to another of the transport ships in the hopes of finding a more receptive welcome, but his anger flared at the waste of time. Whipping out the pistol, he snarled, “All right, here is your choice: Either take this ship to the western jetty and risk the guns of the Germans, or be on the receiving end of one Frenchman’s gun right now!”